Scratchin Mamba

4y

I think the second and that's funny af ngl

SEGA GOON

4y

Post the pic

Sir Real

4y

Even tho she is a dumb lib I do find that she engages in pretty good faith and asks good questions most of the time. Honestly it surprises me she’d say something THAT blatantly ignorant. Unfortunate.

I’m not trying to cape for her lol she’s just generally one of the less exceedingly stupid ones

Level 5 Goblin

4y

I usually forget which voice is which tbh unless they say it on air

But if you're curious, The interview was with Robert Draper, titled "How the hard-right turn in the Arizona GOP is an anti-democracy experiment"

The context was them saying basically conservatives love calling their opponents communists even though they're aligned with the communist state of Russia.

Scratchin Mamba

4y

Americans genuinely still believing that Russia is communist is so funny to me

SEGA GOON

4y

Japan is promoting alcohol consumption with a new public campaign. What are they cooking? Is it for tax purposes? Or do they want drunk impregnations?

Level 5 Goblin

4y

I usually forget which voice is which tbh unless they say it on air

But if you're curious, The interview was with Robert Draper, titled "How the hard-right turn in the Arizona GOP is an anti-democracy experiment"

The context was them saying basically conservatives love calling their opponents communists even though they're aligned with the communist state of Russia.

americana

4y

China's economic situation is about as bad as one can imagine for a major world economy.

First of all, the Chinese real estate market is the biggest Ponzi scheme that's ever been. Real estate companies rely on a mixture of bank loans, bond sales, and pre-purchases of completely-nonexistent houses to fund the construction of the houses they've already sold, which means that if demand collapses as is now happening, they can't afford to continue normal operations, meaning they can't deliver on their present sales, which is the main driver of the growing mortgage boycott movement. This is already worse in scale and magnitude than the 2008 financial crisis at least as far as real estate is concerned. Real estate alone accounts for 1/10 of China's GDP, while its associated industries account for perhaps as much as 1/3, all of which is threatening to grind to a near-halt.

But it gets worse, actually, because China's middle class is basically fully-invested in real estate. Between an unreliable stock market and tight restrictions against moving money out of the country, real estate is the only reasonably safe worthwhile investment option, which means that basically everyone who isn't a billionaire has their entire fortunes and life savings invested in uninhabitable concrete boxes in cities halfway across the country. And this is not touching on notoriously low quality - and so inherent value - of the houses people actually live in.

But it's actually so much worse even than that. You see, the central government in Beijing collects all taxes for itself and assigns local governments a budget. Naturally these budgets are hilariously inadequate to meet even the basic functions of administration, let alone Beijing's absurd economic growth targets, so local governments are left to their own devices to make up the difference.

Lacking independent tax authority, the one source of revenue the provinces have ready access to is control of land. As China is still at least nominally communist with market characteristics, the state owns all land, and citizens are entitled to their properties only on a theoretically temporary basis (as of now no one really knows how permanent long-term leases really are). So, local governments utilise what are called Local Government Financing Vehicles (or Platforms) (LGFVs/LGFPs) to lend out land to real estate developers and banks, and use the bond sales from development projects to fill out as much as one-third or more (!) of their normal operating budgets. This practice is a massive engine for official corruption, puts Chinese society at the mercy of the international real estate bond market, and hamstrings local governments during crises (such as the tremendous expense of mass covid testing in the midst of a lockdown-induced financial crisis).

It also makes the already enormous problem of lies, damned lies, and statistics that plague most authoritarian societies and China especially even worse. Local governments use debt to inflate their apparent growth numbers while pushing their real liabilities off their own books and into the private sector, and the central government, seeing good results, pushes for more, deepening the crisis. So confident in their society are Beijing's apparatchiks that they think nothing of spending trillions on pointless infrastructure like high-speed rail lines no one uses, trying to engage in a naval arms race with the US, and lending hundreds of billions in the Belt & Road initiative out to third-world countries that can't afford those debts to build ports and highways and skyscrapers nobody needs and which fall apart as soon as the construction companies leave, even as half the Chinese population lives on less than $200 a month* and local governments can't afford to govern.

No one knows how much China's true public debt is, but the problem is very bad according to even the rosiest estimates, and all estimates are of course based on let's say optimistic Chinese official statistics.

And this is all against a backdrop of severe long-term problems for the economy. The ability of infrastructure investment to produce GDP growth is reaching its natural limits and is producing diminishing returns, the legacy of the One Child Policy has created an ageing population and shrinking workforce, pollution and environmental destruction remain out of control and deepen food insecurity while Climate Change makes China's water woes worse, authoritarian control is squashing innovation, and foreign companies are increasingly looking to decouple from China's lawless, unfair, politically-controlled, and unstable economy, a trend which their undiplomatic diplomacy and zero-covid follies over the last few years have only served to accelerate.

Total collapse à la Sri Lanka is decidedly unlikely, but the heady days of constant, absurd growth are clearly over, and China's economy faces a long and painful road towards restructuring into a more functional form. Overall, the situation is startlingly similar to the Heisei Recession Japan experienced starting in 1990 in terms of both immediate problems and long-term trends, except every facet of the situation is a hundred times worse and on a far larger absolute scale. The disaster is unfolding slowly, step by step starting from the original Evergrande default, but it will unfold with all the inexorable momentum of the rising tide. Expect at least a decade of stagnation and unrest going forward.

*Edit: original income figure quoted was $2/day, which is lower than the actual average rural income in China.

Yuzzy

4y

Source?

Level 5 Goblin

4y

What growing up in Cold War America does to a mf

SEGA GOON

4y

Yeah i support Israel

(Israel Kamakawiwoʻole)

SEGA GOON

4y

Israel was a clear advocate for Hawaiian sovereignty in any number of ways as described by Dan Koiz of Honolulu Civil Beat: “He recorded mele kūʻē, songs of protest, like ‘Hawai’i ’78’ and “Living in a Sovereign Land.” He gave the Hawaiian flag pride of place on the cover of his 1995 album E Ala E. He spoke with bitterness about the displacement of Native Hawaiians in interviews, drawing an explicit connection between Hawaiians’ dispossession of their native land and his own emotional health.

In the last years of his, life Israel’s between-song messages to his audiences mixed generic bootstraps talk with more specific support for Native Hawaiian causes and crusaders, including Bumpy Kanahele, whose occupation of Makapu‘u beach received the Israel seal of approval in a 1994 show. ‘Haoles, it’s nice to have you here,’ Israel said at that concert. ‘But when pau with vacation, don’t forget: Go home!’”

americana

4y

misread

SEGA GOON

4y

Which one you choosing @TragedyGhaddafi

TragedyBerlusconi

4y

Globalism enforced beyond earth