- 15 Feb 2023 19:22
#15265059
If you have paid attention, at all, you will have noticed that things have not turned out as gloomy as Zeihan has predicted. Over the long run, there's no escaping the numbers, but luck and resourcefulness have held off some of the dire predictions.
Part of the problem is that China and Russia are not exactly forthcoming with their bad news.
I talked about this before I discovered Zeihan. I was talking about a very good, but overly pessimistic book titled Rise and Fall of American Growth.
We're headed into a new era. Boomers like me are dying, and the young are, by and large, are not as well educated.
But the same thing confounding pessimists screws with optimists, and to at least the same degree. As Zeihan loves to keep pointing out, we don't even have an economic model for a shrinking workforce (relative to the size of the population).
I'd like to point out that all Republicans do about Social Security is lie their ass off...
Europe has benefited from cheap energy and raw material inputs from Russia, and that has simply stopped. A lot of manufacturing is leaving China, and some of that is coming here. The benefits of short supply chains in a crisis suddenly became obvious when production lines had to shut down.
'What goes around comes around.'
That's a saying from the 70s that keeps running through my head. A lot of countries are going to suffer, some horribly, and there appears to be a slowly growing probability that regional (or even global) chaos could be unleashed. But that could be the result of my tendency to be pessimistic. But one of the 'lessons' of the last century is that a crisis can easily wind up biting us in the ass.
Before someone says that's why we shouldn't do this or that (like in Ukraine), it may not matter. We tried isolationism, didn't work. We tried tariffs before, shortly before WW2 (meaning didn't work).
I think our odds are best when we are Progressive. Rebuilding Europe and Japan after WW2 was one of the most successful moves in human history. Turkey, for example, can be a real pain in the butt, helping them now could have benefits later. When I say help, I mean a lot more than what we usually do. That country was under enormous stress before the earthquake, now it's a mess. That level of assistance wouldn't be cheap. Cheaper than war, certainly, but more than we usually think of, a lot more.
Part of the problem is that China and Russia are not exactly forthcoming with their bad news.
I talked about this before I discovered Zeihan. I was talking about a very good, but overly pessimistic book titled Rise and Fall of American Growth.
We're headed into a new era. Boomers like me are dying, and the young are, by and large, are not as well educated.
But the same thing confounding pessimists screws with optimists, and to at least the same degree. As Zeihan loves to keep pointing out, we don't even have an economic model for a shrinking workforce (relative to the size of the population).
I'd like to point out that all Republicans do about Social Security is lie their ass off...
Europe has benefited from cheap energy and raw material inputs from Russia, and that has simply stopped. A lot of manufacturing is leaving China, and some of that is coming here. The benefits of short supply chains in a crisis suddenly became obvious when production lines had to shut down.
'What goes around comes around.'
That's a saying from the 70s that keeps running through my head. A lot of countries are going to suffer, some horribly, and there appears to be a slowly growing probability that regional (or even global) chaos could be unleashed. But that could be the result of my tendency to be pessimistic. But one of the 'lessons' of the last century is that a crisis can easily wind up biting us in the ass.
Before someone says that's why we shouldn't do this or that (like in Ukraine), it may not matter. We tried isolationism, didn't work. We tried tariffs before, shortly before WW2 (meaning didn't work).
I think our odds are best when we are Progressive. Rebuilding Europe and Japan after WW2 was one of the most successful moves in human history. Turkey, for example, can be a real pain in the butt, helping them now could have benefits later. When I say help, I mean a lot more than what we usually do. That country was under enormous stress before the earthquake, now it's a mess. That level of assistance wouldn't be cheap. Cheaper than war, certainly, but more than we usually think of, a lot more.
Facts have a well known liberal bias
- By paeng
- By wat0n
- By Puffer Fish