Politics

Certainly

Chill Political Economy, Politics, Prediction

FYI an uncertain economy is even worse for investment and future growth than a merely bad economy.

A bad economy is predictable. Uncertainty, however, is economic death. And Trump is overloading us with uncertainty. In fact, providing nothing but. This will result in very bad things. Already is, really, but unless an actual nuclear attack or tsunami hits economic headwinds generally take 6-9 months to have much noticeable effect.

We’re in the winds now. Storm is coming; depression is on the way. Just give it time.

Eurnope

Chill Political Economy, Politics

Europe has even more potentially society-ending challenges ahead than the United States, despite the creeping anti-science authoritarianism here at home. Among them:

1) Demographic crisis. Shared with the rest of the world, of course. And no, immigration won’t solve it. Their more-generous social safety net is going to need some re-vamping that will cause massive social unrest.

2) Islamization. Once a society becomes ~10% Muslim, it’s enough to throw it into chaos and often dissolve the existing culture. Many EU countries are getting close to this threshold or have exceeded it. And no matter what idiot feminists think, this will be very, very bad for women there.

3) Russia. It’ll be invading soon. Europe is not even close to any kind of ready.

4) Immigration of unattached economic anti-western migrant men. Even apart from Islamization, this is a huge issue and will be getting much worse.

5) AMOC collapse. This will make a lot of Europe a whole lot colder on average while having minimal effect on the US.

The US and China are best-positioned to endure and even prosper here. That is, assuming we in the US don’t strangle ourselves to death, which we are merrily on the way to doing by killing science, research and clean energy.

But Europe is pretty much fucked no matter what.

Fund

Chill Annoying, Clowns, Politics

It’s also similar to the left’s assertion that if we could just not send those evil and bad rockets to evil bad and scary space, we’d be able to fund everything.

Wahwah

Chill Annoying, Politics

I also hold no opinion on Hillary Clinton’s past or present hotness, but I very much agree that the turn to anti-sex prudishness did some harm to the Dems — though it does comport directionally with Gen Z and their weird schoolmarmishness.

Religiosity

Chill Annoying, Politics

And the funny thing is the pro-immigration and anti-immigration people largely agree on this! That is, even the pro-immigrant side sees immigrants as punishment for alleged past Western sins.

Not very healthy on either side.

Miss Pax

Chill Evil, Politics

The age of America is ending. We’ve somehow managed to strangle ourselves with no outside assistance.

The world that’s coming will be much more dangerous and worse. The evil degrowthers will cheer, though China, India and now Europe will be ramping up emissions more than the US ever would have, so it’ll be a net loss even there. The wake of our decline will stir into motion much war, much death, and probably a nuclear exchange or two before it’s done.

I never thought it’d all wrap up like this, in a pathetic suicide. But perhaps that’s the only way it could’ve concluded.

DOGE Gone

Chill Evil, Political Economy, Politics

I’ve been planning for Social Security not to exist when I retire and looks like DOGE might make that happen. Glad I started planning for that more than 20 years ago.

Poverty rate is gonna jump and elderly are gonna be dying in the streets. But we all knew it was coming. Well, the smart ones did. The rich absolutely despise Social Security and covet that money. It was only a matter of time before they stole it all.

Superior

Chill Clowns, Political Economy, Politics

That’s right. She doesn’t understand it because it makes no sense. But people always want to feel that they’re better than someone else, even if the average contractor or construction worker should have more solidarity with the waitress in the café than the billionaire being a clown on TV.

But everyone in America sees themselves as a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire so class solidarity isn’t much of a thing.

He Found the Self-Destruct Button

Chill Evil, Political Economy, Politics

I thought the idea absurd in 2015-2016 that Trump might be a Russian agent, or least on their payroll. Now I think it’s probably substantially true.

Has a country so large ever destroyed itself so quickly? Maybe Germany in the lead-up to WWII, but even that was slower if I’ve read my history correctly.