If that is the explanation, it sure isn’t made clear by this shit article.

Yes, so you’d think that reopening the strait should help. Maybe they just mean not right away? It’s unclear.

This is a really shoddily written article. Bad. Basically he’s saying that fuel costs will remain high and from a business standpoint the risk doesn’t go to zero just because Trump says everything is rainbows. Therefore shipping faces increased costs, which raises prices for consumers, high hurts demand, which lowers shipping volume. And that systemic slowdown doesn’t disappear overnight because Trump says yippee.

I think. If the article weren’t total shit, maybe it would be clearer.

Because China’s government knows the last thing it needs is a bunch of unemployed people.

It’s so weird how single-party rule can sometimes be more responsive to the people. Because there’s no illusion: if the people get unhappy enough, CCP is gone.

Meanwhile the US we live with these bizarre illusions about how the people are truly in power, while our government is driven into the ground by plutocrats and their pet priests.

I suppose you’re thinking of Europe and the Nazis there and not the firebombing of the city of Tokyo, or the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’m aware of the usual excuses that these were defensive acts, but seriously, give me a fucking break.

My anus says that 12 times a day.

It makes a certain kind of sense to me. Making capitalism serve social goals is obviously a mix of philosophies but if capitalism is serving socialistic ends, isn’t socialism prioritized?

The essence of socialism, to me, is serving the social good as top priority. Not centrally managing the economy. Capitalism can be a “how” with socialism as the “why.”

All accurate beyond debate except for the part about his social programs ending the depression. That point is debatable, the debate being that it was actually deficit spending to industrialize for WW2 that did it.

Agreed. And with sexism, the link is even weaker.

America is only 15% black so it at least suggests that a good chunk of the other 85% were not too racist to elect Obama.

But humanity is 52% women so in theory, women could elect a woman even if every man in the country was in fact chauvinist.

Because by definition the furthest outliers have the least to say about the rest of the group.

Maybe we shouldn’t attempt to generalize about the categorizes by choosing the most grotesque extremes of both.

Safer than an explosion-powered car carrying a big tank of gasoline? A bold claim! /s

ATAB?

The Houthis are a large group controlling a big area of Yemen, but not the official government of Yemen. So if the Houthis enter a conflict, that’s not the same as the government of Yemen doing so. But Israel is trying to equate the two. They’re basically saying “Yemeni government, we hold you responsible, we think the Houthis are your proxy.”

So this accusation is not so much about the mere act of entering the conflict, itself, and more about WHO has actually entered it.

A comparison might be if Hezbollah carries out an attack, that’s not necessarily the recognized Lebanese government doing it. But Israel will blame them anyway, if for not other reason than to accuse them of not doing enough to stop it. This comparison is quite apt because both Hezbollah and the Houthis are well aligned with and funded by Iran.

Instead of throwing up my hands waiting for someone else to ratify a framework, I personally give substantial direct financial support to an African American family, not because I feel personally responsible for what happened 200 years ago, but because I know that what happened 200 years ago didn’t end 200 years ago but continued on and eventually became Jim Crow and eventually became the War on Drugs and all the while has just simmered there as subconscious racism. It affects them all day every day every time someone looks at them, every time they board an elevator.And alltogether it has unfairly advantaged me and disadvantaged them. I can’t even imagine the mental stress of being a black American over the last several years. And the entire 200 years we’ve been abusing and short changing these people, they have paid us back in unique gifts of art, music, and literature (on top of their everyday contributions to science, industry and education like everyone else makes too). I pay because it’s the least I can fucking do to help and say “someone sees, someone cares.” I give because I can, and never had to face what they face. I give because it’s their money.

You do you.

Birth rates decline as societies develop out of pure agrarianism, by virtue of the fact that unskilled farm labor is no longer as valuable.

If anyone else wants to hear a whole song and dance sideshow to this, see the above. 👆

Yes yes, I know you see everything through the lens of the disappearing middle class narrative.

But you’re unarmed with the basics. Agrarian societies run on family farms, where human hands mean more output. Developing countries have absolutely shit standards of living but they have the most kids. This is in direct contradiction to the way you see things.

The reason more developed countries have fewer children is because in a more advanced economy, workers need to be more educated and trained to produce value. They don’t begin contributing to the economy at age 5. More like 18 or 21. That is expensive. Nothing to do with boomers tanking the economy. This is fundamental and true around the world.

Don’t get so attached to a narrative that you become blind to everything else.

I don’t know how European solidarity works, but will people from France pay double for a shirt because it comes from Portugal instead of India?

Actually yeah I was just talking about this in a different post. Renewables are indeed big now and China is a leader.

BUT there is one catch with this. Liquid petroleum has never actually been that big a part of electricity generation. So all of China’s renewables, great as they are, are primarily reducing their usage of coal (which they have domestically in abundance).

Natural gas is also used for electricity, and they may have had to import that before.

But no matter how energy independent they get, it doesn’t free them from oil, which is still incredibly important for plastics and fertilizers.

A China that can’t manufacture cheap plastic crap is a China brought to its knees. A China that can’t feed its people is a China in revolution.

You seem genuinely unaware that countries like Germany legitimately have less than replacement birth rates. I don’t discount your point about paying people more, but I can acknowledge both these realities and you can too. While the class struggle with billionaires rages on, there actually are real demographic challenges.