That was after the arms race that Kennedy started to starve the USSR out of GDP succeeded, when the USSR was allocating all its GDP to defense instead of consumer industries. Which immediately stifled the extremely impactful consumer industry that the USSR had from 1950s to late 1960s. In that period, Kennedy admn. was quite concerned about the progress of the USSR, circulating internal memos saying how the USSR was able to raise the life standards of its people from desperation to 2nd world standards within the same generation, and at that rate other countries could start copying their development model. Ie, socialism. If this was not countered, the global economic control of the US that it gained in post-Ww2 environment would fell down like dominoes as nation after nation chose socialism and allied with the USSR. This was later called 'the Domino theory'. To prevent it, it was decided to 'make examples of' the countries that tried such 'independent development' (that's what they call socialism in their internal memos). That's where the Vietnam War originated from. Also all the other things including the blockade on Cuba etc.
What relevance this has to the topic at hand is that, if the employees feel that they are actually receiving something out of the work they do and their lives are getting bettered in ANY way, they work. If there is no improvement regardless of how much they work, they just dont care anymore. That's the current situation in the US - any wage raise is immediately sucked out by the privatized critical services ranging from healthcare to food, from rent to education. Its just not worth putting in more effort anymore because the more effort you put into making money, the more the market sucks out of your wallet.
The nuclear arms race started immediately after WWII (or possibly during it), the space race (and associated missile race) started in the 1950s. The idea that Kennedy started “the arms race” is…ahistorical.
Those weren't races. The decision to start an arms race and space race to starve the USSR of GDP is an explicitly laid out plan in Kennedy admn.'s internal memos.
The nuclear arms race, space race, and missile race (the second being intimately connected to the third, and in a way its public face, at least initially) were, in fact, races (and components of the broader arms race) and they, in fact, started before Kennedy was in office (the space and missile races, under Eisenhower.)
That Kennedy capitalized on that reality, and built a strategy beyond the most obvious superficial goal of those races, is clear, but to say that he “started” the Cold War arms race is silly and ahistorical.
That's your interpretation. And possibly a likely noticeable segment of the public. The Kennedy administration's race is an actual, specific race with a specific plan. It cannot be 'interpreted away' like that. It was a specific decision taken with specific goals in mind. And those goals were not just 'reaching space' or 'have more nuclear bombs' like the others.
I recommend watching some relevant Chomsky lectures on the matter. He gives excruciating details of the affair.
It’s a well-documented fact.
> The Kennedy administration’s race is an actual, specific race with a specific plan.
The Kennedy strategy only makes sense as an a strategy within the well-documented arms race that was already occurring.
> It was a specific decision taken with specific goals in mind.
An arms race is not defined by the existence of a strategy of one side, it is an escalating cycle of response between two (or more) sides. The Kennedy strategy might help explain why the superpowers didn’t break out of the race sooner (though, really, arms races continuing until either one or both sides reach economic exhaustion or a geopolitical realignment through either war between them or intervention of a third power renders the race moot is fairly normal, so it’s plausible that the adoption of an obvious strategy by the more economically powerful power given an existing arms race did nothing.)
> I recommend watching some relevant Chomsky lectures on the matter.
There are things Chomsky might be able to convince me of, but effects preceding their causes isn’t among them.
Sorry. Kennedy administration says otherwise in their internal memos released to the public via FOIA requests. This may not fit the worldview that you constructed in your head, but reality is what it is. In between what the Kennedy admn. itself says and your 'interpretations', I'll go with the former. Thanks.
The 1% win no matter how we design the housing market. They don't need to thumb the scale
Can any software men/women here comment on how many votes they can buy?
In the software business, which government has so far not interfered with, prices have declined to zero (literally) with lots and lots of revolutionary software being developed.
Famously, software doesn't take any more resources to build and share than a few electrons and a laptop, so not quite the same market as homes which require a massive amount of resources to build.
but there's no reason why you'd expect that the price of anything would stay at the exact same ratio it was 30 yrs ago.
The increase in prices of real estate is demand and supply driven, which implies that way more people got way more richer than you in the intrim 15 yrs. And not to mention some bad gov't policies that prevented an increase in supply, while demand increased, and you see high prices.
I am specifically saying that homes in my area, and most others, have risen in price at a MUCH faster rate than incomes. My example was meant to describe that situation, not just "standard inflation".
Your last paragraph, I fear, is accurate.
And if you're going to say that it was just one country, why do you say that it was North Vietnam that was that one country? Why not South Vietnam? (And if you're going to say that they were both that one country, yeah, come live in reality for a while, it's not that bad here. They were two separate countries for thirty years, in the same way that North and South Korea are two separate countries, and in the way that Russia and Ukraine are two separate countries.)
And as for calling it an invasion... there was sure a lot of shooting for it to have been a political convention.
A curious perspective; fear of options. Emotion over logic.
A free market would be something like a farmers market where producers sell directly to consumers. Instead, the US stock market is more like a cartel where there is a central group of intermediaries, which control money moves between producers (companies) and buyers (small/medium investors).
No, a free market is when people are free to make transactions with whoever they please. Big companies are just as free market as mom & pops.
Not really. A company that's big enough to be (even a regional) monopoly forces people to transact with them by virtue of being the only game in town. The question is whether this is a continuous gradient from "more free" to "less free" or more similar to a step function when a company reaches monopoly status.
Your local supermarket may be the only one in your village, but the next village is easily attainable. Something being more convenient doesn't make it a monopoly.
I grew up in the Air Force. My mom would always shop at the base PX because it was cheaper, and sometimes it was a 30 minute drive away, passing store after store to get there. To make the drive worthwhile, she'd buy 2 weeks worth of groceries at a time.
In Seattle, there are some neighborhoods without stores, but that is usually because the stores cannot handle the shoplifting anymore, and quit. It's still not far to another store outside those neighborhoods.
You can even buy food from Amazon from your Lazy-Boy. Push a button, and food appears on your porch.
If you have a really hard time finding food where you live, may I suggest:
Happy new year to you!
P.S. I buy some food items from Amazon that, including shipping, are cheaper than what the local grocery store prices them at. Isn't American competition great?
Aren't you? I find that businesses like my money.
What stocks in the market are you prevented from buying?
https://www.sec.gov/education/capitalraising/building-blocks...
Stock price is a part of a public companies responsibilities, but there are many other priorities and responsibilities a company's charter and board can set. Personally I only want to have stock in companies with a vision. Ultimately they tend to become the most valuable in terms of stock price too.
Hum... Are you sure? Keep in mind that state backed companies that are not allowed to fail create almost exactly the same problem.
You also forgot the national auto industry that was bailed out from certain disaster in 2008.
You have obviously lived in cities your entire life.
Farms fail all the time. Ask any banker at a branch in an agricultural area.
Every industry is too big to fail.
Honestly, other than entertainment, I can't think of any situation where the government would allow an entire industry to fail.
I'm appalled anybody needs to ask this question after the 2008 bailouts.
> In total, U.S. government economic bailouts related to the global financial crisis had federal outflows (expenditures, loans, and investments) of $633.6 billion and inflows (funds returned to the Treasury as interest, dividends, fees, or stock warrant repurchases) of $754.8 billion, for a net profit of $121 billion.[89]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Progra...
And the outflows include about 30% that went to Fannie and Freddie, which were quasi govt operations, and 10% to auto makers that the govt created no mechanism to recover money from.
In reality, outside of the original Bear Sterns collapse, what the 2008 financial sector basically saw was a loss of confidence which was leading to a bank run. All the govt did was provided a backstop that prevented the bank run, which is why even though the government took ludicrously low ownership stakes for the money they put in, their stakes were still highly profitable.
Another example showing this, but from the private sector, was Warren Buffett getting Goldman Sachs to basically pay him hundreds of millions of dollars just to lend his credibility, which was sufficient for them to weather the environment (this was structured as a loan, but the loan was just window dressing for the fact that Buffett was saying he had trust in GS).
In reality, there was always gonna be a recession as house prices went back to more realistic levels and the wrongly rated AAA mortgage backed securities were marked to market to a much more realistic number, along with the knock on effects on various portfolios that included them.
What tipped this recession into a major financial crisis was Paulson forcing Lehman brothers to collapse despite bids from at least 2 other companies that would have saved Lehman, simply because of a personal vendetta.
The overnight and unexpected Lehman bankruptcy sowed massive uncertainty into the markets, drove a bank run, and triggered a chain reaction of failed assets that eventually made it to AIG, and the risk of an AIG failure, was what eventually caused the crisis.
Much of it could have been avoided simply if Paulson wasn’t such an asshole.
I would find it absolutely hilarious if Apple banning certain kinds of in-app tracking combined with Binance sparking a run on FTX for laughs ended up collapsing the software and crypto industries for a few years.
So who even gives a crap if you win this rigged game?
> harder work does not necessarily pay better or lead to advancement
Smarter work does, though.
In a free market, supply&demand set employee compensation at about 85% of the value the employee produces.
The reason is simple. If the company overpays, the company goes bust. If the company underpays, his competitor will hire the person away.
If you believe you're underpaid, make your case to your employer. If he agrees, good for you. If he doesn't, and you're not convinced, quit and work for his competitor.
The thing to do then is keep founding competitors and make a profit selling them to the "monopoly".
P.S. buying a company is not "sabotaging" it. LOL
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_s...
Also- based on my cursory reading here, it seems disingenuous to claim 46% of GDP is government spending- the stat is that government spending is comparable to 46% of the GDP of that year. Government spend doesn’t comprise 46% of the GDP, rather we are using GDP as a measuring stick to evaluate the sanity of government spending amounts.
Defense spending. Government workers. Infrastructure projects various governments partially or fully pay for. Subsidies. And so on.
However, I’m struggling to square that fact with the observation that the Wikipedia table shows a number of entries >100%. How could government spending ever exceed 100% of GDP given it is counting toward GDP?