https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52104978 i think this analysis on the possible long term effects of this crisis is more usefull. They say that the perceived risk of ordering parts from east asia is now much higher and that they will likely prefer local producers because of that perceived risk. (don't know if that is practical, as things nowadays are much more specialized)
China’s decisions regarding intellectual property and trade secrets (IP), however, haven’t changed and are the reason my (large) employer has stopped sending anything sensitive there. We still sell to China but any IP entering the country is assumed as forfeit.
Other countries are becoming more competitive even outside of IP considerations.
I think we’ll see more and more “the Chinese economy” and “the US Et al economy” but mainly divided by IP. Covid will be a minor blip on that scene.
yeah but its also easy to see capitalism deciding that the super cheap near slave labor in china make those products much cheaper, why buy local when it can be gotten for half the price +- 2 days delivery.
I don't really follow the perception though. It doesn't seem like the globalized supply chain has actually been hit by the pandemic - travel restrictions have universally exempted trade.
Globalized supply chains have been devastated by the pandemic. Large numbers of shippers are projected to go bankrupt because their loads have plummetted.
That goes in direct contradiction to what you just said above. Either global supply chains are devastated or they are not. You very clearly said that global supply chains were not hit.
Fair, I was imprecise. My point is, companies that exist solely to maintain the supply chain aren't doing great, but that seems to mostly be because so many people aren't producing stuff - as far as I can tell the stuff that is produced is making it around the world with no problems. I've found no shortage of the things I consume that are produced in Asia.
Comparative advantage was an often used debate point by Australian politicians. Unfortunately, only recently have studies on this topic started to mention that some countries exploit what is essentially slave labour, and that they have little regard for environmental consequences. I believe these studies strongly influence our public servants so it’s unfortunate that such important points have not being raised sooner by academics.
Higher worker costs, along with other reasons, means the Australian manufacturing industry could not compete in the international market. With import tariffs being steadily reduced since the 70s (from roughly 35% in 1970 to below 5% in 2016), the local industry could not compete against international competitors in the local markets either. Without these protections, all of our car manufacturers have shut down, for example.
So, we’re in a situation where the majority of our local manufacturing industry has evaporated. We are dependent on the industries of other countries.
This is only made possible by our abundance of in-demand and conveniently-located raw materials. Our exports are mostly oil (33%), unprocessed ores (29%) and uncut gems (7%) (other types of industries don’t come close, with meat next at 4%). This has supported our dollar and given us fifty years of paradise.
Clearly, this is not sustainable. Should our goods stop selling, our exporters will be in trouble, our dollar will drop, and our importers (everyone!) will be in trouble.
It shouldn’t be necessary, but I hope a silver lining of this recent crisis is that it provokes our politicians into fixing this absurd situation. I do not want to be dependent on the slave-driven & environmentally-damaging industries of other countries.
I'm not sure how this will affect the current strategic balance. It's safe to say that China will recover faster, but they are so export-dependent that their economy will still be crippled by global lower demand.
However, I think this also shows that large-scale government intervention in the economy is necessary in the current world. Ostensibly free-market economies aren't free anyway, as the Fed continues to show.
> However, I think this also shows that large-scale government intervention in the economy is necessary in the current world.
Mostly as a result of large-scale government action. Don't forget that the majority of the economic 'damage' from the coronavirus is from the shutdown, not from the virus itself. If lockdowns were determined on an individual / localized basis, the outcome might have been different.
You don't know that. As California chose to suggest staying at home (it's basically voluntary not even enforced particularly aggressively except for a handful of corner cases) earlier than the rest of the country, proving that decentralized authority can lead to better outcomes.
Imagine if California chose to defer to federal authority; a huge chunk of 40 million people would have been put at higher risk.
The reason no one can find toilet paper is not because there isn't enough, it's because the public either went nuts mimicking Asian buying (they don't produce TP, they did have a shortage), went nuts overbuying due to the resulting apparent shortage, or went evil trying to take advantage of everyone else by reselling and price gouging.
The same thing is happening with food now. Bread yeast that used to go for ~ $8 to $14 a box, can be found now only from resellers trying to charge upwards of $70 for it.
In Massachusetts, early action on shelter-at-home, before the order went out, seems to have helped, as it has in California. But in Southern states the common thinking is that this is something that just happens to someone else. It's just the flu. What's horrific about that is that even if New York, for example, succeeds, it could come back anyway because of these folks.
They'll know it's denial when reality kills them in the middle of their opinion-touting.
But in Southern states the common thinking is that this is something that just happens to someone else.
If one is in a rural environment, this view is understandable. Not seeing one's neighbors (outside of now cancelled gatherings) may well be the norm.
It's just the flu. What's horrific about that is that even if New York, for example, succeeds, it could come back anyway because of these folks.
If there is an unlucky mutation and a 2nd go around, the likelihood of that is driven by population. It's the population centers like New York which would most likely produce this.
They'll know it's denial when reality kills them in the middle of their opinion-touting.
That's often how a free society works. People are free to make decisions, good and bad, and others can then learn from their mistakes. We must be willing to convince, not coerce, when we can.
Do we know that that is the driver of California’s improved outcomes vs (for example) climate? I believe illinois was similarly early (at least relative to its phase of progression if not absolute date) but I believe the outcomes are worse there, certainly on a population adjusted basis.
EDIT: Californians, this is a genuine question, not trying to bruise your egos by suggesting suggesting you're perhaps equal to other Americans. Terribly sorry!
It takes time to go from infection -> sick -> diagnosis -> death. IL and CA would have had inertia following the stay-at-home proclamations. CA started with 25% daily case growth and has now dropped to 12%, IL started with 40% case growth but has now dropped to 12%. IL's daily death rate increase is still higher than CA, but it is dropping.
> population adjusted
Population adjustment is much more important for assessing the final outcome. At early stages, the growth rate is far more important for knowing if it's under control.
> climate
Washington/Seattle had earlier outbreaks than CA, started distancing earlier, and have had a much lower growth than CA. We started at 30% case growth, but brought it down 20% by ~Mar 21 and 10% by Apr 1.
I'm using the graphs at 91-divoc for the historical numbers, but I've found NYT to have the best looking graphs for growth rates.
"Global Economic Shutdown with Shelter In Place" is the NEW approach, not fast local quarantines. Fast local quarantines are how we (public healthcare experts) stopped measles, smallpox, polio, etc outbreaks before vaccines were available. And we still use those methods (fast local quarantines) for eradication purposes when they spring up again.
Just like our immune system. I'm sure stopping our heart would slow down the disease, but...
Fast local quarantines and such as you are describing are great, if you catch it early. If strong measures are taken before it spreads, it is reasonable to quarantine all sick and people in contact with the sick. Taiwan was able to do this, and has had only minimal cases and minimal disruption. There is community spread basically everywhere now, so it is too late for local measures. It's almost as if people should have been listening to public health experts in January when it was clear where this was heading.
Is there any way to do this with a disease that can spread for a week before symptoms show when we don't have anywhere near adequate numbers of tests? The issue here is that unlike most other diseases, this one goes from one person somewhere has it to many, many people in many places have it before it can be detected in its original location.
> "However, I think this also shows that large-scale government intervention in the economy is necessary in the current world."
you've drawn no line between "this" (or even clearly established what it is) and a necessity for "large-scale government intervention" (whatever those may be). state your goal, and then your rationale, rather than making a vague and dogmatic pronouncement.
and critique both the current (un-)free market dogma and blind large-scale government intervention, rather than trading one for the other. either extreme will lead to more (liberty-threatening) consolidation of power, not less.
I may be paranoid, and I'm certainly a cynic, but I simply don't believe the epidemic numbers coming from China. Wuhan is huge, densely populated, and there is evidence of human-to-human transmission since the middle of December. The disease has a long incubation period, highish transmissibility, and a large proportion of mild or asymptomatic cases.
The only thing we know is something big happened and it's probably going to have some effect. That's it. It's not like we don't have examples from history to look at. Even with the clarity of hind site can you say what the effect of the AIDS crisis was? Polio? Spanish flu? No we can't. Would things have been different if they hadn't happened other than a lot of people wouldn't be dead? Sure, but how would they have been different? Not so sure. I don't think it's even worth speculating other than knowing that whatever you come up with is probably going to be wrong.
I think it's possible to know more than just "there's going to be an effect" from history. 1st order effects (i.e. this happened because of this) are usually quite obvious and observable. For instance, are we going to see remote work becoming more mainstream because of this? I think that is almost a certainty at this point.
In simple systems, 1st order effects are dominant.
However you're right that in complex systems like geopolitics, the dominant effects are not 1st order, but higher order (2nd, 3rd, 4th order) and those are hard to isolate -- all the effects are mixed. Also, we can't measure the counterfactuals ("what would have happened if...") because they didn't happen! Of course, historians and writers will try to fill in the gaps with their theories and invariably they're going to be wrong to various degrees and still make the NYT Best Seller list.
That notwithstanding, we can still learn something (albeit limited) from the 1st order effects that are observable -- it's not all or nothing.
They aren't obvious and observable other than your defining 1st order effects that way. Remote work becoming more mainstream because of this isn't a certainty at this point. It took a pandemic to get employers to allow it in a large way, why would you assume that once that is gone you're going to keep it? For all you know there will be a backlash and there will be less remote work than before. Did you think you're going to come out of this with more leverage with your employer?
Is Covid-19 a Geopolitical Game-Changer? I hope and pray that this is the case. This may be the best time for us to make a change in the way the world works. Our lives have been disrupted, and we need to strive to make lasting changes for the greater good.
The internet, and our world is over-commercialized. The pandemic causing an economic re-evaluation which may be the best opportunity we have to re-evaluate our position. If not, and you think the advertiser/marketer/retail market was invasive before... you aint seen nothing yet. They will need to try every trick in the book x10 - repeatedly, at lighting speed - and invent new tactics to boot. I know, this type of talk makes it seem like the Max Headroom blipverts are the future.
What a complete rubbish article. Apparently the three possibilities as an outcome are; 1) Nothing changes, 2) "China's rise is confirmed" (does this even mean anything?) and .... 3) Biden is elected. I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that these three choices do not span the space of possibilities, or even the space of large probabilistic mass for the possibilities, but they may span the space of the acceptable outcomes to the clown who wrote it.
Let me propose an alternative 3 possibilities that presently seem more likely:
1) Autarky is recognized as not so bad after all, at least in strategic resources
2) International institutions continue to not matter much in a crisis
3) Someone is elected (I could be wrong about this)
It's a good question whether the Covid-19 crisis is good or bad for Trump.
You might say Biden benefits because Trump looks so incompetent. But his voters knew that already. Most of them vote for him because of a singular issue in which they have the minority view: abortion, extreme gun rights and white superiority. To these voters, nothing else matters, even if they were totally aware of Trump's incompetency and corruption. I even think many pretend to not notice that, because they don't want to admit how important their single-issue is to them.
In my opinion, Covid-19 will be good for Trump because that is his only chance to get the voter depression he needs to win against an overwhelmingly more popular candidate, according to all the polls.
Do you know Trump voters? Your depiction of them seems extremely bigoted and does not reflect the reality I've experienced living in an overwhelming Republican state. Trump's approval rating has been increasing and his disapproval rating decreasing over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, so your read on the situation does not seem to match reality.
While I agree that the handling could be better, I don't think Trump looks that incompetent, especially when compared to other countries' leaders (most of Europe is doing about as badly as the US) and organizations like the CDC (masks don't work), the WHO (closing borders is racist), and the government of New York (encouraging people to go to the movies and restaurants in March).
I think your view of Trump is preventing you from getting an accurate read on reality. FYI I'm not a Republican and did not vote for Trump.
FWIW, that is not holding true. He got an uptick in approval of 2-3% early on, but it has been slipping a bit since then, trending slowly back towards where it was previously. About 45% approval, about 50% disapproval, so he's still underwater.
It has been well established by polling that single-issue voters favor Trump overwhelmingly. And when you ask them about Trumps' various scandals or the evidence of criminal activity, they claim to know nothing or blame Clinton and Obama. I've not seen intellectually sound defenses of Trumps behavior and conduct. Much of it is indefensible.
In reality, most European countries are way ahead of the US on testing, and most have enacted social distancing way before the US. Even Italy is on track to managing Covid-19 better than the US, they are just a bit earlier on the curve, currently. None of the European leaders have downplayed the pandemic for so long or spread so much disinformation. Delayed action, no federal coordination, spreading lies - for me that's objective incompetence and not a matter of opinions.
It sounds biased to say Trump is narcissistic and functionally illiterate and that he doesn't have a clue about most issues he is facing. It's also true, when you look at the data. Would it be more objective to ignore such data?
My view of his supporters is giving them the benefit of the doubt. The single-issue effect is a much nicer explanation than saying they don't know enough about Trump, his corruption or contemporary issues. Or blaming them for being racist. Which many of them probably also are. A single-issue voter at least knows that he is picking evil when he thinks he is picking the "lesser" evil. A racist, or someone brainwashed by FOX news, does not know about Trumps criminal behavior, mental issues or his chronic lying.
Hmm. I would not be so certain for a Chinese rise-up after covid19. If you had asked this question three months ago, no one would have doubted that China was on track to be the dominant world power, given that the Trump presidency trades American dominance for little to no gain (e.g. leaving Paris Accords, retreating out of Iraq/Afghanistan/Kurdistan, while at the same time cozying up with dictators and autocrats like North Korea or Saudi-Arabia), while at the same time China exploits the reduction of Western help in both Africa (where China now provides investment aid / work without the strings that are usually attached to Western aid, like rules of democracy) and Europe itself (where Italy, Greece, Spain and other countries, e.g. Croatia or Serbia, turn to China for financial / logistical assistance as the EU is unwilling to help out thanks to Germany/Austria/Netherlands opposing). Also, China abuses that influence regularly to tune down criticism of e.g. the Muslim Gulags or the Tibet situation, because a trade blockade or stop to supply money is an effective threat that China can make as many countries depend on cheap Chinese labor or money by now.
Now with Covid19 however? Many people and many corporations are effectively forced to diversify their supply chains (Apple most famously) or to re-nationalize critical production like ventilators or even mass goods such as masks, gloves and overalls for medical staff; at the same time consumers in most if not all nations will face a massive lack of spending power on goods that are not essential to their survival. Both of this will drastically reduce the dependence of Western (and other) nations on China, and if Corona FINALLY forces Germany and the Netherlands to drop their blockade of Eurobonds then also China won't be needed as financer for poor-er EU countries.
On the other side, I would also not bet on the US to rise to fill the void they themselves have left and China will leave, especially if Trump gets reelected (his approval ratings are on record highs for whatever reason). I'd rather expect a further deterioration of international institutions such as the UN and even EU as states will resort to more nationalism and a decent load of chaos in one or two years when there will be vaccinations available and global travel will begin to flow again...
Even before Covid-19 I thought China would soon be hitting some form of glass ceiling. Partly because of things like a virus that gets a head start on an authoritarian, corruption-riddled government. If they had their sh*t together, they would have enforced their ban on "exotic" meat already and the whole episode might never even have started at all. And they also can't get a grip on the African Swine Fever, for similar reasons, which also hampers economic growth. Then there was the Sanlu milk powder scandal. Similar things echo around modern Chinese history. Dishonesty can win in the short run, but it hurts long-term.
Lack of openness means corruption, corruption means volatility, volatility limits growth. Yes, they achieved a lot of great things for their people. But without an open and much more honest society they will reach a ceiling. And then there is the threat of some kind of "Economic World War" when the rest of the world has had enough of Human rights violations of Third Reich proportion (Falun Gong, Uighurs, etc) and their unfair trade practices.
The consensus is Covid-19 is a naturally occurring rather than engineered virus. Everyone outside of a very small number of radical conspiracy theorists understand this.
But here's a dark thought. China has just showed the West if there ever _is_ a biowar, who will likely win.
China certainly did not win. The best they could be thought to have done is "lose less badly". Even that is questionable, depending on how much you believe their statistics.
Did they close their whole country to control the spread? Are they mostly open now? Did they have the same rate of infections and deaths (even if they fudge numbers some)?
Look, I dislike CCP as much as anyone but I think we need to look at reality so we can be prepared.
> Did they close their whole country to control the spread?
Yes, they did... eventually. You certainly could make a case that they did it far too late (though that could also be said of other countries).
> Are they mostly open now?
Maybe? They say they are. Other people have questioned that claim.
> Did they have the same rate of infections and deaths (even if they fudge numbers some)?
Hard telling, if they fudge the numbers. There are huge discrepancies between the official numbers and what other people try to estimate by indirect means (cremation urns, for example). Depending on who you believe, their death toll may be horrific.
Mind you, I'm not saying that these other claims are correct. I'm saying that we don't know that the official claims are correct, and if they're wrong, we don't know how far off they are.
I think you forget that the whole issue started because of a virus that came via bats and civet cats which were sold on Chinese markets.
In violation of a ban on such meats, since the last SARS epidemic. But it hasn't been enforced rigorously, probably because it's not really possible to enforce something like that with all the corruption that is going on. They can control social media with technology, but they can't stop people selling "free" meat.
Bioweapons are normally not meant to be transmitted human to human on a large scale. It is a popular view that something like Sars viruses would be a good agent, but actually it's not.
First: You don't want to infect your own people, especially if your health system is inferior. Containment is impractical. Second: You need to find an agent that satisfies two requirements. It must be able to transmit readily between humans. And it must not have done so already, because that would make most of the potential victims immune. That's basically impossible to achieve.
> the election of Mr. Biden to the White House is not impossible
As nice and warm and fuzzy it may be to believe that the Democrats regaining the White House would solve/help these issues, I doubt there'd be much of a difference. There weren't exactly huge top-down changes between Bush, Clinton, Bush 2, and Obama.
There were huge top-down changes. Bush 2 got you into two endless wars. Obama got you a much better health system, even if it's still ridiculous.
And you underestimate what Trump has done to the US administration. It's much worth than you think. The White House is a chaotic mess, with unprecedented turnover, a record number of smaller and bigger corruption scandals, and the rest of the administration suffers from a shortage of competent people wanting to work for Trump.
It's hard to not do a better job than Trump. That includes his pathetic response to the pandemic.
If you talk about Saddam's WMDs ... yes, he actually used those before. It's kind of ironic that he later didn't have any.
Yes, the democratic party hasn't been able to win against Trump in a presidential election since 2016. Can't be because there wasn't one, can it? On the other hand, Democrats wiped the floor in any other elections meanwhile. Biggest losses in GOP history. Huge increases in voter turnout. If that doesn't count, what else would count?
And if you vote for third party candidates, you are part of the problem, not the solution. If you didn't want Trump you should have voted for Clinton, from a rational point of view. If you don't like Clinton you should examine why. In my opinion, the hatred against Clinton has more to do with the GOP campaign against her and general misogyny than anything she ever did wrong.
Calling much of the country "a basket of deplorables". Years of scandals (yes, Trump had them, too, but Clinton's were more public). The definite impression that she thought she was entitled to the presidency. The campaign she ran, where she just assumed that she would win certain states. The way she assumed that she would have the blue-collar vote, and therefore didn't have to do anything to earn it. Those things cost her the election.
In reality, she had more votes than Trump. In reality, the third-party voters would have been more than enough to give her the victory.
In reality, there were no real scandals about Hillary Clinton. Most have been disproven. Unlike multiple incidents of criminal behavior on Trumps' part that were known even before the election.
Trump needed a lot of unexpected factors to eek out a very narrow win. He couldn't have won without any of those factors: Cheating about the hush money (committing actual crimes), Comey's breaking of DOJ rules and all of Russia's efforts.
None of those factors, except the Russian influence, will repeat this year. The voter turnout - before the pandemic - was on track to be setting records. The enthusiasm on the Democratic side has mopped the floor with GOP seats in most elections since 2016.
Trump needs a bigger miracle than last time to get reelected. For example Covid-19, by depressing voter turnout or (god beware) disabling his opponent.
In reality, that's completely irrelevant, since that's not how we do presidential elections. It's like saying that one team had more yards than another in a football game, or more hits in a baseball game. It doesn't matter whatsoever.
> In reality, the third-party voters would have been more than enough to give her the victory.
Sure, if they had all voted for Clinton. They didn't, though. Why not? I can tell you why I voted third-party: Because I couldn't stomach voting for Trump, and I couldn't stomach voting for Clinton.
If all those third-party voters had voted for Trump, we might not have had to listen to three years of people whining about the popular vote. But those people didn't vote for Trump, and they didn't vote for Clinton. Counting them all as voting for Clinton if they just hadn't voted third-party seems rather presumptuous, just as counting them all as voting for Trump would be.
Considering the politics of the third party candidates, you can hardly say they disliked Clinton more than Trump.
The popular vote is highly relevant, because it shows Clinton was more popular than Trump, revealing much of the criticism about her as BS. There was no objective basis to think Clinton would have been a remotely as bad president as Trump. At best you can call that wishful thinking.
And there have also been polls that Third-Party voters do regret their choice by a significant margin.
Coupled with the unilateral voter depression and to a large part even suppression, all of these factors where necessary for Trump to eek out a narrow win. Just a bit more voter participation here or a bit less third-party-voting there, and Trump couldn't have won.
> There weren't exactly huge top-down changes between Bush, Clinton, Bush 2, and Obama.
But at least neither of the four essentially tanked US international relations with allies like Trump did, by essentially dismantling American influence everywhere from the UN to long-time allies such as Europe, South Korea or the Kurds.
Another four years with Trump and the once "leader of the free world" will be no leader any more.
Why is it so important to you that the "free world" follow the United States and by extension, one particular political party inside the United States. Why can't the "free world" be free and not need to check in with the United States for permission on everything? Is it really that important for the United States, and one particular political party inside the United States, to have control over the "free world"?
> Is it really that important for the United States, and one particular political party inside the United States, to have control over the "free world"?
(As a German) I massively prefer a global system led by the US (or for what it's worth also the EU if we could get our fucking act together...) and a common basic value set (liberal democracy, rule of law, universal human rights) than nationalist chaos (like what the EU is sadly heading towards) or, worse, authoritarian/illiberal surveillance state systems like what China is exporting.
As for the "one political party" I hope that the current administration has disintegrated this party so hard that the USA will get someone sane as president again who fixes the issues that are no longer avoidable and that the Republican Party goes down forever (many have already left the ship / been forced out by Tea Party and now QAnon types). Obviously I'd prefer Sanders but even Biden would do IMO.
I am not sure I like the idea of a global system led by a country that has been at war ever since world war 2 (arguable the cold war was not a war but that is debatable).
The is a good reason why the US spend more on their military then the rest of the world combined. They are at war. Same reason why their surveillance operations operate indiscriminately against anyone they can target. They are at war. Countries in peace time operate very differently from countries in war time, and the behavior of the US is one of a country in war.
EU could be better but it was original designed to create a single market in order to improve production and decrease the risk of war within EU. In order to apply that model globally you would need to make a global single market, and that concept has a lot of problems since you then need a single common standard for all production of products, services and goods, and it need to be uniformly enforced.
Neither seems such as good entity to put our hopes on for a common basic value set in regard to liberal democracy, rule of law, and universal human rights. It should also be noted that the US do not agree to the EU definition of universal human rights, something that was quite talked about during bush and obama era when officials argued in favor of torture as a interrogation method.
As a non-US citizen, I would like to see the US elect someone who want to end their constant wars. Trump was almost such candidate with his "american first" slogans, even if the chance of that actually happening was slim. Sanders is a new chance, as he want to redirect military funding into social safety nets and health care. Biden however, similar to clinton, has been part of the government that increased funding to the military and in his public statements there is nothing to imply that under their rule there will be finally peace time.
> As a non-US citizen, I would like to see the US elect someone who want to end their constant wars.
But who and what follows after the US drop out and retreat? Just look at Kurdistan: the Kurds are being all but eradicated by Erdogan and Assad. Afghanistan is going to fall back to the Taliban Islamists. Iraq? Steering towards collapse. Libya is essentially fucked beyond repair. China is free to do whatever they want, same for Russia.
Human rights are only words on a paper when there is no one to back them against those who openly crap on said paper. I agree the EU should be stepping up to the voids that the US leaves, but unfortunately a chaotic power transfer is chaotic and will result in suffering and death.
As Sweden took in a lot of refugees from the middle east I actually hear a lot of their own views on the subject. As long as the rest of the world are infusing the area with money in exchange for oil the wars there will continue.
There exist a good reason why nations stopped allowing money going to blood diamonds. Inequality fuels conflict and oil money has a long and proven history of increasing inequality. Cutting off the money river would do more to stabilizing the region than any number of more military bases, bombs, drones and invasions could ever achieve. Yes, china and Russia would jump in in order to attempt seizing that oil in the absent of US interest, and in order to prevent them we would need to make it worthless for them to do so. Just like with money laundering we would have the new problem of oil laundering.
If we look at EU for inspiration, the peace inspired treaty that created it was primarily focused on steel. Steel production was expensive, required a lot of workers and energy, and involved a complex chain of inter-dependent markets. Nation measured themselves in their ability to create steel. The iron miners however did not get massively rich. Nor did the coal miners. EU managed to connect the sources for iron, coal, and nuclear energy, and in large this was the revolution in Europe for equality. The lower the friction of that market the more interconnected the involved countries became. As we now move away from a world focused on steel that union has seen increased instability. Just now in corona times people are arguing if countries of more successful management strategies will bail out those that is currently failing. We don't really feel it like we used to do if one country in EU drop in equality.
The US tactic of using bombs and invasions in order to create equality did also not work in the middle east. It might had worked in a steel focused era such as that after the second world war. Similar the EU tactic might had worked in the middle east if the oil market would behave more similar to that of steel. Right now however I doubt either will create the equality needed for peace. The most promising strategy would be to just leave them alone and make sure that the oil is never going to be worth wasting blood over.
Besides the US and UK, NATO deaths in Afghanistan were on par with training exercises. But that's not what the parent comment was referring to. Almost every country in the world was taking advantage of the US pre-Trump. As he renegotiates to even the playing field, he is accused of "tanking US international relations". Pure political BS and an old argument that has mostly been disproven by now.
> Almost every country in the world was taking advantage of the US pre-Trump
Sorry what? That sounds like the Trumpian logic "If you don't pay me money, I'll retract my troops". Of course the US pays for the troops and keeping a global world order led by the US - but it gets something in return: free markets to sell goods and services to, stability (i.e. the cost of stationing troops or foreign aid is smaller than the cost that would be incurred in a war) and political influence (when other countries need help, they turn to the US, and when there is something happening that requires guidance/coordination, the other countries will follow whatever the US does).
Especially the latter cannot be quantified in monetary value at all which is the reason why a pure "numbers comparison" supports what Trump and the right wing are saying is theoretically true, but has nothing to do with reality.
The result of the international relations being tanked are especially evident in current times - the rest of the world does their own stuff instead of mirroring what the US is doing. Not just in regard to coronavirus, but also in terms of Russia/China trade policy, Iran policy, climate protection... this is the real, tangible influence the US has lost over time. Something like Europe devising clever workaround schemes to continue trading with Iran to evade US sanctions would have been unthinkable during the Obama terms, or the US fighting out the trade war with China on their own without Europe assisting, or all other governments except Brazil and the US cooperating with each other on the Paris Accords, with Europe actually even recruiting US governors and mayors to the cause.
To add insult to injury: to fix this, to repair international relations where trust has been destroyed and eroded by Bush (lying about Iraq WMDs) and then Trump... this is going to cost a lot more money than the US could ever have saved.
Before the pandemic I thought Trump has a very little chance to get reelected, and he needed a bigger miracle than last time. That "miracle" might be this pandemic. His support increased slightly, the pandemic might impact voter turnout and the Republicans might find ways of using the pandemic to further increase voter suppression. Four more years under Trump will depress American influence further.
I also feared that bad international actors would strike before the election, maybe more than one at a time, recognizing the US is at its weakest point in decades and can only get stronger with a president that can actually read. Examples would be Putin gobbling up territory in eastern Europe, North Korea testing a nuclear bomb or even poking South Korea militarily, Iran reaching the nuclear breakout or Israel launching a unilateral assault to stop it. Now, that might not happen, because all those countries have their hands full...
Democrats have failed to field a candidate that is viable, which is Trump's biggest advantage. Biden has been missing in action for weeks at this point. My personal feeling is all the other candidates dropped out too soon.
Sanders is still in, and still has 42% of allocated delegates, with more than half of delegates still unallocated. There's still a viable candidate in the race.
Sanders probably isn't a viable candidate. He can't beat Biden head-to-head (he got almost all his delegates when there were many candidates still in the race). And even if he did, I don't think he can beat Trump.
On the other hand, I don't think Biden can, either. (Or at least I didn't before Covid 19, which hasn't shown Trump to be the pinnacle of competent leadership.) Is the cupboard really that bare at the Democratic Party, that these candidates are the best they have?
All of these candidates were better than Trump, by any objective measure like polls, IQ, eloquency, politics, grasp of domestic and international issues.
Biden and Sanders had been pulling crowds just as large as Trump had been.
The only path to victory for Trump is a really low voter turnout. Biden is beating him in polls, by a much larger margin than Clinton did. Even in "battleground" states. Covid-19 is the only factor on the horizon that could lead to the kind of voter turnout that Trump needs to win. Otherwise, again from polling and the mid-term elections, you can expect a record voter turnout, especially on the democratic side.
Trump has a rock solid base, so he only needs to convince a few swing voters to jump on board. He could start pretending to be presidential (having someone else write the speeches, and refusing to do any talking that isn't on a teleprompter would be enough) and his approval ratings would shoot into the stratosphere because expectations have been set so low up until now.
It is not a good idea to underestimate him. He defies expectations, over and over, while doing things every day that would be the end of any other person's political career.
The base is not enough. He needs more independents to vote for him than last time. And according to most polls, he just doesn't have them.
You think he can act more presidential? No, he physically can't. He can barely read. Reading a teleprompter is torture for him. He messes up about one sentence in three (being generous) and takes pauses. He sounds like a hostage reading a manuscript. He constitutionally can't tell the truth, and that is evident from his long public life and has been even more densely proven through his presidency. He really doesn't have the skills to even "act" presidential or fake empathy.
He also is mentally incapable of not being in the spotlight. He is hijacking the Covid-19 press briefings, turning them into campaign speeches. Lying both about Covid-19 and about other issues like his Facebook popularity, his impeachment or whatever else he is obsessed about.
God help us. He's even older than Biden, and Biden would be record-setting were he to be elected. Both of these guys should be worried more about surviving COVID19 than anything else at this point.
Yeah. Ironically, Trump represents the youth movement. It amazes me that the Democrats found not one, but two people older than Trump to be their two remaining possible candidates.
Appalling, but not terribly surprising, that white-haired old guys become candidates. While different, very qualified candidates were essentially ignored.
Well, it's a bit surprising for the Democratic Party, at least if you listen to what they say about "different" people. But maybe it's easier to talk that way than to actually back such candidates.
Now, in fairness, the Democratic Party has produced female candidates, and candidates of different races (for other offices), and elected them. And they produced Hillary as a candidate in 2016. And they produced Obama as a winning candidate in 2008. So they have "walked their talk".
For this election, though, old white men. And emphasize the old. Bill Clinton and JFK showed the power a younger candidate could unleash. But not this time. It just feels like, these guys might have been interesting two decades ago, but today? C'mon.
I've thought for a while that there should be an age limit for the President and also the top positions of the house and Senate. Anecdotally lot of people seem opposed to that. However I read that Jimmy Carter believes the same.
What pisses me off is the Democratic party pushing the line that not being 100% behind Clinton meant you were a misogynist. And then 4 years later they throw Harris and Warren under to the bus to support Biden. Not nice.
Anyone who calls Sanders more viable than Trump is not interested in a factual discussion.
You might like Sanders more than Biden, you might like his politics more. But you aren't entitled to your own facts, and the facts are that Biden has a decisive lead that is almost impossible to catch up. Biden beats Trump in polls by a much larger margin than Sanders. Sanders was not able to motivate a larger voting turnout in the primary elections. There is no basis to call Sanders more viable.
So much this. Aside from Biden being MIA, something had seemed very "off" about him recently as well, and it doesn't inspire confidence. I know he's always been a little gaffe-prone, but if you compare recent interviews with speeches he gave historically, it's pretty clear he's lost the edge he used to have.
Other than that political rallies are off for everyone (pandemic, you heard?), he has continued his campaign. If you didn't notice that, you weren't looking in the right places.
Nobody will vote for Trump because Biden's "gaffes". He clearly is more mentally fit than Trump, who can barely string together logical sentences any more.
I haven't been looking for him, but he's obviously not been able to make headlines, either.
I don't personally have a dog in this fight, but it says something when people on both sides of the aisle question Biden's mental health. It was even posted in the Washington Post, this isn't just me imagining things.
Trump is a lot worse in this department. He started out as somebody with a narcissistic personality disorder who can't read and conned his way through life, failing upwards as he went, blowing his $400 million inheritance. He was never very truthful, but now he doesn't have the mental acuity to hide it. He slurs sentences and is unable to utter any details (i.e. "A number nobody wants to think about"= "A number
I can't remember"). I've hardly ever heard him cite a number that is accurate.
Really, discrediting Biden on mental health issues is entirely partisan, given the data we have on Trump. When Democrats said something to the effect it was in the primary election and compared to other candidates, not compared to Trump. Trump can't compete, intellectually, with any of the Top-20 candidates on the left.
>Trump can't compete, intellectually, with any of the Top-20 candidates on the left.
He couldn't with any of his own fellow candidates either, and it doesn't matter. Mental fitness is, as you say, entirely partisan - only ever mentioned when discrediting an opponent, but not actually relevant. Americans hate intellectuals almost as much as they hate politicians, they associate intellect with effete globalists and cultural Marxism, and scum of the earth "experts." Trump was the only candidate willing to joke about the size of his dick and call people petty names, so he was a shoe in.
It's not as if Trump was a brilliant orator, noble statesman and Rhodes scholar until at some point during his term he degraded to the state he's in today. He's exactly the person he was when he won, nothing new is known about his personality, beliefs or qualifications.
The Republicans were very successful at poisoning the well around Hillary Clinton and the Democrats didn't help by picking an establishment candidate in an anti-establishment election. But then, there were conspiracy theories around the Clintons going back to Bill's tenure, so intimations that maybe there was evidence of treason and felony crimes in those leaked email and something something satanic pedo cult and maybe she did some murders already had a receptive audience. Joe Biden doesn't have the kind of heat, though.
The only question to me is whether or not Democratic voters stay home in droves again - I assume most Republicans who vote will vote for Trump either out of party loyalty or actual fealty. Biden probably can't win many of them, so to me his job is to manage attrition from his own side, particularly from voters who wanted Bernie or someone more radical.
You underestimate how much Trump has motivated the Democratic party and basically anyone not on his side. Voter turn-out went through the roof in 2018. Without the Covid-19 crisis, it would certainly stay that high or get even higher.
According to polls, Biden does have a better chance among independents and swing voters, even among disillusioned GOP members. The only chance for Trump is a massive depression or even suppression of voter turnout. Otherwise his base doesn't matter.
Biden is attractive to anyone who hasn't seriously looked into his as a candidate. He has great name recognition. He's associated with Obama, which has so far proven to be his golden ticket. The trouble is when he speaks, nonsense comes out.
Missing in action? Hardly. He warned of the pandemic long before Trump. He has a decisive lead against Sanders, and the news has focused on another small topic, recently, so maybe that's why you haven't heard so little about that.
Not viable? Biden beats Trump in every poll. By a larger margin than Hillary Clinton. Trump has no prayer of winning unless there is a major voter turnout depression. It is a clear-cut requirement for his reelection, just as it was last time, when he eeked out a college victory win against a much more competent candidate.
I really don't understand the obsession with Trump (from both sides).
It's not like he is a pivotal make it or break it for the Western world. He'll be gone in 4 or 5 years max and can only do so much damage (or good depending on how you look at it). He hasn't ended the world nor saved the world in the time he has held the office. Not that much has really changed fundamentally.
There are more powerful forces for good and evil then one talking guy in a suit.
Being obsessed with Trump gives the luxury of turning off one's brain while discussing politics, which is pretty much a requirement for anyone who is a partisan. All one needs to know is "Trump BAD!" or "Trump GOOD!" to play the game of contemporary politics. Having a nuanced view on anything without it first being filtered through the lens of Trump is unacceptable in the world of partisans. It sure makes deciding issues much easier since all one has to do is find out the concession for their side and stick to it because to not do so is to be on the wrong side of Trump (the only issue that counts for the modern partisan).
I'd say Trump is objectively in the wrong about many issues, including Covid-19. He is - objectively - lying all the time.
Then he is on the minority side of major political issues, like abortion, health insurance, immigration, corruption and so on. He is also working with the GOP to decrease voter participation, which should be hard to defend for any "non-partisan" who is interested in democracy.
On the basis of these facts, to have your extreme view on "everything is partisan", even reality itself is partisan now. Even calling the president out on his lies, even if there is video footage of him contradicting himself is still partisan. Because the only non-partisan view would be "Trump is as good as Hillary might have been". As if Trump hadn't been proven to commit at least a dozen different crimes between his campaign and his presidential term...
You underestimate the damage he already has done. The federal administration has been gutted by employees fleeing, getting fired and not replaced. He raised ethnic violence in the US. He damages international alliances. He gave North Korea and Iran time to do their stuff. He enshrined the current Middle-Eastern "no-peace" process.
If he gets a second term, he will change the supreme court for the next two or three generations, enabling the GOP to rule over a majority. Banning abortion is a major setback to equal rights for women. Under Trump, there is no progress on ethnic or gender equalities. Given the time, he will turn back any progress on health insurance.
He already messed up the response to several Hurricanes, set Iran on a path towards nuclear weapons (and a near-certain war with Israel), and is at least two months late in responding to Covid-19.
Maybe you think he can't mess up much more because he has messed up so much already that there isn't much left. I believe you are mistaken!
My concern is that he politicizes things that should not be politicized - the Justice Department, for instance. The damage from the precedent will survive after Trump is gone.
(Yes, I know, there was some politicizing of Justice before Trump. There probably always has been. And there was the IRS business under Obama. But it seems to be much worse - or at least much more public - under Trump.)
