I do agree that Russia has made huge blunders, but honestly, was there any chance Russia would be able to keep these states close? Can Russia compete with the advantages that the US/EU offers? How do you think Russia should've responded to US efforts to militarize and weaponize these states?
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- Thread starter bd popeye
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Hi, for the record, the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet republics were mostly already estranged with Russia from the moment of the breakup. Ukraine and Georgia was fighting with Russia over ownership of the Black Sea Fleet and its bases. Poland was ruled from the start by an anti-Russian protest movement, etc. Romania, like many socialist states, was already de facto uncooperative with the USSR since the late 50s.
Now is important moment to recall that Russia =/= the USSR. About 50% of the population and even less of the military hardware, which were primarily stationed on the frontiers of the Union and taken over by those republics at the time of collapse.
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You would think they'd be into that given how rabidly they wanted to pop that balloon.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
"Recency bias" is called following current tends. Comparing 30 year old data is called history.
By whom? By rich older people who are investing or by the young people who need a house to live in? The complaint I'm hearing is that housing is bought up by the rich, inflating prices beyond what's affordable for young people and piling up rent costs.
Sure, the US is much better overall than it was 30 years ago. Once again, that's a very very low standard. It's not easy to find a country in the world that is literally worse off today than it was decades ago even with the spread of technology. This means nothing to America's competitivness.
This is acceptable, since that cope was first used by Americans as they could not understand and did not want to believe China's growth. I don't have any desire to go down that route since it's a dead end of "I just don't believe it." But I'm saying that seeing all these horrendous new trends in the US makes it hard for me to believe that the US is actually getting better, although I was thinking in the few years prior to and after COVID as a comparison, not some decades-long trend. If America is worse off in absolute terms today than it was 30 years ago, it's fried. It's not competition for China, not even for Russia. I never held that low of a standard.
Yes, but plummetting and mild depressions are different and they do rely on governance. Looking at American vs Chinese GDP post COVID, as well as the death rates, it's easy to see that Chinese governance far surpassed American governance to the point that they cannot both be classified as "reasonably good." But then again, I keep losing track of the unique fact that you don't compare; you want to talk about the US in a vacuum.
Relatively new effort, isn't it? We'll see whether the powers of the CCP can shine through this time, as it always has when they specified something as a goal. I don't think it is an old, long-standing effort through the decades.
Once again, that's a totally useless comparison. The tigers were lifted by the US and the West while China has risen through opposition from the US and West. Also, the tigers are small, and easy to lift, like a lemonade stand being patronized by a megacorp, while China is building the megacorp of megacorps. A little stand grows 100% when it sells 20 cups of juice today to the 10 cups it sold yesterday but growing a megacorp while fighting off rival megacorps is a far different story. Hence, they cannot serve as reference points to each other.
Faster than what? It's faster than every other major economy but it means nothing to say, 'If you were better, you would have done even better than you did." LOL
1. China is a developing country.
2. Rural China is the poorest subset of China.
3. Of these, several obstacles existed aside from economic including tradition and desire in rural and sometimes tribal/ethnic communities.
4. Despite this, China is capable of pinpointing the problem and eradicating it with visible progress every year on a schedule and that shows a lot more positive about China than whether 93% or 95% currently use a toilet.
No.
1. Supremely competent doesn't mean perfect.
2. Evergrande is a private company; that its bankruptcy was well-managed and buffered by the government and did not devastate gdp growth shows supreme competency of the CCP.
3. China is not comparable to Tigers; if China wasn't supremely managed, it would be a boot-licking tiger instead of the only country that drives the US to make fear-fueled bad decisions like electing Trump and attempting to gloss over COVID.
Sure, just much less so than China. Being much lower than supremely well-managed is still reasonably well, especially compared to what Europe has recently become.
Another user tackled this.
The US tried everything to stunt China's growth but it failed. It used powers that were beyond its own, marshalling all of its followers, willing and forced, and all they managed to do was send their own economies into stagnation/recession (especially if they thought they could economically challenge Russia at the same time) while hardening China's economy against outside disruption. America is the ringleader; it delegates the damage that it takes onto others, which is why the US economy fares better than its own henchmen's. It is not isolated but it is cushioned by their economies. And despite this, despite every effort and despite grinding its allies and tools down, it still fares much worse than China's economy, a trule testament to the saying that what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, both in size and in quality, which is buttressed by technology. The price that America pays is not devolving into something subpar to what it was 30 years ago; the price it pays for using its stunts and tricks against China and failing, is that it wears down its own weapons and cushions while providing training that strengthens its enemy. Remember, the goals are different; America can only win by sabotaging China, while China wins by default growing faster than the US so it has no reason to meet sabotage attempts with the likes. Trump's or Biden's new antics are not an escalation in America's force, they've exhausted their efforts trying to bow China already. What escalates further is only their desperation as their shields thin, their spears blunt, and China's growth into the most critical areas of technology accelerates.
And here we are again. You don't care about that. You just care that America's better off in absolute terms than it was 30 years ago. LOL
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I think this is now the third thread that is basically getting hijacked by a back and forth discussion from the same user.
This entire argument is stupid. Yes China is not as developed as the US. No that is not the reason why the simplest sons of the Chinese nation are crossing the Darian gap to come here instead of just flying. Case closed, move on.
They already used it to attack Syria before this war started. One was damaged during an attack on Syria, which the Syrians claimed was a hit from their SAM. Israel said it was a bird attack.
You literally brought up SF in reference to your childhood so that comparison was, of course, fair game
By individual households, which obviously include young people. A wealthy family is counted only once in the numerator, no matter how many houses they may own.
You originally argued everything was getting worse and crumbling. Now, you’ve modified the argument to say that f’(x) isn’t < 0, how would it; f’(x) obviously is > 0 but not fast enough.
None really exist: of the original issues you’ve brought up: poverty, crime, infrastructure, and overdoses: poverty and infrastructure have gotten better compared to the pre pandemic, crime is flat, and overdoses are up (but largely from adverse selection) - for the supermajority people, population health metrics are better
I’ve never talked about the U.S. in a vacuum; you’ve indeed conceded my point that the U.S. is better governed than Europe. GDP growth isn’t dispositive to proving China is uniquely well governed (poor countries have faster gdp growth due to catch-up; COVID death differentials include the fact that Americans are more risk-loving and health policies are endogenous for cultural values)
Nope. Megacorps don’t on net grow slower than small caps (in fact, the S&P 500 has outperformed the S&P 1500) and the U.S. and China outgrow Europe and SEA (larger vs. smaller country comparisons). Having more people and land allows for greater specialization, economies of scale, and economies of scope. Asian Tigers are a completely fair comparison group: if China is mega competent (compared to the Asian tigers), it should be able to better adapt to shocks including bad relations with the U.S. and thus have the same or better growth numbers
Faster than similarly situated Asian tigers. If China is the most competent country in the history of the world, it should deliver the fastest growth in the history of the world, conditional on GDPPC. It hasn’t.
It would be in the high 80% with toilets since ~30-40% of China is rural. Besides, you’ve conceded my point. Cross-sections; i.e., f(x), of nearly every variable are worse in China - if cross-sections of U.S. data (ex., infrastructure and population health) are supposed to be evidence of failure; then China is even worse (of course, that’s silly, you need the time-series).
It clearly caused gdp to be substantially lower than it otherwise would’ve been. Everyone’s forecasts on China’s GDP growth are now at 3-handles by the end of this decade and even in China, the 2022 gdp target of 5% was meant to be an easy target that China only barely reached
Everything? There’s a lot of scope left: plain vanilla foreign direct investment controls, broader sweeps of portfolio investment, and applying extraterritoriality of US tariffs/export/investment controls using dollar sanctions.
The U.S. trade/GDP ratio is the lowest among G20 countries.
Not really: the U.S. will be able to substantially frustrate Chinese plans for decades into the future, at minimal cost, assuming a 2% growth rate in the U.S. and a (highly questionable) 5% in perpetuity in China; the decades stretch out even longer if China grows at 3-5% instead (for any sort of shock - a trade shock, a financial crisis, etc). China can grow at the 90th-95th percentile of historic growth outcomes conditional on gdppc for decades into the future and still have a gdp <150% of the U.S. level. That operative fact is because of historic and continued good governance in the United States for 2+ centuries of peaceful capitalist development; China having a very late start and being governed by competent individuals (but still humans), and the U.S. being large, productive, geographically isolated, economically isolated, and leading the technological frontier well into the future.