Posts by Anony Mous

14

Narcissist challenges culture ingrained with the concept of “saving face” to perform humiliating retreat

by slimboyfat in

oh yeah, this is going to end well.

hold on to your seats, folks, we’re on the front row of history for, as the chinese might say, “interesting times”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8rgkkl7v8lo.

Anony Mous

Somehow the US survived the Cold War without ever trading with the USSR. China has gone down the same path as the USSR, developing nuclear weapons and increasingly hostile to the world and the EU and US keep feeding the beast.

China needs the world more to keep its economy afloat. Under Trump 1 many factories moved their production out of China already due to threats of tariffs, Biden kept the tariffs in place. Their housing market crashed as a result, the rest of the world was fine.

Nobody should need China or Russia. If the EU needs them then they’ve screwed up royally and will bear the pain. Meanwhile my gas prices have dropped below $3/gallon again. Groceries are slowly dropping in price, they moved about -0.5% in the last 4 months, despite Bidenflation in the market still having its effect. Remember when they shot up by 2% per month after Biden got into office? Nobody was concerned back then? Nobody was concerned when China said they had the ability to shut down the export of critical medication? Nobody was concerned when Russia dictated to the EU the prices on oil and gas?

Despite all the news outlets squawking about what MAY and LIKELY and POTENTIALLY happen, none of this has realized yet. The markets are correcting for massive inflation and cash printing from the feds over the past 4 years, but it is not affecting the common person. While federal employment has gone down significantly, so is unemployment, meaning all those fired federal workers are creating jobs in the private sector, under Biden it was the reverse, more federal workers than ever and unemployment rose.

225

The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity

by slimboyfat in

rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.

Anony Mous

@slimboyfat: Universalist Unitarians and LDS are examples of belief systems similar enough to Arians as are various offshoots of the Millerite theology. Although early Millerism held to trinitarianism, its offshoots such as some SDA churches down the line (Ellen White’s cult) as the Bible Students (Barbour and CT Russell’s cult), JW (Rutherford’s cult distinct from the various extant Bible Student movements after CT Russell died) did reject the trinity and Jesus divinity in some form.

JWs held/hold that Jesus was not Jesus but Michael before he came to the earth, so you could say that they too didn’t believe in Jesus being in heaven in his Messianic role. LDS also believes Jesus was in heaven before he came to earth if that’s a (rather arbitrary) definition you want to make of Arianism.

What is rather telling that in each of the cases mentioned above (whether or not you consider them Arian) is that to justify the non-divinity of Christ they each had to modify significant passages and interpretations of the what I would call “catholic” (small C) Bible.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Anony Mous

@joey: name me an example of a product that is absolutely not at all manufacturable or being manufactured in the US today.

TAA compliance requires most goods the government buys are manufactured or substantially modified in the US. Expand that base.

There are loads of things that without China subsidizing their exports would be too expensive to ship across the oceans. Placing a reciprocal tariff on those things is going to reduce that heavy, unnecessary shipping which is a large cause of carbon emissions.

People have long complained that certain products are being sourced in the US, shipped to China, assembled, shipped back to the US where the US then pays China through their tariffs. And there is plenty of that going on around the world to evade taxes and export controls.

What will end is being able to get the cheap junk from China that fills up our landfills. I don’t know why one of the richest countries per capita should not get more durable products.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Anony Mous

@hoser: I’m just using publicly available data on Canadian public healthcare right now. As you say, you have your private insurance option, which makes you relatively wealthy and you thus pay twice for the same ‘service’, you go to the “rich people” queue at the doctors, if your doctor even sees public healthcare patients at all.

That’s not “typical” for your average Canadian. Off course this is not what you above were describing, what was said is that bus loads of people come across the border, walk into a pharmacy, pick up free medicine from the public healthcare pharmacy and go back to the US which is BS.

As far as to your comments about MRI. You need to drive 2 hours to a different state to get an MRI and pay out of pocket? I can call my local doctor, if urgent, be seen same day, pay $15, if he says, go get an MRI right now I can go to a hospital or other provider which there are literally more than a dozen MRI suites, even an animal one, in about 30 minute distance, for $35 specialist copay I have the MRI done and read and sent back to my doctor. And this happened to my wife after pregnancy, we had a neuro consult in <1h. A few months later I get a bill that says the procedure would have cost me about $700/h for the MRI and there are line items for contrast fluid that was manufactured at the local cyclotron with a half life measured in hours and other services, totaling a few thousand (oh, gasp, healthcare is expensive) my insurance will cover it. If you have no insurance and you have insufficient income to pay for it, Medicare/Medicaid and the hospital will cover it, which is why healthcare in the US is so expensive, because it is expensive, it is fast and efficient and private businesses pays for most of it. The majority of Americans don’t die due to lack of healthcare, they die because they are fat and it is cheap enough and easier to medicate than make lifestyle changes, meanwhile our Canadian friends are promoting suicide to anyone that becomes too expensive.

This is true for any “poor” (<$50k income) American which Medicare/Medicaid covers most if not all of their cost. This is true for any illegal immigrant or Canadian that walks across the border (which happens a lot, I live close to Canada) because hospitals are obligated to provide healthcare - unlike Canada, the hospital I work for can’t put people in queues, refuse care or adjust wait times depending on whether they have insurance. People here get upset if they had to wait 2 hours to see a doctor because they presented to the emergency room with a sneeze.

We actually have ~15 3T MRI suites in just 1 hospital system, most hospital systems in the US have at least 1, even the rural ones. Many of them are used for research as well when not busy which is a significant amount of revenue. Our northern neighbors in Saskatchewan have exactly 5 3T MRI facilities across the entire province with 3 of them being ‘private’ practices. I work in that field so I know they are building 1 suite for the public healthcare facility in Saskatoon. We currently have 2 on order for our regional (not even state wide) hospital system.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Anony Mous

@truthlover: I explained why the US prices are higher in the above post. We are subsidizing the R&D on behalf of Canada and the EU which perform price fixing. The medicine doesn’t become ‘more expensive’ or ‘cheaper’ when it crosses the border, they are keeping the pricing artificially low.

However US citizens cannot get medicine from Canadian public healthcare, to get access to Canadian medicine, you would need to legally immigrate or be a Canadian citizen, apply for a health card (takes ~8-12 weeks to get after application), make an appointment to the doctor (takes ~30 weeks on average) and then get the prescription filled (currently takes ~2 weeks on average). Bus loads of people coming right across the border, first of all that would be illegal for whoever organized the bus tour, second most pharmacies don’t stock that much medicine.

So that someone from the US where all of the above can be arranged in the next 24 hours on Medicaid/Medicare with a $15 copay would go through the effort to immigrate into Canada to go queue for the next 6 months of their life before getting their prescription, I highly doubt.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Anony Mous

@hoser: Canada and the EU both set price controls on medicine that is invented and often manufactured in the US. So let’s say a medicine costs $100/dose to create during its 10-15 year patent validity (invention, manufacturing, FDA approval etc), but the production cost is $10/dose the EU/Canada tell the companies, if you want to sell here you can only ask $15/dose. The manufacturers stil do it because of the $5 profit, but effectively that $85 remainder is now paid for by making that even more expensive medicine in the US. Same for hospital supplies like MRI machines etc, the ‘invention’ cost is not paid by Canada because Canada is broke when it comes to that.

On the other hand, the invention itself is often largely funded by US taxpayers. The US spends more than the next 4 economies combined (that is China, UK, Russia and EU in order) on health research. Canada spends a fraction of a fraction compared to the US on healthcare research. And when it comes to private investment in medicine, the US drives 70% of the world in investments while only being ~30% of the market in purchasing power parity. A simple example is that of COVID vaccines - the US spent $40B on the R&D, China and EU each provided $100M in loans with the rest of their ‘investment’ going into not R&D but just a $2B pre-order (which ended up having the distribution footed by the US companies).

Now you have a few options, you basically tell Canada and EU no more, which is what the Trump admin is doing - we cannot keep subsidizing your healthcare by making ours more expensive, which now causes even more shortages and price hikes in those socialist markets. The other thing to do would be to stop Medicaid/Medicare waste which is where most of those cost ends up hiding, as the taxpayer has endless pockets.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Anony Mous

@hoser: automation can solve some problems, but with all the automation we’ve seen the growth of jobs in other avenues from highly skilled service technicians to cybersecurity.

The problem in your case seems to be Canada - the problem is that now that the US is going to stop paying for your medicine and imports, the government can’t keep going like it is. You now have a Trudeau-clone in power, and people think it is change, that is a problem with the electorate, you are quickly running out of other people’s money and people that don’t work for a living are indeed feeling entitled, because the electorate keeps the feel-good entitlement candidates in power.

The US however can’t keep funding EU and Canadian welfare either, we collectively wasted all our money in the last 75 years doing welfare for ourselves and the world to the point China, which is for the majority still the definition a third world country, is passing all of us by.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Anony Mous

@joey: both of those instances went from concept to functional in 2 years - as in, hey we want to build a factory - should it be Texas or Georgia because California is screwing us over to rolling off the band. And those are megafactories. VW, GM etc all have capacities already that they reduced over time, I live not too far from a building GM still owns and operates but abandoned mostly for China, they use it now for small production runs, but nothing says they couldn’t just re-hire the 2000 employees they laid off under Biden and the 10,000 under Obama.

There are many people who need assistance

Not 40% of the population. Statistically (Pareto distribution) it should be <10%.

The cops showing up at work, them fighting with their ex girlfriend, fighting with other employees bringing guns and threatening employees, stealing tools from the shop.

So why are they not in jail and why are they collecting unemployment. Seems more like a management issue at both company and government level to keep enabling people like that. They don’t want to work, then go home and get nothing.

All these problems have easy solutions, just stop giving handouts.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Anony Mous

@joey jojo: in the mean time car parts manufacturers have set up factories in a matter of months and are now up and running, some people saw what was coming and invested, those people are going to be rich in short order. Hyundai and Tesla both did their mega-factories in just 2 years. There is plenty of empty manufacturing space ‘today’ that can simply be reopened, there are plenty of manufacturers that simply can hire more people and manufacture more ‘today’, where that employment historically has gone abroad.

The problem is not space or machines, it is people. We currently have 40% of working-age people ‘not working’ at all, that’s a massive amount that is unemployed and collecting welfare (the unemployment rate has been a lie since Obama changed the definition to <6 months). One of the things we absolutely have to do is reduce the total welfare package from the current equivalent of $25/h wages (between unemployment, food stamps, rent assistance, transportation assistance, cell phones, Medicaid etc) to at least minimum wage and eliminate people from the system that can but don’t want to work, guess what, suddenly you’ll see millions of people willing to work, reduce crime and increase the economy.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Anony Mous

@Balaamsass before the election got underway I made a prediction here that the media would take the current (at that point) depression that the Biden gang for some reason never had labeled as a depression and blame it on Trump.

A little while ago, people were complaining (under Biden) that the P/E ratios of most stocks was incredibly high, NVIDIA at one point had a triple digits P/E ratio (meaning the stock was trading at more than twice the actual value of the company) which is an indication other options (debt, bonds, trade) was inherently untrustworthy. Biden and the Fed prevented a full correction temporarily by DURING the election (which had never been done before) lowering the rates on the Fed despite having massive inflation for months.

The market rushing to treasury is a good thing, at least for the US, it means people are buying USD investments rather than Chinese or European. The yields lower, because it is a market, demand is high, so the US doesn’t have to promise to pay back more than is being invested in the future which is good (that yield is currently mostly funded by even more debt).

As far as the tariffs themselves, there is a reason other countries have them. Whether it is protecting your own food supply or steel supply, a lot of those things are necessary in full blown war, as Ukraine and Europe recently found out. Yes, to those importing cheap supplies, they will no longer be able to undercut their competition with sub-par steel beams (https://fortune.com/asia/2025/04/02/bangkok-skyscraper-collapse-earthquake-substandard-steel/) and radioactive drywall (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall) or lumber (https://nchh.org/2015/03/formaldehyde-and-wood-products/) or cars (https://youtu.be/CWwuHKrw8Cc?si=9hYtYrLX7U5zkz62) all of which many other countries, including the EU and US have historically permitted or even made exceptions for (eg. BYD in EU market are death traps that don’t have functional airbags).

As far as the “story” about the penguins - I’m sure we’re not trading with the penguins, so either this is a non-story, as we don’t trade ANYWAY with the penguins, so we’re just stunting with numbers (1M% tariffs on 0 is still 0). Or the MSM is ignoring the real problem - that penguins are trading millions of dollars annually - which would be convenient for someone to hide streams of money. So what is really going on, my bet is on the last things through the WEF and World Bank, all sorts of shenanigans have been going on that are ‘legalized’ by previous administrations. Same with the Falklands, they are supposedly trading 90% of their fish with the EU, yet millions of dollars in trade ends up being paid for by the US (and by that we mean the US taxpayer) through a mysterious fishmonger that nobody seems to know about… something ‘fishy’ is going on.