Paying off debt as a country means producing a budget surplus: generate more revenue in taxes than are spent by the government. With how much debt has been generated among these countries, the repayment plans would take some number of decades, with many years requiring large budget surpluses.

Because these countries can print their own money, there isn't an incentive to produce budget surpluses, rather just borrow money and leave it to another generation to pay it back in 30 years.



There can be, yes. If you believe the debt taken on at any given time will lead to future prosperity, then the debt is an investment. For example, if you're the government and you issue 50M USD out in federal loans for young people to go to college and receive specialized education in engineering and medical science -- that 50M of debt could theoretically pay for itself over the lifetime of these young people given that they contribute to the economy with their specialized education and repay the government for these loans.

But the many trillions of dollars that are tied in debt with the countries you mention are far from investments with a positive return. Point being, not all debt is bad debt.

Yes, it's technically "possible" to switch to renewables entirely. The pertinent question is how much GDP growth and how much wealth a country is willing to give up in order to take on the burden of switching to renewable energy. The cost analysis is rather clear that renewables will not generate a positive ROI, they will not pay for themselves. The countries that switched to renewables that you've laid out are either misleading on what percentage of their energy comes from renewables (meaning they still have carbon based energy sources that they rely on and therefore aren't entirely CO2 emissions free) or they don't have a large energy demand to begin with.

Carbon based energy sources are cheap and efficient. Having India, China, and the U.S. switching entirely to renewables within the next 20-30 years is economic suicide. The U.S. is on track to lower their emissions more than India and China, but even they would need something like 50+ years to go zero emissions.

And at which point, I've been informed by the climate alarmists, it'll be too late and we'll all die from climate change so what difference would it make.

Religious couples have the lowest rates of divorce, and religious affiliation is falling.

If you look at the statistics, the reason why the divorce rate could be so high is that you have some segment of the population that has been married and divorced multiple times. If you're divorced once, chances are rather high it could happen again.


Financial support isn't enough. The metrics are rather clear that children from single parent household on average end up worse off than children raised in a two parent home.

The tabloids really enjoy writing these terrible articles based on an ambiguous comment Musk made in an hour long interview with Benjamin Netanyahu...

He did not specify what this fee would be nor did he specify that every X user would be required to pay for it. Seemed like an off the cuff comment, and news organizations are running with it.

More likely to me he might introduce a lower subscription tier than the one he already offers and may limit what the "free" version of X offers. I doubt he's considering a subscription only model for all users of the site.

If the income is foreign generated, I'm not sure how large the tax burden should be in the jurisdiction that the person resides in. Someone living in Thailand is still subject to VAT, so it's not as if they're paying nothing.

And any foreign income would be subject to income tax from the original jurisdiction too. Not great for investors.

They're a sanctuary city, perhaps conceitedly so, but still nonetheless. Though I do recall many stories of NYC mayor Eric Adams boasting about NYC's sanctuary status. To his defense, he's reversed course. AOC on the other hand is a lost cause.

Anyways, the NYC constituency voted for radical left wingers, and they should not be surprised when their governance reflects radical left wing policies.


I'm not arguing for or against the neoliberal perspective economic perspective. Only offering a potential explanation as to why NY might prohibit illegals from getting jobs. I mention wages are driven down -- it's mostly unskilled wages that are driven down because of cheap labor. But who benefits from cheap labor? The consumers. The doctors and lawyers of NYC don't need to worry about this. The uber drivers do.

In other words, if you're a skilled worker, it's within your interest to allow cheap unskilled labor to flourish. If you're an unskilled worker, it becomes an issue.

Yes, the illegals could educate themselves and benefit the local economy. But that's not what happens in actuality. Illegals generally take up low skilled positions and stick to them.

Time for BRICS to take up Bitcoin 

There's many countries that allow physical casinos but ban digital platforms for the reason a lot of tax funds are being thrown away when an individual plays on a virtual platform. At least with a physical casino, some amount of the funds are being recirculated into the local economy.

I agree this is a government limitation not based on ethics, rather they have financial motives. As if the government has ever cared about ethics.

The NYC constituency being forced to bear the burden of their voting habits, a tragedy.


If there's an influx of cheap labor, it drives down wages of everyone else. The neoliberal perspective is that borders shouldn't exist and they would argue that it increases economic growth and raises productivity. But that assumes you're dealing with a skilled labor force, which these people are not.

India is more closely affiliated with Russia than they are of Ukraine. Zelenskyy would have nothing to do with G20 even if provided the opportunity only for the reason that India was hosting the summit this year. India's been purchasing Russian oil, and they've repeatedly abstained from voting to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine on any UN resolutions that comes up.

As for Xi Jinping, he would not be affiliated with an organization that is heavy with western countries. China is on the UN security counsel along with the U.S., but they joined as permanent members post WW2. It's one of the exceptions. They're membership is laughable anyways.

It's not fair to lump all economists together. Economists like Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell have been opining on the failure of government to follow basic economic principles for decades. Meanwhile, so called economists like Paul Krugman, conflate economics and politics, praising liberal failures in fiscal policy.

Economists opine on matters related to monetary/fiscal policy. The politicians act within their own whims, and it's entirely up to these politicians on who they choose to listen to. Economists are not in the position to form public policy, that's the job of the congress.

No, I don't believe in deterministic outcomes. If you work for 20 years and are still poor, you've likely made willful decisions that have kept you secured to the low income group.

Educate yourself with a diverse and marketable skillset, earn more than you spend, and set aside funds for investment early to allow for accrual over 20 years plus and your chance of being impoverished is virtually zero.

RCP polling averages have Trump +0.5 points on Biden, with DeSantis trailing on recent polls by a few percentage points.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-election-trump-vs-biden-7383.html

Firstly, polls this early do not mean anything. Of course, gamblers will make use of available data so as to place their bets accordingly if they're betting on an outcome -- but again, it's too early.

But I raise this because it highlights precisely why you should *not* be using polls as the quintessential element in predicting outcome. Many of the polls that have Trump beating Biden assumes that he will greatly overperform on the minority vote, securing something like 20-30% of the black vote and perhaps even more of the hispanic vote. If Trump were to secure this portion of the minority vote, then a Trump victory seems plausible and the polling numbers seem accurate. However, based on historical trends, a democratic candidate hasn't secured less than 90% of the black vote in the last three election cycles, so for the polls to suggest that Trump has any chance of securing double digits of the black is erroneous. Setting propaganda from the Trump team about his great poll numbers against Biden aside, the actual data beneath the headlines render the poll results nearly worthless.

Generally speaking, economic indicators are a great way of predicting election results. This applies to elections globally. Over and over again, when there is large uncertainty in the direction of the economy, voters will often elect the opposing party into power, whether or not the opposing party would actually cause greater economic prosperity.

And so if at any point from now until the election there were to be a recession, Trump's chances of victory boost significantly.

What additional sanctions exist for the Russians to endure. Surely nothing. And would clinically obese Kim Jong Un be personally affected by sanctions of his country -- his people are starving to death and live in totalitarian hell, after all.

Threats of sanctions are obsolescent. It's the U.S. State Department's crutch when they can't gain willful compliance, but sanctions only works if USD/related assets are still strong.

It really only takes the U.S., Europe, or China for the world economy to fail. The U.S. has the largest affect because of their share of global GDP and the value of their import/export totals are greater than the GDP of some small countries. Consider the percentage a country's share of global GDP to be proportional to the risk that individual country has that could cause a global recession of some degree.

All the factors you mentioned could trigger a global collapse, but realistically it could happen if the individual economies of large regions collapse for whatever reason. There does not need to be a global event for a global collapse -- the global economy is so interconnected that only one country could cause a domino effect.

False story or not, it seems believable enough to warrant caution. Doctors kill more people inadvertently than some may realize. And in some cases, they kill patients intentionally.

Christopher Duntsch, orthopedic surgeon referred to as "Dr. Death" was responsible for the death and maiming of dozens of patients. Even after botched operations, he was allowed to continue operating on patients. Wasn't until after some number of people had died under his care until he was finally jailed.

And how is a patient supposed to know any better? The doctors surrounding this sociopath should have spoken up sooner.

Diversity in hiring used to mean ranges of individuals with diverse skill sets. Now, companies have turned diversity hiring to be based solely on race and not skill, sometimes turning down more qualified candidates who aren't of a particular skin color.

I suppose the logic is that diversity in race adds to social capital of a team -- but it's been refuted over and over again that race as a factor alone improves dynamics in the workforce or in academia. No evidence that "diversity hires" do anything but add to a company's ESG score.

That's normally how the private sector operates, except Tim Gurner wants employers to collude with one another to drive unemployment artificially high, thereby reducing market wages of everyone participating in the labor market. His opinion is corporatist jabber.

Employees shouldn't monopolize the labor market to artificially raise wages nor should employers do the same with job openings.

It's entirely debatable whether income inequality leads to reduced economic growth. We would need to first define what income inequality looks like because disparity in income has always existed. At its core, disparity in income is income inequality and thus it's impossible for a free and fair economy to allow everyone to earn the same income. It assumes equal skill level for every participant in the workforce. If a physician has a different and more valuable skillset than a delivery person, income disparity must exist in a free market society. Presumably, taking away wealth from the physician and handing it to the delivery person is what solving wealth inequality would look like, and I don't see why that would do anything but reduce incentive to generate wealth hence lowering GDP.

You can point to any country that's condensed the welfare state into a centralized entity through high taxes and look at their GDP growth. It's always been stagnant. Israel in the late 90's and early 2000's struggled with growth and high inflation because they had taken wealth from high income earners and put them into generous social welfare programs that gave a disincentive for Israelis entering the labor market. It wasn't until the their Finance Minister reduced the social welfare state that labor participation increased and their economy began to grow. Of course, this was off the back of liberalization of their monetary policy -- reducing tariffs and opening the country to free markets and such. Point being, they tried a wealth redistribution approach and it didn't work.

GDP growth matters because the population is growing. If GDP growth shrinks or remains stagnant with a growing population, that means lower quality of life because the amount of goods and services produced are distributed more thinly.

If you wanted to focus on redistribution, you could. That would involve taking wealth from the highest generators and giving it to those that generate less.

Historically, wealth redistribution has always resulted in a net reduction in GDP. It's not as practical as it may seem.