Cipheron on 30/12/2022 at 00:35
Quote Posted by monk
That's high economic growth for you? You must be joking.
You're doing the standard gish gallop now. Your claim that there was a decline in GDP growth that started in the early 1960s was disproven, so you've move the goalposts now.
"high" growth is subjective, but if we were to agree on what counts as high, then "higher than average" would be it.
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(real)_per_capita_growth_rate#10_years_change)
USA's GDP per capita increased faster from 1960-2018 than the world average.
What you want is steady growth. 3-4% a year is actually ideal. Anything higher than that and you're either a developing nation or you're setting yourself up for a boom/bust cycle.
Look at that chart for some of the highest-growing nations in the 1960s. They include Spain, Greece and Portugal. If you just assumed from their high growth that they have the strongest economies in Europe then you'd clearly be wrong.
Quote:
You forgot to talk about real wages dropping after 1970
No i didn't forget about that. I actually talked about that and linked a source that shows that real median household income increased at the same time you claim "real wages dropped". Here it is again:
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https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA672N)
You can see fairly steady growth in real median household income for the same period wages were supposed to be dropping. the explanation is that the period where real wages started to drop was also the time period where a lot of women entered the workforce. that creates more labor supply, and more supply drives the price of something down. But the net effect *was* in fact that average families ended up wealthier overall.
Quote:
Of course the U.S. is a rich country: rich in debt. What is it now? Something like $70 trillion in total debts plus $170 trillion in unfunded liabilties? Which magnificent genius can you name who will argue that the U.S. will be able to pay off even part of that debt without borrowing more?
The $70 trillion includes medicare and social security payment estimates for the next 75 years. It's not the current debt at all. The higher figure you quote also
already includes the $70 trillion. And that one is calculated to the "infinite horizon". So basically that's what the debt would be at the end of the 22nd century:
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https://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2020/VI_F_infinite.html)
Quote:
Another measure of trust fund financial status is the infinite horizon unfunded obligation, which takes account of all past and future annual balances, even those after the next 75 years. The extension of the time period past 75 years assumes that the current law for the OASDI program and the demographic and economic trends used for the 75‑year projection continue indefinitely.
So the $70 trillion is what the debt would be, in the year 2097. And the $170 trillion is the same figure, but projected out into the next century after that. It's literally project out to the dates when Star Trek is set.
Saying Putin has to go is no different from saying Trump had to go. It's not a declaration of war, unless you live in a cult of personality and cannot conceive of the concept of a change of leader and see it as an attack on the very existence of the nation.
Quote Posted by monk
Neo-libs have nothing to do with liberals? You must be joking. They came from liberal hawks disillusioned by the rise of "tyranny" worldwide?
Well if you can't get your facts straight, nobody is going to take you seriously. Maybe if you read and learn then you'd actually be able to make a better case.
1) Neo
conservatives are the ones who came from liberal hawks concerned with the threat of the USSR*. They split with the liberal Democrats after the Democrats embraced the anti-war movement in the early 1970s. Because they weren't really conservatives, they ended up with the signifier
NeoConservative to denote their difference from the actual Conservatives.
2) NeoLiberals were actually conservatives and right-wing Libertarians who dug up some 19th century "economic liberal" ideas. They believe in free trade and deregulation. The name doesn't have anything to do with the Democrats being called "liberal" at all, and it was actually a Republican thing.
I'm sympathetic to the anti-American stuff but just repeating yourself being provably wrong about stuff doesn't help your argument.
* note about the USSR and "tyranny" in quotes. If you're literally a Stalin apologist then i really don't have much to say about that. Go read "The Gulag Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Yes, Stalin was dead by the time the NeoConservatives came about, but considering the mass genocide of the Stalin years, who in their right mind would have accepted "pinky promise, we're nice guys now" from the USSR.
RippedPhreak on 31/12/2022 at 03:35
Quote Posted by Qooper
No, it isn't. Based on what you've written, Tocky made the entirely reasonable assumption that you're a Kremlin propagandist. I mean even if you weren't, it's a fact that you're still propagating some of Kremlin's propaganda. It's also a reasonable question as to why you've been lurking since 2012 and decided to activate now of all times.
So this is shitlib Qanon. Cool.
Cipheron on 31/12/2022 at 04:49
Quote Posted by RippedPhreak
So this is shitlib Qanon. Cool.
It isn't really.
If someone makes an account then doesn't post anything on it for 10 years, then suddenly logs in and posts a wall of politically-motivated text then that is in fact pretty unusual. Especially when it only happened once we had a Russia-related thread.
He supposedly has really strong views on American politics, and pointed out that the USA continuously has stuff going on to upset him. However somehow NONE of those various things ever upset him *enough* to actually log in and post about it until just now.
And when called in it, they maintained radio silence about the reason they even made this account in the first place, which could be suspicious.
Like, what does he do with the rest of his time? Presumably he only comes here to post pro-Russia anti-Ukraine stuff and doesn't read anything else on the forum. The logical thing would be to extrapolate that when he's not here, he's on other sites and social media ALSO churning out pro-Russia anti-Ukraine stuff.
Here, he didn't even have time to read my entire post, such as when he criticized me for "not talking" about one point, but i had an entire section of the post just addressing that point (in fact the reply wasn't really intended for him, but for the rest of you). Also I broke down why his figures on the national debt were bullshit, but he ignored it and I think later repeated the same original claim a second time.
This makes a lot more sense if he's actually hopping from site to site and not actually focusing on any one of them. So you got a guy who's clearly juggling a lot of accounts, none of which he particular invests in, and only posts pro-Russia anti-Ukraine/America stuff in each of them, then hops to the next one. That sounds like exactly what the PAID trolls actually get paid for.
And back in 2012, forums were actually still pretty mainstream. So there might be a swag of accounts created across a big list of forums that they have in their pocket. This was reported in 2015 so the timeline would be right:
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house)
Quote:
Former workers tell how hundreds of bloggers are paid to flood forums and social networks at home and abroad with anti-western and pro-Kremlin comments
Just after 9pm each day, a long line of workers files out of 55 Savushkina Street, a modern four-storey office complex with a small sign outside that reads “Business centre”. Having spent 12 hours in the building, the workers are replaced by another large group, who will work through the night.
The nondescript building has been identified as the headquarters of Russia's “troll army”, where hundreds of paid bloggers work round the clock to flood Russian internet forums, social networks and the comments sections of western publications with remarks praising the president, Vladimir Putin, and raging at the depravity and injustice of the west.
I mean, his posts are literally what they're describing in this 7 year old article. If someone is producing content that's identical to the paid troll content, it's at least plausible they could be a paid troll.
And on that point: he hasn't produced a single post that's not "on point". The paid trolls have quotas and their content gets checked, so they wouldn't waste time posting "non-Ukraine" posts.
WingedKagouti on 31/12/2022 at 10:22
Quote Posted by Cipheron
And back in 2012, forums were actually still pretty mainstream. So there might be a swag of accounts created across a big list of forums that they have in their pocket. This was reported in 2015 so the timeline would be right:.
I would also find it plausible that the account wasn't really created in 2012, but rather the account was created with a falsified creation date in one of the recent bot attacks. Sill, an old sleeper account left to age for authenticity purposes seems far more likely.
Tocky on 31/12/2022 at 18:58
Quote Posted by monk
You must be joking. Read his post very carefully. He can't counter my arguments, so he engages in a personal attack, arguing that I'm some sort of Kremlin propagandist and Republican who started posting even after joining in 2012.
FWIW, I got my ideas from Chomsky, Mearsheimer, Kennan, and Sachs, and my views are shared by Assange, Greenwald, and various leftists who are critical of the U.S.
For one, your arguments have been countered here before. For another, you would know that if you had been here at all since 2012 instead of being recently activated. We all know where your ideas come from and how they are twisted. Your arguments have been done to death back as far as 9-11 here. You would know that if you had not just recently activated a sleeper account. And further, I can distill my answer in a few sentences. The US and Russia learned very different things from the world wars. The US learned it could not be isolationist so it became proactive protector. Russia learned it could be invaded so it wanted a buffer of countries it owned, if not all the world.
You can forever parse the details of those two views but those two things will forever be at odds. Invaders who take to keep and invaders who take to stop those invading who then give back will never see eye to eye. Simple enough to be seen in the sectioning of Germany after the war. I don't care to argue. It's obviously wrong to try to take Ukraine when it gave Russia back it's nukes and has made no aggressive moves on Russia. Russian paranoia is not defendable, try as you might.
And nah, don't want no Chat GPT.
RippedPhreak on 31/12/2022 at 19:34
I wonder if the people of Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc appreciate the "invading then giving back?"
Pyrian on 31/12/2022 at 19:49
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
Sill, an old sleeper account left to age for authenticity purposes seems far more likely.
Perhaps the account was a fairly standard creation and abandonment, but hacked at some point since.
Qooper on 31/12/2022 at 21:52
Quote Posted by RippedPhreak
So this is shitlib Qanon. Cool.
That's a very American thing to say :D
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Perhaps the account was a fairly standard creation and abandonment, but hacked at some point since.
Actually that sounds most plausible to me.
lowenz on 31/12/2022 at 22:21
It's just Vlad wanting to bust us thieves-in-law, like good old Koba......(russian correct joke for russians)
