Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Face-off! Join Chas and John for a Biden-Trump debate special | Planet America | ABC News" video.

My fellow Australians lets put this into context. FIRST: America is still 25% of the worlds economy and most of OUR TRADE like all international trade relies on the US Dollar being the worlds reserve currency. Either our deals are done directly in $USD or the currency exchanges rely of $USD. SECOND: We are about to stake the future of our nation's security on America still functioning as a reliable partner. I actually went to college in America and have many American friends. No doubt most American's can be relied upon but we are talking about the guy who sits in the Whitehouse as the world tries to deal with some very serious issues: Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine and China-Taiwan. THIRD: There's the elephant of all elephants stomping through the room, CLIMATE CHANGE. Make no doubt about it climate change will affect the worlds food supply and starving millions make for dangerous times. One of these 2 doesn't care and the other is incapable of doing what's needed. Love America or hate it, doesn't matter as much as knowing the guy in the Whitehouse is RELIABLE and can be counted on to do the right thing under pressure.
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@kallekas8551 Unfortunately (and I do means this with some sadness) the best you could call it these days is the SA "States of America" because the word United has LEFT the building. It might even be argued that it left the building some time ago and I genuinely mean that saddens me. I had a fantastic time going to college in America and its sad to see what's happened. And if you want to blame Australian born Rupert Murdoch, then fine. We tried to warn the Brits and America what he was like neither of you listened. But feel free to deal with that problem. I'd recommend the Dirty Harry method.
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@topologyrob Then why does American media refer to "Team America?" Why was the film titled "Team America World Police" instead of "Team USA World Police" or would that have confused people?
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@kallekas8551 Interesting times????? I'll be on this weeks Steve Keen & Friends and I'll show you interesting because this is "sort of" trivial compared to what's in a particular US congressional budget Office report into family wealth that has gotten very little air play and even less analysis.
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@JamesTulip Great reply. On the first point I 1/2 mostly agree because I think one of the biggest mistakes made too many times is relying on America to lead outright rather than being more collaborative at the leadership level. Often you must have a clear person leading, but even then they need support team. Too often too many of us just sit back and wait for America to do everything or at least most of it. This is a major flaw in NATO and will eventually repeat in AUKUS because it will eventually become JAUKUS, SKAUKUS or CANAUKUS or some other multi-national behemoth incapable of doing anything like NATO and the UN are now. On the second point your are 1,000,000% right. America has some incredible systemic issues. I used to warn my American friends (because I had studied Orwell) that ANY society could fall into a totalitarian state. That was what Orwell was actually warning about rather than being specifically against communism. They used to tell me that it was impossible for that to happen to America because VIA the Constitution there were the systems of Checks & Balances. Well thanks to Mitch McConnell the Senate is a disaster and thanks to the Federalist Society SCOTUS is a catastrophe and they are the 2 main parts of the Checks & Balances to keep Congress, the Whitehouse, the Military and other agencies from going too far. So, sadly the system is broken and wont get fixed because there are too many people with too much vested interest and are making mountains of money from the broken system that they helped break. On the 3rd point you are also correct and it goes to the first point of over-relying on American leadership. On the 4th point you are even more correct. Australia MUST focus on better relations with the major economies of Asia. As to the South Pacific, our FAILURES there are so bad it should be seen as a national embarrassment that will take years to fix. None of those nations should respect us until we EARN IT BACK and I can't scream that loud enough. I am going to be on the Steve Keen & Friends podcast in a few hours and might bring up a couple of these points because they are so on topic. Just note it will be at 2:00am EST.
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@roughhabit9085 Go look at the YT Channel the Analysisnews hosted by Paul Jay. He has recently re-posted an interview he did with Gore Vidal in 2005. Its titled "Mini Doc: Gore Vidal's History of the National Security State" Its right in line with your quote from Mencken As to your second point on food production. Sorry but there is no evidence at all that its guaranteed that a government in charge of food production will cause mass starvation although I will agree that it has happened. One of the most notable times was Mao's "Great Leap Forward" when he pulled people off the farms and shoved them into factories. It would have worked had he given the remaining farmers tractors and mechanised sowing and reaping machinery. What you are claiming is the same sort of nonsense that Milton Friedman claimed which is that governments can't do anything right. I'll give you 4 things on that. 1) The Apollo Program not only did as intended "Get a man to the Moon and safely return him to the Earth" but also gave America such a major technological boost that the money spent was easily recovered via American industry exploiting it. FYI - I did aerospace engineering in America in the late 80s. After the Challenger accident when there were calls for NASA to be disbanded the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics commissioned a study by an economist as to the value of NASA. Due to time constraints the report focused on Apollo. They found that by 1986 Apollo had returned $9:50 for every $1:00 spent making it the most profitable investment in history at that time. Considering that the things it returned money on (industrial output) ahs NOT stopped then that $9:50 is likely to be much higher these days. 2) Here in Australia like many other countries we privatised our power industry on the promise that: "competition would provide better services at lower prices" We now like many other places pay much higher costs for electricity. 3) Private Industry constantly claims it is overregulated and taxes are too high. FIRST - deregulation hasn't helped any industry or shareholders BUT IT HAS massively helped the top 1% make around $200 Trillion since the 1970s. SECOND - deregulation hasn't helped the general population anywhere. Not only has it not delivered for the average person but many services have decline, most consumer protection has evaporated and (1 I hate) is that its lead to things like the Boeing Max-8 where they built a plane that was always going to crash. 4) Here in Australia we have spent over AU$20 Billion on consultants (PwC, KPMG,.......etc) in the last decade or so and yea that number has stunned us. Those consultants were hired by successive governments from both sides to help various government departments do their job better. You will not find many who think we got a damn thing out of that AU$20 Billion because nothing is working any better and that's because most of the consultants are ex-Government employees. Its just 1 giant ongoing scam that was started by Margret Thatcher. Its spread across the entire developed world. So yeah I get Milton Friedman's point that the government can suck, but the solutions his advocates have served up have FAILED and FAILED and FAILED.
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