Comments by "bart thomassen thomassen" (@thomassenbart) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1. No, there are very few actual slaves in China producing goods sold in the USA. Low wage foreigners are not making slave wages. They are good wages in their nations. All wages are relative. When people make these accusations, they don't understand how labor markets work in the world.
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  2. Bridgeheads don't require an actual bridge. It's an area of occupation from an attack, which allows for a concentration of force prior to achieving a breakthrough and then followed by the exploitation phase of a battle. So, for example bridgeheads were established at Normandy, Sicily, all amphibious invasions and attacks in many theaters of war, from WWII on.
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  3. Interest on the debt just passed that spent on defense. That is impactful
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  4.  @davidreese6519  That is what relative means. Making $1 an hour in Afghanistan will feed you and your family and leave something left over. Hence saying 'slave labor' is disingenuous or ignorant. You obviously have not understood my comment at all. Yes, some people do live in abject poverty, but that number is the lowest it has ever been in the history of the world and the UN believes, all things remaining equal, that category of humanity will disappear by 2050.
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  5. Their job is to responsibly pass laws and not spend the nation into bankruptcy.
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  6. What you are talking about is not historical but modern. Prior to WWII, the Germans and Russians did not attempt to entangle their economies to avoid war. Hitler and Stalin did have a trade agreement but the purpose of that was not to avoid war, but to prepare for it, especially from Hitler's perspective. Also, prior to WWII, Germany was physically located in much of Poland, this was Prussia. Germany has a long history of being invovled in the East, going back to the conquests of the Teutonic Knights, in the Middle Ages, throughout the Baltic States and Poland. So, while I appreciate the analysis, it is historically incorrect, except since WWII and even then, only partially so.
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  7.  @harryagrotis326  Hostile has a meaning, it should not be confused with being right or wrong. You seem to be doing that.
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  8. Yeah the Germans will not abandon NATO regardless. The Turks also will not leave NATO.
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  9. Because you don’t understand the issues
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  10.  @nathangill8404  Child labor is not the same as forced or slave labor. The Dept of Labor distinguishes between the two. You should acknowledge that all nations, including our own also used child labor when industrializing. The latest global estimates highlight that 152 million children remain in child labor and 25 million adults and children toil under conditions of forced labor, including in global supply chains that crisscross our globe. This is the list of goods supposedly produced in China by forced labor: Artificial Flowers, Christmas Decorations, Coal, Fish, Footwear, Garments, Gloves, Hair Products, Nails, Thread/ Yarn, Tomato Products Bricks, Cotton, Electronics CHILD/forced LABOR & Fireworks, Textiles, Toys The People’s Republic of China has arbitrarily detained more than one million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in China’s far western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. (24) It is estimated that 100,000 Uyghurs and other ethnic minority ex-detainees in China may be working in conditions of forced labor following detention in re-education camps. So, given this information, it seems you have overstated your case. Inflation is not due to 'slave labor' nor to 'slave wages'. Certainly, lower wages in developing nations has kept prices down but that is simply a competitive advantage and often the only one such nations have in global capitalism and competition.
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  11. He was wrong because he doesn’t like Trump and allowed his prejudice to override objectivity. To make such a huge error when you tout yourself as a future predictor is not only embarrassing but a warning for those watching Zeihan.
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  12. Lack of inflation is primarily due to China and low cost labor from overseas not illegal immigration.
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  13. Nothing advocated by this woman or her party remotely resemble actual fascism. Ludicrous claim.
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  14. Near slave conditions??? Hyperbole. How does a nation with no natural resources succeed if not by utilizing low priced of labor? This is how all nations have gained a foothold and begun to prosper.
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  15.  @bernardzsikla5640  Zeihan says the same thing.
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  16. There is zero indication that Trump is less sharp today than at any time. He will not go senile like Biden. This Zeihan prediction is again likely to go south.
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  17. The French did not kill off the local elites or rulers when they colonized Africa or anywhere else. This is incorrect history. France encouraged the elites to become culturally and linguistically French unlike the British. The French sent elites back to France to become educated and their children and their children and then these folk returned thoroughly Frenchified, with a few exceptions, i.e. Ho Chi Minh.
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  18. Gaza is not the most densely populated place on the planet, not even close. Also, there are 2.3 million inhabitants of Gaza. The less than savory ideologies predate the open-air prison and the prisoners elected Hamas to power. Gaetz got Mcarthy fired but the Congress was already dysfunctional and arguably immoral, with its inability to show a modicum of fiscal discipline. Having a $2T annual deficit, will bankrupt the nation and must end, even if it means shutting down the government for a time. Doing this will not stop payments to the debt, SS, Medicare the military etc and will do so for all the non-essential foolishness. The mandatory spending can be funded one at a time by vote and appropriation as it should be, rather than multi trillion-dollar omnibus extensions of the previous budget. It won't take years to go through Gaza with 300,000 troops, not even close. Yeah, condemn the terrorists, i.e. Hamas, which runs Gaza and is supported by the bulk of the population. Killing those with whom you are at war, is completely legitimate and if civilians are killed because they are being used as human shields, that is also the fault of Hamas. There is no moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel and the tactics used by each.
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  19. Get rid of the social circumstances???? You are lost. Welfare does not work and neither are any governmental interventions.
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  20. You are high if you think raising children is easier in Germany. You are focusing on the welfare state benefits which are not sustainable and ignoring the huge taxes, small housing, and numerous other issues in D-land.
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  21. My understanding is that beneath the Colorado Basin lay somewhere between 1-3 trillion barrels of shale oil
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  22. However, that small group is extremely vulnerable and if those Tomahawks are captured...think of the ramifications.
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  23. Trump did not purge his he Repis of fiscal conservatives.
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  24. More bad analysis from PZ all of trump’s picks have been great
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  25. Golf courses etc… are not the problem here. It’s all about agriculture, which consumes 80+% of all water in this region. Fix this issue and you solve the problem. One answer is desalination plants in California and making that state create the infrastructure to hold excess water, like for this year, rather than letting it flow back into the ocean.
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  26. France 24 is a very good news source, which I rely on. The Economist is still good, Wall Street Journal yes, Rand Corps., PEW Research are also all good.
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  27. I don't see how one gets to the x8 or x10 body count to defeat Russia. Ukraine had a population of 43 million v. 140 million Russians, that's about 4:1, not what was stated. The Russian Army from 1943 on was a quality force and largely well led. They pulled off complex maneuvers and large-scale encirclements of the Germans and though continued to lose a massive amount men and material it is incorrect to say that the Russians are always badly led and poorly equipped. Also, the force that captured Afghanistan, did so with Elan and panache.
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  28. Zeihan is either dumb or disingenuous. The US is not anti-immigrant, it is anti-illegal immigrants. That is a huge difference.
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  29. But old twitter was solidly biased and excluded those it did not like, i.e., Trump etc... Foolish and incorrect analysis of Musk. Were he in favor of Russia, he would not have given Starlink to Ukraine and this thing about antisemitic is just dumb. He was criticizing the ADL, who are far left loons.
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  30.  @robgrt  Completely false and if you took 5 minutes to examine how the system actually works, you would see this for yourself.
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  31.  @CAVALRY19D  Bravo! You and I are sympatico.
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  32.  @robgrt  This figure is totally fictious. Before throwing out such a sum, look at the GDPs of all of these nations or Africa entire. The entire continent generates about $3 trillion per annum. The former French colonies are among the poorest on the continent, with the exception of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Here are some basic numbers for you: Benin $17B Burkina Faso $19B Cote D'Ivoire $70B Mali $19B Niger $14B Senegal $27B Togo $8B Guinea $21B If we include all of the former sub-Saharan French colonies outside of West Africa such as: Gabon $162B Cameroon $462B Chad $101B Mauritania $58B CAR $19B So, if you total all the above, what figure do you get? We see that Gabon and Cameroon together about $620B and that all of the others is around $370B. Obviously, France is not taking $500B from these colonies. It's not possible. The 500-billion-dollar theft myth is based upon the CFA currency and that countries using CFA Francs are required to store 50% of their currency reserves with the Banque de France, and the currencies are pegged to the euro. Notice this is currency reserves, not GDP or a tax or anything similar. Also, all members of the CFA currencies can quit at any time and establish their own money. The rules for accepting the CFA are: 1. unlimited convertibility of the CFA franc into other currencies guaranteed by France 2. fixed parity rate between the CFA franc and the French franc (then the euro) 3. free movement of capital between the countries of these zones as well as with France 4. deposit of at least 50% of foreign exchange reserves of the central banks concerned in Paris These deposits were supposed to guarantee monetary stability for countries using the CSA franc and to inspire confidence from foreign investors. France did/does not use these funds, which remain the property of these 14 African countries. Until recently, this "operating account" opened in Paris was also remunerated by the Bank of France at a higher rate than those of the market rate (0.7%) which brought in several tens of millions to the two African central banks concerned annually. France required African countries using the CFA franc to pool 50% of their foreign exchange reserves (not their exports) with two African central banks which then deposited these with the French treasury, in return for a guaranteed exchange rate with the Euro (this rule ended in 2020). They were free to access these reserves if they wanted to and France paid interest while holding them (at 0.75%). So, as with all things economic, there is good and bad. Countries using the CFA are tied to the Euro, which gives stability and tampers down inflation, and allows for easy exchange between CFA countries, however, the CFA because it is strong, necessarily lessens exports. This is the reality of the situation. There is no tax and the money deposited in the Bank of France was 50% of reserves, to cover export imports, not of GDP, also this money is still available for each country, not spent by France. And, any money sent, has never been $500 billion or anywhere near this, since the entire region, is scarcely worth this much money.
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  33. There is no famine in Gaza. Propaganda at this point Peter. Israel has not targeted women and children in Gaza. There is no evidence for that assertion and were it true, you would expect vastly higher deaths of civilians. The primary war aim is the destruction of Hamas. Afghan style urban campaign, WTF??? 2.3 million people in Gaza, not 3 million. Recruiting without arms is not a good strategy and nothing is coming into Gaza so...
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  34. Why would any European nation seize Russian combat ships? That's an act of war. I don't think so.
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  35. Biden is not going to beat Trump, foolish assertion.
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  36. It's not that the police simply killed a kid. These 'kids' are generally grown men, criminals, violent and attack the police with impunity, especially in les Banlieues. No, 50% of the pop. is not non ethnic French. There is also a large population of illegal immigrants from sub Saharan Africa and N. Africa in France. Racism is not the issue. It's largely about culture and Islam which will not assimilate.
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  37. Intere
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  38. The War on Terror was not a failure. How many 9-11s have we seen since? None, so that was the primary reason for the GWOT. Success! Vast numbers of terrorists/Jihadists are dead and their leadership decimated, demoralized and marginalized worldwide...success! The war in Ukraine is not genocidal, if the word means anything at all. Using Spec Ops against nation states, means war. That is a dangerous game, constitutionally and practically.
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  39.  @bernardzsikla5640  They live in a communist country and have received varying degrees of both health care and education. What the level of wealth or other metrics you want to use is in China and other nations, compared to western nations, is irrelevant. We don't own the world. Each nation develops at its own pace depending upon multiple variables. Sure, curtailing Chinese dumping of their products to dominate industries is a travesty. Our policies regarding China have largely failed and we must retrench and bring supply chains home.
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  40.  @aruak321  You are correct, but the Uyghurs are not manufacturing much or many of the imports brought into the USA, which would impact inflation.
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  41.  @thinkaboutwhy  Prison labor in country X may indeed be equivalent to slave labor, a distinction without a difference, the question however is if this translates into exportable products which undermine wages in the USA. I argue no.
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  42.  @nathangill8404  It can and is overstated.
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  43.  @aruak321  Let's see...no, yes I have a pair of sketchers, my wife buys from Costco, no, yes, no, no, no, no, no, no. I suppose it depends on which sourced product you are talking about. I also believe if your assertion were viable, it would be illegal to import into the USA, so I'm dubious of your claim. 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. §1307), which prohibits importing products that are mined, produced, or manufactured, wholly or in part, by forced labor, including by forced or indentured child labor. Regardless, the question is about the percentage of trade that might occupy and if it is significant as a determiner of inflation reduction. Child labor, as I pointed out, has been the norm for all nations industrialization and may be the difference between a family being able to survive or prosper or not. You insist, seemingly, that child labor should not exist, from a safe Western out post. This seems neo colonialist and hypocritical as well as immoral. Should a family starve to make you feel better?
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  44.  @davidreese6519  If you understand what relative labor costs and wages mean you would not say that people all over the world cannot buy the same amount of bread or rice. That is inherent in the meaning of relative.
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  45.  @aruak321  How do you know if it is Uyghur produced? Same problem I would say. Still, you are not proving your case. I'm not talking about 'reasonable standards or good working conditions' either. Why is your standard of reasonable etc...the metric? More Neo Colonialism? You can't see that you are imposing a very modern standard to nations which generally have no competitive advantages save low-cost labor. This is how S. Korea, Bangladesh, India, Taiwan, China etc... escaped grinding poverty. It takes time and one must pay the Piper. The people engaged in this labor are glad for the opportunity, as was the case for our ancestors previous. Your interference, were it possible to enforce, would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and throw millions into destitution and condemn many countries to endless cycles of the same. Your last sentence makes clear you have no clue about the developing world and what those people want or how they are able to escape poverty.
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  46.  @davidreese6519  I said that labor and wages are relative, which necessarily means that people buy different commodities for different prices and amounts depending on the local market. This is called supply and demand basic economics. Your phrasing is queer and is a double negative in the first sentence and difficult to understand. People buy things depending on what the cost of the product is and their ability to pay the price. What you pay for a chicken for example, in a US grocery store, would feed a family in many countries for days. In Thailand you can eat in a medium restaurant for two, with $4, same in Vietnam, Indonesia and many other countries. This is also true throughout out Africa but you will spend even less. It's all relative. Giving someone a few coins of dirham in Morocco, can literally get them enough for a meal. So, if people are too poor to afford any food, they starve, beg, do whatever they can to get enough money for the next meal. You imposing restrictions on labor exacerbates these problems and solves nothing.
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  47.  @RICHFORD-jw2vh  I have been talking about economics not morality. If that is your subject, what is your grounding and why should anyone accept your view of 'morality'? If we approach the USA from a Judeo-Christian moral perspective, I think a very strong case can be made for US morality by multiple metrics from charitable giving to US foreign policy. If, however you want to mesh macroeconomics with morality, you are on very slippery ground because they do not really work. Applying large scale economic principles to individual circumstance is basically a Marxist trope and always results in mass poverty, often genocide and authoritarianism, none of which are moral.
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  48.  @dt089  I don't know who you think you are arguing with. Did I say that living standards are not lower in China, or that unions don't exist or that labor regulations are weaker? I don't believe that I did. Outsourcing has been profitable, in China and elsewhere, did I say it was not? I believe I specifically mentioned Uyghur slave labor. I'm not sure what point you are making or why
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  49.  @aruak321  What products are the Uyghurs producing in the camps that are imported to the USA?
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  50.  @davidreese6519  Using words like all, immediately make you an unserious person. Did I say all? Nope. We are talking about relative wage advantage, and the cost of living, and what money can buy in a given economy. China is no longer considered a low-wage nation, which is one reason companies are not building factories there and have moved to other nations, like Mexico, Vietnam and Bangladesh. Approximately 50% of the Chinese population is still very poor but most of these people are in the countryside and not the workers we are discussing. I don't think you know anything about China or the economy there, right?
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