Comments by "Sue W" (@SuezWSuezW) on "Econ Lessons" channel.

  1. Mother Teresa was born in Albania. She didn't grow up in an extremely rich place.
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  2. In later part of WWII Germans were using vehicles with wood-powered engines.
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  3. Yup. There's an interesting piece in the Guardian newspaper today, reprinting three articles from 1922, on this exact subject. The US went into an "America First" phase then too. The article is called: "Archive, 1922: US isolation and its impact on Europe".
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  4.  @DocJaeBass  Lenin said it, but yeah.
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  5. People within Russia are desperate for hard currency, USD or Euros. Older people have seen this movie before.
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  6.  @thorthunder6336  Not just surrendered (WWI) but was utterly defeated (WWII). The German leadership destroyed themselves and Admiral Doenitz surrendered.
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  7. After WWII they had gangs of women mending roads with hand tools.
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  8. Yes. And, sad to say, it kills some people in the target countries. Their leaders are inconvenienced to the point they have to pay more for their luxuries, and for hard $ they invest in drug dealing and cyber crime. (North Korea, Russia, Iran and Syria, to name but a few).
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  9. Yes, but in Russia it's on a massive, massive scale. In the Arctic, in Siberia, in Central Asia (the Aral Sea!!) and in the Far East. Plus nuclear contamination.
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  10. It was a metaphor, dear.
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  11. We had the exact same conversation with a woman from Crimea when Putin got in. She was very worried. We were a lot less alert; we thought stability was important. How wrong we all were. We realised our mistake by 2007; she is now a rabid Putin supporter with a Russian passport - but she got Canadian citizenship and lives in the Far East. We haven't spoken to her since she called us up a couple of days before the 2022 invasion with a line of propaganda straight from Russia Today; "Call all your friends in the West and tell them we are only hitting military targets!"
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  12.  @user-yq2wk6yg8s  Prigozhin, yeah. The late-head of the Wagner group.
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  13.  @williammasselink  Agreed. We await developments.
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  14.  @williammasselink  ..and send donations to the Ukrainians...
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  15.  @nicolasolton  Hard to say since the poor man has been dead for nearly a decade.
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  16. Cad-mium, but yeah, toxic metals.
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  17. It still costs them massively though. And that, economically speaking, is a problem.
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  18. Thank you Mark. Excellent questions. Let's hope we all have a better New Year!
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  19. 1944-1991 Mother Heroine medals given to women who had 10+ children. \2022, it was started again...
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  20.  @dawnandy7777  There have been recent rebellions in the Caucasus. (There are myriad ethnic and religious groups there.) At least one was to complain about Russian eco-cide and corruption. I did hear about the indigenous groups in the Arctic regions because they went to a circumpolar cultural festival of some kind a while ago.
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  21. A double wide on high ground might be more worthy of "investment" than a millionaire's beach house. Weather-dependant! But I take your point - and the millionaire usually doesn't put all his/her assets into one financial category.
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  22. This is very sad. A world-level catastrophe which could be avoided by better government. Famine doesn't happen in democracies.
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  23. So, it appears that the price of gasoline and diesel is going up enormously inside Russia. I'd be interested if anyone has information about that.
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  24. Yep it's a problem. The EU has been working on the "Right to repair" for a while, for this and other industries.
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  25. There's an interesting short novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on just that topic. The people of the town built a nice new college and when it was completed it was seized by the Party "For the Good of the Cause".
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  26. Would that be "Soviet-style" economics? All those collective unicorn farms and the annihilation of the small landholders/ ?
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  27. I'm sorry to say that it appears that Americans have voted to bring in an emperor in the name of Freedom. The failure of the ancient Roman republic is perhaps more of a parallel. A corrupt, charismatic showman (Julius Caesar) was elevated to the status of a king by popular acclaim.
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  28. Doubled the nation's debt? Not really, it went from 52.8 to 69.6% of GDP from 2015 to 2024. The deficit went up a lot though in that time (to $39.8 billion). I'm sorry that you use the term Marxist, though. The current federal government are many things, but not that.
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  29. People who do their "research" on Wikipedia would be an improvement, tbh. Right now, there are selfish nihilists who are targeting the gullible.
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  30. The Turkish economy is, like many countries in difficulties, using foreign currencies in parallel.
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  31. Yeah. The invaders could just "Declare victory and leave" in the words of Gwynne Dyer. Perhaps that's what Lukashenko was driving at when he said recently there were no more Nazis in Ukraine?
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  32. Modi's agents have assassinated dissidents in Canada.
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  33. Good for barter, branded bottled liquor. Use miniatures for small change...
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  34. There is no currency exchange in Russia that will take roubles and give you USD, obviously.
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  35. Well, it would last a couple of years if they can afford to heat it...
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  36. Actually India is a crony state; Modi does what's good for him and his pals.
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  37. Very good video. Otoh, post-war Ukraine will need massive investment to rebuild (and re-arm).
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  38. Good discussion. Ethics and morality are important. These are Ponzi schemes; someone can just lose everything or get rich for reasons they don't understand - this stimulates the human impulse to gamble. Riding on this are the proceeds of crime. I'm not at all in favour of the Chinese regime, but they have banned crypto currency. They know what it is, that they cannot control it, and know that it could be undermined (!) using quantum computing. (They've also seriously restricted the use of social media by children, but that's another story).
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  39. lol...
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  40. Nah, they could do it without cutting that if they paid more taxes. Plus their industry would get a boost. Win-win.
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  41. The lesson in war gaming is very interesting, thank you! (Spock may have said that but Stalin did say "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.")
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  42.  @heathermccall8015  Pete Seeger.
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  43. How much does it cost to print a bank note?
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  44.  @maritaschweizer1117  Because rapture1949 is weird?
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  45.  @maritaschweizer1117  Oh, I've been wired my whole life, luv! (English spelling is weird, I'll give ya that).
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  46.  @jarcadipane2849  Canada legalized marijuana too. Nothing changed except there are now 3 failing cannabis stores in my town. A gold rush with not enough gold. (Another economics lesson, fwiw.)
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  47. There a sad story around something that was sold as crypto, back a few years ago. OneCoin and was a complete fraud. The Bulgarian lady who promoted it didn't even understand that she'd basically just got a spreadsheet. She made oodles of money and then disappeared. Leaving all kinds of "unbanked" poor people very much poorer than before. This behaviour, along with buying lottery tickets and gambling, appears to be wired into the human brain. Something for nothing, manna from heaven, looting etc.
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  48. Always a problem.
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  49.  @veikovasko5603  Yes, the pattern will probably be a collapse into regional warlordism. Who controls the military (or what's left of them) is crucial.
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  50.  @williammasselink  So Russia's got 18 months left?
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