ATL Bear said:
The_barBEARian said:
ATL Bear said:
The_barBEARian said:
trey3216 said:
The_barBEARian said:
ATL Bear said:
The_barBEARian said:
ATL Bear said:
The_barBEARian said:
ATL Bear said:
Redbrickbear said:
ATL Bear said:
Putin's Russia is getting closer to the Soviet economic dilemmas that crashed it. Defense spending outpacing social spending, rising deficits with increased borrowing costs, inflationary pressures, and a problematic labor force. An unintended weapon Trump will likely initiate is further energy deregulation resulting in lower oil and gas prices (that Russia is already discounting to avoid sanctions) which will put more and more pressure on Russian tax revenues, which are now becoming the primary funding source vs energy.
Meanwhile China is running a debt trap operation on them since the West is sanctioned from buying Russian debt.
I don't think the USSR had that particular problem:
"The crude birth rate in the Soviet Union in 1989 was 17.6 per 1,000 people. The average population of the USSR in 1989 was 286,731,000"
"The USSR had a Fertility rate of 2.3 in 1978-79"
They were doing ok-ish on the population stuff....there was a workforce to replace the elderly aging out.
But the modern Russian Federation certainly does have that problem:
[Russia's fertility rate in 2024 is estimated to be 1.46 children per woman, which is well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain population levels.
In the first six months of 2024, Russia's birth rate was the lowest it's been in 25 years. In June, the number of births fell below 100,000 for the first time
Russia's population is aging rapidly due to a number of factors, including low fertility and a high mortality rate
The natural population declined by 997,000 between October 2020 and September 2021 (the difference between the number of births and the number of deaths over a period). The natural death rate in January 2020, 2021, and 2022 have each been nearly double the natural birth rate.]
The USSR's labor issues were cultural and skill based not the shortage issue they have today. My comment was simply a problematic workforce.
Sound a lot like 2024 America.
TSMC officials claimed the plant they built in Arizona was having problems because the American workforce was too stupid and lazy to develop the technical expertise required to manufacture their semi-conductors.
You don't have to tell me. I've been saying it for some time that we can't do here what is done elsewhere from a manufacturing perspective. It's why outsourcing has occurred. To put it in perspective, China and India graduate well over 1 million engineers every year. The U.S. graduates around 100,000. And people wonder why we need to import skilled labor. There's a fundamental shift that has to occur in the American workforce for us to compete from America vs through America.
For once we agree.
Instead of wasting billions of dollars on failed proxy wars, use that money to increase the salaries of our top doctors, scientists, and engineers and incentivize young people into pursuing those careers.
It's not a compensation issue.
And your moment of clarity has passed... doctors, scientists, and engineers are underpaid for the value they bring to society. If you have never worked in STEM you dont know what you are talking about.
Look at Bar_Bearian. Always wanting Big Govt Big Handouts....so long as they are to him.
I know quite a few surgeons, doctors, engineers and other STEM oriented folks that get paid quite handsomely, with very little coming from government (outside of contractually obligated stuff from Medicaid/Medicare...which none of them want to deal with since they make less money off that) .
So once again, you just show your ass about small government. You don't want small government. You want big government that makes you the safe space. You want government that selects you and not all "those other people."
Sorry buddy. Keep banging away at the data entry that all the medical doctors do so you can get your paychecks like everyone else does.
Of course there are, but the majority are compensated either directly or indirectly by the government.
Over 50% of a typical hospital's patient volume are on Medicare.
NIH spends $50 billion on grants for medical research every year.
The biggest civil engineering firms and defense contractors work on government contracts.
Utility and Energy companies receive government subsidies.
I want a small government but I also want a sensible government.
I would be in favor of the government subsidizing the industrial sector to bring foundaries and steel mills to the US or spending money on GMP and GLP compliant manufacturing facilities and laboratories to resecure our drug supply chain.
The CHIPS act is a sensible idea, but going back to what ATL_Bear said, there is a gap between the supply curve and the demand curve when it comes to qualified workers with the technical abilities to run these facilities and typically we address this gap in a capitalist economy with wage growth and higher salaries.
America doesnt need any more lawyers or finance guys. We have a surplus.
You really have no idea what you're talking about. The simplest example is in 2 areas. First, countries with more socialized medicine (government involvement) have lower earnings for physicians, surgeons, specialists, etc. Second, healthcare payments and reimbursement rates are driven down by Medicare/Medicaid and hospitals, surgeons, physicians, etc. struggle for profitability unless they have a healthy private payer, private insurance revenue stream.
So not only is that giant healthcare subsidy/entitlement called Medicare crushing our Federal budget and imperiling our fiscal future, it's strangling the healthcare market, particularly rural hospitals and smaller facilities and practices, and driving up healthcare costs.
So tell me more about how we can F up the engineering market? Because you don't understand the issue. If you want to talk STEM, then just look at how small of a percentage of American students participate in it, and then take a second look at the demographics of those who do. Ironically it matches the global market for those same interests. That's a baseline of the fundamental issue.
And then there's heavy industry, which again is so hamstrung by regulations you can barely get the coal and scrap steel you need to even sniff those types of operations, much less discuss the mining dearth we've cast upon ourselves. And that's not even getting to the labor force that's not even interested in that type of thankless difficult work to participate at the levels other countries manage to execute. We have a supply and skill shortage at pretty much every level of the manufacturing segment, and to change that isn't to artificially inflate the costs or throw more government dollars at it. It's a reevaluation of labor and skill perspectives, as well as massive regulatory and environmental policy shifts.
But the real solution isn't what the wage complainers want, and that is technology, the biggest job killer since tools were invented.
I wrote a great reply to address all of your strawmans but I backed out of my post and my brilliance was lost to the ether.
So I will address the major relevant plot point - to compete with China and India, America must subsidize our industries and that includes our specialists and skilled tradesmen. The Chinese and Indian governments both subsidize their industries and that is why it is not economically viable for private industry in America to pursue them. They would take on billions in debt, immediately get cost cut, and go bankrupt within a few years.
These subsidies would pay for themselves by lowering costs and bringing down inflation.
Finally, you and Trey are in no position to lecture anyone on government waste when you both support the most wasteful, corrupt, least beneficial use of tax payer dollars - funding failed proxy wars that are not essential to our national security and offer zero ROI to the American tax payer.
Wait, are you actually saying subsidies are lowering costs??? If you think Uncle Sam with his magic subsidy wand fixes the issue, that couldn't be further from the truth. Just look at the scrap heap of ventures the government has destroyed through ineffective subsidy schemes. From the family farm, to Solyndra, to the domestic electronics market, and on and on. Subsidies kill competition and innovation, and game the marketplace, whether at a corporate or individual level. I mean at least with proxy wars you generate manufacturing and service jobs for the defense industry. It's one of the few industries we still actually have success domestically and abroad.
Shipping heavy metals and machinery from China or India takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money.
Time and money that could be saved by reindustrializing America.
These industries were all outsourced and sold off in the 80ties and 90ties so some jackoff vulture capitalists could make a quick buck at the expense of middle class American workers.
There is also the national security threat posed to your beloved defense industry being dependent on raw materials and parts from unfriendly nations.
China has strategically used government subsidies to kick our ass.
China now sucks $1 trillion, and growing, per year out of America.
Even India, a country that rather infamously struggles with urban sanitation, is able to out compete America.
China's new trade surplus record
India's largest trading partner is the US, and it is also one of the few countries with which India had a trade surplus in 2022-23
