ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

Redbrickbear 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.

---

How much fraud do you think comes with that number?

There are quite a lot of articles out there about Chinese diploma mills and the cheating that goes on

(india as well)

---

Even if it's 30-50% the differential is astounding and emanates from educational focus, purpose and outcomes.

---

If 50% of their degrees are BS..And if China does have 1.3 billion people

While the USA has 330 million

Then America is not that far off on producing engineers

If anything it's China under producing with its large population

---

Only if you think the U.S. doesn't suffer from a similar "fraud" and under qualified degree programs

---

I don't…

Our fraud problems in education are nothing like China.

Just like our pollution problems are nothing like China's problems.

Plus I don't think most of our fraud degrees are in STEM (more a liberal arts thing)

lol

Here is Marco Rubio saying it’s just “common sense” that Russia must have obviously blown up the Nordstream pipeline pic.twitter.com/NkLVAENCZ1

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 14, 2024

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.

Redbrickbear said:

---

lol

Here is Marco Rubio saying it’s just “common sense” that Russia must have obviously blown up the Nordstream pipeline pic.twitter.com/NkLVAENCZ1

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) November 14, 2024

---

Yeah... Marco Rubio as Secretary of State has AIPAC written all over it.

But if we end up getting Ron Paul as Treasury Secretary I will call it a win!

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.]

---

and it will take 18 years for today's reduced reproduction to matter on the battlefield.

basic law of attrition warfare: firepower is an offset to demography.....

NATO’s Secretary General has met in France with Macron to call stronger Western support for Ukraine and to warn about Russia’s growing alliances with China, Iran, and North

NATO’s focus on global security is broadening as Secretary-General Mark Rutte calls on Western allies to…

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 14, 2024

BREAKING:

The North Korean Army fighting against Ukraine will soon receive the 170 mm long-range non-rocket artillery system M-1989 Koksan. The weapons are currently being transported through Russia from North Korea.

The system has a range of 40-60 km

🇺🇦🇰🇵🇷🇺 pic.twitter.com/t28SqACHSp

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 14, 2024

BREAKING: Secretary of State Antony Blinken announces "every dollar we have at our disposal will be pushed [to Ukraine] between now and January 20th" when Trump takes office. pic.twitter.com/7m6VLLfTlI

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 14, 2024

boognish_bear said:

---

BREAKING: Secretary of State Antony Blinken announces "every dollar we have at our disposal will be pushed [to Ukraine] between now and January 20th" when Trump takes office. pic.twitter.com/7m6VLLfTlI

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 14, 2024

---

more proof of slow-walking of aid..... Why isn't it already there?

"We don't care what you voted for, we will launder every possible dollar before we are expelled from office" https://t.co/yqDkaAjyYt

— Auron MacIntyre (@AuronMacintyre) November 14, 2024

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.

---

I can speak from personal experience that many family farms absolutely depend on farm subsidies to get by.

Inflation created by forever wars and bailing out crooked banks combined with raising taxes to pay for LBJ's great society are what really killed many family farms.

The_barBEARian said:

---

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.

---

I can speak from personal experience that many family farms absolutely depend on farm subsidies to get by.

Inflation created by forever wars and bailing out crooked banks combined with raising taxes to pay for LBJ's great society are what really killed many family farms.

---

No…. Estate taxes and lower birth rates killed family farms.

trey3216 said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

---

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.

---

I can speak from personal experience that many family farms absolutely depend on farm subsidies to get by.

Inflation created by forever wars and bailing out crooked banks combined with raising taxes to pay for LBJ's great society are what really killed many family farms.

---

No…. Estate taxes and lower birth rates killed family farms.

---

When you are right... you are right.

Flamethrower drones are now starting to appear in Eastern Ukraine pic.twitter.com/pM8Toe7sW9

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 14, 2024

The_barBEARian said:

---

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.

---

I can speak from personal experience that many family farms absolutely depend on farm subsidies to get by.

Inflation created by forever wars and bailing out crooked banks combined with raising taxes to pay for LBJ's great society are what really killed many family farms.

---

Farm subsidies created/enhanced massive agribusinesses that has greatly impacted family (smaller) farms.

ATL Bear said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

---

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.

---

I can speak from personal experience that many family farms absolutely depend on farm subsidies to get by.

Inflation created by forever wars and bailing out crooked banks combined with raising taxes to pay for LBJ's great society are what really killed many family farms.

---

Farm subsidies created/enhanced massive agribusinesses that has greatly impacted family (smaller) farms.

---

Inflation and high taxes lead to massive conglomerates buying up all the family farms.

For once Trey actually brought up a great point about the unconsitutional estate tax and how that has forced many families to sell their farms against their will.

Subsidies have kept many family farms afloat during low yield years caused by droughts or other natural disasters.

Your preferred version of an American government that only helps banks, private equity, and foreign lobbyists just got it's ass handed to it by the populist MAGA movement.

Whether Trump delivers on what got him elected remains to be seen... right now his cabinet picks are schizophrenic... some are the establishments wet dream while others are it's worst nightmare

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

The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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trey3216 said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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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.

---

I can speak from personal experience that many family farms absolutely depend on farm subsidies to get by.

Inflation created by forever wars and bailing out crooked banks combined with raising taxes to pay for LBJ's great society are what really killed many family farms.

---

Farm subsidies created/enhanced massive agribusinesses that has greatly impacted family (smaller) farms.

---

Inflation and high taxes lead to massive conglomerates buying up all the family farms.

For once Trey actually brought up a great point about the unconsitutional estate tax and how that has forced many families to sell their farms against their will.

Subsidies have kept many family farms afloat during low yield years caused by droughts or other natural disasters.

---

Estate taxes, which I agree are heinous, play very little role in the loss of family farms. Generational transfer issues ironically mimic our labor force issues. Not as many in the younger generation want the burden and hard work required in farming.

And once again, regulations, including subsidies, exacerbate the already volatile farming industry, and only the conglomerates have the financial wherewithal and subsidy volume to effectively survive. Now farming is turning more niche for certain cash crops, while others have declined drastically. Then we gripe about imports of those. These are the problems that occur when you have ineffective government meddling in an industry.

I don't think you're close enough to the asphalt to appreciate the effect estate taxes have on family farms. You can't take half the equity of a marginally profitable an marginally capitalized business then divide it again a time or two among siblings and not expect to see a consolidation of family farms. Most of those which do not adopt a corporate structure that effectively excludes most siblings from the income streams will not make it.

I am personal friends with the former owners of one of the largest and most famous ranches in Tx. They literally sold it because their share of the estate did not have the cash to pay the estate taxes. They'd have had to gone into debt to keep it. Only child situation, so no division among siblings. These are wealthy people, mind you, with great cash flow - there's oil in the ground out in Tx, ya know. They coulda made it work. But the numbers didn't make sense. If those numbers don't make sense for the wealthy, how could they make sense for the owner-operators who clean and grease their own tractors?

indeed, that is the rationale of the estate tax....redistribution......to give the state the ability to prevent over-concentration of wealth among the landed class. that's all well & good, but when laws designed to keep family farms small run into $1m dollar combines, something's gotta give.

whiterock said:

---

I don't think you're close enough to the asphalt to appreciate the effect estate taxes have on family farms. You can't take half the equity of a marginally profitable an marginally capitalized business then divide it again a time or two among siblings and not expect to see a consolidation of family farms. Most of those which do not adopt a corporate structure that effectively excludes most siblings from the income streams will not make it.

I am personal friends with the former owners of one of the largest and most famous ranches in Tx. They literally sold it because their share of the estate did not have the cash to pay the estate taxes. They'd have had to gone into debt to keep it. Only child situation, so no division among siblings. These are wealthy people, mind you, with great cash flow - there's oil in the ground out in Tx, ya know. They coulda made it work. But the numbers didn't make sense. If those numbers don't make sense for the wealthy, how could they make sense for the owner-operators who clean and grease their own tractors?

indeed, that is the rationale of the estate tax....redistribution......to give the state the ability to prevent over-concentration of wealth among the landed class. that's all well & good, but when laws designed to keep family farms small run into $1m dollar combines, something's gotta give.

---

I'm not going to justify estate taxes, so don't interpret my comments as that. But the average family farm is 400+ acres. When you get to large farms and ranches, thousands of heads of livestock and acres of crops, large farm staffs, and equipment, you aren't a traditional family farm. You are as much like a business or corporation which has different treatment and different avenues for asset transition. If you have set yourself up as transitioning that through your estate as an individual, that's a serious lack of planning. So many things you could do, including resetting the tax basis for your children that would minimize capital gains impact much less estate transfer value. Not to mention stock/equity transactions, etc. But I digress.

Circling back to my reference to the average family farm, the estate tax exemption is somewhere around $13 million, and that's net value of assets. Again, I'm not saying estate taxes are great, they're terrible and should be abolished, but they've been around long enough for those who have larger value enterprises should have or could have planned for, but in reality is a very small percentage of family farms. I saw an article saying it was around 1-2%.

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

I don't think you're close enough to the asphalt to appreciate the effect estate taxes have on family farms. You can't take half the equity of a marginally profitable an marginally capitalized business then divide it again a time or two among siblings and not expect to see a consolidation of family farms. Most of those which do not adopt a corporate structure that effectively excludes most siblings from the income streams will not make it.

I am personal friends with the former owners of one of the largest and most famous ranches in Tx. They literally sold it because their share of the estate did not have the cash to pay the estate taxes. They'd have had to gone into debt to keep it. Only child situation, so no division among siblings. These are wealthy people, mind you, with great cash flow - there's oil in the ground out in Tx, ya know. They coulda made it work. But the numbers didn't make sense. If those numbers don't make sense for the wealthy, how could they make sense for the owner-operators who clean and grease their own tractors?

indeed, that is the rationale of the estate tax....redistribution......to give the state the ability to prevent over-concentration of wealth among the landed class. that's all well & good, but when laws designed to keep family farms small run into $1m dollar combines, something's gotta give.

---

I'm not going to justify estate taxes, so don't interpret my comments as that. But the average family farm is 400+ acres. When you get to large farms and ranches, thousands of heads of livestock and acres of crops, large farm staffs, and equipment, you aren't a traditional family farm. You are as much like a business or corporation which has different treatment and different avenues for asset transition. If you have set yourself up as transitioning that through your estate as an individual, that's a serious lack of planning. So many things you could do, including resetting the tax basis for your children that would minimize capital gains impact much less estate transfer value. Not to mention stock/equity transactions, etc. But I digress.

Circling back to my reference to the average family farm, the estate tax exemption is somewhere around $13 million, and that's net value of assets. Again, I'm not saying estate taxes are great, they're terrible and should be abolished, but they've been around long enough for those who have larger value enterprises should have or could have planned for, but in reality is a very small percentage of family farms. I saw an article saying it was around 1-2%.

---

Trump got the exemption raised to around $10 million during his last term, so this is a rather recent development.

Before that you were getting hitting with estate taxes after $1-2 million, which is where we were headed again if Kamala had won.

BREAKING:

China has for the 1st time sent direct military aid for Russia’s war against 🇺🇦

🇩🇪 newspaper FAZ spoke to sources near Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, who informed EU’s foreign ministers about the new intelligence

🇪🇺 is preparing sanctions against 🇨🇳 pic.twitter.com/YUIjraaQ9y

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 15, 2024

ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

---

ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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trey3216 said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

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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

---

I keep telling you why we can't re-industrialize

---

Yes we can

We are the greatest super power on earth

Of course we can re-industrialize if we want

Stop making excuses

ATL Bear said:

---

whiterock said:

---

I don't think you're close enough to the asphalt to appreciate the effect estate taxes have on family farms. You can't take half the equity of a marginally profitable an marginally capitalized business then divide it again a time or two among siblings and not expect to see a consolidation of family farms. Most of those which do not adopt a corporate structure that effectively excludes most siblings from the income streams will not make it.

I am personal friends with the former owners of one of the largest and most famous ranches in Tx. They literally sold it because their share of the estate did not have the cash to pay the estate taxes. They'd have had to gone into debt to keep it. Only child situation, so no division among siblings. These are wealthy people, mind you, with great cash flow - there's oil in the ground out in Tx, ya know. They coulda made it work. But the numbers didn't make sense. If those numbers don't make sense for the wealthy, how could they make sense for the owner-operators who clean and grease their own tractors?

indeed, that is the rationale of the estate tax....redistribution......to give the state the ability to prevent over-concentration of wealth among the landed class. that's all well & good, but when laws designed to keep family farms small run into $1m dollar combines, something's gotta give.

---

I'm not going to justify estate taxes, so don't interpret my comments as that. But the average family farm is 400+ acres. When you get to large farms and ranches, thousands of heads of livestock and acres of crops, large farm staffs, and equipment, you aren't a traditional family farm. You are as much like a business or corporation which has different treatment and different avenues for asset transition. If you have set yourself up as transitioning that through your estate as an individual, that's a serious lack of planning. So many things you could do, including resetting the tax basis for your children that would minimize capital gains impact much less estate transfer value. Not to mention stock/equity transactions, etc. But I digress.

Circling back to my reference to the average family farm, the estate tax exemption is somewhere around $13 million, and that's net value of assets. Again, I'm not saying estate taxes are great, they're terrible and should be abolished, but they've been around long enough for those who have larger value enterprises should have or could have planned for, but in reality is a very small percentage of family farms. I saw an article saying it was around 1-2%.

---

Estates pay estate taxes, too........

I'd check your percentages again. $13m is about 2600acs of dirt farm at $5k/ac. Combines & tractors approach 7 digits each. Implements and trucks can run up into 6 digits. So on any reasonable operation, the equipment alone will be ca 25% of the exemption limit. Then there's the improvements....barns, dryers, irrigation equipment residences, etc....minimum of another million. So now, at $5k/ac dirt, we're talking about a 1600ac farm. There's a fair number of those.

And that's before we get to minerals and energy rights......
And that's before we get to whatever investment wealth has been accumulated.....

agriculture, specifically row cropping, is incredibly capital intensive. More upside on income than ranching, by wide measure, but also more risk.

(Keep in mind, Iowa dirt averages TWICE what I laid out above. avg farm size in IA is 350acs. Lots more than 1% of them are going to be subject to inheritance taxes.)

He sense of humor is amazing 😂https://t.co/4BL4rTXaZS https://t.co/pacq5vNkza

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 16, 2024

Trump is going to end this war.

And no one is going to like it except draft aged Europeans, business leaders throughout the world, and the Nobel Prize Peace committee.

So is the money going towards weapons coming back to the U.S. in the form of more public schools, more police, more prisons, more bridges, roads, airports, etc? Or is it going to Raytheon? Huge mystery. https://t.co/e5TOxR16iO

— Andrew Smith (@AndrewSmithClub) February 26, 2024

Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

---

ATL Bear said:

---

The_barBEARian said:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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I keep telling you why we can't re-industrialize

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Yes we can

We are the greatest super power on earth

Of course we can re-industrialize if we want

Stop making excuses

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I'm not the one making excuses. Check the U.S. regulations on coal mining and smeltering and then look at China and tell me how we compete. And that's just one of dozens of examples.

whiterock said:

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ATL Bear said:

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whiterock said:

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I don't think you're close enough to the asphalt to appreciate the effect estate taxes have on family farms. You can't take half the equity of a marginally profitable an marginally capitalized business then divide it again a time or two among siblings and not expect to see a consolidation of family farms. Most of those which do not adopt a corporate structure that effectively excludes most siblings from the income streams will not make it.

I am personal friends with the former owners of one of the largest and most famous ranches in Tx. They literally sold it because their share of the estate did not have the cash to pay the estate taxes. They'd have had to gone into debt to keep it. Only child situation, so no division among siblings. These are wealthy people, mind you, with great cash flow - there's oil in the ground out in Tx, ya know. They coulda made it work. But the numbers didn't make sense. If those numbers don't make sense for the wealthy, how could they make sense for the owner-operators who clean and grease their own tractors?

indeed, that is the rationale of the estate tax....redistribution......to give the state the ability to prevent over-concentration of wealth among the landed class. that's all well & good, but when laws designed to keep family farms small run into $1m dollar combines, something's gotta give.

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I'm not going to justify estate taxes, so don't interpret my comments as that. But the average family farm is 400+ acres. When you get to large farms and ranches, thousands of heads of livestock and acres of crops, large farm staffs, and equipment, you aren't a traditional family farm. You are as much like a business or corporation which has different treatment and different avenues for asset transition. If you have set yourself up as transitioning that through your estate as an individual, that's a serious lack of planning. So many things you could do, including resetting the tax basis for your children that would minimize capital gains impact much less estate transfer value. Not to mention stock/equity transactions, etc. But I digress.

Circling back to my reference to the average family farm, the estate tax exemption is somewhere around $13 million, and that's net value of assets. Again, I'm not saying estate taxes are great, they're terrible and should be abolished, but they've been around long enough for those who have larger value enterprises should have or could have planned for, but in reality is a very small percentage of family farms. I saw an article saying it was around 1-2%.

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Estates pay estate taxes, too........

I'd check your percentages again. $13m is about 2600acs of dirt farm at $5k/ac. Combines & tractors approach 7 digits each. Implements and trucks can run up into 6 digits. So on any reasonable operation, the equipment alone will be ca 25% of the exemption limit. Then there's the improvements....barns, dryers, irrigation equipment residences, etc....minimum of another million. So now, at $5k/ac dirt, we're talking about a 1600ac farm. There's a fair number of those.

And that's before we get to minerals and energy rights......
And that's before we get to whatever investment wealth has been accumulated.....

agriculture, specifically row cropping, is incredibly capital intensive. More upside on income than ranching, by wide measure, but also more risk.

(Keep in mind, Iowa dirt averages TWICE what I laid out above. avg farm size in IA is 350acs. Lots more than 1% of them are going to be subject to inheritance taxes.)

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I didn't make up the 1-2% stat, it's literally the IRS and FDA data. And you gave me an example of a farm/ranch 5 times the size of the average.

Remember what the original topic was. Not the nuances of estate taxes or planning for farms, it's the reality that estate taxes are a rare reason for the decline in family farming.

Redbrickbear said:

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So is the money going towards weapons coming back to the U.S. in the form of more public schools, more police, more prisons, more bridges, roads, airports, etc? Or is it going to Raytheon? Huge mystery. https://t.co/e5TOxR16iO

— Andrew Smith (@AndrewSmithClub) February 26, 2024

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Taxes pay for those things and Raytheon pays income taxes and payroll taxes and property taxes, as do the 180,000 employees of the company. So yeah it goes to police, fire, and schools, etc.

ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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trey3216 said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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The_barBEARian said:

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ATL Bear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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ATL Bear said:

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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.

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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.]

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The USSR's labor issues were cultural and skill based not the shortage issue they have today. My comment was simply a problematic workforce.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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It's not a compensation issue.

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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.

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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

---

I keep telling you why we can't re-industrialize

---

Yes we can

We are the greatest super power on earth

Of course we can re-industrialize if we want

Stop making excuses

---

I'm not the one making excuses. Check the U.S. regulations on coal mining and smeltering and then look at China and tell me how we compete. And that's just one of dozens of examples.

---

A classic case of how tariffs on China could level the playing field for American workers and companies