i dont live in america, but I believe free ponies is badass as all hell
communism, national socialism, syndicalism, american left and right, boring as fuck
i want a pony
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Headlines “Politics” [read the OP before posting]
- Thread starter vonFiedler
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communism, national socialism, syndicalism, american left and right, boring as fuck
i want a pony
I think Biden has been doing a great job (espicially given the position he was in) & I have agreed with most of the policy decisions he's made. His speeches are also great & shows he understands the issues he's discussing quite well. I admittingly was regretting the post I made earlier today since I let my frustration get to me, posted without thinking (as I usually do) & thought there were some key details I was missing. In Biden's speech earlier today, he basically reiterated what I was thinking in a far more eloquent fashion.
Unfortunately, the poison runs pretty deep in our country. Perhaps I've been brainwashed Brian Tyler Cohen, but these republican politicians are relentless, undermining progress in every corner, whether it be Ron DeSanctimonious passing BS draconian legislation to ban books, Marjorie Taylor Greene embarrassing herself with another asinine take, multiple Republican states trying to make voting harder by removing voting machines in college campuses, etc. It never ends! Their recent stunt of holding the debt ceiling hostage until their demands were met really grinded my gears since that would have cratered the global economy. They had no issue raising it during our last administration, but now they wanna pretend like they give a shit about fiscal responsibility so their shitty demands can be met? Give me a break.
Trump being held accountable in multiple lawsuits + likely going to jail is a good thing at least. However, most of his buddies in Congress, Supreme Count, and in the state governments seem a lot crazier & its really hard for me to see things getting better when these guys are constantly breaking everything.
The Supreme Court's job is not to "decide how to uphold the constitution," the court has a duty to interpret the constitution based upon previous jurisprudence. It does not mean the justices get to pick and choose how to change the law. That's called "legislating from the bench," and it's a sign that American democracy is seriously imperiled by the continued existence of the Republican Party. It's also precisely what the far-right has been accusing in Roe v Wade, Brown v BoE, and other important civil rights rulings, which just goes to show how bullshit their legal positions really are. This court is straight out of Nazi Germany, it's purely Schmittian in its behaviour.
There's a word of particular importance that I've brought up: jurisprudence, the guiding philosophy and principles of a legal system. It's notably lacking in these and other decisions by the Roberts Court, decisions that include overturning several decades of precedent in cases that lacked any actual dispute. There's no reason to treat these decisions as legitimate and it's high time that American leftists stop roleplaying as the shittiest Bolsheviks imaginable and start seizing from the Republicans the institutions they have spent the last four decades trying to hijack for their own partisan motives. Ensure Democrats dominate electoral office and non-fascist independents need to build a movement that treats the Roberts Court as something to be completely erased from lawbooks a decade from now. Roberts should be looked at as a modern day Roger Taney.
I also really hate this "afraid" explanation that's sometimes trotted out for explaining extremism. It's a bullshit narrative that portrays scapegoating as being on the basis of perceived threats. That's not at all what motivates eliminationism or most authoritarian movements (and especially not in the US), and in the US there has been a steady effort for 60 years to create a far-right, authoritarian eliminationist movement within the Republican Party that goes all the way back to Nixon, and preceding Nixon (and Goldwater) was actually a staunch Democratic faction. This sort of shit isn't because "they're afraid," these people literally have authoritarianism as part of their personal identities, and many of them literally hold decades-long grievances over democratic progress. Like Clarence Thomas and Robert Mercer over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 65, and more. Or Roger Stone over Watergate. Hell, most of them are literally conditioned into disbelieving in the existence of crises like climate change or COVID. To claim that they are afraid or anxious of the times is completely out of touch with Republicans
It's also absurd to portray progress as inevitable, it's a silly, US-centric and ahistorical talking point that's made even more ridiculous with the basic knowledge that humanity is currently experiencing several crises that constitute existential threats, most of which are set to get worse in the future. It's incredible to me that anyone, after one million dead Americans, an attempted coup and at least three different efforts by the Republicans to enlist foreign states to interfere in federal elections, that ANYONE could try retaining an exceptionalist stance on American democracy and the supposed inevotability of its progression.
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solidarity with the voting masses :fist_emote:
I was hoping they cancel the debt bc my fiancée got debt and she don't even got a high paying job you'd hope for after completing university.
And I feel for all these people who are in debt. But even if they did the next generation of students would end up in the same situation. This was never a solution to the real issue, it was just Biden buying votes. I'd love to see a real solution that incentives public universities to cut costs and pass on the savings to students through lower tuition. Unfortunately I don't forsee that happening
And I feel for all these people who are in debt. But even if they did the next generation of students would end up in the same situation. This was never a solution to the real issue, it was just Biden buying votes. I'd love to see a real solution that incentives public universities to cut costs and pass on the savings to students through lower tuition. Unfortunately I don't forsee that happening
Cancelling student debt would have been a great public service, helping 40+ million Americans. It's technically true that it's Biden buying votes, in the same way that Trump bought votes with lower taxes. It's almost like government spending is a weapon to entice new voters.
But yes a permanent answer is needed. Taxpayer funded college has been the common sense solution for decades now. Every American benefits from a well educated workforce.
Something I genuinely wonder since a long while is, why is the Chinese government so laissez-faire towards greenhouse gas emissions? China has the most emissions of any country worldwide, the CCP has an iron grip on the country and could from one day to the next cut their emissions by a large amount and China greatly suffers from climate change.
Does the CCP not understand/belief in the causation? Are they personally invested in sectors that would be against such actions? I feel like they usually act thinking long-term but they're inflicting damage on themselves in the long run with their current direction in this matter
Does the CCP not understand/belief in the causation? Are they personally invested in sectors that would be against such actions? I feel like they usually act thinking long-term but they're inflicting damage on themselves in the long run with their current direction in this matter
For the most part, the CCP doesn't care unless it's profitable e.g. coal remains ~60% of their energy supply and that percentage has only fallen over the past two decades in relative terms. A curious show of just how much they don't care was the ban on imported Australian coal after the Aussies asked for an international investigation into the source of Covid-19. That ban left China to rely on domestic coal, which is both lower quality (less energy efficient) and supply scale-constrained, and therefore worse for the environment (the supply bottleneck also caused a price spike that screwed over ordinary people during winter, but I digress). The ban lasted for over two years before it was quietly repealed during spring 2023.
While the CCP does care about saving international "face" to some extent, China has pivoted to become a much more inward focused country nowadays. That means they care less and less about virtue signalling, nevermind actually doing something about climate change. Besides, they have other more significant immediate problems to prioritise, namely a self-inflicted economic death spiral.
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China as a whole has far less emissions per person than the majority of western nations. They have 1 billion people, and for that number their emissions are pretty low.
But that said China is in the middle of a genocide, is threatening an invasion of their democratic neighbor, and as a general rule only does what is best for them at the cost of everyone.
I don't think China deserves to be focused on for emissions but they do deserve flak for basically everything else. Fuck 'em.
But that said China is in the middle of a genocide, is threatening an invasion of their democratic neighbor, and as a general rule only does what is best for them at the cost of everyone.
I don't think China deserves to be focused on for emissions but they do deserve flak for basically everything else. Fuck 'em.
A lot of people like to assume the government of the PRC is capable of completely overhauling its entire manufacturing supply chain, when that's not really true. It doesn't really have the competence that a lot of paranoid xenophobes and tankies ascribe to it. Even if they wanted to (and they don't) they probably couldn't do it any faster than democratic countries. Hyper-stratified authoritarian states like the BRICS countries aren't going to care either, climate change is an issue for the poors to deal with. Hell, there's a pretty sizeable chunk of far-right billionaires that think climate change will help them achieve their political goals. Even the ones that aren't that evil are simply looking to escape options rather than changing their business practices.
Then there's guys like Elon Musk who fleece governments out of billions on promises to produce a future fuelled by green transportation, then just flat out create luxury deathtraps that are completely inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of Americans
yeah, this too. US is much worse per capita and has a huge section of its elite that actively seeks to encourage global warming. Russia has a similar situation too.
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This has a lot to do with China being much poorer. Their GDP per capita is $12,500 versus $70,000 in the US and $51,000 in Germany.
As China continues to be come wealthier the average chinese person will consume more and their emissions per person will go up.
Speaking of China, it's incredible how Republicans have become extremely receptive to recruiting hostile states into interfering in electoral politics on their behalf. The latest revelations about the House GOP "whistleblower" Gal Luft being wanted as an unregistered Chinese agent doesn't really shed light on how willing the GOP is to recruit these efforts (we saw that in 2016 and 2019 with Russia), but it does shed a lot of light on how little the regime they work with matters to these people. It's been 4 years of claiming Hunter Biden is a Chinese agent, and now they're pulling this shit.
Never thought i would defend China, but here we go...
Yes China still has a lot of coal emissions, that is true, however China is the worldwide leader of renewable energy by a landslide at the same time and that's not a hyperbole at all (it's progress is just as fast as the entire rest of the world combined). The large floating solar float in Huainan is just one example and according to Hemsley not only is Beijing alone on track to reach 1.800 gigawatts of total renewables by 2030 (Xi Jinpings set goal was set to 1.200 gigawatts), China are likely to reach their peak emission by 2025/2026 and no, that person is not a CCP shill, far from it. So claims like "CCP just don't care" are just wrong, it's the rest of the world who "don't care" in comparison. If anything Chinas official goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2060 is just extremely conservative (which fits into a bunch of CCPs other policies under Xi Jinping) and doesn't reflect the progress the country makes in renewable energy and Chinas new coal power plants could very well end up as short lived malinvestments sooner than they anticipate.
Yes China still has a lot of coal emissions, that is true, however China is the worldwide leader of renewable energy by a landslide at the same time and that's not a hyperbole at all (it's progress is just as fast as the entire rest of the world combined). The large floating solar float in Huainan is just one example and according to Hemsley not only is Beijing alone on track to reach 1.800 gigawatts of total renewables by 2030 (Xi Jinpings set goal was set to 1.200 gigawatts), China are likely to reach their peak emission by 2025/2026 and no, that person is not a CCP shill, far from it. So claims like "CCP just don't care" are just wrong, it's the rest of the world who "don't care" in comparison. If anything Chinas official goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2060 is just extremely conservative (which fits into a bunch of CCPs other policies under Xi Jinping) and doesn't reflect the progress the country makes in renewable energy and Chinas new coal power plants could very well end up as short lived malinvestments sooner than they anticipate.
I dont think Hemsley is a CCP shill lol, but i think it's really easy for westerners to take economic data for granted when it comes from an authoritarian regime that has set up incentives for officials to misreport data as being more optimistic than what is warranted. I am extremely skeptical that the PRC -or any G8 country- will genuinely reach its targets.
Not political necessarily but I have no fucking idea how Kevin Spacey just got away with what he did
Guy's a fucking monster, he should be imprisoned and never see the light of day again. If he wasn't filthy rich and famous, no way in hell would he have ever gotten away with the sick shit he did
Guy's a fucking monster, he should be imprisoned and never see the light of day again. If he wasn't filthy rich and famous, no way in hell would he have ever gotten away with the sick shit he did
I have bad news, the vast majority of rapists and abusers get away with what they do regardless of being rich and famous, though wealth definitely helps. We have a societal culture that encourages looking the other way and does not care about sexual assault (one could very easily argue, in fact, that sexual assault is foundational to many states’ power structures and therefore encouraged), so it happens all the time. We just hear about it and think about it more when the rich do it because they make headlines (and, frankly, many of them are depraved, horrible people in general).
I know it's tempting to take what you want to hear and run with it, but this is the oldest trick in the book; a headline grabbing vanity project that serves entirely as a political veneer to obfuscate the bigger picture. The below chart speaks for itself.
https://www.iea.org/countries/china
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So it's definitely worth adding that emissions in the US and Europe have been falling every year, both per capita and as a total whole. In China (and much of the developing world) emissions have been increasing.
However unlike the US and EU China is not a universally first world nation. Hundreds of millions of people are being pulled out of 3rd world poverty and brought into 1st world living standards. This change results in a massive energy demand increase. In the US, EU, Japan etc where the entire populace enjoys modern infrastructure energy demands over the past decade have mostly plateaued or even fallen. Your previous post shows that China's energy demands have increased by about 50% since 2010. The graph is visually misleading and really misses the finer points of what is actually happening during this 50% energy demand spike.
Coal usage has increased by only 18%
Natural Gas usage, which is at least cleaner than coal, has increased 300%.
Hydro-electric has doubled.
Wind / Solar has increased by 7x.
Oil usage has gone up by 50%.
Nuclear power has increased by 5x.
Meanwhile China's poverty rate has gone from 62% in 2010 to 25% in 2020 and gdp per capita has tripled in this time. Despite these quality of life changes and increasing energy demands it seems China is at least trying to put some focus on increasing reliance on renewables. Chinese energy demands has increased 50% since 2010 but emissions have gone from 8.62 billion tons to 11 billion in 2020, a 27% increase. Given a continuation of this bell curve China's emissions should plateau around 2025 and begin fall just like all the other major economies.
That said China's been slurping old king coal's crusty load for decades now despite climate science being well known and they're still a genocidal autocratic xenophobic dictatorship so fuck them super hard. However when it comes to emissions it's probably better to compare them to developing nations with increasing energy demands like India rather than first world nations where energy demand has long since peaked.
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A country is either first world or it's not and China isn't even close. You're correct in your assertion that hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese have been dragged out of absolute poverty since the Deng Xiao Ping reforms, but the same hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese continue to live in relative poverty. The middle class has grown exponentially during the past 30 years, but remains a small percentage of the population (the last statistic that I've seen was 33 million households in 2018... so about 7% of households) and the median within this group is unambiguously "lower-middle class". Besides, the government is currently expertly destroying the middle class, but I digress.
The implication of your post seems to be that China has reached a development milestone from where its future emissions can reasonably be expected to slow in growth and even fall. Firstly, I don't understand how you've reached this conclusion, and secondly, it's an incredibly naïve projection to suggest a meaningful shift to clean energy for an authoritarian country where individual incentives are such that (to get ahead in a brutal rat race) every level of government is necessarily corrupt and broken to the extent that no progress is made and everything is vanity.
With all that said, I do think that emissions should slow and even decrease in the medium to long term, but that will be driven by the end of China's "demographic dividend" as the country has the most catastrophically shaped population pyramid in the world. In other words, the legacy of the one child policy will be the destruction of the economy as China's population ages, because an ever shrinking workforce can't sustain their parents and grandparents.
As its labour supply shrinks and the cost increases, China's competitive advantage will dwindle on the global stage, but that's actually not its immediate problem; its immediate problem has been its recent decoupling and antagonistic foreign/business policy that has caused international corporations to diversify their supply chains abroad. Therefore, China faces both demand and supply issues that will reduce its output, ergo its emissions.
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In the future if you're going to share a source to prove just a single digit data point I highly suggest you do it in a way that doesn't involve a 38 page analysis entirely in Chinese. This is an English website, linking to a literal Chinese book has major "just trust me bro" vibes.
In case anyone cares, the “middle class” is defined by McGrrr's Hurun link as “Urban residents with an annual household income of more than RMB 300,000 (approx US$42,647) in first-tier cities [Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen] and more than RMB 200,000 (approx. US$28,431) in new first-tier cities [such as Chengdu, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Wuhan, Xi’an, Suzhou, and Tianjin] and other cities.”
Meanwhile the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which defines the “middle-income group” as a typical three-person household that earns between RMB 100,000 to RMB 500,000 (approx. US$14,844 to US$74,221 in 2022) per year which puts the middle class at somewhere around 400 million.
The world bank defines poverty as ~$2 in spending money per day. If we define China's middle class as having over 20 dollars in spending money per day that least 20% of the population as middle class. If it's 10 dollars we can put 50% of the population in the lower-middle class or better, meaning around 600 million.
If you think I'm using arbitrary data to prove a useless point just like McGrrr then yes I just did. It's almost like where we define China's middle class is irrelevant. Since the 2010s around half a BILLION people were ripped out of "no running water" style poverty and shoved into low income apartments with public schools, electricity, central heat, and even (censored) internet. As any amount of common sense will tell you the greatest cumulative improvement to human lives in history is extremely energy intensive. China is a developing nation and as we would expect they have seen their demands skyrocket. However of their new power plants it's pretty clear from your previous link that their focus on green energy is real. Their investments in nuclear, wins, solar etc has multiplied by several factors while coal power has increased by a percent of total energy needs. The Western nations who are seeing their energy demands and emissions fall are doing so because their populations and infrastructure needs have plateaued. China on the other hand is still in the process of industrializing and is unlikely to see the same emissions trends as Western nations.
Lol okay so tl;dr China will gradually become a fully industrialized nation with a decreasing population where their emissions will peak just like us regular people in the West. The one child policy might have sped up this process and made things worse for them overall, but it's pretty clear their emissions are going to peak and even begin to fall in the relatively near future. As wages go up global competitivity shrinks. Welcome to the first world mother fuckers.
In other news Donald Trump was indicted on felony charges for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. So we're inching closer to the day that Fleece Johnson shreds his chocolate starfish in a grimy prison cell. That might hurt his chances of a 2024 presidency for sure.
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Fleece left jail couple of years ago, he even started giving interviews: https://rollingout.com/2023/06/25/the-booty-warrior/
1. China's new middle class lives entirely in the cities, because that is where all of the foreign direct investment and opportunities have gone
2. You ever visited NYC and LA and compared cost of living to e.g. Wyoming? That is comparable to the purchasing power disparity between large cities in China and everywhere else, except the gap is greater in China
This is why the benchmark is what it is. The NBS "one size fits all" number is unrepresentative in the same way as suggesting e.g. $30k to be middle class in NYC.
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there are only two classes anyway. so uh. write that one down.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...n-inflation-lower-bank-england-interest-rates
Really makes you think... when i see such admirable governance it sometimes brings a tear to my eye, if only ppl in the us were as interested in taxing and price controlling and profit taking away-ing. instead americans just buy w.e bs cop-landlord hybrid line the media feeds them about the causes of inflation, seeminly unaware of the record corporate profits occuring.
Really makes you think... when i see such admirable governance it sometimes brings a tear to my eye, if only ppl in the us were as interested in taxing and price controlling and profit taking away-ing. instead americans just buy w.e bs cop-landlord hybrid line the media feeds them about the causes of inflation, seeminly unaware of the record corporate profits occuring.
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