The All Things Political Topic - What's Going On...?

[uuuhhii]

texas get the extra seat it wanted

time to see if this escalate

[BruceVC]

14 hours ago, Elerond said:

Tariffs has not had yet effect long enough that they would show anywhere but in  imf's prediction data which draws trend that shows that China will pass EU again in 2026.

And EU would have survived economically full trade war with USA, now long term it means that EU will slowly lose its US trade.

Yes and China passed the EU in 2022 and it was predicted to become the strongest economy in the world by 2030 if you read links like this 

https://trt.global/world/article/12768680

And that was influenced  because the UK had left the EU and its GDP wasnt counted 

Now in 2025 the EU has passed China again, the point being economic predictions are often wrong

But you right, this doesn't include US tariff impact and we will see that more accurately reflected at the end of the last quarter

And this will apply to all countries that include China. But we need time to see the impact of US tariffs on countries that export to the US 

 

 

 

[BruceVC]

3 hours ago, Lexx said:

Putting it into politics thread, because Project 2025 brainrot again. https://www.thegamer.com/steams-adult-content-ban-has-been-plotted-for-a-year/

That is a  problem, any suggestion to ban adult movies or  adult content must be rejected at all costs

I would even consider protesting if that happened in South Africa 

Im an adult, no one must dictate to me what I can or cant watch or what game I decide to play

As long as its legal of course and not things like paedophile content 

[HoonDing]

"texas get the extra seat it wanted

time to see if this escalate"

Newscum 2028!

[Zoraptor]

Reminder: the only GDP that really matters is the Purchase Price Parity variety. And really, GDP (PPP) per capita since that tells you how well the people it's relevant to are actually doing- or at least, is the best general and handy measurement of it there is. China is 78th, there.

GDP (nominal) is an awful measurement and it's use is responsible for a lot of extremely bad economic management.

[Elerond]

38 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Reminder: the only GDP that really matters is the Purchase Price Parity variety. And really, GDP (PPP) per capita since that tells you how well the people it's relevant to are actually doing- or at least, is the best general and handy measurement of it there is. China is 78th, there.

GDP (nominal) is an awful measurement and it's use is responsible for a lot of extremely bad economic management.

Even GDP (PPP) per capita isn't the greatest metric, as it doesn't show how capital has been divided in the country. Ireland is good example where GDP (PPP) per capita does not give accurate picture how much average Irish person has money, because they have inflated GDP because they have so many mega corporates flowing money through Ireland, but most of the Irish don't benefit from that money, because corporate taxes there are so low and corporations don't really invest in Ireland.

[uuuhhii]

tax haven are so stupid

who benefit other than the megacorp

[Zoraptor]

The country looks like an economic miracle, and to a large extent that is what is important*. Mostly because economics is a spectacularly non rigorous field of study/ expertise with more similarities to religion than science.

Same reason house price inflation was massively encouraged here- it made the economics look good though it was utterly unproductive and a very real drain on the practical economy because it sucked up all the investment. Worse, the houses were made from over priced materials and didn't fill the actual need (ie were built to appeal to appeal specifically to 'investors'). Why start a business when you could buy a house at 5-10% return y/y + rental with the knowledge that the government would prop you up? When house prices started to stabilise because no one could afford them the government started importing massive numbers of people to create artificial demand to keep the bubble inflated. Because economists mostly look at GDP nominal the fact that GDP per capita was actually dropping got ignored and then people wondered why everyone felt poor.

Also why politicians and economists try and tell us that $10 butter in a country which makes 20x the amount of butter it needs is great, and everyone should be happy about it- it makes the country look like it's doing well economically. It'd be true if we had 1-2 million people and a quarter of them were involved in selling unimproved cow juice products like in the 50s and 60s, but we don't. Doesn't do much to dispel the old saying that there's one type of person who believes in infinite expansion in a closed system: economists, politicians and idiots.

*eg you can borrow a lot more money at better rates because typically lenders look at GDP nominal as to whether you can pay the money back. Much like religion a great deal of economics is getting people to believe in stuff.

[majestic]

Plenty of our real estate "investors" and "developers" who kept buying houses and apartments with those great (almost) 0% loans are going bankrupt at the moment. They also can't really pawn off their "investments" because they largely consist of large housing areas build mainly to invest in, and all the apartments in them have terrible room layouts no one wants or even can live in, as they were just built to be pawned off to investors who in turn would sell them for a 50%+ ROI five years later.

Then the unthinkable happened, the ECB increased interest rates, and what was even worse, our government introduced a loan limit for banks: Private households' monthly loan installments must not exceed 40% of their income in order to put a curb on the rising private bankruptcies. Because all those great variable interest rate loans they took out suddenly went from 0.7% interest rate to 4+% and monthly installments exploded putting middle class families in financial duress (which in turn combined with rising prices due to greedflation is currently causing our economy to be stuck, who would have throught). 

Private demand is down and companies are sitting on massive amounts of debt they can't clear without the fake income of rising real estate prices. Housing prices are pretty much stuck because selling for less is not an option, and no one's buying. It is especially satisfying to watch because all these investors and companies paid donated millions to our conservative parties who made sure that nothing was done against the energy and supply chain inflationary shock of 2022. 

The conservatives let the energy companies (who they all have a stake in, mind) run rampant with their merit order inflated prices, causing a feedback loop of increased rents (now if that makes no logical sense for you, dear reader, then keep in mind that our rent prices are by far and large linked to inflation, i.e. if the average statistical inflation of a year is 10%, then rent prices will automatically be increased by 10%, and no, that makes very little sense and is just kept up by the conservatives because many of them are on the payroll of receiving donations by people growing even richer from increased rent prices) and increased labor costs, which in turn now means that while everyone else in the Euro-Zone is sitting at the target 2% inflation rate, we're still stuck with 3+%.

Energy and housing is sucking up free income because there's no alternative, and groceries are incredibly expensive because three companies have 90% market share. There are goods available in literally the same store brand in Germany and only a handful of kilometers away for a 50% premium in Austria. Products actually manufactured in Austria, mind you - if that can be sold for a profit for 50% less in Germany where the income levels are very similar (if not actually better in the low income brackets that supermarket employees usually are in), then it certainly can be sold for a profit at the same price in Austria. What are you going to argue with? Transportation costs across the border (wait, that would make the product more expensive in the country exported to, huh...)? Can't be labor costs. Right, got it, it's greed. 

The regulartory body supposed to prevent the formation of cartels and oligopolies keeps saying they can't find any proof of price fixing between the large players. Not sure what sort of proof they're looking for to be honest. Transcripts of phone calls or e-mails going back and forth discussing how to best price gouge? 

Meanwhile the government has no idea why the right wing extremists are rising to power. Between living expenses exploding and the 2015 influx of culturally hard to intergrate people from certain areas of the world it makes me wonder: Are politicians in this day and age really that dumb, can't they really not see the forest for the trees or are they all just corrupt asshats best put under the guillotine's blade?

Not that being dumb and a corrupt asshat is mutually exclusive, one just needs to look at the Orange Sex Offender. 

Edited 2 hours ago by majestic

[Zoraptor]

Three grocery companies have  90% market share? Absolutely jealous. And don't get me started on the number of NZ products- like cow juice, sold via a monopoly because obviously that's the best way to get competition per the free marketers in the government- that manage to toodle literally half way around the world to be sold cheaper than here.

Two supermarket companies have 95% market share here. It's- apparently- an absolute mystery to NZ's politicians why there is not competition between those two and they make $1 million per day in excess profits. They talk a lot about breaking up the duopoly, but never do anything. They've quite literally talked about it and given their buddies high paid consulting jobs on panels for twenty years when the solution is trivial- demerge. And debundle distribution while you're at it. That latter because, aside from the monopoly cow juice supply, NZ supermarkets absolutely fleece suppliers as well as consumers, because your options are sell to them at the price they dictate- or watch your crops rot for nothing.