Post: #26

I see. How many warheads was that order? Nukes. Mhmm.

Some equipment got sold that shouldn't have. That's exactly what I'm talking about. The US sells a lot of high tech military industrial crap because it's made by the big defense companies with politicians on their board.

They sell it to dictators on both sides of wars. They sell it to allies. Worst of all they sell it to our own government at absurd prices.

As long as they get paid they don't care where the money came from. Was it foreign aid? Tax dollars? Cocaine profits? Who cares. Pay us. Oh you don't want to pay? How about a war? Yay even more money for us!

Then we scream about healthcare and other budget stuff meanwhile the defense budget is more bloated and decrepit than Henry the 8ths stinky ass.

Japan was restricted from buying or building that stuff after WWII. They developed consumer industries. They also benefited from all our bases there. And actually they still built a pretty good military too. Their economy heated up then what? Still didn't end up being a winning equation.

Why? It's a ponzhi scheme. You still have to be willing to suck in immigrants and people need to have babies.

Brazil did this minus most of the industry, infrastructure, internal reinvestment, etc being developed. Immigrants came, worked hard and built up certain sectors, integrated, had babies. But most of the opportunity is in a few cities that still have third world slums. Meanwhile the cops aren't being paid in a Rio so they've mobilized 10,000 troops. Where did the money go?

Post: #27

(08-03-2017 11:08 AM)rudebwoy Wrote:  Where does the wealth from the UK come from?

Industrial revolution, and the British Empire with dominance of global trade, ports, cash crops, raw materials etc for >100 years. That's what gave it the large jump over other European powers.

In the 20th century, collapse of the Empire hit it hard and it slowed down. The USA ramped up to full steam to dwarf everyone else, Japan and Germany had their post-WW2 'economic miracles', and recently China. But UK is still in top five wealthiest countries in the world.

Post: #28

The UK has Thatcher to thank that we are still economically powerful (relative to almost every other country in the world), as she smashed the power of the unions, who had a grip on the country that is pretty much unimaginable today.

The future of the UK is uncertain especially with political events such as Brexit, but it's still a great place to live, as long as you are middle class in terms of wealth or higher. You can live in a tiny hamlet/village with more pigs, sheep and chickens than people and just live a peaceful rural life yet still be less than 1.5 hours from working in an office in London.

Post: #29

The UK is a sleeper empire that could very easily rejoin itself with its colonial children.

If push came to shove, it would be trivial for the royals to encourage at a minimum the repatriation of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

The royals are a crafty bunch and the UK will last a lot longer in its current form.

Post: #30

Here is a good example illustrating the problem with even a highly developed country like Japan. If people don't have babies and you don't suck in foreigners IT DOESN'T WORK.

Japan was so picky in late 2000s they PAID Brazilian-Japanese to go back to Brazil permanently. Most of these people were genetically Japanese 100% and that still wasn't good enough.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/01/japa...gn-nurses/

Now no one wants to have kids, the population is aging, they can't afford to take care of them (nor have the trained professionals to do so), young people will work to death, and are more pessimistic than Brazilians. Do we bring in the unemployed SEA nurses? Hmm, how about robot bears instead!

At least they reinvested and developed the country's infrastructure and industries though.

Post: #31

(08-07-2017 04:41 PM)Travel Museums Wrote:  Here is a good example illustrating the problem with even a highly developed country like Japan. If people don't have babies and you don't suck in foreigners IT DOESN'T WORK.

Japan was so picky in late 2000s they PAID Brazilian-Japanese to go back to Brazil permanently. Most of these people were genetically Japanese 100% and that still wasn't good enough.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/01/japa...gn-nurses/

Now no one wants to have kids, the population is aging, they can't afford to take care of them (nor have the trained professionals to do so), young people will work to death, and are more pessimistic than Brazilians. Do we bring in the unemployed SEA nurses? Hmm, how about robot bears instead!

At least they reinvested and developed the country's infrastructure and industries though.

This issue is not singular to Japan. It is one that many other Western countries are now facing. The question is how to encourage the younger generations to have children? Any other solution like increased immigration simply invites other problems that frankly are seldom considered deeply. I would be curious to know though how much Japan's reasons for seeing these changes mirror the reasons of people in Western countries. Are they largely the same such as rise of woman's rights, promotion of nihilism over religion, academic support like zero population growth theory, etc.?