The U.S. Economy is Better Now Than in 2015-2016

The economy is much better than it was three years or four years ago. The nation is in the midst of a continuing expansion- one of the longest periods without a recession in U.S. history. Public debt is great, yet some economists dismiss that. Others regard it as threatening.

The $22 Trillion U.S. Debt: Which President Contributed the Most

Bureau of Labor Statistics Data U.S. Unemployment Rate

https://tradingeconomics.com/uni...

President Trump is reducing the rate of growth of the annual federal budget debt. Not enough of course. Public debt as a percent of the national income should be less than 40%. President Obama saw the debt percent rise from 62% in 2008 to more than 100% before leaving office. Presently it is around 104%.

See How the U.S. Debt Tripled Since 9/11

People have confidence in President Trumps economic capacity to lead in national economic policy so far as the executive branch can. The marginal unemployment rate of 3.6% is good for those that have most difficulty finding work. Even so there are numerous social challenges for the poor that exist structurally. Neither party is competent to repair that.

In addition to public debt there is the problem of the non-sustainable basis of the economy that continues to adversely exploit the ecosphere of the nation. Neither party understands ecological economics yet.

Another concern is the tremendous concentration of wealth that has developed in the nation since 1990. Wealth is as concentrated as it was in the Gilded Age at the start of the 20th century.

People are concerned that a Democrat President would run up the public debt even more and perhaps overload the system with trillions of dollars of additional borrowing to pay for medicare for everyone and so forth. Democrats may finally collapse the economy at least to the point of recession.

Socialism Isn't 'Emotionally Intelligent'

I.M.O. emotion is an evolutionary forerunner of intelligence. Animals feel things, people can reason about things. So emotionally intelligent as a phrase is rather meaningless. One might compare it to intelligent emotion to understand the problem. Socialism is a philosophy of government wherein people are something like prisoners ruled over by trustees or prison gangs. The U.S.S.R. was a reasonable example of socialism. It wasn’t an ideal society.

In primitive societies there is no government. There may be a tribal chief. Most men are warriors occupationally. People tend to have the same tools such as a knife. If another warrior admires the knife one gives it to him. It’s easy to make another and jealously is dangerous. That sort of society is quite unlike modern society. A more modern society might have the guy that makes admirable knives become a knife-manufacturing specialist. People will trade or barter goods for the excellent blades. The knife maker prospers more than the warriors. An exclusive blacksmith shop is required to keep dishonest tribespersons from stealing the excellent blades.

Private property and exclusive use of property are requisite for private enterprise. One cannot develop technology for oneself on the commons with people wandering in and out of clean rooms. Capitalism is not a form of government. Democracy is a form of government that usually allows free enterprise and capital building. Capital is material or intellectual property. It is possible for some individual or groups to concentrate so much capital they can end democracy and have a form of working government that benefits themselves more and better (i.e. plutocracy, oligarchy, dictatorship of the proletariat with exclusive, privileged party leadership)

Socialism is a form of government where everyone is a prole, is oppressed yet is slopped and has a place to live. Everyone is guaranteed their very own cell. Maybe it will have nice pictures in it- even a big screen t.v. with government approved programming.

Tactical War With Iran or Moon Base?

It the Trump administration decides to launch a tactical military strike on Iran for developing nuclear weapons, supporting terrorism and threatening Israel the cost may be rather high. N.A.S.A. reportedly requires 24 billion dollars to return Americans to the moon by 2024 and just a little high-tech conflict can be expensive.

President Obama's war on Libya- kind of a kinetic, stand-off affair, cost $2 billion dollars per day one source said. https://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2011/03

https://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2011/03/28/the-real-cost-of-u-s-in-libya-two-billion-dollars-per-day/#7b00a68a7b5f

Another source CNN - reported the war to oust the legal dictator of Libya cost about $2 billion altogether. Another report said the Iraq war and its peak cost about 3 billion dollars per week.

Iran has many good people. While the Republican Guards are fanatics, there are still a lot of good Iranian people. A war with Iran comparable to the Libyan venture should have modest goals of destroying the nuclear bomb building infrastructure, taking out the leadership of the military and government, and decimating the military aircraft vehicles and so forth after taking out air defense.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-lies-behind-rising-u-s-iran-tensions-11560776829

There isn't much of a need to occupy Iran. In fact the lesson Iran can learn from the policy interdiction can be that the military medicine might be repeated as needed if corrections are not made.

The entire potential conflict harms the N.A.S.A. lunar exploration budget and billions already are being borrowed from foreign governments to finance the federal budget deficit.

Modern Defense- 3M Blitz

                                                                       I played black in this game.

National Capital Concentration for the Rich Has Made U.S.A. a Peer of Haiti, Uganda and Turkmenistan

The state of capitalism in the United States- the growing inequality in the distribution of wealth that has brought the United States down to the level of Uganda, Haiti and Turkmenistan ( Gini coefficient - Wikipedia ) Countries ranked by GINI index (World Bank estimate). The shape of an economy always affects social conditions. The political economy of global plutocrats is different from a rural agrarian society for instance as the United States largely was before the end of the civil war (though urban manufacture continued to grow quickly). The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

The evolution of American capitalism following the end of the cold war and the end of Roosevelt-era high taxes on the rich, along with government debt of vast size has definitely changed the political economy. Both parties support corporatism and elements of socialism (e.g. bail-outs of General Motors and Big banks after the 2008 debacle. Fifty million Americans have about 1/2 of 1% of the national income. Student loan debts exceed a trillion dollars, ordinary housing prices average about a quarter of a million dollars, the national ecosystem is steadily being degraded and species extirpated, one party supports legal drugs, abortion, homosexual marriage and illegal immigration in order to build a majority of support on the foundation of vice. The broadcast media is owned by the rich and conditions the people toward consumption and daily hate of opposition party leaders while providing silly yellow tabloid issues to follow; these are signs of the times of the state of networked capitalism where a small percent of the people own or control most of the nation’s wealth and income.

Even so I would tend to support the opinion that original sin is the root cause of the nation’s social problems and corruption of the efficacy of capitalism for everyone that should serve everyone very well without dark areas of hidden poverty, oppression or ecospheric degradation.

Bootstrapping Production During Economic Collapse

There are innumerable forms of economic collapse. And there are counter-cyclical investments and businesses. During the Greek civil war there was, I recall, a fellow who had horded wheat before the collapse and sold bread for exorbitant prices during the collapse when people were starving. I believe he was later executed or punished in some way.

Bear markets have people that profit from them and even win ‘bets’ on the collapse of the economy. Short selling has made fortunes for good guessers. Even inflation can drive up real estate values- though one should keep in mind that real estate as capital is very small today in comparison to manufacturing and financial capital.

On a micro-economic basis I would think that bootstrapping production for-oneself might be useful as a safeguard against starvation. One might grow plants at home for food and the market, produce solar and wind power and find other simple items to manufacture that are necessary.

Why Cuba is More Separated than China from U.S. Economics

Cuba is a communist nation just 80 miles from the United States. Normalizing relations would allow its agents to work misanthropic acts in the United Sates. So the controls are a prophylaxis against communist subversion. China on the other hand is at a distance and too large to ignore. It is relatively harmless to ignore Cuba since it has little military or economic power, yet China with 1.3 billion people and a large nuclear weapons arsenal cannot be safely ignored.

Chinese Communism is one of two vast political threats to political and spiritual freedom remaining on the planet (the other is Muhammadism). With the end of the former Soviet Union Communist China presented the greatest challenge to free people in the political ideological battle between free people and government authoritarianism.

Communist Chinese leadership had begun moving toward limited free markets following the Nixon administration beginning at normalizing relations in order to move beyond the Vietnam War era paradigm with the Soviet Union investing in S.E. Asian and global political military intervention through arms supplies and military advisers. There may have been a divide and conquer element to the Kissinger-Nixon method since China and Russia had a certain mutual belligerency over Siberian-Chinese borders and leadership of the communist world.

At any rate the Chinese naturally moved toward limited free markets and relationship with the west over time because the free markets of free individuals is far more dynamic and productive than government owned and directed economics. China has other issues than those of political philosophy however; it has so many people that government discipline is required to keep the population from exploding and chaotic civil wars from breaking out- dynamic wars more of non-ideological demographics and economics rather than pure theory. It may be illuminated by saying China is like a tinder-dry barn full of hay and gasoline in barrels that requires government repression to keep fire from breaking out. A socialist-capitalist fight with light sabers in the barn wouldn’t really be good for anyone in China.

The worst thing about neo-communist China with its repressive government is abortion and the one-child per family policy that has existed for decades. China would have 3 or 4 billion people without it fairly quickly. The world cannot imagine what that would do; it’s really not good to think about because of the possible famines and etc.
I guess China will need to evolve a political economy with the best situation for individual rights, the best ecospheric restoration it can manage and good virtual reality for entertainment; in fact a healthy ecosphere with lots of wildlife would be entertainment for so many people too.

Cuba is likely to be moderately separated from the United States until China is no longer a repressive authoritarian threat to its own people and the free world. There are a lot of American sailors that would like to be able to legally sail to Cuban marinas and return normally. Sadly that will have to wait perhaps until all of the southern ocean reefs perish, dead zones expand so there are no fish in the sea and the waters become far more acidic.