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Oh thank God. I thought they were bragging about using Twitter.
No, the first course of action would be to stop the fire.
Link just doesnt realize he is the girlfriend now.
Plenty of people with moderate views are passionate about politics and love to talk about it. Its just that they talk about boring stuff like policy positions and numbers.
Should have let that one live.
North Korea is quite poor. They ave a GDP per capita of around 1700 USD, and that has likely been shrinking steadily year over year since the Soviet Union collapsed. They have an extremely militarized economy, devoting perhapse 1/5 to 1/4 of their entire GDP to the military (for reference, the US is at about 3% and Russia is at about 5% right now in the middle of a punishing war). To come up with hard currency for their missile and nuclear programs they have focused on illicit programs including counterfeiting, drug production and trafficking their own population.
Their military is also massive for their population, with roughly 1 million active duty troops and perhaps 3 million more in reserve. This military has two primary missions: to keep the current leader in power and to reunify the Korean peninsula under north Korean rule by force. To accomplish this they maintain a strategic stockpile of supplies sufficient to support their active duty military for at least six months of high intensity combat. These supplies are kept in an extensive network of tunnels and bunkers that have been constructed throughout the country. North Korean doctrine imagines an extremely high intensity conflict that is likely more intense than anything we have seen Russia perform in Ukraine, outside of perhaps a Wagner suicide charge. The amount of food, weapons, supplies, fuel and munitions required to support a force this large for six months in an intensive offensive is enormous. When you consider the poor state of their economy and the poverty that most north Koreans live in its absolutely staggering.
Now during the 90s north Korea suffered from two catastrophic disasters. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union, cutting off most of the foreign aid that had propped up their economy and supplied their military. This led to a collapse of their industrial base and starting the trend of year over year GDP decline that continues to this day. The second disaster was the North Korean Famine. This famine lasted throughout the mid and late 90s and resulted in the deaths of a significant percentage of their population. Exactly how bad things were is a closely held state secret. We know that people were trying to eat grass and tree bark. There were rumors that people were digging up freshly buried corpses and children and old people were going missing, but I couldnt say if that was common or even if it was true at all. The famine was finally ended with a steady supply of international food aid. This solution was a thin cover for the fact that their agricultural capacity has still not recovered to this day.
North Korea does manufacture arms and munitions for export. However, the quantity these weapons are available in would be on a scale suitable to arm your standard warlord on a tight budget, but not nearly enough to backstop a full scale mechanized conflict. If they are supplying at a significant level it means they are taking weapons and munitions from front line units (which they would never do), or they are dipping into their reserves. Now, north Korea does genuinely support Russia and it is very much in their interest that Russia not collapse again. However, considering the extreme hardships they have endured without touching those strategic reserves, I find it implausible that they are doing so now. I believe that this is actually an equipment swap, where they dig out crates of old supplies from their bunkers and swap them out with brand new supplies from China. I dont have any evidence to back that part up, its just a hunch.
North Korea has been painstakingly hoarding military supplies for generations. While their people starve and freeze they stuff tunnels and caves full of food and clothing. While their industry crumbles they pry up train tracks to melt down into artillery shells. They have their own soldiers train in cheap tennis shoes so boots can be saved for war. What would make them dip into these precious stockpiles that are so important to their security that everything else can be sacrificed to preserve them? My guess is its pretty simple. Russia sends oil to China, China sends new munitions and uniforms to NK, NK sends old stockpiles to Russia. Russia gets their supplies and China keeps their hands clean.
NK doesnt have a significant textile industry. They get their uniforms from China, like everyone else.
In practice, if you report so little tips you cant hit minimum wage management will assume you are (a) lying to the IRS, (b) providing awful service, or © business is too slow to justify you being there. Any way you look at you probably wont work there much longer.
And elections coming up next year in the US. If the Russian stooge block in congress gets large enough it might become very difficult to continue supplying Ukrane, especially if it looks like they arnt making progress. If the presidency flips support might even start flowing the other way. Without full US pressure supporters like Germany and France are likely to go back to calling for negotiations, and the UK, Poland and Lithuania cant keep the Ukrainian army going on their own.
Its not really the airlines in charge on this one. Maintaining a strong domestic aviation industry is an absolutely critical national security concern for…well, every industrialized country on the planet. At a minimum they want a pool of pilots and mechanics that could be drawn from in the event of war. For wealthier countries, the industrial capacity to build and maintain aircraft is vital to maintain an independent defense posture.
Its just unrealistic to use anything else at the moment. Current batteries are only at like 250 wh per kg while av-gas sits at around 12,000. And liquid fuel gets lighter as it is consumed. This is not an impossible hurdle for something like a car, where fuel is a tiny fraction of total weight, but for an aircraft its totally unrealistic unless you are willing to dramatically cut speed and cargo capacity.
Send everyone 12 dollars.
It totally depends of the jurisdiction. In some parts of the world calling up a ride sharing app with get you a totally normal taxi at normal metered taxi rates. In other parts of the world its pretty much they do it and nobody can stop them. A private citizen can pick up anyone they want and the laws all assumed that a taxi would have to find passengers and handle money in person. By the time politicians get around to doing anything about it they’ve already taken over the market and voters would take it personally if they had to go back to regular cabs.
Tiny short term changes either way will not be enough to drastically alter people’s behavior. If those changes are long term and predictable they will absolutely change people’s behavior. 2% may not be much year over year, but over a 30 year mortgage you can expect to take a bath on any house you buy, even with 1% interest rate. And people, rich and poor, do horde cash when they think that returns are going to become negative. In a very mildly deflationary world this happens much more often than in an inflationary one.
Yes, companies can save money because one person with a computer can replace a whole pool of secretaries or a room full of people doing mathematical calculation. You can buy a whole wardrobe of full of clothes for what a few outfits might have cost before, thanks to automation and cheap foreign labor. Weve seen quite a bit of that in the last 50 years. It means you can buy all the mass produced plastic crap you want, but you cant afford a house to put it in. And it has resulted in a MASSIVE boost in wealth equality, its just that it was a global phenomenon and it was the poor people in places like India and China that experienced it.
It doesnt hurt the banks, it destroys them. The modern economy is unable to function without banks. I suppose if you were in favor of entirely destroying the modern economic system, long term deflation would be the easiest way to do it. Dont expect some sort of socialist utopia to come out the other side though. Last time we had a serious deflationary run we ended up with a handful of obscenely wealthy robber barons and a world war.
Is nobody going to ask why Ted Cruz is wearing a yellow wig?