Destiny Confronts a Senior CDC Official.

Non evidence based recommendations from Trump’s CDC will result in deaths. The chaos of getting CDC workers to leave, and shutting down programs, and giving directives where the verbal and written directives don’t match, and restarting things when it is suddenly realized they are needed…is not good! Bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-IWFoE4LBw

Trump Berates Reporters, Gets Mystery MRI & Closes Border to (Non-White) Immigrants | The Daily Show

Trump Berates Reporters, Gets Mystery MRI & Closes Border to (Non-White) Immigrants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4STrDD7leEM

Good News for Small Nuclear Reactors!

Small modular nuclear reactors may end up being a good idea, but they have problems. They require more shielding overall compared to one big reactor. As of yet, they haven’t been built with more speed. They produce energy less efficiently than one big reactor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1r_WPtqLp0

Michael Pettis: Bilateral Tariffs Will Fail To Restructure Global Trade Imbalances

When countries like China focus on heavily investing, initially it works well because they invest in productive things and this grows their economy. However, later, they run out of that many productive things to invest in, in which case they are robbing their citizens of consumption and outcompeting other countries’ manufacturing, but not gaining much actual new productive benefits. This leads to debt.

Bilateral tariffs like Trump is doing don’t work. The U.S. has a huge deficit because it consumes more than it exports. A global tariff could work by making goods more expensive and incentivizing people to consume, now relatively cheaper, domestic products. Bilateral tariffs just mean Americans will import cheap goods from country C and D instead of the heavily tariffed countries A and B.

Getting foreigners to invest in the U.S. hurts the U.S.. The U.S. has plenty of capital to invest and doesn’t need more. Additional investment means driving up the dollar, making U.S. goods less competitive internationally, and hurting U.S. exports.

China has debt to support investment. The U.S. has debt to support consumption. The system is out of whack and needs adjustment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoSNdzfydRU

Fears Spread Over New ICE Crackdowns, and F.B.I. Makes Arrest in Jan. 6 Bomb Plot

The administration says they are targeting the worst of the worst in their illegal immigration crackdown, but the facts are, they are sweeping up lots of people whose only crime was illegally immigrating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e8hotmwsJc

Trump Rants: ‘Let Them Go Back to Where They Came From’

Somalis in Minnesota were involved in fraudulent welfare schemes that stole a buttload of money from the U.S. government. Minnesota state officials were getting wind of the crimes, but failed to act in part because they feared being called racist in the post-George Floyd environment. Instead of seriously thinking about how to crack down on such schemes, Trump responded by calling all Somalis trash and saying he doesn’t want any Somalis in the country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nWswQVRDx0

Should Canada choose the Gripen E over the F-35?

The F-35 is vastly superior to the Gripen E. By comparison, the Gripen E is the budget choice. If the goal is to limit dependence on the mercurial United States, the Gripen is dependent on American parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C096AkDu1IQ

Economics Explained: The ‘Surplus’ Concept… That Trump Doesn’t Understand (Paul Krugman)

Calling a political opponent a communist is silly. Not even the Soviet Union or China called themselves communist. They called themselves socialist. Communism is when the productive surplus is controlled by the workers themselves. The government owning a business and deciding what to do with a surplus is just a government elite controlling the surplus instead of an owner or manager elite. Communism would be not a government elite or capitalist elite controlling the surplus, but the workers controlling the surplus. The socialist governments were supposed to be a transition phase to true communism. The closest things to this might be cooperatives where the workers also own the business, although those are done within a larger capitalist system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUXucPRH_-4