Hunt should have taken a leaf from Biden’s book and boosted much-needed investment in green transition to build new industries, create good jobs,
Jobs are a cost, Honey, jobs are a cost.
Miatta Fahnbulleh is chief executive of the New Economics Foundation
Sigh.
Britain today has a UniParty — the party of government, which seems to consist of the same people as the party of the opposition. Britain has reached where the US has been for quite some time — a cabal of political elites hijacking the country, operating its own agenda, regardless of which political party is formally in power — and the people at large having lost control of their government. – M.K. Bhadrakumar
Which will become a failed state first: Britain or the USA?
Yes, jobs are a cost. But people like having jobs. Well, some people do. Most people like having the money they get from having jobs. Which is why politicians like to boast about how many jobs they’ve created or are going to create.
Which will become a failed state first: Britain or the USA?
Britain.
We’re smaller, so will fall quicker. And we’re further along the path already.
Luckily we have all these young, vibrant doctors and engineers who have been coming here illegally. They may just prevent the fall into decay and poverty.
CD – gonna be a close race, I think.
There’s a lot more ruin in the United States, but also $30 Tn of national debt and their government is looting the economy as fast as they can. Saudi Arabia is now cosying up to China and Iran (!), so the petrodollar is on borrowed time.
On t’other, as a shitty colony of the US of A, our government can be relied on to subordinate British interests to American demands (no fracking allowed, no tax cuts allowed, the Windsor Agreement, the coming war with China).
So, idk.
Steve & CD
Hah!!!
Oz’ll beat ’em both.
Bboy – Paul Keating was right.
Australia is now on the hook to pay an expected A$368 billion (it’ll be a lot more than that) so the USA can use your country as a FOB and drive away your biggest customer (China).
Primitive tribesmen used to sell valuable land in exchange for beads. Oz is actually paying the Yanks to base American nuclear submarines in Western Australia, which will make Australia poorer and less secure. As we should know by now, WW3 isn’t going to be about a tiny number of ridiculously expensive cutting edge wonder weapons, it’s going to be a WW2 style industrial slaughter. A handful of subs won’t protect Australia, their only value will be in annoying the Chinee.
You’re getting a worse deal than the native Manhattanites who sold their island for $24.
@FrankH
“ Most people like having the money they get from having jobs.”
But what will they buy with this money when a loaf of bread is £50 and manufacturing closes down because there is no energy to run it? Then the jobs created will be toiling in the land… but al least thy will be ‘Green’ jobs I suppose.
It’s funny how so many countries near China fear China and are keenly acquiring defence ties with the USA to ward off China, yet Steve sees the horrid yankeees as the root of evil. How can all those countries be so wrong?
– Saudi Arabia is now cosying up to China and Iran (!), so the petrodollar is on borrowed time.
The current Saudi ruler is tweaking the current US leadership because they were jolly rude in public. I doubt he’s daft enough to tie himself into a submerging market (China), and I doubt there’s much that can be done to cancel the long running Sunni and Shia Show. The Mullahs will get nukes and that will focus priorities.
– As we should know by now, WW3 isn’t going to be about a tiny number of ridiculously expensive cutting edge wonder weapons, it’s going to be a WW2 style industrial slaughter.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. It’ll be known what WW3 was like after it’s happened.
Britain today has a UniParty — the party of government, which seems to consist of the same people as the party of the opposition. Britain has reached where the US has been for quite some time — a cabal of political elites hijacking the country, operating its own agenda, regardless of which political party is formally in power — and the people at large having lost control of their government. – M.K. Bhadrakumar
I (genuinely) blame Thatcher. Pre-1979 you had a choice between Labour = hard-line socialist: nationalise everything, tax at 98%, block money transfers outside the UK; or Conservative = not exactly capitalist free-marketeers (under Macmillan and Heath), but at least much, much softer-left. The success of Thatcherism meant Labour’s line was unsustainable (though it took the dinosaurs over a decade to realise their time had passed), which gave rise to Blairism and ‘triangulation’ (borrowed from Slick Willy across the pond).
So you now have two main parties in the UK with largely identical policies, and the choice between them is purely marketing-driven, like deciding whether to put BP or Shell into your car. It’s been that way in the US for decades – although Republicans like to portray Democrats as communists and Democrats like to call their opponents fascists, in government there’s generally little to choose between them (with occasional, honourable exceptions, such as Reagan and Trump).
PJF – the US government isn’t the root of all evil, just most of it.
You don’t like being reminded of how many countries they’ve attacked this century, and I can’t be arsed dredging up the ashes of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and other horrible, evil, pointless disasters. So we’ll elide that bit.
And the weaponisation of sanctions and its incompatibility with the ongoing status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is something they’ll probably be writing textbooks about in future.
So let’s talk about the Chinee and Australia instead.
AUKUS was not well received in the region, countries are not queuing up to become Uncle Sam’s little gimps in Southeast Asia. Indonesia and Malaysia don’t like it, and India isn’t interested in joining a military alliance against China.
That leaves Japan (still an occupied satrap of the US) and Australia (always has been a colony) as the only significant mugs in the region. While the others may not like or trust China, they’re not looking to join a retarded crusade to maintain American military supremacy in the Pacific either.
Now for the bill:
Australian balance of trade numbers
Rank Country/District Trade Balance
1 China 57,966
2 Japan 31,829
3 European Union −34,572
4 United States −18,660
Australia’s top 10 two-way trading partners 2018-19 ($ billion)
Rank Trading partners(a)(b) Goods
1 China 213.0
2 Japan 81.4
3 United States 48.7
4 Republic of Korea 38.0
As you can see from these poorly formatted tables, China is Australia’s #1 and most valuable customer by an incredible margin.
Australia is a resource extraction economy, it needs rapidly developing markets to sell into. So the alternative to selling to China is poverty and unemployment.
The Australians are being asked to believe that choosing poverty is necessary to “defend” them from China. But China isn’t a credible threat to Australia and it’s ridiculous to claim otherwise. In actual fact, AUKUS isn’t a defensive alliance, it’s an aggressive one. (Like NATO)
Aussies are sacrificing their sovereignty and wealth so the US Navy can play homosexual games in the waters around Taiwan. And when the war comes, and the US loses, Australia will be left penniless and holding its dick.
As you walk into her home office, the enlarged storeroom between the kitchen and the guest loo, there’s a plaque over the door which reads, “New Economics Foundation.” Almost all of these fancy-titled activist organisations are one-woman and one-man shows.
Actually Steve, I like the nuclear submarines. Though I don’t like the cost of building a manufacturing site in Adelaide.
But of course, I really think we need lots of H bombs and missiles. No one would think it was worth a pricked finger to kill 20 million or so Aussies, so they’d probably just leave us alone.
Though with the way we’re deindustrialising, perhaps we’ll have to get the abos to show us how to make a few stone axes when the attack finally comes.