What Offense Did the Ukrainian People Commit That Caused Them to Be Bombed into Oblivion by The Russian Military at the Command of Putin?

[AntonToo]

No, thank you. Our friend Antoshka will definitely disagree with the first paragraph.

Why? It's true, houses did get more expensive in the last 4 years under Biden, and they got more expensive in the 4 years before that under Trump too.

Inflation adjusted data:

S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index

View data of a benchmark of average single-family home prices in the U.S., calculated monthly based on changes in home prices over the prior three months.

fred.stlouisfed.org

 

[ESay]

Why? It's true, houses did get more expensive in the last 4 years under Biden, and they got more expensive in the 4 years before that under Trump too.

Inflation adjusted data:

S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index

View data of a benchmark of average single-family home prices in the U.S., calculated monthly based on changes in home prices over the prior three months.

fred.stlouisfed.org

But Todd went further and claimed that because of the current tendencies children will have to live with their parents.

 

[TruthNotBS]

WHO WILL DO THE JOBS?

You are not answering the question.

Maybe you like conveyer belts at a manufacturing factory compared to conveyor belts at Amazon warehouses or McDonald's, but someone has to do all of them so we are talking about shocking changes in CONSUMPTION, never mind just the cost you basically make up out of thin air.

The only way any of this is realistic with our aging labor force with deminishing participation rates is a drastic change to immigration policies to allow huge increase in prime age foreign worker migration, this along with big terrifs on goods imports. And whats the bottom line? Big time inflation and higher costs to consumers.

I understand you have a manufacturing fetishism like a good ol' socialist but it's blinding you to the consequences.

WHO WILL DO THE JOBS? You are not answering the question.

I just answered your question, but since I'm a "masoqista", I will continue answering it...

​

Maybe you like conveyer belts at a manufacturing factory compared to conveyor belts at Amazon warehouses or McDonald's, but someone has to do all of them so we are talking about shocking changes in CONSUMPTION, never mind just the cost you basically make up out of thin air.

What do you mean by "shocking changes in consumption"? The "cost I'm creating from thin air"? I may have an idea of what you're referring to but I don't want to waste my time and yours responding to a straw man. Define your terms.

The only way any of this is realistic with our aging labor force with deminishing participation rates is a drastic change to immigration policies to allow huge increase in prime age foreign worker migration, this along with big terrifs on goods imports. And whats the bottom line? Big time inflation and higher costs to consumers.

Why do you insist that we don't have the manpower to work the mines and factories? We have millions of workers ready to take those well-paid manufacturing jobs. The problem isn't a lack of human labor, the issue is capitalists prioritizing short-term profits to the detriment of our nation's economy in the long term. They see dollar signs hiring dirt-cheap labor abroad, then importing those foreign-produced products into the American market. The US consumer suffers because all of their good jobs leave and they see themselves relying more on their credit, forcing them into debt.

Crappy jobs, more debt, and cost of living through the roof, and the capitalists who once owned factories in America, are cashing in, in the short-term, turning their factories into warehouses for their imported, cheap products. This is economic cannabilism. Destroying the American consumer's purchasing power, taking away their good manufacturing jobs and the advantage of living in a nation that produces tangible goods, and doesn't rely on foreign products or markets to survive and thrive.

I'm not an isolationist, I believe international trade is important, but so is our nation's need to have a productive economy, that manufactures tangible goods and services that rely on those MADE IN THE USA products. Next time there's a pandemic, our medical professionals shouldn't be deprived of the equipment they need to safely perform their important, life-saving work. Waiting for China or India to send us masks and respirators. No, we need American factories, producing masks, and all of the machines.

Everything I just said, assumes we're living in the 1970s or 80s. It's 2024 Anthony, we have intelligent, autonomous machines, incredibly advanced automation, and artificial intelligence, that makes manufacturing ten, even fifty times more efficient than it was 50 years ago. Autonomous machines can produce 24//7, from the mines to the factory, and then to the outlet stores. Practically, every element and component of our supply chain and logistical infrastructure can be automated. We're not living in the 20th century, we're in the 21st, We need to reorganize and reform our economy in order to avoid the inevitable, impending unemployment crisis.

The UBI or UI, i.e. Universal Basic Income, is a ploy by the ruling class, to preserve an obsolete market-based mode of production that is unsustainable due to advanced automation. Without wages, there's no market. There's no need for a market when we can fully automate the economy. Supply chains, the logistics of raw material extraction, processing, transportation, the production, shipping, storage, and distribution of goods, and services, are no longer dependent upon human labor. In capitalism, if we're able to reduce the need for human wage-labor even by 30%, that's an economic catastrophe. We had our great depression in the 1930s, with only 23% unemployment.

This is one of the major contradictions of capitalism. Capitalists in their pursuit of profits, are driven to make production as efficient and cheap as possible, and in doing so they undermine the market. The foundation of capitalist production is wage labor. The capitalists are the wealthy and powerful PILLARS of a society under capitalism, and the working class or human labor is the FOUNDATION upon which the PILLARS rest. The capitalists need wage labor just as much, if not more, than labor needs capitalists. Why should people allow capitalism to undermine human progress?

If we can produce everything without human drudgery and exploitation, by exploiting intelligent robots, rather than human beings, and other advanced autonomous machinery like self-driving vehicles and automated miners in mines..etc, why shouldn't we?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

No, thank you. Our friend Antoshka will definitely disagree with the first paragraph. But he virtually called you a liar, so decide that among yourselves.

Russia sucks, and I even would call it a shithole. But that doesn't change the fact that we see a global shift in the balance of power.

Our friend Antoshka will definitely disagree with the first paragraph.

Homes are more expensive and mortgage rates are higher.
Even commie morons like truthbs can't deny that.

But that doesn't change the fact that we see a global shift in the balance of power.

It's not shifting to the shitholes.

 

[TruthNotBS]

Kinda crazy you say that considering I live in American made house with American made Teslas in the driveway, posting this on American deisgned PCs and American designed phones with American operating systems.

Are you sure you don't live on the fucking moon?

Your house was built by Americans, at best, maybe, but the materials are imported from China. I know, I have a close friend, who's a building contractor. A lot of what he buys in Home Depot is MADE IN CHINA. Teslas are useless, as far as contributing to the American economy, until we have the electric grid to sustain hundreds of millions of EVs. It's a "luxury item", a "gourmet" mode of transportation. We need millions of manufacturing jobs in this country and that's no longer viable. Even Tesla is automating its factories. The Carrier factory that Trump visited during his 2016 presidential campaign, where he promised the workers the factory wouldn't close and move to Mexico:

​

Didn't move to Mexico, because they didn't have to. They rather let go of all of those workers, replacing them with advanced automation. Robots are now manufacturing the furnaces, not humans. Carrier cut that plant's workforce by 75%.

Designing technology isn't enough, we need to produce it here, or we won't have the jobs to sustain an American blue-collar, working-class home. People need good-paying jobs, with benefits. Affordable housing, healthcare, education, a robust public infrastructure, with buses and trains, that arrive on time. You don't have to wait 30, 50 minutes for the bus to arrive at the bus stop, you have a bus every five minutes or less. Here in NYC, you don't wait for more than five minutes before there's another bus or train. Why the hell do I need a car? I have it more because of my wife, she likes cars. I ride the train and bus all of the time.

 

[AntonToo]

Why do you insist that we don't have the manpower to work the mines and factories?

Because our unemployment is very low. Do you understand what that means? It doesn't seem you grasp it.

We have 8 million job openings and only 5 million unemployed and you want to force a drastic increase in the job openings.

 

[AntonToo]

But Todd went further and claimed that because of the current tendencies children will have to live with their parents.

Current tendency is increased salaries, leveling off of real estate prices+building materials and dropping interest rates, all of which should add up to improved affordability in the coming years.

Yes there were disruptions to economy during and post covid, but that is true world over.

 

[TruthNotBS]

Because our unemployment is very low. Do you understand what that means? It doesn't seem you grasp it.

We have 8 million job openings and only 5 million unemployed and you want to force a drastic increase in the job openings.

Those are crap jobs comrade. Poop. You need two of those jobs to live in this country, the cost of living is through the roof. I was lucky to have a step-father who was a CNC machinist, and operator and he got me into machining. I'm a union worker, with an amazing salary with benefits. How many blue-collar workers are like me? Maybe 30% of the working class, at best. I spent the last three years training the AI that is going to replace me. I trained it, to code the machines, making sure it translates the simple, English instructions into code. I'm now a consultant, working contracts from my union, and helping companies automate.

The tech we have today is going to take all of our jobs. Human drudgery, working in factories or in the gourmet restaurant that you frequent, is unnecessary. Technology can do everything for us, hence no more need for human drudgery and exploitation.

 

[AntonToo]

You identify with the rich, even though you said you're employed by a capitalist.

WTF? Niether is true.

 

[AntonToo]

Modern, American socialism, will automate practically everything

This fucking guy.

 

[TruthNotBS]

Current tendency is increased salaries, leveling off of real estate prices+building materials and dropping interest rates, all of which should add up to improved affordability in the coming years.

Yes there were disruptions to economy during and post covid, but that is true world over.

Market adjustments take time, way too much time. The invisible hand always needs help from the government or some other external stimulus. Nothing is going to change for the better. The situation wasn't much better before covid, and it's only going to get worse now, if we remain in capitalism. Your fear is that any other economic system will somehow reduce your standard of living and freedom. It won't because technology will ensure you have even more gourmet restaurant outings with your family and beautiful vacations. Moreover, your present home will be yours even more so than now. In modern, American, democratic socialism, you have a human right to your home. It's yours even more so than now under market capitalism.

 

[TruthNotBS]

WTF? Niether is true.

OK, I was wrong. Good, I'm glad I was wrong about that.

 

[AntonToo]

Market adjustments take time and way too much time. The invisible hand always needs help from the government or some other external stimulus. Nothing is going to change for the better. The situation wasn't much better before covid, and it's only going to get worse now, if we remain in capitalism. Your fear is that any other economic system will somehow reduce your standard of living and freedom. It won't because technology will ensure you have even more gourmet restaurant outings with your family and beautiful vacations. Moreover, your present home will be yours even more so than now. In modern, American, democratic socialism, you have a human right to your home. It's yours even more so than now under market capitalism.

Yea yea yea, it's all the same bullshit pie in sky stories communists were selling in Russia and China.

Don't worry about your freedoms, we will centrally plan everything and make sure you are working a good job making stuff, getting paid same as them 4 eyed doctors and soft-hands lawyers.

NO ONE IS BUYING THAT BULLSHIT, I don't know how many ways to explain to you how unpalatable what you are saying for either Republicans or Democrats. Your positions have no constiutency, no political lifeline. Any politician esposing this shit will lose - it's as simple as that.

 

[TruthNotBS]

Yea yea yea, it's all the same bullshit pie in sky stories communists were selling in Russia and China.

Don't worry about your freedoms, we will centrally plan everything and make sure you are working a good job making stuff, getting paid same as them 4 eyed doctors and soft-hands lawyers.

NO ONE IS BUYING THAT BULLSHIT, I don't know how many ways to explain to you how unpalatable what you are saying for either Republicans or Democrats. Your positions have no constiutency, no political lifeline. Any politician esposing this shit will lose - it's as simple as that.

Yea yea yea, it's all the same bullshit pie in sky stories communists were selling in Russia and China.

So what's your solution if everything in the future has to be as it was in the past? You pretend that conditions in the past must persist into the future indefinitely as if material conditions never change. Amazing. So what is the working class supposed to do Anthony, in a world where production is mostly automated? I asked you the same question before, what's your effective solution? I sincerely want to know, because I like coding CNC machines and being a machinist. Can you talk to my former employer and tell him not to use the AI anymore and re-hire me? Give him a call, and use your Russian accent to scare him into re-hiring me. The best accent in English is hands down the Russian one.

Don't worry about your freedoms, we will centrally plan everything and make sure you are working a good job making stuff, getting paid same as them 4 eyed doctors and soft-hands lawyers.

We are the "we", there's no them, or those people over there doing any central planning. In the 21st century, all of the data collection, planning, and accounting is done by supercomputers, sensitive sensors..etc. Everyone will have manicured hands if they want to, so your insistence on ripping the future out of context and transplanting it in the past century is misleading and completely unnecessary. You're also confusing foreign socialism, with American socialism. All socialism isn't the same, look at WW2 in Europe. It was essentially a war between socialists. One party was Marxist and the other wasn't.

NO ONE IS BUYING THAT BULLSHIT,

Everyone who's not clutching their pearls is buying it because they know it's true. If they haven't bought it yet, they're going to buy it, because when they see themselves unemployed relying on a UBI, that will be the end of their delusions about capitalism and becoming billionaires.

When people's kids are facing hunger and homelessness, or are actually hungry and homeless, that's when intelligent industrial robots and artificial intelligence become public assets, owned by everyone, together. We are equal before the law and the means of production. We're not equal in other ways, but when it comes to the law and the means of production, we are equals. The mines, factories, genius robots, and AGI - Artificial General Intelligence, the supercomputers i.e. quantum computers, self-driving vehicles, and nanotechnology..etc. All of that is owned collectively, communally, by the people.

I don't know how many ways to explain to you how unpalatable what you are saying for either Republicans or Democrats. Your positions have no constiutency, no political lifeline. Any politician esposing this shit will lose - it's as simple as that.

Unfortunately you're absolutely right, and that's why things are going to get worse before they get better. I believe the government is going to intervene eventually and provide everyone with a UBI which will quickly, within a few years become a UI, i.e. Universal Income. When people realize that they've been reduced to unproductive consumer serfs, living under techno-feudalism, and the heel of techno-lords, who ironically will be living in a marketless, gated community full of intelligent robots, that will be the end of the capitalist order. Socialism will become the obvious solution. High-tech, council/democratic, socialism. I believe the translation for the word "council" in Russian if I remember is Soviet hahahaha hehehehehe....American Soviet Socialism. Aha!!!!! LOL, hehehehe amazing, the universe has a great sense of humor.

 

[AntonToo]

We are the "we", there's no them, or those people over there doing any central planning. In the 21st century, all of the data collection, planning, and accounting is done by supercomputers, sensitive sensors..etc. Everyone will have manicured hands if they want to, so your insistence on ripping the future out of context and transplanting it in the past century is misleading and completely unnecessary.

Technology can change economics and politics but that’s just your fantasy about tech, not reality in near or even mid-term future.

You have some trouble separating the two and then you try to convince someone of a political order around what is fundamentally a naive disconnect with reality.

Keep automating, god knows you and others that work on it everyday have a long long long way to go to get even within 30 years of what you are talking about.

 

[ESay]

Our friend Antoshka will definitely disagree with the first paragraph.

Homes are more expensive and mortgage rates are higher.
Even commie morons like truthbs can't deny that.

But that doesn't change the fact that we see a global shift in the balance of power.

It's not shifting to the shitholes.

Depends on what is considered shitholes. But anyway, you are not right here.

 

[ESay]

Current tendency is increased salaries, leveling off of real estate prices+building materials and dropping interest rates, all of which should add up to improved affordability in the coming years.

Yes there were disruptions to economy during and post covid, but that is true world over.

I am afraid that the trend on shrinking of the so called middle class in America started in the 1980s and will continue, Covid or not.

 

[Arlette]

In thinking about why Israel is destroying Gaza and killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, it caused me, in comparison, to wonder why Putin began bombing Ukraine. I honestly could not remember why this all began.

I'm sure we all agree that retaliating for having been attacked and having your citizens abducted and killed is more than reason enough to go after the perpetrators, even if we do not necessarily agree with how they are going about carrying this out. But what I'm struck with at the moment is how Putin was NOT defending Russia, or retaliating for an attack against the country and its people. This wholesale slaughter of innocent people seems to be based on ideology?

Putin attacked Ukraine to prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO member.

 

[AntonToo]

I am afraid that the trend on shrinking of the so called middle class in America started in the 1980s and will continue, Covid or not.

Have you ever actually looked at the data? All these assertions are worthless without it.

The total shrinking was 11 points, but of those 11, only 4 points of low income group expansion and 7 point upper income expansion

What Is Middle Class Income? Thresholds, Is It Shrinking?

Which income class do you belong to, and what defines the different classes? It's said that the middle class is shrinking, but what does the data say?

www.investopedia.com

So yes we have a few more people on low income, but gained almost twice as many in high income brakets, which is an overall improvement and overall healthy distribution.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Depends on what is considered shitholes. But anyway, you are not right here.

The shitholes who don't have a decent currency to use besides the US dollar.
You talk a big game, but no one trusts the Ruble or the Yuan.
Let alone a currency from Venezuela, Egypt or Iran.