Random political thought thread.

[ceecee]

The US stock market took a hit because of the tariffs. But middle class investors will suffer. The billionaires would come out of this richer.

Billionaires can afford to invest when the market crashes. But very very cheap. Sell 10 years later with 10 times the profits.

Can trump voters see this?

I understand why people voted for him - his promises of bringing jobs home - but why would they keep supporting him?

The commodity prices might increase quite a lot.

Donald Trump deliberately crashed the stock market so he, his family and cronies could rake in billions. That was always the end goal of "tariffs".

 

[Virtual ghost]

Zelenskyy invites Trump to Ukraine: Come see ‘what Putin did’

 

[SensEye]

Zelenskyy invites Trump to Ukraine: Come see ‘what Putin did’

And Trump responds by attacking "60 Minutes" and threatening to have their broadcast license revoked. What an ass.

More whipsawing, chaos, and general uncertainty on tariffs as I expect will be the norm going forward. Chinese semiconductors and related tech exempt from the big tariff, but subject to 20% fentanyl tariffs or some other such thing. Impossible to tell really, and it will all change several more times no doubt.

As expected he is also ignoring SCOTUS ruling to facilitate the return of the wrongly deported guy to El Salvador. He's using two plays: passing the buck to the El Salvador president and obviously instructing him not to comply (he's hosting him at the White House today) and playing semantics between 'facilitate' vs 'effectuate'.

 

[Coriolis]

This will continue. Only Trump's boss has the ability to rein him in, and ideally tell him, "You're Fired!"

Who is his boss? Us. The American people. If we don't stop him, we are essentially accepting what he is doing.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Something to think about.
Since multiparty system is something that comes up as the topic on this forum (from time to time).

 

[Red Herring]

My native language doesn't really have a word for "gated community".

More thoughts on that in spoiler tags so as not to spam those not interested with a wall of text and several photos:

I looked it up.

If you look at the different language versions on Wikipedia several languages (like Italian, Dutch, Danish and Czech) also use the English term. It's a concept that has not really taken foot in Europe. It's mostly a North and South American thing (as well as Chinese and maybe a few other places with great wealth inequality). A handful of them exist for the rich and famous in a few places here, but it's the exception.

LOL, I also just googled "middle class home" in German and got a lot of local image results. But when I googled for "upper class home" in German suddenly the first 100 results or more were almost exclusively of American homes and with English text under them.

That got me thinking.

Not that we don't have a class system and social inequality, we most definitely do, but the social code around using those labels and how it presents in public is just different. A bit like the tall poppies thing in Australia or Jente's law in Scandinavia. You can be rich and powerful, but you're not allowed to display it too much. That would be vulgar.

I had to search for famous posh neighborhoods to get more reliably local results.

This is one of the poshest neighborhoods in the country (Hamburg Winterhude):

This is where the richest man in the country lives (co-owner of the ALDI supermarket chain) (in an otherwise irrelvant small town):

This is used to be the residence of the head of government when Bonn was still the capitol:

This is where former chancelor Schmidt lived until his death:

Former chancelor Kohl:

The first one in Bonn is deliberately simple and modern (at it's time) to signal the concept of modesty and transparency. The houses of Schmidt and Kohl were simly normal family homes, not even upper middle but middle middle class from the looks of it.



Don't let the relative simplicity fool you though. This one was the most expensive house offered for sale in Germany in 2024 - the asking price is 17.6 million dollars and it's on the posh island of Sylt:

Location clearly matters.

This one in Munich was sold for 30 million a while ago and used to belong to the manager of Goldman Sachs (to be fair, long before that it used to belong to Nobel laureate Thomas Mann, so that likely played a role in the pricing):

 

[Red Herring]

On that note:

I googled the estimated private net wealth of several current and former heads of government:

In Europe:
Emmanuel Macron (France): under 1 million (about 500.000 Euros)
Nicolas Zarkozy (France): 4 million Euros (used to be more, but there were some, ehm, legal issues)
Olaf Scholz (Germany): 4 million Euros
Friedrich Merz (Germany) - 11 million Euros
Angela Merkel (Germany): 3-4 million Euros
Keir Starmer (UK): 7-10 million pounds

In Canada:
Mark Carney - 7 million USD
Justin Trudeau - 96 million USD

In the US:
Joe Biden - 10 million USD
George W. Bush - 50 million USD ... and here comes the big jump from million to billion!!!
Donald Trump - 1.4 billion USD
Barack Obama - 2.1 billion USD

Africa:
Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa): 500 million USD

Asia:
Narendra Modi (India) - under 1 million (officially 360,000 USD)
Xi Jingping (China) - 1.2 billion USD
Kim Jong-Un (North Korea) - 4.5 billion USD

But all these folks have nothing on the tsar ...

Vladimir Putin (Russia) - really hard to tell but estimated at around 36 billion USD


For comparison: The private wealth of King Charles II (not a head of government, obviously, but a head of state) is estimated at around 2.2 billion USD. That's a head of state though, not a head of government
Draw your own conclusions.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Draw your own conclusions.

When it comes to conclusions: this is very democratic approach to the issue. The thing is that if someone is genuine dictator then their net worth is basically the sum of all assets and money in their country. Trust me, in reality Vladimir is much richer than Elon.

In the collective west they don't like to count it this way because the statistics wouldn't look pretty.


Just saying.

 

[Virtual ghost]

World’s cartoonists on this week’s events

 

[ygolo]

I am thinking about putting this on my reading list:

Troubled Memory, Second Edition | Lawrence N. Powell | University of North Carolina Press

This powerful book tells the story of Anne Skorecki Levy, a Holocaust survivor who transformed the horrors of her childhood into a passionate mission to defe...

uncpress.org

The reason I am hesitant is that I need to keep myself from getting too worked up (for health).

 

[ygolo]

I found this conversation illuminating.

Some sources to look through:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/real-wages-continue-to-recover_8f8ec0e4-en.html

This may go on my reading list too:

Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers by MARK BLYTH - Book: 9781324106142 | Rizzoli Bookstore

Buy now Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers by MARK BLYTH available for just $31.99. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, this Non-Fiction book is a must-read. Order today and enjoy fast shipping.

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