Remember the last time Germans were freezing in winter?
Yours,
Vlad
Posted on 02/22/2022 6:25:40 AM PST by shadowlands1960
Putin demands roll back of NATO to pre-1991. Also, denies that Ukraine is a sovereign nation.
I agree. But for the time being they will do what they need to do.
However, I wonder if the Democrats will oppose the use of coal or oil even it it means subjugation to the thieving Russians?
GDP and political freedom:
not a strong correlation
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/income-vs-type-of-political-regime
GDP per capita and economic freedom:
a strong, positive correlation
Hey "AMI" why don't you sell/give some MORE military tech to commie china, that works too!
Germany literally turned off all their nuclear power plants. France just announced that they will be building DOZENS of new nuke electricity power plants. France already gets around 70% of their electricity from nuke plants. It what world is France the one making better choices? Yikes!
Trump was delivering large shipments of LNG (liquid natural gas) to several areas of Europe. Obama / Biden want to ‘keep it in the ground’ and starve us of low-cost energy.
GDP and political freedom
Your chart seems to rank Russia and China low on the political freedom count and the U.S. close to the top. In my view, political freedom is quite relative and is best determined by the people who live there — not some arbitrary formula. I think we’ve seen enough charts and data over the last two years from our government that truth and cherry-picking data has become an art and a major deception.
You don’t see a mass exodus for the exits in Russia or China. Political freedom is relative. If you are born into an environment, where you have your basic needs addressed and seem to be happy with your environment, and are proud of your country, then the chart tells you nothing about the happiness and well-being of that cohort. Do they all have homes with two-car garages and a couple of $50K automobiles? No. But maybe there is more to life.
Our society has accomplished much (until recently) thanks to a few good leaders — in particular in the beginning. We now seem to believe that the rest of the world should be like us. It seems we should have learned a big lesson from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, Ukraine (all big mistakes). We can’t change governments and tell others how they should live their lives. It looks like we would have learned that lesson by now.
On the flip side the anglosphere (including the U.S. to a lesser extent at the moment) is becoming more tyrannical with each passing day (marshal law in Canada, internment camps in Australia, brutal lockdowns in New Zeland, etc.). What do we have in this country? A deep state that launched a coup against a sitting president, a stolen election, a 30 trillion dollar debt (and growing), and now the highest inflation in over 30 years. None of this is reflected in your chart.
All I’m saying is that the correlation to dictator vs term-limited leaders does not seem to exist when viewed from the comments above and from reality.
By the way, add one more single ruler for life to my previous post. Singapore whose leader served for 30 years and who has a GDP that is 38th in the world and an economy that grew by over 7% last year with very little crime.
I stand by what I said.
(1) little correlation of GDP with political freedom, (2) strong correlation of GDP per capita with economic freedom
Because of (1), it is easy to find outliers, e.g., countries that have restricted democracy or even dictatorship and do well (Singapore), as well as do poorly (Gambia). But, citing only the outliers that support a view, and ignoring those that contradict that view, isn’t fair.
To focus on term limits for chief executives, communists and authoritarians love to remove term limits. But, maybe removing term limits isn’t bad. We should avoid “guilt by association.” Yours is a provocative thesis. You should see if you can test it, in a way this is fair.
There is an argument for hereditary monarchy, viz., that the monarch who is secure on the throne will internalize the productivity and happiness of the people of the country.
A short-term ruler, or a monarch or a dictator who isn’t secure, would be inclined to maximize his short-term gain and be susceptible to deficit spending, pay-offs, and corruption in general. Similarly, a pure democracy will tend to redistribute the wealth.
So, in fashioning a democratic republic, you’d want to arrange voting in order to minimize these risks while empowering the government to pursue the common good. It seems hard to get it right. And, it is a good thing to try to get it right; at least, if you can’t get it right, then get it not badly wrong.
Way to go shutting your nuke plants down Germany!
Smart move Sherlock!
Happy now ?
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