American Economics Thread

sndef888

Senior Member
Registered Member
Despite US stagnating economically, I still believe the US is the largest civilisational threat to China in all 5000 years of history. It's the only country that has good enough geography to match China so far. The huge amounts of farmland and rivers gives the US the ability to sustain a large population. Even though they have barely 1/4 of China's population today, nobody knows what will happen in 2,3,500 years.

For China to remain number one it needs to expand. North to Siberia and south to Vietnam. Maybe not now, not even in a hundred years but it has to happen. Unless the US implodes into different cultures like Europe, but that's unlikely as technology has standardised language.
 

Tam

Brigadier
Registered Member
Despite US stagnating economically, I still believe the US is the largest civilisational threat to China in all 5000 years of history. It's the only country that has good enough geography to match China so far. The huge amounts of farmland and rivers gives the US the ability to sustain a large population. Even though they have barely 1/4 of China's population today, nobody knows what will happen in 2,3,500 years.

Not when climate change devastates the farmlands.

For China to remain number one it needs to expand. North to Siberia and south to Vietnam. Maybe not now, not even in a hundred years but it has to happen. Unless the US implodes into different cultures like Europe, but that's unlikely as technology has standardised language.

China also has this existential problem --- climate change. In fact, pandemics is one of the things that result from climate change.
 

KYli

Brigadier
When the time comes, China would be the only country that deploys a plan to save its country and people. Just look at the responses from pandemic, Chinese is the only civilization that believes man can beat natural disasters. It is in our blood to overcome natural disasters. Reading the Chinese history, you can see it is always about mankind struggles against the natural disasters and gods.
 

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
Despite US stagnating economically, I still believe the US is the largest civilisational threat to China in all 5000 years of history. It's the only country that has good enough geography to match China so far. The huge amounts of farmland and rivers gives the US the ability to sustain a large population. Even though they have barely 1/4 of China's population today, nobody knows what will happen in 2,3,500 years.

For China to remain number one it needs to expand. North to Siberia and south to Vietnam. Maybe not now, not even in a hundred years but it has to happen. Unless the US implodes into different cultures like Europe, but that's unlikely as technology has standardised language.

You have a funny way to show your love for China. It is 2020 now, not 1500. Land and resources don’t worth nearly as much as human ingenuities. Why takeover lands with people who contribute very little to industrial productions? Energy needs can be met with renewable source, food demands can be met with vertical farming, aquatic farming, etc. conquest of territories is so 1500
 

quantumlight

Junior Member
Registered Member
Why Nvidia's fake paper launches are a sign of the coming US economic collapse


It all started when I'm working from home during the pandemic and cannot buy a new joystick after my old one broken... (buying a joystick on amazon had NEVER been an issue before!)

It used to be I could order any number of joysticks/HOTAS from wide variety of selection on Amazon and they would be at very reasonable prices often with free 2-day or even same-day (PRIME) shipping... For example years ago I got a Thrustmaster joystick for only $38 at the time and it was the regular price, not even a flash sale or anything like that... Nowadays I cannot find any joystick on Amazon that isn't at least three times the normal price, if its even in stock or available at all... Some people have attributed the blame to Microsoft's new Flight Simulator 2020 release, but that can't be the entire reason...

Because it isn't just joysticks... when Nvidia debuted the much hyped RTX3080 I stayed up all night and had three or four web browsers open, constantly F5-ing to refresh the product order/launch pages on Nvidia, BestBuy, NewEgg, etc etc hoping to be one of the first to be able to get a stock FE version of the RTX3080... and it turned out there was literally zero inventory and this was a fake paper launch, and no one could get their hands on a RTX3080 FE for the stated MSRP and those that did end up getting one paid thousands of dollars more to scalpers... and to this day, months after the initial so called "launch" of Nvidia RTX3080 GPU, there still has been zero real availability of the card for anywhere near the MSRP...

When the lower tiered Nvidia RTX3070 released a bit later last month I figured they would learn from their mistakes and have more inventory this time around, but to my surprised I wasted another night staying up for nothing and it was sold out before it even released and the Best Buy website even crashed online because of it... essentially almost noone got a card and Nvidia didn't even sell it on their own website this second time around...

If it was just not being able to buy joysticks and graphics cards I would say attribute it to a string of bad luck in the year of 2020... but apparently just days ago the launch of the PS5 suffered the same fate, people stayed up and no one was able to F5 fast enough to beat the bots and very few people (who weren't already luck enough to win the pre-order lottery) were able to actually get a PS5 and it looks like due to inventory issues it wouldn't be until 2021 that most people can actually get their hands on a PS5...

And then there are the new games that are supposed to run on these new hardware... after all it makes no sense to buy new state of the art graphics cards or next gen consoles like the PS5 if you don't have those killer titles that make it worth upgrading for.... the most anticipated game of the year, Cyberpunk 2077, which is supposed to come out on nine devices had already been delayed four times this year is seemingly going to get delayed yet once again onto 2021.... at this point, over 13 years in the making, this game feels much more like a vaporware scam that was meant only as a social construction rather than a real deliverable title...

Back before the pandemic, it used to be one could put down the games and just go out and do something fun in 'real life'... well that doesn't seem like an option anymore, you cannot go on a cruise, cannot take an international vacation, heck cannot even go to a movie theater or do some local event these days anymore.... what is worse, all the popular spots and places are closing, some of which are permanent closures. Just in the Arlington, Texas area alone, the spaghetti warehouse shutdown, a lot of popular high end restaurants have permanently close their doors and won't be coming back, and even the Cheesecake Factory by our local mall is closing their chain and shutting down....

I noticed also items mysteriously gone missing that are not being restocked/reshelfed ever again... first it was select brands of beef jerky that I often for years had gotten at CVS and Kroger, then it was other items and now it has gotten to dozens of things that I had been able to consistently get for years have suddenly disappeared from the shelfs and stores and no sign of ever coming back with no explanation of what happened to them.... and stores everywhere are closing way earlier than normal. My local Best Buy shuts down at 6PM everynight, in stark contrast to the 11PM closing time of years ago... our Kroger used to be a 24/7 and now it closes at 10PM... same too for our SuperWalmart that used to be 24/7 now closing at 10PM... and for years I had been able to do midnight snack runs, well now all the fast food places close early, even places at McDonald's, Wendy's, Jack in the Box, etc close their drive through by 10PM... I used to be able to get food at midnight or even at late as 2AM at ease...

On one hand people are talking about UBI and stimulus checks and how the stock market is skyrocketing and bitcoin is strong and they are getting more and more wealthy on paper... looking at the growth of their 401k, digital assets and all that... but on the other hand it seems nothing is open anymore, there is nothing to do, and you cannot buy nothing of value... with every major launch this year from graphics card to consoles all being absolutely fake paper launches with zero inventory so that even if you do have money there is nothing actual for you to buy and you cannot really do anything with that money...

I get the distinctive feeling this is a trend that is only going to continue, no one is talking about it, and people are all pretending everything is going to be okay... but in reality this could be a top-down structured demand-destruction to permanently acclimate the population to a far reduced standard of living/ quality of life where everyone is a millionaire on paper but no one can buy anything save for the few lucky enough "F5" lottery winners!
 

horse

Major
Registered Member
Why Nvidia's fake paper launches are a sign of the coming US economic collapse
Who wrote this?

This is just anecdotal accounts of lack of economic activity on the ground. We all see that.

People who do not live in North America or parts of Europe, people in Asia do not understand what it is like now.

In fact, when we read an article like this, people in North America do not even understand what it is like now.

To make a long story short, western governments have to print money non-stop or give out free loans just to keep things afloat. This is not to create a boom, just to make sure the economic system does not collapse. All because western government response to Covid-19 was sub-par.

Eventually things will improve economically in a few years.
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
@quantumlight
I bought a brand spanking new AMD Zen motherboard and CPU when those came out. Wanted to send some bucks AMD's way because of Intel's insane CPU prices. Then I looked at the prices for memory and GPUs. It was insane. I waited a year until the prices for memory came down to sane levels and purchased some. But I had to wait another year until GPUs were at least reasonable after the stupid cryptomining price hike. I got myself an AMD Radeon 5700. So I basically bought hardware I didn't use for two years. My parents thought I was insane, or something, but I just couldn't justify buying a crappy graphics card for twice the price, or an SSD that was both more expensive and had less capacity than the one in my older computer.

TBH I kind of wish I had stuck with Nvidia as usual. First time I bought an AMD GPU and while it's fine for games it isn't good for anything else. But given the prices I just can't justify buying a Nvidia card it's too expensive. It's nuts.

I wish I had just waited two years and bought everything then. I would have got an AMD Zen 2 by then.

AMD Zen 3 is also too expensive. It makes no sense. The 8-cores are just too expensive and use a lot of power compared with Zen 2. I think AMD Zen 3 makes no sense. Better to wait for the die shrink to 5nm when that comes out. At 7nm it's just too expensive and awfully hot.
 
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