What the Heck?! Thread (Closed)

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Blackstone

Brigadier
I think Donald Trump is going to have a field day with this report.

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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jul 28 (IPS) - A US government agency acknowledges that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will not deliver many economic benefits promised by its cheerleaders. The 2016 report by the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) acknowledges that the TPP will not deliver many gains claimed by the US Trade Representative (USTR) and the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE) although it uses similar methodology and assumes that the TPP will not change the US trade deficit as a share of GDP.

FAOThe ITC's credibility has declined over the years as it earned a reputation for cheer-leading FTAs. It had grossly underestimated US trade deficit increases following virtually every ‘free trade' pact it assessed. Its projections understated the large US deficit increase with Mexico following the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the huge trade deficit explosion with China following ‘permanent normal trade relations', and the trade deficit spike with South Korea following the US-Korea trade agreement.

To assess the impact of the TPP, the ITC used its variant of a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model modified to take account of foreign direct investment (FDI) effects. To be sure, the ITC accepts growth to rise due to a significant increase in FDI, although there is no strong evidence or even logic that the TPP provisions will ensure the increase in FDI and growth projected. In fact, the procedure used involves many arbitrary elements, such as the impact on the OECD's Regulatory Restrictiveness Index (RRI), and the impact of the latter on productivity, FDI flows and GDP, both in the US and abroad.

However, the ITC accepts only a fraction of the overall growth attributed to ‘non-trade measures' (NTMs) by the 2016 PIIE -- and World Bank -- assessment, effectively rejecting many claims of growth attributed to other NTMs. Thus, for example, the ITC estimates exports will increase by only 1% due to NTMs by 2032 as against the PIIE's estimate of 9.1% by 2030.

Thus, the economic gains from the TPP are much more modest for the ITC, with US GDP growing by only $42.7 billion (0.15%) by the year 2032, or by an average of less than 0.01% annually. Indeed, the ITC found that US manufacturing output in 2032 would be $10.843 billion lower with the TPP than without it, with manufacturing employment lowered by 0.2%! And while vehicles production would gain, automotive parts, textiles and chemicals output would contract.

Overall projected gains to US real national income are $57.3 billion, or 0.23%, by 2032, implying an average annual increase of slightly over 0.01% over the next 17 years. The much larger increase in US national income compared to GDP suggests that the TPP will significantly increase (mainly corporate) income from economic activity abroad, presumably from outward FDI. It is not clear how much of this is due to enhanced intellectual property rights (IPRs) or TPP-related financial liberalization, or if such income changes have been considered. An alternative possibility is that the terms of trade will change sufficiently in favour of the US.

US trade balance to worsen

The ITC expects the TPP to have small positive effects on the US economy. Dropping the usual CGE modelling assumption of an unchanging trade balance, it adopts a controversial methodology to project changing trade balances. According to the ITC, US exports and imports would be $27.2 billion (1.0%) and $48.9 billion (1.1%) higher than ‘baseline projections' without the TPP, thus increasing the US trade deficit to $21.7 billion in 2032. It projects that US exports to new TPP and other FTA partners would grow by $34.6 billion (18.7%) while US imports from them would rise by $23.4 billion (10.4%).

The ITC projects increased exports of $27.2 billion in 2032 (in 2017 US dollars), less than a tenth of the PIIE's projection of $357 billion in 2030 (in 2015 dollars). It expects manufactured exports to rise by $15.2 billion, while such imports would increase by $39.2 billion, increasing the net manufactures' trade deficit by $24.0 billion.

Although US services' output is projected to increase by $42.3 billion (0.1%) due to the TPP, the net services' trade surplus is expected to contract as the increased services' imports of $7.0 billion would exceed the increased exports of $4.8 billion. Exports of services to non-TPP partners are projected to fall by $11.8 billion, less than the projected increase of $16.6 billion to TPP partners.

The ITC report also projects worsening trade balances for 16 of the 25 US sectors it featured, including vehicles, wheat, corn, auto-parts, titanium products, chemicals, seafood, textiles and apparel, rice and even financial services. It projects a declining market share of US manufactures, natural resources and energy of $10.8 billion as such exports increase by $15.2 billion while imports rise by $39.2 billion by 2032. In the US, agriculture would gain most, with output $10.0 billion, or 0.5%, higher by 2032. However, the costs and implications of the still growing US agricultural – including biofuel – production subsidies are largely ignored in the report.

Who gains, who loses?

While dropping the typical CGE modelling assumption of constant labour supply, the ITC nevertheless seems to assume that the economy naturally tends to full employment. It thus projects overall employment will increase by 128,000 full-time jobs, or by 0.07%, due to the TPP. The trade deficit increase due to TPP implementation would result in 129,484 American job losses, including a manufacturing employment drop of 0.2%. Hence, this has to be largely attributed to services employment growth despite the expected fall in the services trade surplus.

Even if a more comprehensive and balanced assessment of the costs and risks of TPP provisions finds the potential for improved net economic welfare for all in all TPP countries (which the ITC report does not claim to show), TPP measures will not compensate losing participating economies and stakeholders. And while there may be measures available for beneficiaries to compensate losers in some national economies, nothing in the TPP itself will ensure such compensation, let alone adequately compensate those who will lose.

Furthermore, the ITC analysis does not seem to consider public health and consumer welfare losses due to higher prices, and reduced access due to broader, stronger and longer patent and copyright protection -- although higher prices for pharmaceutical drugs, software and other forms of intellectual property will impose substantial costs on the public and governments.

Implementing the TPP will greatly profit some large corporations, especially those getting IPR and financial rents. Meanwhile, real incomes for employees, especially the less skilled, are likely to be further depressed, as in the past, due to international competition following trade liberalization. Compensation for such losers is virtually unheard of in developing countries, and declining in developed countries, as they are hardly ever advocated by current conventional wisdom, let alone in the TPP Agreement's 6350 page
 

DigoSSA

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Married skydiver Luke Aikins become the first to jump 25,000 feet into a net without a parachute
  • Aikins jumped 25,000 into a net Saturday evening in Simi Valley, California
  • Found out he had to wear a parachute just hours before - but did not use it
  • The skydiver, 42, has done more than 18,000 jumps and stunts in Ironman 3
  • His four-year-old son and his wife both watched his record-breaking jump
An American skydiver has become the first of his trade to jump 25,000 feet into a net - without a parachute.

Luke Aikins, 42, completed the record-breaking stunt on Saturday evening in Simi Valley, California.

He hit the 100-by-100-foot net perfectly, quickly climbed out of it and walked over to hug his wife, who had been watching with other family members.

Just before climbing into a plane to make the jump, Aikins said he had been ordered to wear a parachute but indicated he wouldn't open it.

As the plane was climbing to 25,000 feet above the drop zone he said the requirement had been lifted and he took off the chute.

He fell for about two minutes, then flipped onto his back at the last second and landed perfectly to cheers from those gathered to watch.

Aikins had rehearsed the jump earlier in the week, aiming to land in a trawler-like fishing net 20 stories above the ground and about a third the size of a football field.

He has completed more than 18,000 jumps in the past and did stunts for the Ironman 3 movie.

Aikins said he found out about an hour before he was scheduled to jump on Saturday that the Screen Actors Guilt required him to wear a parachute.

He didn't elaborate but the jump was broadcast on Fox television as part of a one-hour TV special.

Aikins said wearing a chute would actually make it harder for him to properly put himself over the 100-foot-by-100-foot net.

He argued wearing a parachute would in fact make the jump more dangerous because he would have its canister on his back when he hit the net at about 120 miles per hour.

Aikins did however need an oxygen tank for the first 10,000 feet of the fall. He jumped with three other skydivers, one of whom was in charge to collect the discarded tank.

His jump was shown on television with a delay and a warning to viewers not to try this themselves.

'If I wasn't nervous, I would be stupid,' Aikins said before his jump.

He spoke with a grin as he sat near his landing spot earlier this week following a day of practice jumps — all made with a parachute.

Aikins planned to jump with three other skydivers: one carrying a camera, another trailing smoke so people on the ground can follow his descent, the third ready to collect the oxygen tank.

The other three were to open their chutes at 5,000 feet, leaving Aikins alone with no one to hand him a chute in midair as has been done before.

When his friend Chris Talley came up with the idea two years ago, Aikins turned it down cold.

'I kind of laugh and I say, "Ok, that's great. I'll help you find somebody to do it. But it's not for me. I've got a wife and son, and it's really not for me.'''

A couple of weeks later he changed his mind.

Talley, who'd worked with Aikins on other projects and was helping Amusement Park Entertainment pitch a show to Fox, said Aikins is the only skydiver he's confident can actually pull this off.

Aikins made his first tandem jump when he was 12, following with his first solo leap four years later. He's been racking them up at several hundred a year ever since.

His father and grandfather were skydivers, and his wife, Monica, has made 2,000 jumps. His family owns Skydive Kapowsin near Tacoma, Washington.

His father, two brothers, his sister, his wife and their four-year-old son all planned to watch him jump Saturday at an old movie ranch on the outskirts of Simi Valley. His mother won't be there.

'My mom supports me. She doesn't support this project,' he said with a sheepish smile.

'To me, I'm proving that we can do stuff that we don't think we can do if we approach it the right way.'


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SamuraiBlue

Captain
Here is something you don't see very often, a vehicle that was on anime actually built and fly.
I believe many of you know about the single flying jet rode by Nausicaä the protagonist of Valley of the winds. Well someone just created a live version and it flies with a person one board.


Don't think she will stand on it as it flies but who knows.
 

AlyxMS

Junior Member
Registered Member
Here is something you don't see very often, a vehicle that was on anime actually built and fly.
I believe many of you know about the single flying jet rode by Nausicaä the protagonist of Valley of the winds. Well someone just created a live version and it flies with a person one board.


Don't think she will stand on it as it flies but who knows.
Didn't know this aircraft but did you know if any ballast was used to shift the mass center around?
Most aircrafts in movies/anime had pretty unrealistic center of lift, it would be pretty hard to make it fly without using ballasts to move the center of mass to a reasonable point.
 

SamuraiBlue

Captain
Didn't know this aircraft but did you know if any ballast was used to shift the mass center around?
Most aircrafts in movies/anime had pretty unrealistic center of lift, it would be pretty hard to make it fly without using ballasts to move the center of mass to a reasonable point.

The personnel steering is the ballast.
Here is the details about this actual vehicle.

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B.I.B.

Captain
The government can increase taxes, introduce military conscription, but its gone too far on this one IMO. They are a bunch of spoil sports.

"However Chinese authorities are trying to bring an end to the controversial trend with the Ministry of Culture last year saying the practice distorted the 'cultural value of the entertainment business' and was 'uncivilised'."



"Strippers and funerals are normally considered mutually exclusive - but not so at this bizarre ceremony.

Footage from a funeral in
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shows two scantily clad women gyrating next to a man's coffin as they dance to Maroon 5's hit Moves Like Jagger.

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