He Who Laughs Last... the debt to China.

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I've had a recurring thought. With all the talk about China calling the debt sometime, I think it would be kinda funny if they did. In America, we could simply reply, "Ha ha, we spent it on Defense." My business textbook gave a different light on the subject, that somehow getting into debt, via selling treasury notes, betters our economy in that "If foreign investors cannot buy Treasury notes, they might turn to other countries, reducing the amount of money flowing into the United States."

Why do you think it would be funny? I am not sure that they can suddenly recall all the debt (it may be structured like a loan with regular payments). But a severe tightening of the credit market would hurt businesses, lead to layoffs, etc.

Debt is like a car - if driven right, it can be good. If done with recklessly, it often turns out badly.

Anybody who can laugh at the misery towards which the USA is unerringly heading is well on his way to the booby hatch.

Option 2 seems to be correct so far.

If you're in Finland you can have a good laugh, can't you? As I recall, Finland was maybe the only country to repay World War I debt to the USA.

In the sense that over a third of the money the government here takes is spent on DOD contracts, such as weapons research and development. That was the part of "Ha ha, we spent it on Defense." This was not meant to be offensive, though I suppose people like sand program themselves to take offense easy... oh well. Probably doesn't understand that this is an old phrase: "he who laughs last, laughs best."




I don't know how the debt will be handled, if it ever will. Hopefully the USA will handle debt better than the composer Wagner did.

Anyhow, I suppose trying to be humorous in PPR is a good way to see if it is still the lovely minefield of super-opinionated passionate hatred that it normally is.

America couldn't even handle a little country in the Middle East, despite all it's military might.

The President landing on the air carrier and proclaiming 'Mission Accomplished', priceless!

*Badum-TISCH*

Well, the whole theater-of-war, where there's actual campaigns and fighting with official military forces (rather than people carrying or planting IEDs) went very well. That actually ended almost as soon as it started, compared to longer lasting wars, such as the Punic wars or the Thirty Years war. Now, when it comes to the whole staying there and preventing genocide of the different factions, as well as the whole "death to the great satan" rhetoric, it kinda stinks to stay put.

No, not being super passionately hatering on this ... just wondering what you meant. I think the US needs to reign in the debt and lower it over the medium to long term, while improving exports. Not sure if that will happen - peak oil, wars, other things might interrupt the possibility, and even if they don't, there is no guarantee.




Also, regarding:



I am not sure that retaliation is a good synonym for vigorous disagreement. For example, there have been several people on this forum recently supporting the idea of US apartheid, white supremacy, etc ... the vigorous disagreement they got was not retaliation.

It was sand's comment that got me on the tangent really, not you. Anyhow:







I haven't visited here for a while, so I missed out on all that junk. I don't care for the white-supremacy crap. Can we try for French-Irish-Scottish-CanadianIndian-Cherokee-English-Jewish-Italian supremacy, reduce the age of office to 23 and declare me president?

I have no problem declaring you president, but refuse to lower the age of office - if we are going to have a dictatorship, violating one extra provision of the Constitution will only give me extra delight. Thirty-five, Shmirty-five!

We could just reinterpret 35 to be in another base, like hexanary or something... lets see, that would make 35 = 3*6 +5 = 18 +5 = 23. Though I suppose it's more fun just to ignore it than to waste time trying to treat a document written in English as though it were written in cuneiform.

So, I'm president now? Awesome. New law: any employer who fires an employee is automatically charged with attempted homicide. Reason being, that it's extremely difficult to find work, and having recently been fired only makes it near impossible for a person to be rehired. Cutting off their source of income, and thus increasing risk of death by starvation or by involvement in criminal activity.

More hostile and closed.

China does most things by sleight of hand.

They seem "open" to religion, but the fact is that if they can't tightly control it, it is oppressed with an iron fist. I know a guy who showed photos of people in a Roman Catholic Church praying in China. However, he had no knowledge of the political compromises the Vatican had to make to get those churches built (government, not the Pope, picks the bishop over those churches; agreement to not teach or preach anything the government objects to; RCC, by nature, does not actively encourage or mandate reading of the Bible...rather select contents are read to the congregation during mass).

They seem "open" to freedom of expression, but really, government imposes an iron fist on anything not approved of. The Internet is big over there, but the state's ability to monitor and control what is allowed to appear on your computer is so sophisticated that like-minded people (those who think one man should determine what everyone else can see and think) see it as a model for the whole world.

China is a great place....so long as you don't deviate from what they want you to do.

The illusion of freedom, but no real freedoms.

Your joking right. China has the largest military in the world. Any US president knows that going head to head with China is not an option. Why do you that china was treated differently to other communist states?

Besides it is pure debt, whether that debt comes from defence is irrelevant.

Largest or no, technology still plays a vital role. As for comparison of numbers though,

China has 375 million men available for service and 354 million women available, while the USA has 72 million men available and 71 million women. For total number of persons, that would be that China has 729 million persons available and the USA has 143 million persons available. That would be a ratio of 143:729, 19.6% or about 1:5 in terms of the number of our armies to theirs. If Israel in the 6 day war is any example though, numbers are not a major issue. That and a factor of 5 isn't so large either.

Such as, the population of China is about 1 billion, while the USA is 300 million. We have about a ratio of 1:3 compared to theirs. While China would make 1 out of 6 of the world's population, Americans would make out about 1 out of 20. The USA is not a small country, nor is it poor either, with the per capita being the highest for its large population. We are 3rd on the largest population count, and 8th on the per capita count.

PRC population estimate for 2009 is 1,338,612,968 people. Saying China has about 1 billion people is like saying America has no population at all.