May 9, 2024: The May '24 Report is up.
News: April 23, 2024: Dwarf Fortress 50.13 has been released.
News: February 4, 2021: Dwarf Fortress Talk #28 has been posted.
News: November 21, 2018: A new Threetoe story has been posted.
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The amazing thing is that's not the worst part of what you just quoted. That earth monitoring stuff NASA is doing is, besides what it's does to help climate research, also just about the only thing that lets them do anything orbital or extra orbital.QuoteThe new president-elect also has plans to abandon climate research, transfer Earth monitoring funding from NASA to NOAA, and strengthen the U.S. military’s stance in orbit.I got excited for a second, but nevermind. This is fucking disgusting. Space exploration is a mission of peace and scientific advancement. Stop militarizing space, you bastard! Even the Cold War didn't manage that!
So Trump wants to increase American defence budget by roughly 10%...Eh... maybe, but he's going to have to get the money for it, first, as the article notes. While delivering promises of massive tax cuts. Not impossible, but it's another one of those "may get him killed if he tries" things, considering we really don't have that much give in our domestic spending these days. If he starts slashing that and nixes the ACA at the same time, well... there's going to be a non negligible number that's going to die anyway.
If he will also force NATO allies to do the same... We can get a new very entertaining arms race
So, how do you couple money with supply and demand? One might think barter, but that doesn't work for mass scale economies.Well, there's this thing where the strength of the currency is more or less based on the power and reliability of what ensures it, or something fairly close to that. Like, say. A country's government or somethin'. Oddly enough, it's one of the more economically stable ways of going about things, particularly if managed correctly.
Speaking of farming subsidies, didn't one of the Republican candidates say that they'd get rid of farming subsidies? May have been Trump, but I forget which one it actually was.He did say something along those lines at some point, checking. It was more of a "get rid of all subsidies and let the free market sort it out". Said some stuff that would contradict that too, though, of course.
Though Trump, if it was him, hasn't mentioned that since the debate where it was mentioned I don't think. Not aware if he ever said it more in his speeches.
The alternative isn't farms run by local labor, the alternative is no local farms and import everything from Mexico, where the workers are paid even less than they get here (which is why they travel).Eeehhh... not entirely true. There's still a market for local and in-country grown stuff, after all. It'd just be more expensive and produce would mostly be imported
It's exploitation, but the Mexican workers come here because they get more than they would otherwise. So "end exploitation" is all well and good as a line in the sand, but sometimes people agree to be exploited because they're benefiting as well.
Sometimes I wonder if some politicians are actively anti-environmental. Heh, imagine one day, there's a severe hurricane, and a politician gathers support to dump oil and toxic waste in the sea as retribution. Not likely, but regrettably not unlikely enough.Some absolutely are, straight up explicitly, bought and paid. One of trump's advisors or somethin' used to be a tobacco lobbyist (denying that tobacco caused harm) that transitioned into doing the same sort of work for the energy industry (denying any and every thing climate change), just as an example. There very much are politicians, in the US and elsewhere, that are actively working to destroy the environment of the areas they potentially oversee, are aware of the problems they are causing, and just straight up don't give a damn.
