Yes we are. In a mortgage the bank gives you the money today, for the promise of payments in the future. So for a bank far out payments are nearly worthless today. So they will not give you better conditions for a 50year mortgage compared to a 25year one.

The further in the future profits are, the less they are worth today. As in getting $1000 today is better, then getting a promise of being paid $1000 in a decade. After all if you got the $1000 today you could have invested it and got a return on it. So lets say you know you can get a return of a rate of 5%. The $1000 today invested over a decade would be $1000 * 1.0510 = $1628.89 in a decade. You can also use it the other way around, to estimate what the $1000 is worth in the future. As in X * 1.0510 = $1000 -> X =$613.91 That rate of return is called the discount rate.

The issue with getting money in 50 years is that it ends up being nearly nothing today. So it is just a horrible idea.

Anybody who believes a 50 year mortgage is a good idea, does not understand discount rates…

Democracies can plan ahead and do so all the time. Most laws and system stay in place even with changes in government. In fact you see that a lot in climate policies. Stuff like combustion engine or fossil boiler phase outs, carbon caps, subsidies for green technology and plenty more, which are for a long time. The UK has halved its annual CO2 emissions since 1990 and a good number of European countries are not far behind.

The West is not united on the issue. The EU got a hard lesson from Russia, that fossil fuel dependence is a massive problem. So you see actually quite large investments into the green transition. This is building on some good progress earlier. Obviously Trump doing what he does scares the EU, which currently imports way too much LNG from the US to easily replace. There is push back from the fossil fuel industry, but the laws in place and general direction are good. It is too slow however.

The US as the other large Western power went in the other direction. They elected Trump and currently work on blackmailing the world using oil. This year alone, they bombed Iran, moved a massive fleet towards Venezuela and used sanctions to destroy Russian oil exports. So the three largest oil producers, who deliver a lot of oil to China and are not some sort of vassal to the US.

Gross profit is not what you think it is.

Walmart pays employees, taxes, interest on loans and a lot more other regular expenses. Those costs are not included in gross profit, but in net income. That is obviously much lower.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/net-income

2billion per month. So that means 24billion in a year. Last year Walmart had an income of 19billion.

Reading his Wiki page, he does sound rather reasonable. Support for Occupy Wallstreet, running as a UK Labour candidate, openly calling not to elect Trump and also calling the US Libertarian Party “lunatics”.

Me looking up the project: At least they figured out that they need a metro, given they plan the Nusantara Autonomous Rail Transit. Turns out it is a bus.

Unlike many other countries in the world, Spirits have the same right as humans in Manchuria. Your anti spirit racism is just disgusting.

Source: https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Manchuria

Exactly enough money to bridge the period between ending the war and having created enough jobs in the civilian economy. Right now unemployment is basically zero and given all the dead Russian soldiers that is going to be rather possible.

We are talking about $200B of Russian government assets in the EU. That is enough to pay the soldiers and workers in the military industry for some time until the economy can recover. Even if a lot is lost and lets be real that is happening with military spending as well.

Right now Russia has massive fuel shortages all over the country, the coal industry is collapsing, there are rolling black outs in some regions and high inflation. The base for recovery is pretty low. Add fossil fuel exports to the West at global higher prices and it goes a long way. Nothing some good propaganda can not handle.

Russia has some massive advantages ones they have peace. One is the assets they have in the West. We are talking billions and they could be sold to help out the local economy. The other one is lifting of sanctions. They sell a lot less gas and oil under market prices. So having those lifted would help the economy a lot.

It then is a matter of giving everybody who looses their jobs in the military sector a new one. That can be done with infrastructure spending or something similar.

Who cares. It is better that the government has a shit ton of debt, then almost everybody else. At least if it is used well. Company debt serves the rich and private debt has much higher interest then public debt. So if used well it is not a problem at all. Especially if you borrow in your own currency.

In reality both the US and Eurozone should just forgive the debt their central banks have bought. That if anything is what QE is for.

The transition between unipolar and multipolar is inherently unstable. BRICS wants the multipolar world, so it is destabilizing the US world order. That means change, which can be for good. However the transitions tend to be bloody. We unfortunately see some of that. I just hope we do not end up with some US-China war.

The Paris Climate Agreement and still binding, but a lot of countries would rather everybody else does something about it and petrostates want no action at all.

As for Cuba, the issue is taking action. Words are cheap, but nobody wants to actually help Cuba.

SLAPP protection.

By democratic on a grassroots level you mean that if you try democracy, you can see the roots of the gras growing above your grave?

That was kind of the case for the US as well. They became Germanys largest trading partner basically because Germany needed to replace Russian oil and gas. That has happened, so trade is probably going to fall.

Cheap EVs for Germany, but not the US…