Polyticks: Bob Butler's Perspective

[Bob Butler]

Yes.

I've since noted that the fake electors were major Republicans in borderline states that Biden won. Could they be charged with seditious conspiracy? In most states they were a major part of the overthrow plan. Would 20 years plus being disqualified from office be the implied threat to the Republicans hesitant to push a pardon gambit?

Gads, I hope the end game doesn't get that wild.

[Bob Butler]

I note one issue in the recent SVB collapse is the Democratic propensity for regulation to prevent disaster, and the Republican tendency to free institutions from regulation. I suppose one case supporting regulation? I don't see a country wide pattern as there was in 2008, but it is making a bunch of people nervous. I get the feeling that enough nervous to paranoid people could cause this to cascade.

I know two financial service companies that I have dealt with (a safety deposit box and a car loan) recently sent a "Don't Panic" e mails. Not inclined to panic.

One big high powered lawyer on MSNBC gave her formal legal and economic opinion. If she didn't make firm rules for her teenaged son, he would be an idiot. She figures that the same could be said for SVP's decision makers.

[Bob Butler]

It seems like Bing and ChatGPT are more describing what Strauss and Howe came up with, the idea of an all out crisis conflict every four score and seven years. What John added was the Marco Polo bridge effect, that there is an instinct to hate, oppress, and/or kill those that are different. Related, sure, but not the same.

[Bob Butler]

But this didn't stop the Japanese taking a huge risk by attacking America.

Even in the Industrial Age, the risk for military expansionist cultures was the defensive economic cultures uniting against you, This was the problem that confronted Napoleon and Hitler. It has grown greater in this age of deliberate containment, not to mention sanctions, proxy war and insurgent war.

This doesn’t mean the WW II Japanese weren’t taking a big risk. They were. But in order to maintain their existing aggression they needed the raw materials to the south. They underestimated the reaction of the ‘soft isolationist’ Americans, the waking of the sleeping giant. Aggressive conquest was and is becoming more and more a risk. The question is whether Xi will take it. He has enough problems as is. He needs the capital that the remnants of globalism is providing.

[Bob Butler]

Just learned from Dr. Ben Carson on Fox News that immigrants from Nigeria and Ghana have no wealth gap with whites in America, because of their hard work culture.

This is never mentioned by liberals because it violates their narrative.

Nigeria is 11th in West Africa and 100th out of 163 countries globally. Nigeria has an income inequality of 1 to 14 for the top 10% to the bottom 50% of the population and 1 to 37 for the top 1% to the bottom 50%.

Wealth disparity in Ghana is extreme. The top 10% of Ghanaians consume more than the bottom 60%, and the lowest 10% only consume only 2%

(On the US.) By 2021, the top 10% of households by net worth owned 70% of the country's wealth. Between 2007 and 2019, household wealth declined for all but the top 20%, despite a historic period of GDP growth. The wealth divide is further explained by differences in ownership of key assets and debts.

I suspect that immigrants going to Nigeria and Ghana are doing so to take advantage of a good opportunity. Immigrants to the US are moving to avoid hardship and oppression. Fox, thanks to the Dominion discovery, will clearly lie to the people to tell them what they want to hear. Thus they increase ratings and as a result advertising. For many at Fox, it is all about the money. Yet, I mostly believe them this time. It is a case of apples and oranges. The people are immigrating for very different reasons.

But I did take a look at the wealth divide numbers. The answers came from divergent sources, likely with different methodologies and agendas. They should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, they illustrate that wealth inequality is a global problem. A few have absurdly much, while many have little or nothing, I assume it is much the same elsewhere, hardly unique to the three countries.

This does not seem to have risen to a crisis issue this time around. Issues like BLM, Covid, the Big Lie, the insurrection, China's troubles and the Ukraine war have been much more to the foreground. Yet, I have a feeling that come the next crisis, a few people taking most of the wealth will be a big priority and target. The Democrats do talk about taxing the rich. In any given issue, you have to expect the Democrats backing the people and labor, the Republicans backing the elites and corporations. Some movement in either direction has taken place under various administrations. But this has been a sideshow compared to the big issues? I suspect it won’t be next time around.