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Author Archives: stidmatt
Two countries, one island
It starts with Spanish and French colonialism. Haiti The Duvalier dynasty which ruined the country. He had a poor relationship with the US. The US was sending millions of dollars of aid to Haiti (in 1950s dollars) at the time, Duvalier stole it, so we stopped sending aid which was just making life worse for …
Why Presidents get over or under rated
Overall, I think Biden will be remembered as being on par with Jimmy Carter. He’s had a good domestic policy, and if that were all we were ranking on, he would easily be in the top 10, but his foreign policy has been a continuation of Trump’s failed policies. I generally agree with most of …
Potential invasions
The War in Ukraine shocked people who have not been observing Russia for quite some time and showed how misguided the foreign policy of the United States has been for at least a decade. It pains me to say so, but Mitt Romney was right in 2012 when he said Russia is our main adversary. …
Abundance of caution
There is a disturbing trend in many circles over the last ten years to not trust the police due to lynching of Black people, primarily but not exclusively men. It is right to be disturbed by this. Police who shoot unarmed civilians should be tried for murder. They then take things to an extreme and …
It’s a Palm World After All
It’s a fluke of history that Apple turned into the world’s most profitable company. It didn’t have to be this way. PDAs have been around since the 1980s, but they were clunky and had small screens until the Apple Newton in 1993. The Apple Newton lasted until 1998 and was replaced with the far inferior …
The reality of Chinese invasions post-Ukraine war
The U.S. will very likely fight a 3-front war against Russia, China and Iran, Palantir’s Alex Karp says https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-us-will-very-likely-fight-a-3-front-war-against-russia-china-and-iran-palantir-s-alex-karp-says/ar-AA1oYglr Perhaps… but China is watching what is happening to Russia’s economy under sanctions, and China is far more trade-dependent than Russia. An invasion of Taiwan would be the end of the Communist Party. The invasion of …
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Climate priorities
You can choose to increase specific carbon free technologies, or choose to reduce emissions, but you cannot do both. With a carbon tax or a good cap and trade you directly choose how much carbon emissions will be reduced by. But you do not have control on how much of the reduction will be from …
How to bring down inflation
There is a lot of talk about how to cover inflation from both Democrats and Republicans. We are seeing various ideas like price caps, scrapping social security taxes, child tax credit, and more options. How do each of these stack up? To find solutions, we have to divide the economy into sectors. The sectors with …
Maximum benefit trilemma
When it comes to maximum benefit pensions, like exist in most developed democracies, you can pick two of the three when your population is not growing fast enough to cover future benefits: Stable currency High benefits Low taxes (yes, really) If you choose to keep benefits high and not increase taxes, you will need to …