I calculated great power status based on GDP per capita, population, military expenditure, GDP, and surface area. I calculated the percentile of those 5 variables and averaged them out to get a great power score of each country. The top 10 countries are, along with marking the indicators they fall short of 90% on: The …
Author Archives: stidmatt
Musings about BRICS
BRICS is basically two things: An investment bank A payment system which is an alternative to SWIFT BRICS was founded in 2009 just after Russia invaded Georgia. The entire purpose of BRICS is to give Russia a way to move around European and American sanctions because of their military endeavors in Europe. BRICS comprises 10 …
Induced demand
When armchair urbanists talk about why expanding highways will never work to solve transit, which is true, they claim the reason is due to “Induced demand” and that the highway will simply fill up with more cars, making the point moot. But they then claim that the solution to housing prices is to build more …
What we could have had
In 1968, after a hundred years of operation, Pennsylvania Railroad merged with New York Central and the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroads to form a monopoly of train service in the northeast and Midwest. 8 years later it was bankrupt, and Conrail was formed. Conrail had a near monopoly on train service in …
Reform immigration
A British tourist is currently being wrongfully incarcerated in Tacoma, Washington. She was doing a 4 month backpacking trip up the West Coast, and then attempted to enter Canada to finish up her trip and then was wrongfully denied entry. I don’t know if it was due to “lack of funds” or not having an …
A history of Republican trifectas
Trifectas are an interesting feature of bicameral Presidential systems. In theory they allow a President to pass a lot of legislation quickly, depending on the power of the President. They are a demonstration of the political skill of both the President and their party, allowing rapid changes of the country with minimal opposition. The Republican …
Great Presidents
Which presidents were the most effective based on pure results? I’m going to empirically measure this based on election results. Categories are based on the following: How many terms? How many congresses with a trifecta? Average percentage of the popular vote? This list does not judge based on the morality of the decisions the president …
Puerto Rico debt crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_government-debt_crisis Puerto Rico experienced a debt crisis in 2014, and there are some major misunderstandings about its causes. First of all, the triple tax-exempt bonds made the situation better, not worse. By being triple-subsidized Puerto Rico was able to offer a lower interest rate compared to competitors which saved the commonwealth money. The debt crisis …
Where to go from here
It’s pretty obvious to me that the major point of Trump’s agenda is to ensure Russia colonizes Ukraine again. NATO has traditionally waited for America’s lead on security issues since we are the largest member. However, we comprise less than 50% of NATO’s population and less than 50% of NATO’s military expenditure. It looks to …
Design a government
There are several steps to designing. your system of government and most countries use a unique form of government. Out of 136 democracies listed on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electoral_systems_by_country 106 countries use a completely unique system used by no other country. So using only the features currently used by a government, and only considering democracies, here are the …