I had to see with my own eyes. In terms of value-added at market rates, China ($4.9tn) is now as big a mfg power as US ($2.5tn) and EU ($2.5tn) COMBINED. -'-
Richard Baldwin @BaldwinRE
8:45 AM -- Mar 10, 2023
236Likes118Retweets
Reagan promised us if we'd just deregulate our media and abandon local ownership requirements for newspapers, radio stations, and TV outlets that we'd end up with a flourishing, diverse, and edifying media sector. He kicked it off by ending enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and Bill Clinton carried it forward with the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Instead, a small handful of billionaires and rightwing companies own virtually every consequential radio and TV station in the country; most of our local newspapers are bankrupt; more than half of the ones left are owned by a couple of New York-based hedge funds; and hate, lies, and disinformation have proven more effective at driving profits than honest information or concern for the public good so they've become an unscrupulous business model on the right.
Reagan promised us if we'd stop blindly trusting our government to do the right thing, a healthy skepticism would make our country's bureaucracies more efficient. After all, he claimed, there are no truly competent people working in government because, if they were really talented, they'd be out making more money in private industry.
Instead of getting a more efficient government we ended up with an entire political party made up of fascist-tolerant hacks, sellouts, and opportunists anxious to dance to the tune of any billionaire willing to fund their way of life. They now populate the majority of the Supreme Court, the federal court system, control the House of Representatives, and run about half of our states.
Reagan promised us if we'd just drop all those silly regulations on gun ownership and throw the doors open to weapons of war in civilian hands, the result would be "an armed society is a polite society."
Instead, bullets are the number one killer of our children and the GOP's answer to "the crisis of our youth" is to ban drag shows.
Reagan promised us if we'd just kill off the "welfare" programs of the New Deal and Great Society, then Americans would no longer be infuriated when a "strapping young buck" was using food stamps to "buy a T-Bone steak," while "you were waiting in line to buy hamburger."
Instead, as the social safety net collapsed, poverty became more deeply entrenched and hunger among America's children has increased since the 1980s.
Years ago, I was up late one night in an Asian city watching financial news on a hotel TV. A young American host was interviewing a very wealthy German businessman at a conference in Singapore.
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