US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5298

On October 02 2025 07:01 GreenHorizons wrote:
It's possible. People are free to elaborate/articulate their own answer. ChristianS particular perspective is that 1 isn't where people here are at, so we can check that. If someone believes 1, 2, or 4 is the best way they would fulfil 3 they can just answer with 1, 2 or 4.

3. is basically just "I dunno, every family for themselves?" (or at least that's how I interpreted ChristianS there).

On October 04 2025 00:24 Gorsameth wrote:
So in the last piece of insane Fascist moved by the US government.

Here is a list of enemies within published by the government.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/09/democrats-unhinged-crusade-against-ice-fuels-bloodshed/

This shit should be very scary to see happen so openly.

On October 03 2025 11:40 KwarK wrote:

Razyda coming in out of the blue with the idea that Nazism made Germany strong. That their internal policy was successful, it was only foreign policy where they went wrong.

Weirdly enough, that’s not a thing historians think. Historians think Germany was already a European great power in 1933 due to the demographics, cutting edge science and engineering, and industrial output. Historians think that the spending projects of the Nazis are inseparable from their cannibalism, that they could only sustain the state by consuming first the property of German Jews and then the wealth and people of other nations. That without all the murder it all falls apart.

But you know who thinks that it was the Nazis who saved Germany? Who thinks that they had some great domestic policy ideas? Nazis. And also Razyda. Isn’t that weird?

Edit to explain in more detail just how much bullshit the Nazi economic mirage is.
In 1933 military spending was 3% of German gross national product, by 1936 it was 13%, by 1939 it was 23%. Almost 1/4 of all labour was nonproductive, not helping improve the quality of life of Germans, used entirely for destruction, by 1939.
The economy was transformed into a war economy which did a lot to lower unemployment but devastated consumer spending. The material consumption of Germans fell dramatically under the Nazi economy, they worked harder than ever and yet had less and less to show for it.
Between 1936 and 1939 rearmament was consuming 60% of all capital investment in Germany, new factories, new equipment, new jobs, were all going into the war.

That's an absurd amount of Keynesian stimulus, almost overnight the Nazi government became by far the largest employer and investor in the German economy, everyone had a job because the demand of the total war economy was so high. But anyone who understands Keynesian stimulus knows that it doesn't actually make the economy bigger, it doesn't increase the number of workers or the number of hours in the day, it rearranges the existing economy. You're taking value that was being used for one thing and using it for another. If the government is suddenly spending vast amounts of money on nonproductive purposes then this must surely either be balanced by massively increased taxes which literally take value out of the private economy to make room for the government or by inflation.

There are a few answers to this.
1. Debt. In 1932 it was about 8.5b RM. By 1939 it was 47.5b. (and by 1945 390b).
2. Seizures. The property of all German Jews, then later the considerable treasuries of Austria and Czechoslovakia.
3. De facto seizures of bank balances. They created a second currency called MEFO bills. When a German arms supplier was paid for weapons they weren't paid with cash, they were paid with MEFO bills which they then declared were redeemable for cash. They issued shitloads of these and made them hard to redeem. They issued far more MEFO bills than they actually had cash for, by 1938 there were 6b RM of MEFO bills outstanding and never redeemed. In theory the supplier had been paid, but in practice they had an IOU, an off the books government debt that would never be cashed. Industry was forced to hold their "cash" balance in MEFO bills rather than actual cash.
4. Actual seizures of bank balances. The Nazis gave German workers jobs in rearmament and paid them. The German workers deposited their pay at the bank. The banks were then required to "loan" their money to the German state, despite there being no possibility of repayment. The German state then had money to pay the workers. The German workers were being paid with their own money, they had been converted to slaves, unable to actually spend any money on themselves. Not that it made a huge difference to them because there weren't any consumer goods to buy in the first place. And if you were a German who didn't like your new status as essentially a slave the Nazis were happy to have a discussion with you about your thoughts on labour relations.
5. Out of control real terms inflation. Germans had jobs, they were getting paid, but the German economy wasn't producing consumer goods for German consumers, it had been converted to a total war economy fueled by out of control debt spending. Paper money was in ready supply but actual goods were hard to come by. Costs spiraled and there were shortages everywhere. The Nazis addressed this in two ways. First, they simply set wages and prices from the top. It didn't actually address the issue but they're a police state and didn't need to. And secondly, they banned trade unions and murdered rabble rousers who complained about working harder than ever for less real pay.
6. Literal slavery.

The Nazis were incredibly bad at economic management. Like absurdly so, and in a way that is absolutely inseparable from the fact that they were Nazis. You've got to remember that these are not educated people, they were idiots with absolutely no clue what they were doing but were confident that they could micromanage it all with sufficient dedication to the ideology. They bounced from crisis to crisis, papering over the cracks with ever increasing amounts of theft. Can't pay your workers? Rob the bank. Workers complain that the price has gone up? Force the stores to sell it at a loss. Store complains about selling it at a loss? Seize the store, execute the owner. Can't run the store at a profit? Rob the bank again. And, as with all totalitarian systems, it was extraordinarily corrupt. If you knew the right person you could get your MEFO bills redeemed, and of course they'd take a cut. If you knew the right person you could have the prices set in your favour. If you knew the right person then you could complain about the raw materials to your factory being too expensive and the supplier would get a visit letting them know that their patriotic duty was to give you what you needed at the price you wanted.

Nazis are cannibals. Always have been. Always will be. Nazi apologists like Razyda always like to imagine "what if" scenarios that don't make sense like "what if the Nazis just stayed within Germany" or the perennial "what if the Nazis tried to fight WW2 in a rational way instead of dedicating half their war effort to eradicating the Slavs". Well, if they did that then they wouldn't have been Nazis. Nazism as an ideology cannot be separated from the spiral of seizure, slavery, murder, and war, because that is the only fuel the engine of Nazism burns.

Recommended for further reading.
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
I can put it on google drive for anyone who wants it.

On October 04 2025 04:20 decafchicken wrote:
How is life in Belgium? Everyday I get closer to moving to there (i have dual citizenship from my grandpa) before America turns fully into a fascist hell hole.