Prof. Rich Wolff
Yale Professor and Marxist, Richard Wolff gave a talk in which he argued that the entire West, including the United States, has failed to defeat Russia, and that the US has failed to learn from China’s rise to become a major competitor. China’s economy is growing much faster than that of the US, with an average annual growth rate of 6-9% compared to 2-3% for the US. The US has attempted to stop China’s rise by declaring a trade war and applying sanctions, but these measures have been unsuccessful.
Now, the US is in a war with Russia in Ukraine, which Wolff argues is an attempt to weaken Russia, which is China’s ally. The sanctions applied to Russia have not had the desired effect, and the Russian economy has rebounded from the initial dip. Wolff argues that the US is in denial about the changing world order, and that inequality in the US is continuing to get worse. This has led to explosions of anger and resentment among the population, which are expressed in crime, bitterness, and scapegoating. Wolff argues that the US needs to confront the reality of the changing world order and address the root causes of social and economic inequality.
Michael
“Wolff is full of BS — apparently, out of force of habit.”
It is a terribly destructive thing to say to the man.
It is such a dismissive maybe even violent thing to say
The problem is that the US is trying to compete with its “rivals” the same way the Rockefellers did when they were starting out – by burning up the gas stations of their competitors.
This method is too outdated to be successful, I am afraid.
Wolff is full of BS — apparently, out of force of habit.
Russia and China are the most powerful countries in the world. I explained this in letters to our (US) leadership in 1999 in letters and patiently explained to them that they needed to behave accordingly. They failed to listen. Now here we are. As Sun Tzu taught know your enemy and know yourself and you will prevail. Obviously straight on frontal assaults against more powerful adversaries are bound to fail. I’d suggest as i advised our leadership in letters and phone calls recently. 1.) Recognize the US dollar is losing its role as world reserve currency and there’s nothing you can do alter this as the window of opportunity do so has long passed. 2.) Knowing this work to ensure a “soft landing” when the inevitable happens. Obviously this is going to mean making good relations with the world’s major powers such as Russia, China, India, and Europe a top priority. Obviously destroying the pipeline was incredibly stupid in the unlikely event the US is actually capable of such clandestine actions. Knowing the US wanted to do this Russia would play into it. 3.) BRICS is the future. Work on ensuring the US entry into this. Obviously we will have to start as a junior member, prove our worth and value to the major powers, and work up.
@Peloni
Everything you said is true.
Except Israel, who beats them both, hands down. China is kissing up to Israel because it doesn’t have what it takes to be a start-up nation.
@Ted
To this point, we can not ignore the reality that China has come to stand on the shoulders of giants as she claims to have overgrown them. China was not alone in achieving this feat as the US has stood by and watched as China has capitalized on overt brigandry with its policy of intellectual theft and forced labor to achieve those goals. The Chinese are not stupid people, but they are also not the true authors of the achievements which they have stolen from others. From the transfer of manufacturing towards the cheap uncompetitive Chinese labor, to the Chinese knock-off market, to military and industrial espionage, the Chinese can not be credited as being responsible for their ability to be carried to those peaks of achievement, simply because the West failed to secure the achievements which China stole from them. From the missile designs stolen from Los Alamos back in ’95, to the Hunter Biden sale of braking system for aircraft, to Twitter being deployed to design China’s own WeChat, to the Google aiding in the development of China’s Social Credit tech to monitor their public, China is the author of none of it, even while she is the owner of all of it. Yes, it is true that China has made great strides in marching towards the future domination of the world, but this is due to the corruption which has been coordinated by the Chinese and their American assets to secure the very achievements which China, by herself, would have had no chance of achieving on her own. So, while I do appreciate that Buffet’s sense of national pride is certainly ignoring the massive security failures of the US, I think it is worth noting that the achievements which China stole came from the West which. for all of its shortcomings, is a far more free and open society. Perhaps, the Chinese would have come to develop the same type of achievements as the US in 232yrs as they stole in 45yrs, but I am skeptical as to the truth of this, to be honest.
A major point to consider in regards to the concluding remarks in Graham Allison’s article posted in my earlier comment, is that the decision by the leading billionaires and corporations of the US, from Tesla to Blackrock to Bridgewater to Walmart, to fully place their bets upon the future rise of China over the collapse of the US, has had the unpleasant consequence of placing them in the dubious position of making certain that the future they are backing actually succeeds in being realized. For this to be the case, it was necessary to prevent the US from resurrecting its economic potential back to past levels of success, which might thereby prevent China’s relative rise to overtake America. Consequently, it was important for these corporations to make certain that the return of the US manufacturing base which was a leading factor in the US economic collapse over the decades did not take place. In addition to this, it was necessary for the US to abandon its development into being a major exporter of gas. Of course, any chance of either of these initiatives, either of which might have changed the US economic outlook and threaten the future capital investments of these US corporations, were quite effectively blocked when the 2020 US election was transformed into a fraud based Selection process thru the coordination of multiple domestic and international groups. Thus the surrender of America’s potential economic recovery which was an obvious consequence of the 2020 fraud, would simultaneously serve to render the economic forecasts of America’s greatest corporations backing China’s rise to dominance to become near inevitable consequence…that is should China not collapse from internal strife in the meantime.
@Peloni
It is more than an economic rivalry. It is a contest between the WEF NWO vs the China/Russia/Iran NWO. Will the world be a unipolar world or by a multipolar world? That’s the question. The former involves dominance and subservience, the later involves competition and independence if we can believe them.
The second question is are we better off with our necks under the US jackboot or the alternative. So far China and Russia are better received in Africa, the Muslim World and Central and South America than the US is.
As for Buffet, what took America 232 years to achieve, China took 45 years.
@Ted
The Great Economic Rivalry: China vs the US
China’s 2022 Budget: A Breakdown of the Key Numbers
“The fiscal gap between general public income and expenditure will be 3.37 trillion yuan ($534 billion) this year, or 2.8% of gross domestic product, ”
“The U.S. government has spent $1.93 trillion in fiscal year 2023 ”
“The size of China’s debt problem is truly staggering. At last measure, debt of all sorts – public and private and in all sectors of the economy — amounted to the equivalent of $51.9 trillion, almost three times the size of China’s economy as measured by the country’s gross domestic product.16 Jan 2023”
If anyone can recommend an article which compares the economic health of the US and China, it would be appreciated.
@Ted https://www.worldwide-tax.com/china/china-taxes.asp#:~:text=China%20Taxes,-Home%2FChina%20Taxes&text=As%20at%202022%2C%20an%20individual's,corporate%20tax%20in%20certain%20regions.
China Tax Rates 2022
The tax on an individual’s income is progressive. As at 2022, an individual’s income is taxed progressively at 3% – 45%.
The 2022 corporate tax rate for domestic and foreign companies is 25%.
Small companies pay 5-20% corporate tax in certain cases.
Companies pay 15% corporate tax in certain regions.
Hi-tech companies pay 15% corporate tax.
China Capital Gains
An individual’s capital gains are taxable in China at the rate of 20%.
Capital gains tax for a Chinese company is added to the regular tax.
A 10% deduction at source is made from the capital gains of a foreign company in China.
On taxing capital gains from the sale of real estate, when calculating the capital gain the purchase cost is deducted from the sale price at the 20% rate.
Wolff is right. But I decided to google him because he is a Marxist. He supports Sanders and Warner. He wants a different tax system in which we tax the rich more as in the Eisenhower days because this will lead to a better distribution of wealth. Presently he argues that the current system is making a few people very rich and many very poor. This divides society.
Another argument against enabling the acquisition of great wealth is that inevitably it leads to oligarchs who subvert democracy with their wealth.
In this video he says that China is catching up to the US and will soon surpass it. But China is no longer a communist country. Its economy is based on capitalism. But the question unanswered is how does it tax the rich. I’ll have to look for that.