Peace keeps moving farther away

[papa tiger]

Making money is what life is all about. If you ain't got the instinct you are just a gonna be a looser. It's a no brainer.

These foreign countries where hell is happening, well! Its Gorilla warfare by cleverness.
All they know is killing, rapping, knifing, suffering and starvation. Call it Maffia protection if you can.
If you haven't the stomach, isn't tougher than that you should just butox out. Let em kill each other.

 

[Irishdude]

I think capitalism needs to have some restrictions though or should have had to prevent the situation we're facing today. I watched a short video talking about how the rental situation has been exacerbated by investment groups who've bought up whole apartment blocks, renovated them and then re-rented at rates so high that the lower income folks can't afford them any longer. Sure, people need investment income or whatever, but seriously, should they be allowed to buy all the rental stock and prevent seniors, students and lower income people from having a place to live?

You bring up a good point. There ought to be restrictions in certain areas. Rental housing is one. In the US, private equity groups are also buying up medical practices. This is an absolutely horrible idea and should be banned outright. Of course the whole healthcare system in the US is a mess and needs a top to bottom overhaul. Too bad we can't just start with a clean sheet of paper.

We have been involved in looking for a "starter" house for my daughter and we are competing against all-cash investors seeking to snap up and either flip or rent out such properties. Not sure what the solution is for that, but someone seeking to own a first home right now is totally scrod.

 

[Debrah N.]

You bring up a good point. There ought to be restrictions in certain areas. Rental housing is one. In the US, private equity groups are also buying up medical practices. This is an absolutely horrible idea and should be banned outright. Of course the whole healthcare system in the US is a mess and needs a top to bottom overhaul. Too bad we can't just start with a clean sheet of paper.

We have been involved in looking for a "starter" house for my daughter and we are competing against all-cash investors seeking to snap up and either flip or rent out such properties. Not sure what the solution is for that, but someone seeking to own a first home right now is totally scrod.

We're looking down the road here in Canada too, and seeing the same situation regarding our health care, beginning to rear it's ugly head. I live in a province where our premier has openly opined on the merits of privatizing our health care and how good it would be if people began to have 'health savings accounts' and how we could encourage our employers and friends to contribute to that sort of savings! Our doctors and nurses are quitting entirely or leaving to work for the private clinics that are starting to find ways around our public health care system.

And our youngest daughter is only living in her own home by the grace of her grandmother giving her a bit of her inheritance early. I can't even imagine myself, facing the prospect of saving up $200,000 and then living with a $million mortgage! Talk about sleepless nights!

 

[David777]

Warmongering neoconservatives allied with Wall Street have Military Industrial Complex agendas they realize cannot be publicly proclaimed.

Neoconservatism - Wikipedia

Frank neoconservatives like RK and NF recognize that they are proposing imperialism as the alternative to liberal internationalism. Yet both K and F also understand that imperialism runs so counter to American's liberal tradition that it must ... remain a foreign policy that dare not speak its name ...

While F, the Brit, laments that Americans cannot just openly shoulder the white man's burden, K the American, tells us that "only through stealth and anxious foresight" can the United States continue to pursue the "imperial reality [that] already dominates our foreign policy", but must be disavowed in light of "our anti-imperial traditions, and ... the fact that imperialism is delegitimized in public discourse"...

The B administration, justifying all of its actions by an appeal to "national security", has kept as many of those actions as it can secret and has scorned all limitations to executive power by other branches of government or international law.

 

[AnnieA]

Warmongering neoconservatives allied with Wall Street have Military Industrial Complex agendas they realize cannot be publicly proclaimed.

Neoconservatism - Wikipedia

Frank neoconservatives like RK and NF recognize that they are proposing imperialism as the alternative to liberal internationalism. Yet both K and F also understand that imperialism runs so counter to American's liberal tradition that it must ... remain a foreign policy that dare not speak its name ...

While F, the Brit, laments that Americans cannot just openly shoulder the white man's burden, K the American, tells us that "only through stealth and anxious foresight" can the United States continue to pursue the "imperial reality [that] already dominates our foreign policy", but must be disavowed in light of "our anti-imperial traditions, and ... the fact that imperialism is delegitimized in public discourse"...

The B administration, justifying all of its actions by an appeal to "national security", has kept as many of those actions as it can secret and has scorned all limitations to executive power by other branches of government or international law.

The trouble with this Wikipedia link is that it mostly deals with politicians and parties, not the behind the scenes war hawks who stayed in power regardless of the party of the sitting president. The term neo'conservative' is no longer a good choice since the end of the Cold War. The term suggests a slant to one of the top two parties though both parties are now equal opportunity warmongers post Cold War. Look at the employment history of Victoria Nuland to get an idea of the reach of the warmongers across party aisles. For more about her and the reach of her and her ilk across the parties and the years, there's an excellent January 19, 2021 Salon article that's too political to post.

 

[AnnieA]

....This time, the chosen enemy is the Muslims who have moved into Germany.

I don't think it's as simple as shifting the "chosen enemy" from WWII era Jews to present day Muslims as the OP implies.

Jews in Germany assimilated starting in the late 19th Century and were successful in many fields by the time Germany was weakened and suffering economically after the defeat of WWI. As Jews prospered in upper class Germany at a time of hyperinflation so extreme that middle class Germans carried bags full of increasingly worthless Reichsmarks to buy a day's worth of groceries, Jewish leaders in business and government who had prospered were increasingly resented. It was more than just envy; there was an underlying antisemitism that predated WWI. The age old antisemitism, prosperity of post-WWI Jews, economic suffering of the German middle class were all ingredients in the recipe that led to Hitler and the Holocaust.

Muslims as the "chosen enemy" today has much more to do with the lack of assimilation of misogynistic, homophobic fundamentalist Muslims into not only Germany but much of Europe and the UK. We've had some wonderful skilled, legal immigrants from Muslim backgrounds in Western countries. I've worked with (dated one) wonderful doctors. But the Muslim immigrants flooding into Europe and UK currently "seeking asylum" are largely unskilled and deliberately segregate themselves to actively continue the fundamentalism that led to the abuses in the countries they left and the freedoms of the West are their "chosen enemy".

 

[chic]

I think capitalism needs to have some restrictions though or should have had to prevent the situation we're facing today. I watched a short video talking about how the rental situation has been exacerbated by investment groups who've bought up whole apartment blocks, renovated them and then re-rented at rates so high that the lower income folks can't afford them any longer. Sure, people need investment income or whatever, but seriously, should they be allowed to buy all the rental stock and prevent seniors, students and lower income people from having a place to live?

I agree. I live in a college town. Luckily the three decker houses around the university are independently owned so the students have affordable housing with normal size apartments.