The two world wars were not the same. WW1 was a stupid war that happened for stupid reasons, and there were no real moral differences between the sides. Many nations tried to use the war as an opportunity for independence by collaborating with the opposing side. Some of them were successful.
In Finland, we still call infantry Jägers in honor of those who went to Germany to receive military training and to fight against Russia.
Kansas would probably spend very little on defense, if it was a sovereign state.
Defense spending is not virtue signaling. It's money countries may have to waste if they feel threatened. But if there are no credible threats, it's better to lower the taxes or to spend the money on something that actually benefits the citizens.
From a European perspective, the primary purpose of NATO between 1992 and 2022 was to avoid wasting money on defense. Europe was willing to accept a world order, where the US was the hegemon and paid for the privilege. If the US does not want to do that anymore, European countries will grudgingly increase defense spending. To the extent they feel threatened.
The is no expectation that Europe would help the US in the Indo–Pacific. That's out of the scope for NATO, which is a North Atlantic alliance. Even territories such as Hawaii and French Guiana are considered distant colonies under the treaties, rather than integral parts of the member states. If someone invaded them, it would not concern NATO.
> the primary purpose of NATO between 1992 and 2022 was to avoid wasting money on defense. Europe was willing to accept a world order, where the US was the hegemon and paid for the privilege
We shifted away from that policy in the Obama administration as part of the Pivot to Asia. We publicly vocalized this shift in strategy [0] during my time in the policy space.
Europe did not listen. Instead, they dragged us into Libya because France ran out of munitions within a week of air strikes. That should have been the first warning call.
Then Western and Northern European nations (except the UK) ignored the second warning in 2014 following the Russian annexation of Crimea and the War in Donbas.
> The is no expectation that Europe would help the US in the Indo–Pacific
Your leadership have messaged otherwise, like the UK [1], France [2], and Italy [3]
Yet we cannot trust the rest of Europe, especially looking at Spain's [4] steady pivot to China and Merkel's pro-China policies [5] before the recent pivot [6].
This is why under the Obama administration we ourselves began pivoting to Asia, because we are not in a position to fight a conventional war with both Russia and China.
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And what are you complaining about? We're taking the gloves off now. Deal with the Russians on your own while they are being armed by the Chinese [7]. The leaders you voted to power should have listened when we publicly and privately vocalized this shift in policy for decades.
The Obama administration announced the shift in strategy. And European countries responded by grudgingly increasing defense spending. To the extent they felt threatened. That amounted to an increase from ~1.3% of GDP to ~1.55% between 2015 and 2020.
You could compare Europe to Latin America, which generally spends even less on defense. Because most countries there don't see any significant threats that could be countered with military force.
France and the UK are kind of weird. (I'm not sure about what Italy is doing in that company.) They still consider themselves major powers and occasionally use military as an extension of foreign policy. But that should not be confused with defense. (Which is why I think that the rebranding of the Department of Defense as the Department of War is intellectually honest.)
And to clarify my point, I'm not complaining about anything. I'm saying that defense spending is fundamentally wasted money. It may be necessary if you feel threatened, but necessary waste is still waste. Spending more on defense than you actually need is just stupid.
Also, it looks like you are misunderstanding Europe. European leaders are not "our leaders", as almost all of them are foreign leaders. Europe not a collective entity with a centralized government. It consists of a large number of sovereign states, each of which has its own interests and foreign/defense policies. And most of the time, they act according to those interests, rather than according to what people in Brussels (or Washington) would find convenient.
> To the extent they felt threatened. That amounted to an increase from ~1.3% of GDP to ~1.55% between 2015 and 2020.
Yet continued to trade as usual with Russia and took no steps to reduce reliance on Russia in strategic sectors.
Like I said, deal with the Russians on your own now. The only state we can even somewhat trust to help us in the Indo-Pac is France.
> France...
You realize France has territories in the Pacific that saw severe instability instigated by Chinese disinformation networks [0] right?
> I'm saying that defense spending is fundamentally wasted money. It may be necessary if you feel threatened...
Which we in the US are when looking at our presence in Pacific. If European nations cannot handle their own affairs, then we may as well put them in their place.
> Yet continued to trade as usual with Russia and took no steps to reduce reliance on Russia in strategic sectors.
And some European countries are still doing that. They are even trying to strengthen their ties with Russia. Because they are sovereign states with their own interests, which do not always align with the EU, NATO, or the US.
And the outcome of that pivot might not be what you wanted. Because the American world order does not maintain itself on its own. Not even in Europe.
Without American commitment, Europe will likely become more fragmented. Some countries will remain aligned with the US. Some will become unaligned, and some will align with Russia and/or China.
The budget is ultimately limited by the government's ability to extract value. There are no similar limits to the quantity of laws and regulations that can be in effect at the same time. Legislators can of course impose an arbitrary limit, but they can just as easily increase the limit or repeal it, if they don't like it.
The number of laws is limited by several factors, among them:
The ability of the governed to remember and attend to them all
The resources of the government available to explain, interpret and enforce compliance
The willingness of the governed to obey them without a gun being brought out
The willingness and ability of the government to bring out a gun to enforce them
For instance, when the rule of avoidance in late imperial China created a 5x increase in rate of new regulations, the result was up to 30% decrease in tax collections and a counterintuitive increase in the power and influence of local clerks, gentry and militias, laying the groundwork supportive of the eventual mutiny against and collapse of Qing rule
Renewables are hard when your population density is high. The availability of renewable energy scales with the size of the country, while the demand scales with population.
Last year, German onshore wind generated 111.9 TWh, or roughly 320 MWh/km2. I can't find the numbers of onshore wind in the US, but the total energy generated by wind power was 453.5 TWh last year. Divide that by land area, and you get ~50 MWh/km2. Because the US has developed only a small fraction of its wind power potential, new turbines can still be built in favorable locations, and capacity factors are high. Germany has to build new turbines in marginal locations, with lower capacity factors.
That is partly true. High population density means a lot of roof area. Solar is perfect to put on roofs, you need no extra land. It is basically free (save the investment of the panels which pay off quickly nowadays)
Rooftop solar is easy in suburban sprawl. You don't need extra land, if you have already used extra land for densely built but sparsely populated residential areas. But if you instead have cities, towns, and villages separated by agricultural and natural areas, solar competes against other uses for the land.
> High population density means a lot of roof area.
Up until you start building cities and building with more than one floor. Then you have more people and power usage per roof area. Then you have to put solar panels on some unused area around city to offset that high population density.
They might be able to tax the exports to the UK but not to the EU. As a member of the European Economic Area, Norway cannot impose trade barriers within the single market.
The job training you get at 20 is often obsolete when you're 40. For example, many women of my parents' generation trained for jobs in the textile industry. But eventually the jobs disappeared, as Finland got too wealthy. A bit more abstract education would have made it easier for them to find a new career.
But not too abstract. From my point of view, the weird parts of the American educational system are the high school and the college. Everyone is supposed to choose the academic track. I'm more used to systems with separate academic and vocational tracks in both secondary and tertiary education.
There are certain advantages to having separate academic and vocational tracks, but that tends to lock out late bloomers. Quite a few of prominent US scientists and business leaders didn't have good grades going into secondary school.
Job training is a lot more than learning how to use equipment. It's about showing up on time, dealing with coworkers and being a productive member of a team. That's best learned on the job and is a big reason people don't like new grads. Its like going out on a date with someone that has never had a girlfriend. Let someone else break them in and screen them.
Higher ed unfortunately almost desocializes a lot of people. They live in a bubble and become insufferable obsessed with politics and social issues that are disruptive and inappropriate in the workplace
economies and national policies are complex. only the most straightforward things, like ending patriarchy, wars and modifying interest rates, have firm evidence of causing this or that thing on a national scale. nobody knows if so and so nuanced educational policy really matters in an intellectually honest way.
Pretty much every economist who has ever thought seriously about UBI has already given an answer. Most of the funding would come from abolishing progressive income taxes. Instead, the highest (or second highest) bracket would start at 0. With the current federal tax rates and incomes, that would raise an additional ~$3 trillion/year.
Electricity prices go up when you have access to customers who are willing to pay more. If grid connections to other regions are limited, people in regions with a lot of cheap generation (such as Norway) pay low prices. But if you add grid connections without increasing generation capacity, prices start equalizing between regions, as every power company tries to sell to the highest bidder.
Norway could power itself fully with domestic hydro. But it chose not to, as the power companies make more money by importing foreign power when it's cheap and exporting hydro when it's not.
Washington state has the same problem to a lesser degree. California pays more for cheap Washington hydro, which causes the costs to go up for us, although I guess not as drastic as Norway since our electricity is still considered cheap.
> "Norway could power itself fully with domestic hydro."
We have events where the we cannot get enough load from domestic production. Typically in winter when water freezes.
In Finland, we still call infantry Jägers in honor of those who went to Germany to receive military training and to fight against Russia.