Fiery_penguin_of_doom Posts

it does? :S

If a wealthy politician gave you the opportunity to sell your vote for the current presidential election, would you?

Personally, I wouldn't turn it down.

if that happens, we're going to akihabara and wasting our money on doujinshi's, posters, and etc.

I'm curious. All the people who say they're not going to vote because they think McCain and Obama are both idiots, why not vote for a third party? A third party won't win, so it's not like if you vote for some random person, we'll have a Communist as president or something, and voting would show that people do care.

Hell, I think even if you don't want to vote for either candidate or a third party, you should still vote for something. Just because the person who will become president is a douche in your eyes, that doesn't mean that person won't become president.

In life, you sometimes have to pick between two bad choices. If you're at work, and your boss says you can either spend hours filing boring reports about the budget, or you can spend hours filing boring reports about staff, you won't be able to say, "I don't like either option, so I'm not going to do anything."

Who cares if Obama sucks balls? If McCain's going to do more harm that Obama, why not vote for Obama? And vice versa. If McCain's a dick, but he's going to do better than Obama, then vote for McCain. Even if they're both going to do terrible jobs, and we'd be better off with a monkey, TOO BAD! A monkey isn't going to become president as a result of this election. It's either McCain or Obama.

I do applaud people saying they'll vote for a third party. If a third party candidate, or all the third party candidates together, get a large enough number of votes, it could change the way politicians view things. It may not, but at least it could have some effect. It's better to try.

Oh snap! Exploding penguins! All we need is a mistress Etna for this escapade...

NEW RECORD!

Yeah, that stuff was funny.

What, you people whack off to that stuff? I find it too entertaining.

I would if I could -.-

I'm going to just live in Japan if all hell breaks loose.
Majority of Fakku is probably with me.

WE'RE ALL DOOMED! DOOOOOOMED!
Also, the U.S has nukes in the plates. China buys US. Government goes on the fritz and launches nuke.
Nuclear Winter.

Wheee, life's great when you got dumbasses in office.

U.S will stay a super power no matter what. China will probably become a larger super power, but the U.S will not back down that easily. We're either heading into a depression, or a collapse.

I'm moving to Japan.
I'm taking Captain Falcon with me.
Then let him roam the street looking for lolis to prey on.

The US will not be the world superpower forever, certainly, but those calling for imminent demise are being overzealous and premature. Lets look at some of the claims that apocalypsists make and reasons why the US isn't going to recede just yet.

1) The US owes huge amounts of money to other countries.

We do, but the majority of our debt is to individuals and private corporations, through bonds and the use of the dollar as an international standard. What would need to happen for this to become a problem? The world would have to lose faith in the security of US bonds(currently seen as the most secure investment possible) and/or the dollar would have to lose its place as international standard. Certainly, the whole implosion of Wall Street doesn't help confidence in the US government, but it is a worldwide crisis. The government isn't anywhere close to becoming so insolvent as to need to engage in inflationary money printing. In fact, many other nations currently have much higher debts as a proportion of their GDP than the US.

As for the dollar losing it's place, there simply are no better alternatives. The Euro suffers from many of the stifling economic policies of EU countries. The Yuan(China) is current set at a fixed price(too low) by the Chinese government to encourage exports and thus is useless as a standard. If China did let the market value to Yuan, it might eventually be able to catch on, but it would have severe economic consequences in China and require a fundamental realignment of their economy to be successful. Authoritarian regimes are also not popular for economic standards because the government has the power to potentially cause massive economic change very quickly with no resistance, as opposed to democracies, where debates and legislation slow things down.

2) The dollar is in a free fall.

The use of the dollar as an international standard is discussed, above, but here we examine the claim that the dollar is quickly spiraling towards worthlessness in the international world. Simply put, this is dependent on imports vs. exports. The US has been importing more than it exports, known as a trade deficit. If the dollar is strong, the trade deficit should go up, since imports become cheaper for the US and exports more expensive for everyone else. This demand causes the dollar to fall. Right now, with the dollar low, imports should become more expensive and US exports cheaper, causing the opposite effect. This is the position of the Milton Friedman school of thought concerning economics.

3) Who will fill the void?

Russia lacks the economy. The government gets its income from oil and natural gas, which is unsustainable. As energy costs rise, it forces research into efficiency and alternate energy. Additionally, this source of income is no more isolated from world economics than any other. The financial crises hurt a lot of industries and as a result, oil has been tanking. Russia and OPEC are starting to feel the pain. Other than its oil, Russia has no economy, and the government is known for destructive seizures of assets. Not exactly the best way to build markets.

China, the popular pick, certainly has a stronger economy than Russia and has seen monster growth in recent years, but they have a number of problems that they will have to reckon with as well in the coming years. Pollution and environmental destruction are both huge. The government may not care about the morality of these things, but as they get worse and worse, the economic costs start to pile up. Despoiled land leads to unsustainable resource use(for example, slash and burn vs. sustainable logging) and increasing health costs for the population. Additionally, China's non-market currency keeps the economy artificially shifted towards cheap exports. This is not the path to global superpower: the economy will need to advance grapple with the consequences of outsourcing. As China gets better technology and education, the value of labor will be driven up, and the cheap manufacturing sector will face competition from lower wage workers in poorer developing countries like Thailand. Finally, China is dependent on having wealthy consumeristic nations buy their goods. Take away the power of the US economy, and China loses one of their biggest customers. The financial crisis will have plenty of effect there as well.

I'm not saying China will never become a superpower. I think they probably will eventually, but I don't think that they are ready to step into that role in the immediate future.



How? They can sell the bonds to someone else, but bonds have a set rate of maturation. You can't just come demand all the money whenever you want, you get whatever maturation value your bond is at when you redeem it. China could stop buying bonds, which takes away a US financier, $300 billion isn't enough to cause the government to collapse. Hell, we just threw $700 billion at our economy. China would have to cause a crisis in confidence concerning US bonds to really damage us, and I don't know how they would do this(I also don't think they would engage in such economically self-destructive actions).

I say that we stop at cosplay porn vids.

I never said that China wouldn't become a superpower, but it has to control its own personal bugbears before it can reach out and play on the world stage. China gets backbushed by too many things, like the occupation of Tibet and Taiwan (?), the persecution of falun-gong, the poor conditions that the majority of the citizens in China live in, etc. etc. It will have to prove itself that it can reform, and once China does that, I will no doubt it'll become the next superpower.

Five pages till someone asked for pics?

I'm disappointed in you guys.