Economics, Money and Debt
What is the message here?
If you are a MAGA and or simply are a Trump supporter, do not read “The China Issue” of WIRED Magazine. You won’t like it for two reasons:
Right there on the cover, the magazine gives away the plot of the entire issue:
CHEAPER AI, SMARTER ROBOTS, FASTER TRAINS, WEIRDER APPS, SCARIER DRONES: WELCOME TO THE CHINESE CENTURY.
The first thing you will read is this paragraph:
Whether you realize it or not, you’re already living in the Chinese century. From batteries to milk to electric vehicles, China is undoubtably doing it better—while the rest of us kick our feet up and watch. China is soaring ahead of the US in a space race called by Trump; China is putting up buildings in a day’s time; China is light-years ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to solar energy.
On page 12, you’ll see an article titled “Power Play, ” by Zeyi Yang, a senior writer at WIRED. The summary line is:
“With factories and manufacturing deals on nearly every continent, Chinese battery companies are taking over the world.”
The article continues:
Chinese manufacturing is spreading far beyond China’s borders. in the pas decade, at least 28 Chinese firms have built or announced a minimum of 68 lithium battery factories overseas. By the end of 2025, nearly half of the had gone into production.
Trump believes the way to win the technology race is to hamstring American production by deporting experienced workers and not allowing new workers in (unless they’re white Christians). Meanwhile, he punishes our best research schools (like Harvard) for being too “woke” (whatever that means), and he takes money from NASA and other research sources.
Finally, he makes it almost impossible to fund new manufacturing, because the tariff rules change daily at Trump’s whim, so no one can trust investing in the future.
Then, on page 16, you’ll see an article titled, “Hello Humanoid,” which describes China’s lead in devoling in human-shaped robots. The lead paragraph of the article reads,
“The first workforce to walk among humans will almost certainly be Chinese.”
Sadly, America will really, really need those robots, because Trump, for no reason other than pure hatred, is on a mission to please his bigot MAGA followers and deport everyone not born here. (He’s tried to deport many who were born here, but amazingly the supplicant Supreme Court, by the thinnest of margins, decided to uphold the clear words of the Constitution regarding birthright.)
In any event, robotics, the future of manufacturing and home appliances, will be dominated by China.
Turn to smart watches, which have gone from ubiquitous to universal in China, and will be so in the U.S. Apple makes most of its watches in China, some in Taiwan and Vietnam. Another article in WIRED reads:
At what age should a kid get a smartwatch? In China, parents are buying them for children as young as 5. Kids can use the watches to buy snacks at local shops, chat and share videos with friends, play games and stay in touch with their families.
And then:
These days, it’s local imports that are exciting Chinese consumers. It’s local brands, and some are going global.
li-Ning Shadow Runner Sneakers: Chinese consumers are embracing domestically born sportswear that blend performance with street style aesthetics.
Herbeast Reishi Mushroom Sunscreen SPF50:Sleek packaging and science-forward claims treat makeup and sunscreen as lifestyle products signaling the wearer has superior taste and self-discipline.c
Huawei Free Clip Open-ear Wireless Earphones: Looking more like jewelry than dorky earbuds, the FreeClip series shows how Huawei has evolved into a design powerhouse.
Changee Ceylon Black Tea Latte is part of a wave of homegrown coffee and tea brands in China like Luckin Coffee, Heytea, and Mixue, which have gradually chipped away at Starbucks’ share of the market.
To summer Kunlun Snowmelt Candles and perfumes blend Eastern-inspired scents with minimalist design, reflecting the growing appeal of carefully curated home environments for younger Chinece consumers.
Songmont Mini Drippy Roof Bag-Chinese shoppers once gravitated toward handbags from labels like Louis Vuitton but now brands like Songmont are finding traction with consumers drawn to understated silhouettes, thoughtful details and the idea that food taste doesn’t require a foreign name.
Meituan Power Bank – Meituan’s bright yellow power banks are nearly unavoidable in Chinese cities, stacked outside restaurants, subway station, and inside malls. A dead phone is a genuine crisis, cutting off payments, navigation, messaging and even access to buildings.
The power bank demonstrates China’s leadership in electronics acceptance by it public. Many other Chines brands — ZEZE Cat Tree with Scratching Board & Play Structure, Lightweight Camping Chair, and Camel Arctic Sentinel Elite Jacket are additional Chinese brands gaining popularity.
Then there was the article that began on page 48: “ECLIPSED.”
Senator Ted Cruz wanted President Donald Trump’s nominee to run NASA, Jared Isaacman, to pledge that the US would not lose (the race to put people on the moon).
Isaacman agreed.
But by the time of his testimony, the Trump administration had started a process that would lay waste to NASA, pushing more that 4,000 agency employees to quit. Then the White House proposed a massive, 24 percent cut to NASA’s budget.
Then, Trump yanked Isaacman’s nomination and named a new pat-time acting chief, a fellow who boasted in his official NASA biography that he is one-half of “America’s first and longest- married reality TV couple.” Then that guy picked a fight with Elon Musk, who’s building NASA’s moon lander. And Isaacman was back in the running.
This disfunction is one of the many reasons why the vast majority of the two dozen sources I interviewed for this story, believe that China will put people on the moon first.
Read the story to learn how incredibly screwed up our space venture is. It was bad before, but now with a President who has no concept of science (he hired yet an0ther fool to lead healthcare, and a n even worse fool to head the military) it will be a miracle if we ever get to the moon. Perhaps a coal-fired rocket . . . ?
Then, there’s energy:
In 2024, the total installed electricity capacity of the planet — every coal, gas, hydro and nuclear plant and all of the renewables — was about 10 terawatts. The Chinese solar supply chain can now pump out 1 terawatt of panels every year.
In China, one problem with all this new solar is that it’s completely over-whelming the national electrical grid. If only there was more electrical storage — technology that holds solar power generated during the day and releases it in the evening — then a lot of the issues that torture China’s renewables market would be resolved.
Of course, China has come to dominate the fast-growing (battery) sector as well.
And they’re revolutionizing another increasingly Chinese -dominated green industry that going fast, cheap and out of control: automobiles.
Tesla’s Shanghai gigafactory was completed in 168 days. It quickly became Tesla’s largest in the world.
Donald Trump hates many people and things, but wind turbines and solar panels seem to hold a special place of contempt in his heart.
His administration has attempted to cancel major offshore and onshore wind projects along with plans for a solar megabase slotted for the Nevada desert that would have been worthy of western China.
Trump and his energy secretary, Chris Wright, often speak of American energy dominance, but they are crippling American firms’ ability to deploy and build the cheapest source of electricity in the history of this planet.
Trump’s focus in life is Donald Trump, his money, his fame, his legacy. He cares nothing for America, for you, for me, nothing even for the MAGAs, who worship him. He would throw any of them under the bus for one extra street or one more golf course named “Trump.”
He is far and away, the best ally Vladimir Putin ever has had. I’m guessing that Putin has something on Trump that is even more embarrassing than being convicted of attacking a woman. (What’s wrong, Donald, did some of Epstein’s young girls refuse you?)
When Trump is insulting someone, which seems to occupy 100% of his time, he often claims they are “communist,” The irony is not lost.
Trump single-handedly has damaged America’s (already poor) health-care system and murdered thousands of believers by denying COVID, then promulgating fake cures, while denigrating the real prevention of vaccination.
He has weakened the military by hiring an idiotic TV talking head with vast inexperience to run the United States military organization. The idiot’s primary action has been to insult allies while firing women and gays and claiming that in this world of computers, high-speed missiles and drones, what we need are muscular men. Intelligence and experience are of no matter.
But hey, what does a weakling draft dodger with fake heel spurs care about the military?
Trump has weakened the workforce by deporting thousands of honest, hardworking, tax-paying immigrants and accepting new applications only from white-skinned people from South Africa.
He has weakened NATO at Putin’s behest by his incessant insults and his attempts to steal Greenland from a NATO member, Norway.
Also, at Putin’s behest, Trump has dragged his feet about supporting Ukraine and even blamed Ukraine for being attacked. So little Ukraine burns as Trump fiddles.
Trump has weakened myriad federal agencies by letting Elon Musk fire at random thousands of good workers, so you whatever services you may have expected from the government will be harder to obtain. After all, who needs people?
Trump has damaged Ameraca’s image among other nations who wonder what kind of fools we are to elect this psychopathic, convicted criminal, often-failing, Hitler wannabe not just once, but twice.
Trump unilaterally ended a treaty with Iran, then started an illegal war after promising he would not start wars and now is begging Iran to enter into another treaty that won’t be as good as the first one and will leave Iran in charge of the world’s most vital oil passage. If you were Iran, would you trust any treaty Trump signed? The mullahs know better, and are way too smart for Dumb Donald.
And we don’t even need to discuss his vile personal life of cheating on three wives, attacked women, cheated workers of their wages, cheated banks with multiple bankruptcies and stole government documents.
Oh, did I mention the inflation that Trump’s war and rediculous, spur-of-the-moment tariffs have caused. Fear not; it will get worse. He hasn’t even served 2 years. Think of the damage he’ll cause in the next 2+ years.
And let us not forget January 6th, when Trump sent a crazed mob to attack Congress, tried to persuade the Vice President to break the law, tried to persuade the Governor of Georgia to break the law, lost 62 court cases where he lied about the election being stolen, continues to lie about it, and now has engaged the full force of the U.S. government to harass and punish anyone who told the truth. Oh, and he pardoned every nut who tried to overthrow the U.S. government, yes, Proud Boys, too.
Finally, yes China will beat us to the moon and set up bases in the most strategic locations, because the only thing worse than people not having democracy is people having a truly stupid, dishonest egomaniac as their leader, backed by a spineless political party, an extremist Supreme Court.
How the hell did we Americans let this happen to us?
Rodger Mitchell
Why war?
Many explanations for war begin with politics. Others begin with economics, religion, territory, or ideology. All are incomplete.
War long predates politics. It predates religion. It predates money. It predates nations. To understand war, we must first understand humanity. We are not programmed for contentment. Humans are programmed for restless dissatisfaction.
The bear sleeps after eating. The deer grazes until full. The lion kills only when hungry. Humans are different. Feed us, shelter us, and make us wealthy. We immediately begin asking, “What next?”
Human desire is never satisfied.” — Book of Proverbs 27:20
That urge has built civilization. It also has built armies. The same restless dissatisfaction that sends explorers across oceans also sends armies across borders. The same curiosity that invents telescopes invents missiles. The same ambition that builds hospitals builds empires.
The engine is the same. Only the destination differs. War is therefore not the cause. War is one manifestation of something deeper. An evolutionary strategy. Nature favors organisms that continually seek improvement. The satisfied organism remains where it is. The dissatisfied organism crosses mountains.
Eventually, one species occupies a valley. The other occupies a planet. That species is us. We left Africa. We crossed deserts. We crossed oceans. We reached the Moon. Now we prepare for Mars. Not because we need to. Because we are restless and never satisfied.
The great irony is that the very qualities that made us successful— curiosity, ambition, cooperation, courage, dissatisfaction— also made war. Throughout history, many powerful people—emperors, kings, presidents, industrialists—have continued seeking greater power long after their material needs were met.
The drive isn’t simply about food or shelter. It’s about something more deeply rooted in human motivation.
Evolutionary psychologists often discuss drives for status, influence, mating opportunities, coalition building, and legacy. Those drives can continue even when basic needs are fully satisfied.
The problem is not aggression. Aggression is merely one outlet. The deeper force is an inability to remain still. This helps explain one of evolution’s strangest paradoxes. War destroys. Yet war also accelerates Medicine. Engineering. Transportation. Communication. Computing.
History repeatedly shows civilization sprinting during its darkest hours. That does not justify war. It merely reveals the extraordinary power of the engine beneath it. The real question therefore is not, “How do we eliminate war?” It is, “How do we redirect the engine?”
Can competition become scientific discovery? Can conquest be limited to exploration? Can nationalism turn to planetary stewardship? Can the desire to dominate become the desire to understand and help?
Perhaps the civilization that reaches the stars will be the one that has learned to compete by creating rather than destroying. Human life survives because it is never satisfied. Civilization advances because it is never satisfied. Science exists because it is never satisfied. Art exists because it is never satisfied. Even this essay exists because its author, at ninety-one years of age, looked at the universe and said, “There has to be something deeper.”
War is not the engine.
Behavior is stimulus → response. One of the strongest stimuli evolution ever produced: Restlessness dissatisfaction.. That restless dissatisfaction gave us cathedrals. It gave us calculus. It gave us Beethoven. It gave us Apollo 11. And it gave us Verdun, Stalingrad, and Ukraine.
The engine neither is moral nor immoral. It simply is an engine. The challenge for civilization is not to extinguish it—that would extinguish much of what makes us human—but to harness it.
To stop making war, we must find other goals. The opposite of war is not peace. The opposite of war is creation. That doesn’t mean peace is unimportant. It means that if the restless human engine ever becomes satisfied, it won’t merely stop making war.
It simply will stop.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell;
MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell;
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A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
“It can’t be that easy.”
When I was explaining to a friend, the basics of Monetary Sovereignty, she said, “It can’t be that easy.” She really meant that if it were so simple, logical and rational, why don’t our thought leaders — the economists, politicians, and media — seem to understand it?
I’ll discuss that question, but first here is what I had originally told her.
A. The U.S. federal government invented the U.S. dollar, which it created from thin air. It still has the infinite ability to create dollars. It never can run short of dollars.
So, the federal government never, never, never borrows dollars. It creates all it needs by pressing computer keys. Those things called Treasury bills, notes, and bonds are not borrowing.
They are deposits in accounts owned by depositors. The government pays them off simply by transferring the dollars to the depositors’ private bank accounts. This is akin to you transferring dollars from your savings account to your checking account.
The purpose of T-accounts is to provide a safer place than private banks, to store unused dollars — not to provide the federal government with spending money. If you were a foreign nation, and had millions or billions of unused dollars for international trading, would you feel safe storing them all in private banks?
Even if the federal government stopped collecting tax dollars, it still could continue spending forever. This is known as “Monetary Sovereignty.”
The federal debt isn’t a burden on the federal government or taxpayers—actually, it’s quite the opposite. It represents the net amount of growth dollars the government has injected into the economy. The more money the federal government puts in, the more the economy grows.
State and local governments don’t have this ability. Like businesses and individuals, they’re monetarily non-sovereign and need income before they can spend.
The federal government’s finances are unique, unlike those of local governments, businesses, or households—it creates its own income by tapping computer keys.
B. The purpose of federal taxes is not to provide spending money to a government that creates all its spending money. It’s to control the economy by taxing what it wants to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what it wants to reward.
A second purpose of federal taxes is to assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring that taxes be paid in dollars.
C. When something is scarce and demanded, its price rises. When the price of many things rises, that is called “inflation.”
Scarcity is caused by excessive demand or by insufficient supply. Thus, to cure inflation, one must reduce demand for, and/or increase the supply of, the most critical items.
D. Cutting demand requires pulling money out of the economy, which can be done by raising taxes, reduced spending on things like Medicare, Social Security, or making it harder for businesses to grow by increasing borrowing costs. All of these are recessionary.
E. Increasing supply can be accomplished via federal financial support for businesses and industries that add to the supply of scarce goods and services. Because scarcities of energy and/or food are the primary causes of inflation, increasing the supply of oil and food cures inflation.
This can be accomplished via federal financial support for energy production and food production. This involves pumping dollars into the economy, which grows the overall economy.
F. For the above reasons, every depression and most recessions have resulted from reduced federal deficit spending, and these recessions and depressions have been cured by increased deficit spending.
None of this seems difficult to understand, yet our thought leaders, the economists, politicians. and the media, seem oblivious to those facts.
They keep complaining that the so called “federal debt” is bigger than the economy, which is a meaningless comparison. The economy is supported by the “federal debt.” The bigger the “debt” the more growth dollars are being pumped into the economy.
And inflations are not cured by causing recessions. Has no one heard of “stagflation,” the simultaneous existence of recession and inflation?
At this point, many smart people might wonder, “How could our thought leaders fail to grasp such simple ideas?” There are really only two possibilities:
One, which I find unlikely, is they’re so clueless that even the most basic concepts escape them; the other, which I believe, is that they’re paid not to understand.
The wealthy use their money to shape American politics. They:fund economists through university endowments and offer them cushy think tank jobs,
influence the media with advertising dollars or outright ownership, and
sway politicians with campaign contributions and the lure of lucrative private-sector roles after their government careers.
Now really, is this hard to understand?Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell;
MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell;
……………………………………………………………………..
A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 