The euro group did not follow austerity measures.

Italy's debt has ballooned to 150% of it's GDP, France is heading for 130% in the near future. Whatever happened in the EU, was not Germany's responsibility. Even Greece's debt is way higher than it should be after the Euro zone austerity "cure".

If there had been real austerity and real slashing of the national budgets so that all countries of the euro-zone actually complied with the fiscal pact that says that euro countries should not have a level of debt higher than 60% of it's GDP, then the Euro-zone would actually have some dry powder left to face these uncertain times.

Instead, the only country who seems to try to do something currently is Germany, precisely because it's debt is lower than most Euro-zone countries and therefore it can afford to spend more to try to create growth.

France is running 5%+++ deficit each year and it has not complied with the euro-zone fiscal rules for the last 20 years. Finland has 10% unemployment, Italy is not doing much better.

Where do these countries go from here? Do they cut social services and risk getting ousted in the next election? Do they borrow more and more with not much to show for it? That is the question that is facing these countries and nobody has the answers.

> It's your civic duty to determine when upholding the law degrades you and every else more than following it does.

That’s a lot more complicated. What happens if a foreign power takes over Canada and changes the law? What is the state law goes against the laws stated by your religion?

It’s a thin line, better not deal in absolutes.

ICE has had a press conference and explained why their agents approached the car and wanted to detain that driver. They are claiming obstruction of their operations (18 U.S.C. § 111). It doesn’t matter what I think or what you think, only what they thought and what the subsequent other evidence substantiates either validating their claim or not and what a potential jury might decide on the subject.

I’ve explained elsewhere on this HN thread what I observed from the videos we have all seen by now and why I think it will be difficult to waive the qualified immunity of the officer to pursue criminal charges against him. This particular spur of the thread is about whether or not law enforcement can detain people. They have the force and capability to detain, and they have case law that allows it.

It is an indicator and it's not totally non-meaningful. But GDP growth, when it's at the price of increasing the public debt and inflation, is no real growth.

Instead of looking at the US, let's look at what used to be a relevant ally...

In the eurozone, for example, politicians are hiding the lack of growth behind a growing mountain of public debt and the GDP growth ain't even beating inflation since the 2008 crisis. In 2008 the eurozone represented about 25% of the world's GDP. Now it's not even 15% anymore.

Falling into irrelevancy doesn't begin to describe the state of things for the eurozone: from 25% of the world's GDP to less than 15% in 17 years is more than alarming.

And yet if you look at the eurozone in Euro, it looks like it's been growing since 2008. But it's actually been stuck since nearly two decades now and there aren't signs of anything getting any better in the eurozone. German carmarkers, the number one export of the eurozone, are in huge trouble (with China eating their lunch).

The US and China are, obviously, less fucked than the eurozone but the USA's growth has also been achieved at the cost of a runaway public debt and runaway inflation.

I don't know what protectionism can and cannot do for the US and it's not clear if manufacturing can really come back to the US but one thing is certain: the eurozone is a failure and whatever it is that they did or do should definitely not be copied. Unelected bureaucrats have managed, in 17 years, to drive the eurozone into the ground. It's mostly true for non-eurozone EU countries as well but some, like Poland (which is in the EU but not in the eurozone), are doing fine.

Basically: if you want to slash your part of the world's GDP by 40% in 17 years, do what the eurozone did.

Now we must understand this: the eurozone didn't just slash it's part of the global GDP by 40% in 17 years... They did so while, at the same time, creating a gigantic mountain of public debt and experiencing inflation.

Another 17 years of this, so another 40% loss, and the eurozone would only represent 9% of the world's GDP. And these unelected bureaucrats are so incompetent that I don't discard the possibility that they'll actually be able to crash the eurozone even faster than that. For example at the moment, while german carmarkers are in trouble, EU bureaucrats are hard at work trying to kill them for good.

Anti-americanism and anti-trumpism is a thing on HN but people should really look more closely at what's happening elsewhere.

What about an article from The Economist as to the reasons the eurozone managed to lose 40% of their share of the world's GDP since the 2008 financial crisis?

> That’s because that so-called bubble has been ballooning in size for three decades now, and almost nobody still believes that it will “burst” in any meaningful sense.

That's because Boomers live far longer than prior generations thanks to medical advances. The housing bubble will collapse (at least outside of the megalopolises) once the Boomers finally start to die en masse due to their over-representation in demographics.

But before that, the pension systems will crash hard. For people in systems with redistributions (like most of Europe), there simply aren't enough working age people contributing payments for the pensioners, and for people in stonk-based systems (e.g. US 401k), they will run into the issue that someone has to buy the stocks that the pensioners sell off to fund their retirement, and ain't no one of my generation buying stocks, thanks to us having to spend insane amounts of rent.

Here is the slowed down and zoomed video.

https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/2008976092326203562

Here is what I see in this video…

- Officer at driver side window, reaches into vehicle while simultaneously trying to open the door (I cannot fathom why an officer would be reaching in the vehicle and attempting to open the door if he was giving the driver an order to move the vehicle, but perhaps there would be a reason for this). At this time the vehicle is moving backward, its tires turned to the left shifting the front of the vehicle to the right. The shooting officer comes into view but appears to be stationary. (This suggests that he was probably on the front right of the vehicle before the vehicle reversed). The reversing movement of the vehicle orients its front end to line up with him in front of the vehicle.

- Shooting officer is in front of the car just left of center of the hood when vehicle starts moving forward

- Vehicle tires spin before gaining traction and they are facing forward. The officer is directly in front of the vehicle at this moment

- Vehicle tires are straight towards the officer until after he unholsters his firearm, only at that point does the vehicle wheels start turning towards the right. Also at this point the vehicle begins moving towards the right and the officer begins moving towards his right (to avoid being hit).

- Officer is still at the front left corner of the vehicle when shooting but nearly clear. He is at an angle where it is possible for him to shoot through the windshield at the driver, his body dodges further to the right as he is firing his weapon. Additional shot appears to have been fired after he was cleared of the immediate danger.

When I was a manager I had to take a training based on the book "The Coaching Habit." It left me really sour on the role, and explained some of the behavior of previous managers of mine that I least appreciated, specifically that their approach to management seemed to be to just get me to articulate and explain my problems over and over until I somehow rubber-ducked myself into solving them myself. When that didn't work, it transitioned to "so how can I help?", which would again eventually be turned around into "now you know how to go help yourself", no matter how direct the request was or how much it really needed management authority behind it.

I get that the point of the strategy is to help people with strong director-style personalities to listen and empathize a bit more, but in my experience it ended up being implemented as "my responsibility to my reports is to listen and nod."