About the only advantage it has is intimidation factor. Kaiju are spectacularly intimidating, and a gigantic robot kaiju would definitely make some people evacuate their bowls on the spot. However there’s no edits you can make to the laws of physics that make it better at anything, from a tactical perspective, than a different form factor.
I can’t speak for the whole of Canada, let alone the world, but as far as I’m concerned as long as one monstrous Republican shill still draws breath and sits in Congress, it will never be safe to trust America. If it’s so easy for America to fall to fascism once, it can and will fall again until there is massive systemic reform. It will be a generation before people like me are willing to put the past behind us. You are still engaged in illegal wars, holding foreign heads of state hostage, keeping refugees in internment camps and every masked ice agent still walks freely on your streets.
Talk to me when the Dems actually do something about the incalculable harm America has done to the world. Boycott, divest, and sanction, for all genocidal rogue states, America included.
Honestly, I don’t expect much but a slowdown in the rate of terrible things coming out every day. We will need to continue organizing, continue building support networks, continue finding ways to protest, support our neighbours and get people prepared to fight for all our sakes. This is a positive, in that it drops a boat anchor that will keep us from falling deeper into authoritarianism… for now. It will not, by itself get us out of this mess. It will not undo the damage that’s been done, and most importantly, it won’t last forever. It’s an opportunity to take a breath, regroup, and prepare ourselves for the hard work ahead.
Democrats in Congress isn’t going to save anyone. It’s just going to stabilize things, temporarily. It’s a place to start, not a finish line.
Edit: What’s far more promising is the number of state level elections that went blue. This is a massive opportunity to undo past state governments’ illegal election fixing and corruption, pass electoral reform, and get serious about laying the ground work to keep someone like Trump from ever taking power again.
A question asked in bad faith isn’t stupid, it’s a question in bad faith. Bad faith questions are quite common unfortunately. Rhetorical questions, begging the question, questions that are based on a sneaky false premise, etc. The subject might not even realize that the question is bad faith, because they acquired that question elsewhere. The fact it was honestly posed by a proxy, doesn’t change the fact that the question is bad faith.
The amount of money being printed has almost nothing to do with inflation (ie. the dollar losing value). As long as it’s balanced and kept in tension by a relatively responsive interest rate, it doesn’t really do much. Big, sudden floods of cash one way or the other make a lot of disruption (like QE after the recession, or COVID checks), but that’s actually pretty rare.
You made a silly comment that sounds more like someone who listens to corpo media than someone who understands economics. How am I supposed to know what you do or don’t understand at that point?
Porn. The internet is made of Porn. Always has been.
You really don’t understand how money works do you. If you want to get technical, private banks print more money than the fed.
I mean, technically yes, but also, that’s kind of a bait and switch scenario. You’re honoring the debt, but what you received is worth less than implied, which means most people are going to think twice about buying bonds again.
No, but playing debt-ceiling chicken every few months isn’t a good sign.
Quick and dirty version. Governments create bonds, which is kind of like the opposite of a loan. It’s a request for money, and in exchange they agree to pay what you give them back with interest. Then they shop around for people to throw money into the bond. That money is then used to pay for government services, equipment, facilities, etc. and taxes are collected to pay out the bond. It’s a bit more complicated but like I said, quick and dirty version.
The general idea is you get a lot further asking people to float you a loan than you do hoarding gold or something to try to scrape together enough money to do big projects, and people aren’t going to revolt or rob the treasury for a stack of unpaid loans.
Who does the state owe the debt to? Lots of people. Mostly rich Americans but also foreign investors, other governments, retirement funds, etc.
Does the US have a problem paying its bills? It didn’t always, but in recent decades, yes.
What it comes down to is the whole “presenting proof of identity” idea isn’t terrible in itself for the most part, it’s a) what counts as proof, b) how is that ID issued and what obstacles are they adding to get it, and what will it cost you, b) how is it checked and otherwise used to track you.
The hard part to understand for those of us in civilized countries is, you have to figure all this out in a country where no one can trust anything from anyone ever. Governments, people, churches companies, charities, not even yourself. You can’t ever trust anyone in the US, because almost everyone is lying about something, and there’s never any consequences for it. Their real motto should be “Caveat Emptor.”
Unless you have a few billion to spend on campaign donations, don’t bother. You will not get anything out of Republicans. As long as someone made money off the death, it was and will be considered a cost of doing business.
Unless you have money the Republicans want you dead. You are nothing but a liability on their balance sheets.
Drones
Bigger Drones
Drones
Under no circumstances is walking better than flying, tactically. Once you introduce airborne combat, a mech loses all tactical benefit. Tanks/mobile artillery? Sure, that you can justify, mostly because it’s low profile and easier to hide if necessary. In almost every other circumstance, if you can have an airborne gunship you want an airborne gunship, and you don’t even have to alter the laws of physics to make them work.
The only way you could make the case for mechs is if whatever magic Clarke-Tech you were imagining for moving them was astronomically more efficient than flying for approximately the same tonnage, and you were desperate to conserve as much energy as possible, to the point where flight just isn’t an option, and even then, the most efficient machine would look something like a gigantic beetle.