I don't get what you're saying. Let's say I made $300k per year for 10 years, and I knew that's the most I'll be able to make. I could just put 2/3 of that away, which would be $2 million, which could then compound over my entire working life, until I'm 65, and easily be worth the 4 to 10 million you're talking about. That would still leave me $100k/year to live on, which is a comfortable life, and after I retire from football I could still do other jobs to put money in the bank. In no case would I be broke. You're just excusing bad decision-making as if it's oppression. NFL players have every opportunity to live a very comfortable existence. If they don't because their failed high school math, that's only on them. And even if you failed math, financial advice isn't that expensive. Neither is a basic book on personal finance.

It's actually surprising the number of people who get drafted into sports teams who get a signing bonus, and actually take the cheque to a check-cashing place, because they don't have a bank account. And whether or not it's a plutocracy, western nations, and in particular the US, have the most social mobility of any society in history. So while I agree that having money gives you a big head start, ignoring the fact that there are countless examples of self-made millionaires in every generation means you're being disingenuous. Homes are not as affordable as in the past, but even if you have to rent, anyone who can set aside 15 to 20% of their income into a tax sheltered retirement fund will definitely be a millionaire by the time they retire. I just did the math... if you work from age 20 to 65 and only make $40k per year, you live with a room mate so you can afford it, and you put away 16% and get the standard market return of 5%, you'll have a million dollars when you retire. Most people who are dedicated can put a lot more away than this ($40k is a pretty meagre salary now). And that's ignoring that anyone with ambition could stop and start their own small business with the 100k they'd already saved 10 years in, and potentially make much better than a 5% rate of return. This is why underachievers hate the US... their underachievement is staring them straight in their face.

Your point is basically disproven by example after example in the sports world. There's no end to the list of retired ball players who are flat broke 10 years after retiring.

Well damn. Yes. Though, now that I stop to think about it, the Pacific is kind of crazy in that the Western Pacific is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the Eastern Pacific is in the Western Hemisphere.

And now I have a headache.

Or more likely this one.

Ok, yes, it appears to be something like this. Interesting.

Does anyone have experience with the devices in the pictures? They kind of look like rack mount switches, but they have all these antennae sticking out. I've never seen a device like that. Is it an off-the-shelf piece of equipment? What are they typically used for?

This ain't the early Cold War anymore. While there are certainly some super-secret weapons platforms out there, a lot of military capability is deliberately communicated and even put on display because it deters conflict.

When the Soviet Union fell the Pentagon's priorities shifted from "World War 3 against the USSR" to "wars against countries with marginally effective air forces." So when the B-2 came online, it served the Pentagon's mission better to show it off. "Look at our invisible bomber. You really think crossing us is a good idea? Be a shame of bombs just fell out of an empty sky on you without any warning whatsoever."

China wants the US to know that it can launch stealth aircraft off of its carriers because that allows it to use its carriers to assert control of the Eastern Pacific. China doesn't regard war with the United States as inevitable. Consequently, it's interested in convincing the United States that a war in the Pacific isn't worth fighting. That means eroding American confidence in American strategic and technological dominance so Americans know that a conflict with China will be costly.

This is targeted directly at American isolationists: "do you really want your kid to die for Taiwan?"

Can't they all just get a job picking vegetables? Apparently we need lots of those.

This misses the main point. Nobody wants to invest money in the US right now for new capital projects because the tariff situation has everyone on hold. Look at the auto manufacturers... they're not investing in building out new lines or launching new models. They're refurbishing existing lines and maintaining their existing tooling instead. The meta is "keep doing what you're doing until this blows over." That's what's driving the "no hire, no fire" logic. Now with USMCA under renegotiation, this will just take longer and longer to resolve. Expect this to last for years.

As a historian the only caveat I'd advise there is that we are unlikely to see a long, drawn-out slog like WW2 again. Production capacity is great but the next Great Power war isn't likely to take place over years or even months. So China's technological edge is likely to matter but it's tempered with a willingness to stockpile and maintain systems which may never see use.

Doing that at limited production scale is one thing. Doing it at massive, "we're going to fight a serious war with this stuff" scales is another. China, like many authoritarian regimes, has shown itself to be dazzled by the propaganda value of wonder weapons. The CJ-1000, most recently, seems like a very impressive missile system but if it doesn't exist is sufficient quantity to turn the tide against American assets in theater it's just a waste of money.

Of course, China is also famously closed lipped so it's hard to tell. It might turn out that they have tens of thousands of those things. Probably not, but maybe.

There isn't this massive change where suddenly we went from fairies and unicorns to Mordor. Trump himself is far more authoritarian than the US as a whole. We're currently witnessing that tension between Trump (and his supporters) and the existing US democratic institutions. Certain institutions appear to be breaking, others are holding, and most are under significant strain. But compare that to China where Xi runs a cult of personality, shoots any messengers who bring him bad news, and nobody makes decisions themselves at any level without explicit direction from Xi. The US isn't at that point yet. It's *slowly* and *incrementally* moving in that direction. The way to fight it isn't to use emotions and shouting. Nobody listens to that, and everyone tunes out. The way to do it is to 1) acknowledge the people who voted for Trump for practical everyday reasons, and acknowledge their problems, 2) stop being so ideologically captured by academic ideas that the vast majority of people think is weird or doesn't apply to them (mostly identity politics) and then 3) put together a platform that sells a vision of hope for the future instead of the current vision of the end of the world that the left is so intent on selling. Their vision gets lots of clicks, but it doesn't get votes from the mainstream.

I'm not American, and I'm aware of many of the authoritarian leanings of the current US administration. We're currently living through a test of democratic institutions across the west. Those institutions are holding to various degrees, but barely. But to compare western democracies to Chinese autocracy as if they're equivalent is bonkers. You have to recognize it's a matter of degree.

From the government and military's point of view, this is exactly the reason they want a flourishing free market economy, so that there's lots of infrastructure to call on when they need it. The demand for ships was real, and the market adapted and supplied them. When the demand went away, the market adapted and turned to building other things.

That take is just so far from reality it's bonkers. People with high credit scores tend to a) not take on as much debt, and b) get significantly better interest rates when they do. The last time we switched mortgage providers, our mortgage broker said our credit scores were probably the highest he'd seen in over a decade of doing this, and he went back to the lender and negotiated an extra half percent lower interest rate than what they offered, which was already below prime. Credit score is a measure of risk, that's all. If you're high risk of default, they charge a premium. People with high credit scores tend to borrow money for things that improve their financial situation in the long run: student loans, mortgages, and a car loan for a modest car to get them to work. Maybe a loan to start a low risk business, like an electrician. People with low credit scores borrow money to buy smartphones, TVs, decked out pickup trucks, and even doordash orders. i.e. stuff that has no payback.