Trump understands their fears. He told the Detroit Auto Club that he was going to put a 35% tax on cars from Mexico if Ford moved its plant there. He talked about other manufacturing jobs being outsourced. Doesn't even matter if he can do anything about it but the fact he said it--while Hillary didn't--meant all the difference in the world.
He seems to have completely missed the reason for 9/11, which is not strange since it was not until the 2004 speech (http://worldpress.org/Americas/1964.cfm) that bin Laden explained the reason for the attacks, namely "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy".
In this light it must be regarded as a great success, not a failure, especially since the self bleeding politics continued without much opposition long after 2004.
No, he only started saying that after the US occupied Iraq. Before the invasion his justification against America had strong religious basis. It's especially clear from his earlier writings.
The thesis "Bin Laden destroyed the 9/11 towers to bankrupt America" makes very little sense when you dig into it. It would mean Bin Laden planned to:
- destroy the twin towers so
- the U.S. would justify an invasion of Iraq and
- actually invade Iraq
- and occupy Iraq for a prolonged period of time (and not quickly pull out)
- so America would devote resources here
- thus bankrupting itself
Steps 2 and 3 (and possible 4) are huge leaps of faith. It's absurd to believe he planned all that out. It clearly fails Occam's Razor. Plus, it doesn't fit with the historical context of what he said and wrote at the time.
I'm not sure why you're clinging to this? The motivations behind the September 11 attacks have been widely discussed, see here for a summary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_a.... You'll see bankruptcy or causing economic damage is not mentioned anywhere. Bankruptcy came into the picture after 9/11, when then US was prepping invasion of Iraq.
If you really believe "Bin Laden destroyed the 9/11 towers to bankrupt America", do find some pre-9/11 evidence of this and update the Wiki page so others can know.
How do you know this isn't post-fact rationalization from him?
I'll agree that 9/11 was successful. Bin Laden clearly wanted to damage the US in some way, and got deeper damages than he could dream about. But I doubt he had any intention of "bleeding them at the point of bankruptcy" at the planning stage.
Of course, it's difficult to know for sure if that was the original plan or not. However the actions seem to be quite consistent with that strategy: Choosing Afghanistan (the grave of empires) as the base of operations, and the selection of targets in the attack looks like an attempt to enrage, not just to cause fear.
Whatever the actual plan was, I do think it involved provoking US to attack Afghanistan.
I don't understand. There were 15 people jailed who took part in illegal activities. But the vast majority of Icelandic bankers did not take part in illegal activities. They just did a really really bad job. Therefore they weren't jailed.
Unless you think that Iceland only had 15 bankers?
Mathematically, tau is clearly superior, since it represents a full circle. The question is whether the gain is big enough compared to the trouble of introducing a new constant. It's not like pi is going to disappear any time soon.
Wow, 60 lives were saved and 40 persons less had surgical complications! Just in 3 month in Ontario.
Of course, there was not enough data yet to conclude any improvement within the 95% confidence interval, but still, it does hint at a great reduction in serious mistakes.
> The miseries from bank runs and crashes are real, but even so, the total impact on human welfare from fractional reserves has been overwhelmingly positive.
It surely has been positive in the past but that does not mean it is positive now or in the future.
We are entering a new era, where (economic) growth is no longer necessary for human development, due to automation and that an increasingly large percentage of innovation is in software. In a world of progress without growth, we cannot have an economic system that requires growth to function properly.
So true. The real problem we are facing is not lack of growth, it's getting used to the situation that we'll never again achieve absolute employment, since the need of human labour is shrinking. Depending on our choices today we may end up in either Star Trek or Elysium kind of society in the future.
I can only applaud Switzerland taking seriously this, as well as basic income initiative. If anyone is able to pull it through, it's them. The only pity is that the current discussion is made in German, so most of the anglosphere won't be able to read or contribute to the discussion directly, and would be left to low quality "journalism" as a source of information about the debate.
An event like this is important as an eye opener, to show the citizens that there are alternatives to the current car focused city. If enough people like the alternative version, it will be easier to make reforms to reduce traffic in the future.
