zlacker

Well maybe European countries should have considered that before spending the last 3 decades shrinking the size of their military. Germany's military chief was ringing the alarm bells in 2023 about their inability to defend their own borders, and that was before Trump came back to power. This is the wealthiest country in Europe.

Germany's GDP is twice that of Russia. EU GDP is 8.5 times larger than Russia.

Yet even in the current state Russia would have very hard time fighting Europe. The Russian military hasn't been this diminished in decades. But the real issue is Europe can't easily spare stuff to help Ukraine because they don't have their own security figured out.

>>dmix+(OP)
None of this addresses why we should see China as a threat at all. We thought y'all had our back - why should we have yours now that you've shown your true colors?

>>dmix+(OP)
While I wouldn't argue that Russia is richer than Germany, I think GDP is a rubbish figure - at least it clearly doesn't translate to anything I would consider meaningful.

For example, can the person of today afford a higher standard of living than one of 20 years ago - unclear, food has become disproportionately more expensive, housing cost has by far outpaced the wage growth, tech has become cheaper, but big-ticket items like cars are proportionally not cheaper.

From this, the person of today is poorer in tangible terms.

Did the infrastructure improve? - some, but I'd say it was a (sub)linear improvement in absolute terms - we certainly didn't build as much stuff as we did in the mid to late 20th century, and what we built before was the more important stuff, so the new stuff has marginal utility.

Did European industry and technology improve? I'd say in terms of relative importance, we regressed - there are huge gaps in European technological capability for which only foreign options exist - this didn't used to be the case.

Were there some big ticket innovations like Concorde or the Moon Landing or whatever - clearly no, the world seems to have lost its appetite for these kind of hugely ambitious projects.

This 'number go up' style capitalism is clearly not to the benefit of the individual, but I can't for the life of me think who does it actually benefit.

>>saubei+a
I'd like to know why you think the US doesn't "have Europe's back"? Short term disagreements on priorities are expected when there's resource contention. NATO is still very much a thing.

Why do you think a rising China is concerning to the US, but not to Europeans?

>>radeck+97
Re the US not having our back - here's just the latest evidence: https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-security-funding-baltics...

Re China: We don't share any border or ocean with them and none of our interests are opposed. To the contrary, they're the only other major power taking climate change seriously. Why would they be a threat to us?

>>torgin+X6
>For example, can the person of today afford a higher standard of living than one of 20 years ago

Forget 20 years ago, you can just back 6 years is enough. Ask any person when life was more affordable and job security better, in 2019 or today and everyone will say 2019.

Graphs like GDP or the stock market going up, mean jack shit to the average person when they can't afford a house anymore.

A lot of our economic growth was just on paper through financial instrumentation.