[talldayo]

When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations.

If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China.

[freehorse]

> When I was a kid, China was a lot better integrated with the international community. Right now their relationships are far and few between, rarely featuring first-world nations.

Maybe in western media depictions it would seem so, but eg china invests more and more in europe over the years. Moreover, BRICS are roughly half of world's population. Perceptions of what "the world" or "international relationships" mean are sometimes distorted in the west.

[joshbaptiste]

As a sovereign nation rises in power you'll notice how it slowly starts losing favor from USA

[roca]

If it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal. In the 1990s everyone thought Japan was going to be the next superpower and that was just fine.

[tw1984]

are you kidding? the US forced Japan to sign the plaza accord effectively ending Japan's rise. that was followed by 30 years close to zero economic growth.

you are not mature enough to discuss such topic if you believe the US will be happy to be taken over by some democratic friends.

[gregw2]

I am intrigued by the notion that the Plaza Accord was a lynchpin that stopped Japan, and I'm sure better minds have debated it than me, but I don't quite see how a currency accord that didn't shift the trade flows or even the dollar that much, and which was reversed a couple years later in the Louvre Accord, really killed Japan's rise.

My perception is that Japan, after some great success, went through a normal semi-inevitable asset bubble, but their response was uniquely Japanese. Rather than letting firms and the social contract of lifetime employment (particularly for older workers) go bankrupt, their firms and country decided to absorb the losses for a generation and stagnate.

Economically it was a very suboptimal approach but socially/morally I'm less confident it was the wrong call.

[niceguy1827]

Arguing about the Plaza Accord is really a moot point. The real argument is that in the 80s, Japan-bashing was a real thing, just like the China-bashing today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment_in_the...

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/04/06/us/resentment-of-japanese...

[FpUser]

>"... and that was just fine."

No it was not. The US had taken whole bunch of steps to prevent this from happening and those steps were anything but "let's free market decide" and "compete on merits".

It is a real problem for any country or block. As soon as it looks like it threatens leading position of the US all the gloves come of. Obviously not specific to the US. Any other country would do the same given a chance.

[roca]

What steps are you thinking of? Nothing like what is currently happening with China, I'm sure of that.

[suraci]

> If it's a democracy and reasonably friendly to the USA, it's not a big deal

Correction: If it accepts the stationing of U.S. troops and succumbs to U.S. financial policies, it's not a big deal

Japan and Germany have paid a huge price to demonstrate their friendship to the U.S. That was not 'just fine'

[roca]

What does "succumb to US financial policies" even mean?

The situation has waxed and waned but in general West Germany and Japan at the government level have been pretty happy to have US troops stationed there while facing off against the Soviet Union (now Russia) and China. The Ukrainians and the Baltics would love to have some US troops stationed there right now.

[rangestransform]

It’s a shame that Americans don’t reap the maximal benefits from it, but why should the hegemon not take advantage of lesser states?

[ijidak]

Ha! Do you remember the panic induced by a rising Japan in the late 80's and early 90's.

The fear of the "Red Sun Rising".

The fear that Japan was going to own most of the valuable real estate in America.

The forcing of Japanese car companies to onshore to protect American jobs.

Blaming of Japanese industrial policy as being unfair competition.

It was the collapse of the Japanese growth engine in the mid 90's that finally ended the American panic.

The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power.

Whenever powers rise to threaten that duality there is a lot of hand-wringing in Washington.

[lmz]

> The U.S. and U.K. are a dual world power.

Wait, how did the UK get in there? Especially in this post-brexit century...

[roca]

I remember those years pretty well. There was a lot of hand-wringing but not a lot of concrete action, very much unlike the situation with China now.

[caycep]

The question in a rational mind is, why would it even bother? US/China partnership is the most economically successful in world history, even more so than US/UK or AUKUS. But the downside of CCP government structure is that paranoia at the top ranks has a good probability of overruling rationality.

Albeit US cannot speak as US-centric paranoia/"exceptionalism" may do the same thing...and the electorate voted to self destruct the government despite US economy being the strongest in decades.

[bugglebeetle]

> US economy being the strongest in decades

The vast majority of its people do not share in that success and have seen a declining standard of life relative to prior generations whereas in China, the opposite is quite demonstrably true, despite increasingly similar concentrations of wealth and political power.

[roca]

On the contrary, real wages in the USA are the highest they've ever been. Social media and fentanyl are making people unhappy but for most people it's not an economic problem.

[bugglebeetle]

Sure thing, Dr. Pangloss.

> Average age of first-time homebuyers is 38, an all-time high.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/11/05/the-average-age-of-first...

> U.S. homelessness rose 18 percent in 2024, continuing multi-year upward trend

> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-homelessness-rose-18...

> analysis of government data estimates that people in the United States owe at least $220 billion in medical debt.

https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/the-burden-of-m...

[cheinic830405]

> Average age of first-time homebuyers is 38, an all-time high.

And why is this a problem?

What is wrong with renting for life, exactly? I’m seeing more and more people own rental properties, but do not own their primary residence by choice.

[econ]

Here in NL we first went from non profits owned by the members to gov housing. They just took everything without payment. Then they privatized everything and the corporation got the houses for free. All was fine for a few years then profit became the only agenda point while they were already swimming in free money and didn't want to build. Building was not attractive compared to getting houses for free. All rents are now maximized to the legal limit of course. They also run various inspection teams to force people to make their neighborhood look more expensive so the value goes up so that the rent can be increased further. For maintenance one can call 1 hour per week. They pretty much have lavish offices full of overpaid paperclip maximizers who don't do anything anyone needs, on the contrary, things would be better if they did nothing.

To add to the irony there are also self-made landlords who do similar work on similar scale on their own! They are usually available for defects and damages day and night.

Back when the people owned the non profits they build and fixed everything asap on the cheap. It might even be better than owning the home directly.

[FpUser]

>"And why is this a problem?"

As a free person I want to own my place. I have better ways to spend my money rather than feeding some asshole

[specialist]

For better or worse, home ownership in the USA has been incentivized. Younger generations are now frozen out of the primary means to accumulate wealth.

Ways forward are a) continued denial (status quo), b) YIMBYs defeat NIMBYs, c) change policy (incentivize renting) or d) <insert radical policy proposal here>.

[antifa]

> What is wrong with renting for life, exactly?

Nobody wants to be your serf until they're 38, bozo.

[Dalewyn]

The bad economy is the biggest (arguably only) reason Trump won against Harris, and by a landslide at that.

You may think that expensive gasoline and cartons of eggs are a meme, but the reality is that the economy has become pretty damn Shite(tm) for the commons. Costs of living are objectively higher than they were just a couple years ago and incomes haven't kept pace either.

The stock market is having the time of its life (and as a small time investor I find that nice) but it's completely detached from the economy.

[roca]

You can cherry-pick problems here and there, of course, but the aggregate statistics are pretty clear. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

[bee_rider]

I thought eggs were high because of the bird flu.

[selimthegrim]

Landslide? Electorally?

[Dalewyn]

Trump won both the electoral and popular votes and won all the swing states. The Republicans took both Houses of Congress and held all governorships up for election.

Yes, he won by a landslide and the biggest factor was the bad economy.

[janalsncm]

Not sure where that comes from. By any measure China is more integrated into the rest of the world than ever before.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/biggest-trade-partner-of...

Whether China can beat NATO in a head to head military contest is one question, but separate from whether they can take Taiwan, for example.

[FpUser]

>"If Russia couldn't beat NATO in a pitched fight against the rest of the world, neither can China."

The "rest of the world" is not limited by NATO. And China is not fighting "the rest of the world". It trades with it, invests and does all kinds of other things. But sure keeping one's head in a sand is a nice position.