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Originally Posted by rruff
They weren't persuaded before. Rather they needed to correct for the excesses of the "roaring 20s" and economically beat the USSR, to acheive world domination. Once that project was over they changed tactics drastically (use fiat currency, finance, international trade, and debt escalation to take all the economic gains).
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Is that some kind of bizarre alternative history?
The Federal Reserve was created four years before the October 1917 Revolution in Russia. The US went off the Gold Standard long before WW II, and the USSR was ignored by the US. The primary enemy and chief competitor of the US was Japan, not the USSR. The US abandoned its colony in China in 1938 and consolidated its military forces in the Philippine Islands, because of pending conflict with Japan, not the USSR.
The USSR did not become any enemy until after WW II, and that was primarily due to the fact that Britain and the US told the West Germans to stop making war reparations to the USSR. Instead of starting WW III, the USSR chose to blockade Berlin in protest.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
The fact that we've been getting screwed for 40 years and nothing has been done about it... in fact most people aren't even aware of it... kinda proves that the masses are clueless, easily divided, and powerless.
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You haven't been getting screwed, but you have faced continually increasing competition, starting with Taiwan, then Japan, the South Korea, and now China, Vietnam and others, with India to follow, and then Central Asia and then sub-Saharan Africa.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
The USSR commanded the ruble system and could spend unlimited amounts...
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The Soviet/Russian Ruble was banned from international trade. So were Romanian Lei, Hungarian Forints, Polish Zlots, Yugoslav Dinars and East German Marks.
No such thing as currency speculation or using FOREX for Romanian Lei, Hungarian Forints or the rest of them. They were barred by the UK and US through the Bank of International Settlements.
The only way to buy Romanian Lei was to go to a bank in Romania. If you bought $1 Million worth of Romanian Lei and came back to the US, you'd be screwed, because there isn't a single bank in the US that would have exchanged your currency. None in Canada, either, or Britain, France, West Germany, Australia or anywhere else.
Cuba might, but then a Cuban bank wouldn't give you US Dollars, you'd have to take Cuban Pesos.
Aside from another bank in an East Bloc State or the USSR, the only place you could go would be South Africa.
South Africa and Romania did a lot of trading, but if you went to a teller, the teller would tell you "NO", and you'd have to be smart enough to ask to talk with the bank manager. If the bank did a lot of trading with Romania, or had clients that did, they'd probably exchange your currency for Krugerands, or maybe even US Dollars, but you'd lose $300,000 to $500,000 on the exchange.
Same for all East Bloc currencies. They weren't accepted in the "Free World."
The Russian Ruble wasn't traded on the international market until 1996.
The USSR and East Bloc had to do all of their international trading in US Dollars, British Pounds, French Francs, Swiss Francs or Deutschmarks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
You are confused by money and finance (ie BS). In the last 200 years, real wealth and economic power depend on productivity.
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We've been over this before.
The only accurate and correct measure of Productivity is Unit Volume / Labor Hours = Productivity, but certain think-tanks and policy groups report Productivity in US Dollars for propaganda and disinformation purposes:
200,000 labor-hours; 1 Million widgets produced; unit price is $10; gross revenues $10 Million
190,000 labor-hours; 950,000 widgets produced; unit price is $12; gross revenues $11.4 Million
Did Productivity increase?
No, it did not, but you would falsely claim it did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
The USSR started at a very backward level. Late to the industrial revolution. And they were devastated in WW2. But they made huge strides in the decades after that, and were most definitely a real threat.
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Right.
A country that couldn't even produce blue-jeans. I would go through Soviet Checkpoint Bravo in Marienborn and leave a pair of Levi's in the floor on the front passenger side. When the Soviet guard saluted me, I would return the salute and point to an article of clothing on him, then I'd take my flag orders into the office, and after 10-20 minutes while they photographed me surreptitiously and made note of my regimental crest, unit patch and rank, and then looked through their files to see if I was already in their files, I'd come back to the car and the Levi's would be gone and in their place a belt, a hat or the rank/unit from their epaulet would be there.
The USSR didn't grow tomatoes. If you wanted tomatoes, you grew them yourself, and if you couldn't, then you'd grow something the USSR did produce -- and there were a lot of things they didn't produce -- and trade it with your neighbor or someone in your community (and, no, going outside your community wasn't always an option).
I was in Alexander Platz once, and an old woman damn near knocked to me to the ground running to get into a line.
It was the last of the bread for the month, so everyone was lining up for the chance to buy bread before it ran out, and they'd have to wait 12 days or more for the next shipment.
1984 was a banner year in the Soviet Union....for the first time ever, you could choose the color of your car.
Your choice was an ugly blue, and ugly green, a not so bad reddish-brown and then a light tan that was okay. Only Communist Party officials could drive black cars.
No white cars, except in Romania. The pigment in white paint requires titanium, zinc and couple other very expensive metals and minerals to make, so nobody had white cars.
No car lots, either. You don't look at at cars or test drive them. You go to an office, fill out the paperwork and start making payments. After you finish paying off the car, you'd get a postcard in the mail anywhere from two weeks to two months after your last payment giving you an address where to go and pick up your car, and before 1984, you pray it's a color you like.
When the Wall came down, there were tens of Millions of people in Russia and the East Bloc that didn't even have electricity.
Nearly all of East Germany and the Czech Republic were electrified, but there were places in eastern Slovakia that didn't have electricity. I own an apartment in Kosice not too far from the university and I rented it to the daughter of a village police chief. The police station and post-office are co-located and they had electricity, but the other 120 houses or so didn't, and neither did the two neighboring villages. They do now. They got electricity in 2013.
Nearly all Romanians have electricity now. When I bought my house in 2000, it had electricity, but only 1/3 of the houses in that area did. By 2006, most of them had electricity.
There are still Millions and Millions in Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Russia that don't have electricity.
So, yeah, the Soviets, with their useless currency and their lack of any real consumer goods and their um, one, uh "aircraft carrier" (snicker) that had 12 little Yakolev-38 "Forger" fighters was a real threat to the US and its economy of everything, international reserve currency and international currency of trade, plus its 16 freaking Nimitz-, Kitty Hawk- and Forrestal-class aircraft carriers that each had 36 to 40 fighters and attack aircraft was a real threat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
If you think China is a threat, then you must believe the EU is a bigger one.
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The Chinese Middle Class is about as big as the entire EU population of 508 Million.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rruff
China didn't grow in a vacuum either, it owes everything to US complicity.
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What should China have done?
Not develop?
Traded only within its own borders?
What are you going to do when sub-Saharan Africa develops?
Ndela in Sierra Leone gets paid the minimum wage of $0.28/hour. In about 40-50 years when they have roads and electricity and running water and natural gas and sewage lines and she's earning $4.00/hour making washing machines, dryers, hot water heaters, dishwashers, cars, TVs and everything else, how are you going to compete against that?
You think your $80.00/hour union workers are going to be able to compete globally against workers earning $4.00/hour?
All of your publicly-traded corporations will get Zenithed.
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Not that I was speaking of the gold standard specifically anyway. 
