A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U.S. Customs took it

Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by icelancer on Saturday June 02, 2018 @05:14AM (#17213668)

>> I would disagree that the US government offers anything other governments do not.

You are very first-world centric, then. While I am no interventionist, you are discounting the role the US Military has worldwide on trade, peacekeeping, and other vital roles it actually does a good job at when it's not fucking things up (which is often).

>> I think the US would still be an economically dominant world power if it had the government of, say, Germany.

Including the racial makeup of Germany and the immigration policies?

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by JackCh on Saturday June 02, 2018 @01:03PM (#17215367)

Are you trying to suggest that the racial makeup of Germany is inferior to America? I'd say population size, geographic properties (location, climate, resources, etc) and economic history count for much more than any racial inferiority.

Germany has a population 25% as large as America, and a GDP 18% of America's. So maybe if you ignored history, geography, a potential nonlinear relationship between population and economic domination¹ you could claim this discrepancy is solely due to racial differences between the populations of America and Germany. But I'm pretty damn skeptical of that.

1: for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner-take-all_market

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by icelancer on Saturday June 02, 2018 @03:36PM (#17216008)

>> inferior

Uh, no. Just that it is vastly different and that it is a relevant data point.

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Re:A 64-year-old put his life savings in his carry-on, and U... by JackCh on Saturday June 02, 2018 @05:11PM (#17216405)

Different in a way that's relevant when it comes to explaining discrepancies in economic output?

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