01-05-2020, 06:45 PM
(01-05-2020, 11:24 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:(01-04-2020, 12:13 PM)Isoko Wrote: That is correct. People were actually content with Putin, half the country even supporting his annexation of the Crimea, until he decided to raise the pension age. That was it, overnight the country hated him. Had he left the pensions alone, he would be alot more popular right now and people content with his leadership.
I'm somewhat surprised that much of the country opposed annexation of Crimea. What were the arguments against it?
Pensions and retirement are a big problem everywhere. With people living longer, and population growth slowing or ended, retirement age needs to be pushed back to keep retirement obligations from becoming overwhelming, but it's never going to be popular. The retirement age in the US is shortly going to be pushed back from 65 to 67, but that was passed into law way back in the 1980s, when the people affected were still in their 20s or before. And we're going to need an additional increase to 70 or so soon.
People will approve of degradation of civil liberties and due process so long as someone else gets hurt and the government brings pride through some nationalist achievement. Adolf Hitler did not hold free elections, but he would have won landslides until the casualty lists came back from the Russian Front. Only after the defeat at Stalingrad and some ominous retreats was there any meaningful resistance. The attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944 followed the D-Day invasion but preceded the Romanian coup that switched sides of Germany's most effective ally in Europe, and I can only suspect that the Stauffenberg clique believed that Germany could get better terms while the major allies when those Allies were well outside of Germany itself, especially if the new government could stop the most horrible of deeds (the Holocaust).
Trump is dead meat politically should the economy falter, or should he attempt to dismantle the welfare state. I wonder how many of his voters in 2016 were on disability or food stamps as I am. (I would rather earn a solid income and not need them, but with Asperger's I am ill-suited to servile jobs in which one must keep up the "happy-to-serve-you smile" or any job involving repeated brute force). I would like to participate in the consumer economy, which in my case means getting richer experiences than I have now. 200 channels of cable TV or a trip to Italy and Greece? You can figure what my choice would be. I want some memories and nice photos for when I end up incarcerated in a nursing home in which I have nothing better to do than to watch televised sports.
The manufacturing sector is already faltering. Orders for manufactured goods is one of the more powerful of leading indicators.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.