But it made Martin’s task easier as Canadians (myself included) believed we were in a financial crisis. That “gun to the head” is sometimes needed to take action.
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In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically and economically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, American author O. Henry coined the term[1][2] to describe Guatemala and Honduras under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita). Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites.[3] The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of exploitation of labour.[4] Therefore, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.[4]
A banana republic is a country with an economy of state capitalism, where the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Such exploitation is enabled by collusion between the state and favoured economic monopolies, in which the profit, derived from the private exploitation of public lands, is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are the financial responsibility of the public treasury. Such an imbalanced economy remains limited by the uneven economic development of town and country and usually reduces the national currency into devalued banknotes (paper money), thereby rendering the country ineligible for international development credit.[5]
This could easily describe a future USA.
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If you look at the US national debt, its federal deficit, its underfunded social security promises, etc, the financial situation is much worse than Canada’s. However the US gets a free ride because the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency.
Off on Monday to do research in a former “banana republic”, Costa Rica. It may have escaped that moniker by now. Will check into real estate there, just in case Trump is serious about Canada as a 51st state.
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Could easily annex Costa Rica as well. Then, he will go bankrupt. Cuz T-rump.
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I know a company in Africa that buys lots of coffee, cocoa and tobacco farms and stops producing those. It then produces locally required crops and it’s profitable. They were looking for more funding last year.
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A proper balance is needed between producing export crops such as tobacco, cocoa and coffee while producing sufficient food such as maize for domestic consumption. Not every country has always gotten that right!
Interesting story about maize. Maize is not originally an African crop. It was introduced by the colonials when they dispossessed the locals of the land. Local grains were also discouraged because they took longer to grow compared to maize. The main attraction of maize was it was thought that there was a plentiful supply from the farmers in the South of USA. Unfortunately the preferred yellow maize out of USA is sweet and isn’t the preferred variety for maize meal.
Around the height of Hiv in Africa there was a push to get maize off the diet because it is empty carbs. So they either fortify it or produce other small grains like millet and sorghum which were native and rich in nutrition. Bananas and casava are popular in equatorial Africa because the plants can grow under other trees unlike maize which requires deforestation. Rice farming was also local around the Nile river and the great lakes in central Africa.
I won’t dig into the mischief of Dupont’s subsidiary Pannar or Monsanto and their gmo seeds that are invasive.
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A closer relationship with China is part of how UK is trying to get out of the hole.
@The_Polymath UK doesn’t have the political will to do cuts. The labour party is disagreeing amongst themselves about cuts.
Not surprised that McDonnell keeps harping on about no spending cuts.
The main economic problem with most of these folks is that they think welfare for the old and unproductive comes first, with economic growth later.
Thats how you pretty much always end up a lot poorer as a country.
Sustainable welfare and social safety nets can only really come off the back of real economic growth.
Otherwise, you just end up with a small slice of productive people working, a lot of old and unproductive people on welfare, which then combines to create a stagflationary economy where living standards don’t improve.
We need serious technocrats in charge of the economy in the UK. Professional politicians have become fairly useless as they just pander to the blob, so nothing really improves.
This table shows the scale of the welfare problems in the UK
1 in 8 working age adults are now on disability benefits
2 in 10 children now claim benefits (for disability)
These numbers are absurd and unsustainable. People claim these benefits because its easy for them to get around the checks (the benefits checks are done online and not face to face).
Disability benefits bill will be £100bn in 2029 (thats almost 8% of all tax revenue collected)
Unless they massively tighten down the eligibility and institute real checks…the UK is going nowhere economically speaking.
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And this is why so many voted Trump…
The treasury minister has resigned. Starmer can’t catch a break.
She was the City anti-corruption minister that has been linked to widespread corruption back in Bangladesh.
The UK seems to have a plethora of crappy and inexperienced politicians.
This unfortunately seems to be the new normal now.
I put this on Starmer. He needs to take a step back and get everyone vetted pronto.
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Yo Pops, hold my beer.
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Afraid not. The UK lately makes the US look like a model of stability. Just waiting to see how much of sh*& show Canada goes for in its next election.
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Need to see if their extreme right is MAGA or MCGA.
I think the UK is now officially the worst place im the developed western world to be a fresh graduate just out of school.
£50,000 in student debt
37% tax
£25,000 salary
Disingenuous headline from the Torygraph. Reeves may not be ending the student loans system but she hardly inflicted it on the UK.
Agree that the Torygraph is sensationalising things (as is their habit) but one thing I have noticed is that Labour has not made life for students easier. And those students voted for Labour to help them a bit with the crushing levels of student debt.
There is a lot of issues they (Right wing media) kept under the radar while the Tories were in power that they are magically mentioning now.
Problem is that these issues exist (irrespective of Labour or Tory views) and the UK desperately needs to deal with them.
Student debt is one of them now. It is crushing young graduates due to the extra marginal tax that they end up paying for 40 years.
Another shoe that is also dropping now is public sector pensions (local authority). We had a big thread about the US ones on the AO a while back, and they are now also biting in the UK.
95% of what the Telegraph comments on is garbage but if they put these issues out there to be discussed…I view that as a good thing. Too many times over the last 30 years this stuff has been ignored. As Actuaries…it was like shouting into the wind when writing professionally about these things.