Use this thread to talk about the American elections. If you want to talk about other things, use Saturday’s thread instead.
So, India and Indian chuds are doing a victory round because supposedly Indian poverty has massively dropped to 2.6%. Supposedly 496 million Indians were lifted out of poverty.
What’s the poverty threshold? Making over $3/day. You are still poor, even in India, at $3 a day. As Cateleya says:
Poverty depends on where you draw the line At the $3 threshold, only 2.6% are poor. At the $4.20 threshold, 16.1% are poor.
And, for the record, at $4.20 a day you’re still in poverty.
Yeah.
Folks, it’s my annual fundraiser. This fundraiser keeps the lights on. Everything here is free, there’s no ads, I don’t take sponsored posts and I don’t write pro-Israeli propaganda, even though I’ve been offered money (which I could really use) to sell my soul and betray my readers. If you can give, if it won’t cause you hardship, & you value this site and the writing here, please Subscribe or Donate. So far we’ve raised $8,780 from 68 people, meaning we’re a bit over half way to our goal.
Anyway, this is why I don’t trust stats I don’t investigate. There are stats that are somewhat accurate, for sure, but if you eyeball and number and you think it’s off, it probably is. CPI is bullshit in almost every country. Poverty and extreme poverty stats are almost all bullshit as well, except from China, which actually has lifted people out.
As for India, it’s a wreck. Modi’s policies have been terrible, starting with demonetization, when he took all large bills out of circulation to defeat corruption and hit the grey and black markets. Seemed like a good idea, but it empowers middlemen to take an electronic cut, and those markets were huge in India.
And, surprise, it didn’t make any real difference to corruption.
Further, AI is hitting offshoring hard, since companies are keen to replace employees, even cheap Indian speaking employees, with it. This is hurting all those Indian customer service centers, but also a lot of offshored programmers and so on. India went hard into being an outsourcing center, and unlike China mostly hasn’t used it to uplift their population as a whole, create a domestic market or build its own domestic industry meant for consumption in India. It’s a financialized, extremely corrupt state, with government full of criminals, authoritarian and ineffective.
I still see no reason to believe that India will be “the next China”. Yes, they have a lot of young people, but they don’t have much else going for them. Even without onrushing climate change I don’t think they’d make it, with global warming and onrushing water and rainfall issues, I see no hope. While India won’t be the first country hit hard by climate change (various Island states, Bangladesh, etc…) it’s going to be the first major country to be hit hard unless the Atlantic current flips sooner than expected (in which case Europe is beyond screwed._ I fully expect mass famines withing twenty years, and hundreds of millions dead.
I hope I’m wrong, but I see few signs that suggest otherwise.
I haven’t written a lot about the US elections. The Democrats will win, since Trump has completely trashed the US economy with his policies and caused a cost of living crisis (you ain’t seen nothin’yet), the only question is how large the Democratic wave is.
Democrats controlling Congress is unlikely to make much of a difference. Even if they have enough votes they won’t remove Presidential war powers, even though constitutionally those belong to Congress and were given by Congress to the President. Likewise Trump’s signature policies of erratic tariffs with no plan and violent immigration enforcement will not cease.
It’s hard to predict Trump, but the evidence suggests another attack on Iran immediately after the election. The US has been shifting massive resources to the Middle East in preparation. The Iranians, once again, seem unlikely to attack first even though they can see the buildup, so I guess they’ll tank the first hit again.
Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike.
Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer. Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.
It’s hard to overstate how bad this could be. Even a conventional attack appears likely to provoke a massive response from the Iranians, and they’ve been warning that they’ll hit targets they avoided last time, especially if the US hits Iranian oil infrastructure.
It’s my annual fundraiser. This allows us to cover the changeover of hegemony from America to China, environmental collapse, internal US fascism, what a better society would look like, Gaza, AI, the coming stock market crash and various other issues. As of this writing we’ve raised about $8,755 out of a $14,500 goal, from 67 people. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact me at admin-at-ianwelsh-dot-net if you need another way to donate (mail, usually. A lot of cash apps don’t work in Canada.)
If there’s a nuclear attack, all bets are off. The Iranians will retaliate with everything they have, and they’ve said they’ll take out Israel’s nuclear facilities and its desalination plants, plus hit US companies in the Gulf, possibly cut the underwater internet cables, and likely take out as much oil and industrial infrastructure in Gulf countries as possible.
Downstream, once the US uses nukes, everyone else will feel much freer to use them, and everyone will want nukes of their own as protection, since the taboo will have been broken. It’s one of the first steps towards a new war, possibly even a nuclear war.
This is sheerest insanity, and the people pushing for this are absolute scum, and in most cases stupid. (Netanyahu is not stupid, he cares more about himself than Israel or anything else. He’s completely selfish and genocidal.)
If there isn’t an attack my judgment is that Iran will eventually force a peace more on their terms than America’s. The economic pressure is getting severe, and oil and fertilizer stockpiles are dwindling. They’ve been much more aggressively enforcing their blockade and unlike before, they’re actually destroying tankers. Before they usually just disabled them.
If there is an attack, Iran will still “win” but no one, including them, is going to come out of this without catastrophic economic damage.
The world is on the brink. US elections will not change that. Nothing will seriously change until America admits it has lost the war and makes peace on terms that reflect that.
That remains the most likely outcome, but the longer it takes for America to admit it’s loss, the worse the suffering will be. I repeat my advice to stock up on fuel, food, medicine and other goods (motor oil, etc…)
As for America, until there’s an actual opposition party, elections will simply shuffle the chairs on the deck and inexorable American decline will continue.
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 01, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
He Called for Trump’s Impeachment. Now an Air Force Major Sits in Solitary Confinement.
Jeffrey Sterling, Oct 26, 2026 [laprogressive.com]
Major Jason Watson faces ten military charges after publicly demanding Trump’s removal. His prolonged isolation raises serious questions about constitutional loyalty, selective prosecution, and punishment before trial….
You can also help by sending letters of support to Major Watson while he is being confined to the following address:
Jason P. Watson
Calvert County Detention Center
P.O. Box 9
Barstow, MD 20610
Jordan Zakarin, Oct 24, 2026 [Progress Report]
Christopher Armitage, Oct 27, 2026 [The Existentialist Republic]
… Milan Svolik, a Yale political scientist whose 2012 book The Politics of Authoritarian Rule built a dataset of every dictatorship from 1946 to 2008, argues that every authoritarian government faces two problems, control of the people it rules and power sharing with the elites it rules with, and that the second one ends more regimes.
His 2009 study in the American Journal of Political Science counted 303 dictators who lost power by nonconstitutional means and found 205 removed by regime insiders and 32 by popular uprising. Two-thirds of the dictators in the dataset fell to the people standing next to them.
The rule for the United States follows directly: the people positioned in the data to end this regime are inside its coalition, the senators, governors, donors, generals and judges whose cooperation the coalition needs, and every indicator worth reading measures their cohesion….
the Egyptian army let Hosni Mubarak fall and the Syrian army fired on Syrians. A professional force promoted by merit and bound by law is the kind that declines to fire, and the last 13 months produced two readings of that variable.
In Nepal, police killed 19 protesters on Sept. 8, 2025, the first day of the youth protests against corruption and a social media ban. The next morning Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli left his residence in an army helicopter and resigned, the army chief, Gen. Ashok Raj Sigdel, went on television that evening to call for talks, and by Sept. 11 the generals were at army headquarters negotiating with the protesters over who would be prime minister; the protesters named a former chief justice, Sushila Karki, and she was sworn in the next day.
In Madagascar, Col. Michael Randrianirina of the CAPSAT unit, the unit that had put President Andry Rajoelina in power in 2009, posted a video on Oct. 11, 2025 telling the security forces to refuse any order to shoot the demonstrators; his soldiers walked the protesters into the capital’s main square the next day, the gendarmerie joined on Oct. 13, Rajoelina left the country, and Randrianirina was sworn in as interim president on Oct. 17.
In the United States, Bellin’s finding comes down to which force gets the order to fire: the military, promoted by merit and sworn to the Constitution, or the second force the regime is building. Congress gave ICE $76.5 billion, nearly 10 times its annual budget, close to $30 billion of it to hire 10,000 officers….
What I Released This Week
- Coffee Break: Elon Musk Has a Hand in Everything from Anthropic to Skydance to Texas Politics — Naked Capitalism, Oct. 28th.
- Coffee Break: Trump’s GOP Flailing as Campaign Nears Close — Naked Capitalism, Oct. 26th.
From me as Nate Wilcox at the Let It Roll Podcast
A lot of blues this week, including a brand-new episode on St. Louis Blues (and Jazz and Ragtime).
- Robert Johnson Revised: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 4.11 — Let It Roll, Oct. 30th.
- Robert Johnson: Escaping the Delta: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 4.10 — Let It Roll, Oct. 28th.
- Devil at the Confluence: The Pre-War Blues of St. Louis: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 4.9 — Let It Roll, Oct. 26th.
From me as Nate Wilcox — The MMA Draw & the Mad Squabbles Show
- Did Dana White & the UFC Dump Trump? — The Mad Squabbles Show (YouTube), Oct. 27th.
It’s Ian’s annual fundraiser. This allows us to cover the changeover of hegemony from America to China, environmental collapse, internal US fascism, what a better society would look like, Gaza, AI, the coming stock market crash and various other issues. As of this writing we’ve raised about $5,120 out of a $14,500 goal, from 58 people. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact Ian at admin-at-ianwelsh-dot-net if you need another way to donate (mail, usually. A lot of cash apps don’t work in Canada.)
What I’ve Been Reading and Watching
Iran War
- The Incredible Shrinking Superpower — The Intercept.
- Iran keeps humiliating USrael in the sky and in the sea! — GeoPolitiQ.
- US Army prepares for mass casualties with drill digging graves amid a looming war threat — Daily Mail.
FUTURE IRAN WAR PLAN – IT’s INSANE — Daniel Davis / Deep Dive (YouTube).
Yemen War
Yemeni-built weapons shape Saudi battle, with Jon Elmer — The Electronic Intifada (YouTube).
Israel
- “Sound and fury in Israel.” — The Floutist. “One question in my mind as the Israelis sort out their political future is how the rest of the world will respond once a new government forms and it is bitterly clear that, with Bibi or someone else in power, Israel is either incapable of taking a new course forward or has no interest in finding one. As Alastair Crooke put it the other day, there is no ‘Good Israel’ waiting to come back to life.”
- Massive influence campaign floods France with racist ads, months before 2027 presidential election — Le Monde.
- ‘Abusing and Threatening and Harassing’: Inside the Collapse of Leo Terrell’s DOJ Antisemitism Task Force — The Harvard Crimson.
Ukraine
John Mearsheimer: Russia Will Win The Ukraine War And Take More Territory — Glenn Diesen Clips (YouTube).
Latin America
- Wife of jailed Ecuadorian opposition leader slams Donroe Doctrine dictatorship — The Grayzone.
- Bolivian Attorney General Was Arrested After Investigating Trump-Aligned Operative — Drop Site News.
AI Bubble
- The Bright Side of the Dark Side of AI — God’s Spies. “AI eats what it’s fed, regardless of source. AI is now eating Adobe. And that’s just the start.”
Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
There’s a lot of overlap between my readership and Naked Capitalism’s. Lambert Strether was Yves right hand man for years, and when he left he had to be replaced by multiple people.
He has a new place, THE JACKPOT BLOG.
Lambert posts multiple times a day, showing his usual energy and if you like Naked Capitalism, or this blog, you may like it.
The difference is huge:
Europe’s share of global tech R&D has collapsed from 23% in 2005 to just 8% today, while the US has climbed to 62% and China has risen from near zero to 15%. South Korea now outspends Germany, France, the UK, and Italy combined in tech R&D. Yep, you read that right.
The funny thing is that China’s ahead in over 80% of techs, and has 8 of the top 10 research universities as measured by papers.
Tech:
New research from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) shows that China is now leading the way in 57 out of the 64 technologies assessed by its Critical Technology Tracker, which has now been updated to cover the last 20 years.
But the point here is that America is spending four times as much as China, and China’s so far in the lead they’ve essentially lapped America. (Europe is irrelevant, the other tech leaders are Korea and Japan.)
It’s my annual fundraiser. This allows us to cover the changeover of hegemony from America to China, environmental collapse, internal US fascism, what a better society would look like, Gaza, AI, the coming stock market crash and various other issues. As of this writing we’ve raised about $5,120 out of a $14,500 goal, from 58 people. It’d be great if you can help out (please don’t donate if your financial situation is dire.) You can Subscribe or Donate here or contact me at admin-at-ianwelsh-dot-net if you need another way to donate (mail, usually. A lot of cash apps don’t work in Canada.)
It’s probably a bit tiresome for regular readers, but I bring this all up to emphasize a few points.
First: GDP means nothing. Nothing. Everything in the US is way more expensive, inefficient and unless it’s a luxury sector serving the wealthy, of low quality.
Second: there is NO possibility of the West catching up with China without reducing costs and increasing efficiency. It just can’t be done. That means health care, real-estate, food costs: practically everything.
Third, though not obvious in the above data, much of the efficiency comes from the fact that China has a massive ecosystem of tech firms, including huge clusters of small and middle sized businesses. You want to prototype in China, you can walk right into a factory in Shenzen and have it days to weeks. In the US it takes months or years.
Once you lose this ecosystem, and the US has lost much of theirs, getting it back is unbelievably hard. You’ve got to control costs, and so on, but it also takes decades of industrial policy. There’s no quick cure for what ails the West, too much is gone already, and that is compounded by the scarcity of rare resources and key manufacturing, like machine goods, basic electronics (including things like magnets) and so on.
And since the West sanctioned the hell out of China, they’re now returning the favor. Their sanctions on Japan are likely to destroy multiple market leading tech companies. US and European companies can’t get what they need for many advanced technologies. It’s… well, not hopeless, but pretty damn close.
AI is the last big US tech advance, and my bet is that China, with its open source models that are up to thirty times cheaper (and can run on local systems) are going to win that race where it matters: in adoption. It’s just safer to use Chinese models, which, at least so far, also tend to have a lot less usage restrictions.
If the West didn’t want this to happen we had to act decades ago. The tech lead ALWAYS goes to where the manufacturing floor is, that was true for Britain to America and it’s true for America to China.
But cheer up, America being weak is one reason why Iran can win. America’s weakness is the best hope for Palestinians, since without America, Israel is toast. And, as an added bonus, America has lots and lots of billionaires. That’s what American policy was meant to do, and it succeeded. Chinese policy was meant to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and to make China strong, and it succeeded.
The West got what it wanted: impoverished weak workers and the richest rich the world has ever known