Because they manage to attract investment.

As long as investors are willing to give cash in exchange for equity, a company can operate on that cash and run at a loss.

He should have said almost every.

But thanks for pointing out the mathematical truth ☝️

Interesting that this map does have Palestine (presumably the West Bank and east Jerusalem) but doesn’t consider Gaza part of Palestine.

That’s quite a unique combination.

Edit: looking at Azerbaijan, I think they just focus on the biggest landmass and ignore exclaves.

Edit2: the fine print actually says that they ignore exclaves, except for Malaysia.

I agree. The rule based order only works if the rules apply to everyone.

And from a more realpolitik perspective: the Arab world is our (European) backyard.

We really don’t benefit from instability there.

I know a lot of people don’t like the American First Past the Post system, but to be honest, even in a proportional system like here in the Netherlands, you end up with very similar dynamics.

Truth is, progressives are always a small minority, in every country. Because they are always ahead of the curve on change.

In the US, this means that you only get a handful of progressives in the most progressive districts and never a really progressive national government.

In the Netherlands, this means progressives are always represented, but need to compromise to form a government. And often, they even get skipped and the centrist and conservative parties form a coalition.

Truth be told, Biden is as progressive as you could hope to get in the USA.

And, while I do think it is important to criticize him - and even threaten to not vote for him - to enable him to move more towards the left, it is also important to vote for him.

Progressives always win, not through getting majorities, but because they have the right ideas and eventually the other parties catch up to them.

For recent examples, gay marriage in the USA or marihuana legalization are now law in the USA.

I am 100% confident that American policy on Israel will also shift thanks to progressive voices. And it will not require a progressive majority.

Americans still care about the price of oil, which is set in a global market and where Saudi-Arabia and Russia have more influence than the USA.

Obviously, the extremist Arabs that overthrew their own leaders are also to blame. Where did I deny that?

I don’t think you really have a lot of choices to be honest.

You’d first need to get new candidates to win a primary and then a general and the required majorities are lacking almost everywhere.

A more fruitful approach is to actually change public opinion.

It’s a long uphill battle, but it’s happening.

For decades, Israel and the US (and European countries) have pursued a policy to destabilize middle eastern regimes.

People don’t realize this, but there was a wave of Arab nationalism that was killed by sponsoring Islamic extremists. Had that not happened, the middle east would be much more secular today than it is.

Israel attacking and destabilizing Lebanon and Syria and the US maintaining a dictator in Egypt are part of this strategy.

In turn, this leads to hate towards the West and Israel by the Muslims affected.

It won’t stop as long as American voters care much more about gas prices than about human rights. American politicians are willing to sponsor genocide to have some control on oil prices in order to win elections.

You are stuck at step 1, I invite you to move on to step 2 and actually start looking at how we are gonna solve problems.

You can go back all the way to colonial times and feudal times and even earlier to discuss how societies have become less egalitarian since the invention of agriculture.

But we are here, right now and it’s best to identify the actions we can take today, for a brighter tomorrow.

Not changing history. Just saying that democrats had all the power they could want and failed to implement change to make things better. Literally after running on a campaign of Change.

The people blaming Reagan are fighting a 3 decade old culture war.

Fact is, things really weren’t all that bad in the 80s and 90s.

They only really started getting bad after the financial crisis in 2008.

And which party got both the presidency and a majority in Congress that year? Hint: doesn’t start with R.

Dude, I’m really sorry, but the 19th century sent a letter by pony express and they want their economic theory back.

There are struggling “capitalists” that own their own little manufacturing company, restaurant, hair salon or other small business.

And then there are rich as hell “workers” like Taylor Swift who have become billionaires through their own labour. She can fill football stadiums full of people willing to pay top dollar to see her perform, I simply can’t.

And I think most people don’t have a problem with Taylor being a billionaire.

But the problem arises when middle class people pay half of what they have in tax, while rich people have effective tax rates of <10%. Jeff Bezos had a five figure tax bill as he became the richest man in the world.

A million middle class Americans making $100K are still out earning Jeff by a huge margin, but they are collectively also paying way more tax than Jeff, so Jeff can keep investing his money, while those million Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

Well said, I regret that I have but one upvote to give you, PP boy.

It’s not just Reagan. The same is happening all over the world, including Europe. And his policies were 40 years ago. At some point, we need to own our own problems.

The real issue is that the rich people worldwide have figured out how to mostly avoid paying taxes, while the middle class bears the brunt of taxation - which prevents them from becoming wealthy - and the lower class gets nothing.

That wasn’t Reagan, it would have happened even if FDR had become an immortal vampire and had the New Deal lasted a century.

What we really need is to start taxing the rich and to greatly reduce taxation on the middle class. And we need to really get serious about it.

The US government can spend millions to track down and kill a Shepard in Syria, but they can’t find the capital gains on Jeff Bezos portfolio.