and RIO

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South of the Mason Dixon, west of the Mississippi, north of the Rio Grande, East of the nearest state with legalized weed and right smack in the middle of red ass fascism

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Is the long copper trade something the average investor/trader has hopped on board yet? SCCO, FCX, RIO, MUX, HGN24, etc etc

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It's true that Japan shows that a developed nation is not guaranteed endless growth. However, I think there is a lot of reason for optimism for the US: 1. Land. The biggest, most obvious difference between the US and Japan is that the US has Huge...Tracts...of Land. That means there is always space to grow, to plop down spaceports and factories and solar farms and wheat farms and crypto farms and every other kind of farm. Japan has cultivated every exposed patch of dirt on their islands, and the only place to grow is into the sea. Trying to build land around massive volcanoes is a pretty sketchy proposition. 2. Natural resources. The US doesn't just have land, it also has massive reserves of oil, minerals, forestry products, animal products, even tourism "products". The US started the petroleum age, and currently, it is ending it. Few people would have predicted that the US would be the largest crude exporter in 2024, but here we are. Japan has...beautiful rice paddies. It's pretty amazing their economy is as large as it is with their limited natural resources. The Japanese economy essentially shows us the limits of what can be achieved on sheer human will and determination. 3. Brain drain. The US benefits from the winner-take-all nature of scientific and economic development. Because the US has some of the best research institutions and corporations to exploit the top minds, the top minds around the world want to come to US research institution and corporations, which then make those institutions and corporations the most attractive places to go. As long as the US continues to poach the best and brightest, it will remain ahead of many rivals. There is no guarantee that this will endure forever. Many Indian and Chinese nationals are returning to their home countries after gaining valuable experience in the US economy, but we are still retaining the Nadellas and the Huangs. 4. Immigration. Right now, the world is in a precarious position. Every developed country is facing the demographic cliff which is the retirement of the Boomer generation. Many population curves are getting inverted, top-heavy. Too many old people are propped up by too few young ones. Again, Japan is facing some of the worst of this population inversion, which is exacerbated by having high health and longevity. Doesn't Japan know how to genocide its people by letting them die early of preventable diseases of poverty? Stupid. America would be barrelling off this cliff too, except for all those Hispanics swimming across the Rio Grande. Republicans are too ignorant and uneducated to realize that these people are the only thing propping up dying rural towns and sustaining the young end of the population curve in the US economy. The US can avoid the demographic disaster by simply importing sufficient numbers of young people to offset all the olds we are now stuck with. Lucky for us, Central America is happy to oblige by both pumping out lots of young people and wrecking their local society so badly that those young people are willing to leave by the caravan. Japan has comparatively less immigration, and makes American racists look like tree-hugging hippies by comparison. 5. Republicans. Yes, I said it. Republicans guarantee that the rich are richly protected. This, in turn, draws the greediest bastards to the US, where they know the billion dollars they make in their IPO will be better protected than in Europe or any other advanced economy. The only cost for this is a gutted social safety net and rampant homelessness and poverty. Toss in a wildly profit-taking health care system and exploitative real estate market, and you have the perfect conditions for propping up an out of control stock market at the expense of the entire working class (and increasingly the middle class). Just look at Europeans complain about their pitiful salaries compared to the US, and ignore the fact that those same Europeans simply cannot choose to not have health care the way freedom-loving Americans can. Thus, we can anticipate that the US will continue to have one of the most lax, permissive regulatory environments in which the most ruthless and exploitative corporations will not only survive, but flourish. And that means big market gains. Because there's no faster way to profits than by dumping toxic waste into the river running by your factory instead of disposing of it safely.

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