Surprise, Surprise, Surprise--Golly Gee Whiz!!
Trying to find the survey that according that rating at its publication source was beyond difficult and was much easier to find via a report by Izvestia that picked up the info and linked to it. But then, that report doesn’t tell the whole story, just the military rankings. Finally after much clicking, the page showing the above rankings was discovered, here. The page providing the narrative related to the ranking is clearly biased and one wonders why Russia was allowed a place in these rankings at all. But then it must be noted that the rankings are the result of an international poll, that the publishers apparently decided not to tamper with. There’s one data point that deserves to be outed as a BigLie:
“Open for Business……………………… 0.0 #87”
Stats people would then question the validity of all the other findings, for which I certainly wouldn’t fault them.
Anyway, the source of the rankings and Russia’s placement as #1 given the source I found to be rather amusing after all the efforts put into destroying Russia.
Usually, this is the time of year when the Heritage Foundation publishes its report about the US Military’s abilities. Here’s the link to the 2023 report published on 18 October 2022. I think it an excellent exercise to read through the report card and then compare that to what we witnessed over the past year from the extension of the US Military—Ukraine’s military. That performance is likely the reason why the 2024 Report has yet to be published, although the Foundation has published several reports advocating for even more money to be wasted on the MIC, including the purchase of more F-35s—the Fraud Jet. Too be sure, the Heritage Foundation is drunk on Neoconisms and supports Neoliberal Parasitism, so its appraisals are rather questionable, but it’s been critical of actual readiness levels and thus its critiques are listened to. Of course, it’s possible the Heritage Foundation was told to not publish its assessment this year due to national security issues—not to reveal the great weaknesses of the Outlaw US Empire’s military to its potential enemies, which knows most of them anyway.
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Fascism arose precisely in order to ensure that the "economic whip' remained in the hands of the employer and the capitalist class.
Though how useful it has been in incentivising people to work is dubious, given that it requires that the bulk of the workforce be ill housed, malnourished and uneducated. The reforms, after World War II, about whose provenance Polanyi had so many sensible things to say, were productive of enormous increases in productivity, increases which far outweighed higher labour costs.
Consider the advantages to employers of having workforces whose members are not, for example, prone to debilitating dental infections. Consider the advantages, first noticed in the famous State education systems (California's Universities, Wisconsin's famous pre-eminence) of the expansion of secondary and higher education in the UK which produced an avalanche of talented producers in every field from social classes in which normally education-at a very primitive level- ended at 14 and entrance into the equivalent of High school was reserved for a tiny minority passing the tough 11+ examination.
What neo-liberalism did, by reclaiming social reform costs in order to enhance the interests of capital (in the short term) and to break the challenges that Trade Unions (even those purged of socialists) represented, by clawing back the benefits of (in the UK) the NHS and free tuition while it produced short term gains for the capitalists, began the rapid destruction of society. It was this, the cessation of advances produced by a more secure, more mature workforce, that, together with the flight of capital (enabled by the neo-liberal 'reforms' such as Thatcher's Big Bang) which levelled down the value of labour in the imperial metropoles.
I will now, or rather soon, read Germain's piece with fingers crossed: I hope not to discover a return, 200 years on, to Arthur Young's notorious quip that the poor will only work if kept close to starvation. It was a position echoing Mandeville, Locke and others of a criminal caste of mind which he later regretted. But it went on to be the watchword of Chicago's Department of Economics and the motto above the gates of Buchenwald and Auschwitz, the summation of fascist reacytion "Work will make you free."
WTF happened to GDP? Or was it always Gross Deception Posture?