oslooskar

That’s a ridiculous comparison. American expats in Thailand are not here illegally. They hold valid visas, follow Thai immigration laws, and are subject to the same rules and enforcement as any other foreign nationals. Thai authorities, like American authorities, actively oppose illegal immigration and do not allow it. Opposition to illegal immigration in the United States has nothing to do with evicting lawful residents or visitors. It reflects the same concern many countries now have after watching what has happened in parts of Europe, where uncontrolled illegal immigration has created serious social, economic, and security problems. Every country has the right to control its borders and enforce its laws. Wanting immigration to be legal, orderly, and enforceable isn’t “disrespectful”, it’s normal state behavior, and Thailand practices it just as firmly as the United States does.

Nonsense! There are hordes of people at American Embassies and consular offices trying to get visas to visit the USA. That being said, I personally would not want to go to the United Kingdom right now because I might be arrested at the airport there for criticizing its government on social media.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/immigrant-visa-processing-updates-for-nationalities-at-high-risk-of-public-benefits-usage.html

Yes, eat a small handful of raw unsalted pumpkin seeds, about 30 or 40 grams, every day and chew them very well until they are like a paste in your mouth before swallowing them. You can usually buy them at Makro. Also, in my opinion, the pumpkin seeds sold here in Thailand are of a much better quality than the ones I used to buy in California.

I hitched from Hammerfest, Norway, down to Helsinki and took a cheap ten-day guided bus tour to Moscow and back to Helsinki. I then hitched to Turku and caught a ferry to Stockholm, and from there I hitched to Copenhagen. This was in August 1964. From Copenhagen I hitched down through Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, and across the top of Greece to Istanbul, where I paid about $2.00 U.S. for deck-class passage to Trabzon on the Black Sea in northeastern Turkey. I drove an old Persian’s Mercedes from Trabzon to Tehran because he was unable to drive very well after injuring his leg. From Tehran I hitched southeast to Zahedan, hopped a water train like a hobo, and got off in Nokkundi, Pakistan. From there I took a cheap bus to a crossroads where two Englishmen and I rode on top of a truck to Karachi. We checked in at the British High Commission, where a young woman invited us to stay at her place. I lived in luxury there for a few days, and then it was deck-class overnight from Karachi to Bombay. I hitched from Bombay to Agra, New Delhi, and Calcutta. From Calcutta I had to fly on Union of Burma Airways (I think that was the name of the airline) to Bangkok. From Bangkok an Englishman and I hitched down to Singapore, where I stayed in the Sikh temple until I could book passage on a ship to Fremantle. The ship was called the Centaur. I stayed at the youth hostel in Fremantle for a day or two and then hitched to Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Surfers Paradise, Brisbane, Mount Isa (where a big mining strike was going on at the time), Camooweal, Tennant Creek, and finally to Darwin—where I arrived flat broke but got a job working in construction for an outfit called John White and Sons.

I traveled the overland route from Europe to Australia in 1964 and hitchhiked the Thai–Malay Peninsula three different times between Bangkok and Singapore. On one trip I even got a lift from the Thai Army. The Captain in charge, of about ten soldiers under him, spoke excellent English and invited me to join him and his troops for lunch. Later we all stopped at a beach and went swimming together. While we were there, a police officer who’d been target-shooting handed me his 9mm automatic and told me to take a few shots at the target. And on another trip south, the local police let a fellow hitchhiker, an Englishman, and me pitch our tents right on the front lawn of the police station. They even brought us breakfast in the morning. That was 60 years ago, so I have no idea what it would be like to hitchhike in Thailand today.

Charts don’t explain themselves, you need context. Job numbers fluctuate with Fed policy, global demand, energy prices, and investment cycles. Pointing at a dip and declaring "Trump is to blame" is a political talking point, not serious analysis. Every president inherits momentum from the last, and it takes more than a few months for policies, good or bad, to show in the data. If we want to talk economics, let’s look at long-term productivity and investment, not cherry-picked snapshots.

Let’s not pretend this is about "falling for narratives."You asked why services weren’t included, because tariffs are a tool aimed at goods, not intangibles. Services trade is governed differently, and the U.S. actually runs a surplus in services worldwide. As for Bangladesh, that’s a textbook example: the U.S. buys textiles and garments because they’re cheaper there, while Bangladesh doesn’t need to import American goods on the same scale. A trade deficit isn’t automatically "bad," but decades of chronic deficits in strategic industries mean lost leverage, lost jobs, and greater dependence on rivals. That’s why tariffs were used as leverage, to push for fairer terms. So, calling tariffs a "narrative" misses the point. They’re not about eliminating every deficit, they’re about rebalancing relationships where the U.S. was clearly getting the short end.

Job numbers move up and down month to month, that’s why economists look at long-term trends, not cherry-picked reports. Firing one official doesn’t rewrite the data, and the labor market has been adjusting since COVID with cycles of contraction and expansion. As for immigration, nobody denies it plays a role, but to reduce the U.S. economy to "migrants = growth" oversimplifies a complex picture. Productivity, trade policy, energy prices, and investment all matter just as much. That’s actual economics, not emojis.

Tariffs weren’t about "losing" countries, they were about addressing decades of one-sided trade. India, Japan, and others have always acted pragmatically, working with both Washington and Beijing when it suits their interests. That’s geopolitics, not proof that Trump was a disaster. BRICS was founded in 2009, long before Trump, and its growth reflects China’s ambitions, not U.S. tariffs. Every U.S. president faces the same balancing act in Asia, it didn’t start with Trump nor will it end with him.

You might want to check the spelling before lecturing about the Dunning–Kruger effect. As for Trump being "just an actor", the show’s global success and his ability to leverage it into political momentum prove otherwise. Opinions are fine, but calling a president who delivered policy results a "puppet" sounds more like wishful thinking than reality.

History isn’t a comic book. Nobody with half a brain thinks America won WWI or WWII all by itself, but let’s be honest, without U.S. intervention, the outcomes would’ve looked very different. And calling America’s post-WWII record "woeful" is just lazy sloganeering. Korea was a stalemate, Vietnam a loss, sure, but what about the Gulf War, Panama, and the Balkans? So if you're only going to count failures and ignore successes, then congratulations, you’ve just reinvented propaganda.

Yes, many immigrants from the Arab world are having a better life in Europe, but it comes at the expense of native Europeans, who are asked to shoulder the social, cultural, and economic costs of mass immigration, including higher crime rates in many communities.

Hows that working out in Europe?

So now supporting secure borders, affordable energy, and peace agreements makes you "morally bankrupt"? That says more about your worldview than about Trump voters. Energy independence doesn’t mean torching the planet, it means not being hostage to OPEC and Russia. Lower taxes weren’t just for the rich, middle-class families saw relief too. A sovereign nation has every right to control its borders, while still allowing legal asylum. And dismissing the Abraham Accords as nothing is willful blindness, normalization between Israel and UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan is historic, whether you admit it or not. You can disagree with policies, but branding half your countrymen as dupes or villains isn’t analysis, it’s just your self-righteous contempt.