North Korea is quite poor. They ave a GDP per capita of around 1700 USD, and that has likely been shrinking steadily year over year since the Soviet Union collapsed. They have an extremely militarized economy, devoting perhapse 1/5 to 1/4 of their entire GDP to the military (for reference, the US is at about 3% and Russia is at about 5% right now in the middle of a punishing war). To come up with hard currency for their missile and nuclear programs they have focused on illicit programs including counterfeiting, drug production and trafficking their own population.
Their military is also massive for their population, with roughly 1 million active duty troops and perhaps 3 million more in reserve. This military has two primary missions: to keep the current leader in power and to reunify the Korean peninsula under north Korean rule by force. To accomplish this they maintain a strategic stockpile of supplies sufficient to support their active duty military for at least six months of high intensity combat. These supplies are kept in an extensive network of tunnels and bunkers that have been constructed throughout the country. North Korean doctrine imagines an extremely high intensity conflict that is likely more intense than anything we have seen Russia perform in Ukraine, outside of perhaps a Wagner suicide charge. The amount of food, weapons, supplies, fuel and munitions required to support a force this large for six months in an intensive offensive is enormous. When you consider the poor state of their economy and the poverty that most north Koreans live in its absolutely staggering.
Now during the 90s north Korea suffered from two catastrophic disasters. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union, cutting off most of the foreign aid that had propped up their economy and supplied their military. This led to a collapse of their industrial base and starting the trend of year over year GDP decline that continues to this day. The second disaster was the North Korean Famine. This famine lasted throughout the mid and late 90s and resulted in the deaths of a significant percentage of their population. Exactly how bad things were is a closely held state secret. We know that people were trying to eat grass and tree bark. There were rumors that people were digging up freshly buried corpses and children and old people were going missing, but I couldnt say if that was common or even if it was true at all. The famine was finally ended with a steady supply of international food aid. This solution was a thin cover for the fact that their agricultural capacity has still not recovered to this day.
North Korea does manufacture arms and munitions for export. However, the quantity these weapons are available in would be on a scale suitable to arm your standard warlord on a tight budget, but not nearly enough to backstop a full scale mechanized conflict. If they are supplying at a significant level it means they are taking weapons and munitions from front line units (which they would never do), or they are dipping into their reserves. Now, north Korea does genuinely support Russia and it is very much in their interest that Russia not collapse again. However, considering the extreme hardships they have endured without touching those strategic reserves, I find it implausible that they are doing so now. I believe that this is actually an equipment swap, where they dig out crates of old supplies from their bunkers and swap them out with brand new supplies from China. I dont have any evidence to back that part up, its just a hunch.
Protect the economy by protecting nature, study urges: Protecting 30% of the world's land and sea outweigh the costs by a ratio of 5 to 1, according to a new report. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-economy-nature-urges.html
The global economy is still teetering, but America is in an economic boom due to major legislative victories by Biden and this administration. None of this is by accident, it’s a result of tangible and aggressive action from our democratic leaders and Biden."
Can President Joe Biden convince Americans the economy is actually good?
Vox reports: "Bidenomics is an attempt by the president to package his approach to the economy, much of which is quite complex, in a way that — he hopes — voters can appreciate and understand."
Rosa Luxemburg’s work The Accumulation of Capital described the havoc that capitalism wreaked upon what we now call the Global South. Today’s socialist and environmental activists can draw valuable insights from Luxemburg’s understanding of the world system
To me, the economy hasn't felt good (let alone great) yet (and I'm almost 60). I think the reasons for this is because most of the economic problems I experience are structural, not cyclical. I don't much care what part of the economic cycle we're in at any given time, and I'm not generally inclined to attribute either credit or blame to politicians when it comes to cyclical economic phenomena. I want to undo the structural changes that took place (broadly speaking) somewhere between the 1970s and 1980s, when it was decided that either job security or jobs with benefits should be a LOT to ask for. Absent that reversal, as far as I'm concerned, the economy is in a permanent recession.
A quick 🧵 on some #YouTube videos addressing various aspects of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine that came out today & over the weekend. They're all pretty good, hence why I'm writing about them!
First up is the latest #VatnikSoup.
In this quick episode, Chef Pekka explains the "Firehose of falsehood" method of Russian #propaganda, wherein propagandists saturate the information space with often contradictory narratives to overwhelm the audience.
The Curious Case Of Kyiv's North Korean Rockets (www.thedrive.com)