Open Thread: IMF Increases Global Growth Rate Projections Due to US Tax Cuts

So that's something.

Pointing to growth in the United States and China, the IMF forecast global growth to 3.9 percent for both 2018 and 2019, a 0.2 percentage point increase from its last update in October.

The U.S. economy has been showing steady but underwhelming annual growth since the last recession in 2007-2009. The IMF now expects it to expand by 2.7 percent in 2018, much higher than the 2.3 percent the fund forecast in October. U.S. growth was projected to slow to 2.5 percent in 2019, it said.

Oh, and SJW Disney/ABC is rebooting The Greatest American Hero -- with a girl, because, duh. The same thing they've been doing at Marvel to such acclaim.

Couple of thoughts on that, one short, one long:

When The Greatest American Hero was cancelled, they filmed a backdoor pilot of a new Greatest American Hero, with the suit now going to a girl. I'm pretty sure that episode is on the show's DVDs, as the "last episode," even though it wasn't really an episode of the show, but a pilot for another.

But that wasn't picked up.

I'm not even sure that pilot aired.

There is precedent for a new Greatest American Hero with a girl as a lead, then.

Though there's also precedent for it doing what it will almost certainly do this time: failing completely without finding any audience.

The SJW's continue with this creepy insistence that Girls Are Just Like Boys.

Well, they're not. They're not into quickie anonymous sex as much as boys are, as the Aziz Ansari incident should have instructed us, and they're not as into action-adventure superhero power fantasies.

This is a thing that mainly appeals to boys.

Boys do not like musicals and romance as much as girls, and girls do not like action-adventure superhero power fantasies as much as boys.

If they were, Supergirl would be doing better in the ratings. But girls just aren't as into this.

So, once again attempting to re-frame a boy-oriented fantasy for girls will almost certainly end the way Lady Ghostusters did, in commercial failure, and a blown opportunity to reboot a franchise in a way that might actually attract an audience.

Is it possible that a girl could wear a superhero power suit sent by aliens just as well as a man?

Of course; Ralph Hinckley was a physically slight man. All the "hero" in him came from the suit. There's no logical reason why, in the world of GAH, this suit wouldn't be just as effective when worn by a girl. The actual physical capability of the user is completely irrelevant.

But, in the real world, it's boys who have this particular fantasy of gaining Hercules-level strength, and Mercury-level speed. Girls' fantasies tend to involve social power and social omnicompetence -- see Heathers, see Clueless, see even The Parent Trap, etc. -- and not physical power and physical omnicompetence.

That's a boy thing. And that's part of the reason people are not really into this new Star Wars, either. They're delivering a physical power fantasy to people who by and large don't really care about it (girls) while refusing to deliver it to the group that does (boys).

But Hollywood and the prog SJWs will continue pushing the weird and anti-science idea that Girls Are Really Just Boys With Boobs and Boys Are Really Just Girls with Weiners and they'll keep losing money on the proposition and I'll just keep laughing.

posted by Ace at 07:20 PM

| Access Comments