U.S. Presidential Election 2016

[Fonz]

As for conservatism, I honestly believe part of it has to do with the successful portrayal the American Left has done to the right. ''Intellectual'' voices on the right never disappeared or diminished, the left has just successfully portrayed the right as being devoid of thought. I've never bought the argument that either political side is just outright stupid. People are rational beings and they make claims based on perception and analysis, no matter how sloppy.

I'm not sure what you mean by the American Left here because you then go on to cite the Democratic Party, a right-wing liberal party. The actual left despises the Democrats and the Republicans for being right-wing parties. The discredit of the Republican party has more to do with its hilarious failure to understand modernity and figures like Cruz and Trump, while the Democrats at least pretend to be progressive. There is no American Left to speak of at an institutional level, so pretending a right-wing party represents "the left" is a bit weird. Right-wing stereotypes are easier to propagate because the rightmost force in the country hosts delirious dimwits and gives their garbage views a platform. They're also easy to make because so many so-called conservatives are only vaguely aware of what conservatism actually means.

 

You could easily generalize the left as young college leftists in safe spaces arguing for the utopian, but no one seems to make that generalization and it doesn't take hold as fiercely in the culture for some reason. They're seen as 'idealistic youth fighting for what's right'.

Eh, you could, but then you'd be essentially taking about something that has zero to do with what left-wing politics actually are, or how they exist as class movements in the world, how they shaped most fields of study relating to real society (as opposed to 'free market' pipe dreams and 19th century "land of opportunity" nonsense propagated by the right). The only people who see leftism as having anything to do with either idealism or any particular age are those who have no clue what the left wing is as a political entity.

Edited May 9, 2016 by Black_MiD

[E.A.B.]

 

As for conservatism, I honestly believe part of it has to do with the successful portrayal the American Left has done to the right. ''Intellectual'' voices on the right never disappeared or diminished, the left has just successfully portrayed the right as being devoid of thought. I've never bought the argument that either political side is just outright stupid. People are rational beings and they make claims based on perception and analysis, no matter how sloppy.

I'm not sure what you mean by the American Left here because you then go on to cite the Democratic Party, a right-wing liberal party. The actual left despises the Democrats and the Republicans for being right-wing parties. The discredit of the Republican party has more to do with its hilarious failure to understand modernity and figures like Cruz and Trump, while the Democrats at least pretend to be progressive. There is no American Left to speak of at an institutional level, so pretending a right-wing party represents "the left" is a bit weird.

 

In the American context the DNC is the left-leaning party. I under-I'm not having this discussion again. If you're saying they're not left-wing enough for you that's fair, but they are the left to the Republican's right. If you're an American saying they're not ''true'' leftists fine, I understand you can go further left than the DNC does. If you're a European then I've already had this conversation already and am not gonna repeat myself.

 

As for figures, Trump has been a Democrat for most of his life. He's one of yours

 

Sort of. He's a registered Republican now but you can't argue that Trump has always been a bastion of Republican rhetoric and principled Republican stances, when he actually aligns with Democrats on several social policies. Just because he's been a Democrat for 10 months now doesn't mean he represents Republicanism, and it's specifically because he DOESN'T that there's been a huge internal debate within the RNC. Please don't tell me his trade policy has been the Republican stance on trade for the past century. When he was talking about women being pigs he was a registered Democrat, but that has f*ckall to do with the party so one shouldn't tie party ideology to people, since it always dwindles down to proxy attacks on the party by affiliation with the person.

 

Hitler was a socialist but you don't see me doing what the right does (which you're partaking in) when they say, ''see, Hitler was a bad person who believed in this ideology, ergo the ideology=Hitler''.

 

But I understand what you're saying in how the right wing in this nation can have a negative perception based on figures. Problem is I don't see there being any more 'crazies' on the right than the left, but then again what you might perceive as sane is my crazy, so it's an argument about perception. TL;DR not really worth having since there's no real empirical method of seeing who's ''right'', but I'll stand by my point that the DNC has done a good job at playing identity politics. When Jon Stewart is/was young people's primary source of news and he leans left and lives his entire life in liberal upper class neighborhoods its easy to see why Republicans are viewed a particular way when the person on the mic is a liberal.

 

 

while the democrats at least pretend to be progressive

 

You say that like progressiveness is a good thing. And I mean the term in the political sense, not its dictionary definition.

 

 

Right-wing stereotypes are easier to propagate because the rightmost force in the country hosts delirious dimwits and gives their garbage views a platform. They're also easy to make because so many so-called conservatives are only vaguely aware of what conservatism actually means.

 

well yeah, the rightmost force in the nation would be, I guess, racists and stormfront. I don't understand how this exemplifies the party, or are we going by the most extreme examples? Fine, this woman exemplifies the left in this nation:

 

 

 

''hard worker'' triggers me. Muh slavery. You think left wing stereotypes aren't easy to propagate? If you're basing your assumptions based on retards then yes, its easy to propagate a stereotype. I don't take the words of idiots as serious political discussion, you shouldn't either unless you are trying to misinform yourself as to what the opposition is truly about. In which case your own arguments will be geared towards tearing down functional retards and never hold scrutiny in the face of actual substance.

 

 

but then you'd be essentially taking about something that has zero to do with what left-wing politics actually are, or how they exist as class movements in the world

 

I don't know how further left wing you can get than Marxist ideology, which is what a lot of college students ascribe to. Which includes class movements in the west.

 

I don't think your perception of college leftism and mines align. I guess its pertinent to ask if you're in the US or Europe, and if you went to college in the US.

 

 

how they shaped most fields of study relating to real society

 

Huh? You mean sociology and all related fields dealing with social critique? Because that's all I can think of when it relates to leftist ideology and ''shaping studies''. The only 'studies' I can think of that the left has shaped are sociology and other departments dealing with observing society from a critical perspective.

 

Fields that aren't empirical and are narrative based and subject to things like confirmation bias. I was once thinking of becoming a sociologist when I realized just how unscientific the field was, so went with Economics.

 

Economics is slightly more ''scientific'' only because it's based on some base assumptions, not on what essentially amounts to 'story creation' created through qualitative methods that are never as good as quantitative methods. Karl Marx entire prediction of Communism would fall into the sociology field as it's a study of mankind, but it isn't scientific in the 'hard sciences' sense. Most college degrees that are worthless are, if I'm reading you right, based on the ''fields of study'' the ideology you says shaped helped shape.

 

If you wanna get down and dirty at the very least the 'pipe dreams' you talk of are based on Economic models and actually helped nations like the far east modernize, whilst left wing import substitution industrialization and dependency theory destroyed latin american nations as it was economic principles based on left wing readings of karl marx and international dependence. We can go back and forth about which side of the isle is 'smart' but its such a dumbass topic to discuss as I've said before. It reeks of idiots trying to seem smarter than each other rather than having substantive arguments. It's like Bill Maher or people like Rachel Maddow that go the, ''I'm just smarter than you'' route as an debate tactic but just come across as idiots. I abhor the term 'smart' because it means f*ck-all other than, 'wow dude'. It's used by retards. If your praise of an ideology is based on you believing that it's, ''just smarter'' than that doesn't speak well for your own intelligence. Like I've said, only idiots use the term since it's all encompassing whilst being utterly useless in describing anything.

 

be smarter than that bruh

 

Please tell me how left wing ideology is, ''smarter'', because I'm pretty sure you're not the only one in this thread that has said so. How did you come to the conclusion and how did you attribute political ideology to research advancements. If you're telling me left wing ideology has 'advanced various fields of study' then its up to you to tell me how, not up to me to debate how not.

 

 

The only people who see leftism as having anything to do with either idealism or any particular age are those who have no clue what the left wing is as a political entity.

 

''They're not real leftists''

 

I could use the same argument to defend my ideology.

Edited May 10, 2016 by E.A.B.

[Fonz]

 

In the American context the DNC is the left-leaning party. I under-I'm not having this discussion again. If you're saying they're not left-wing enough for you that's fair, but they are the left to the Republican's right. If you're an American saying they're not ''true'' leftists fine, I understand you can go further left than the DNC does. If you're a European then I've already had this conversation already and am not gonna repeat myself.

It's not about them being "true leftists". It's about them not being leftists of any kind. There isn't an "European spectrum" or an American one. In Spain as in Chile as in Syria as in Japan, liberalism means the exact same thing, and no where is it left-wing because this isn't the 1830s. To borrow MTD's example, the Strasserists were left-leaning in Nazi Party context. That doesn't make them any less ultra-right as far as the actual field of politics is concerned. We don't need to have this discussion if you actually accept reality instead of jamming your fingers in your ears and pretending the US is somehow outside of historical context.

 

 

 

Muh slavery

 

Yes, joking about slavery is f*cking hilarious.

 

Hitler was a socialist

Ah, so you know jack sh*t about politics, capitalism or socialism. Socialism means social ownership of the means of production. Nazi Germany was a capitalist regime built on private ownership of the MoP, commodity production and capital… y'know, capitalism. The distinctive feature of fascism is corporatism, but all fascism is capitalism. The National Socialist Workers' Party name was an umbrella term meant to appeal to nationalists, socialists and the working class, but in fact every single left-leaning person who had originally joined the NSDAP was killed. I'm not going to bother with your comments on sociology and Marx as it's hilariously clear you haven't read a page by him, but as far as free markets go, did you know that between 1830 and 1850 (the peak of economic liberalism) public expenses rose by 75% in the US? Free markets are just that, pipe dreams (or nightmares, really), and the social mobility myth has been so thoroughly debunked that not even the blindest liberals around believe it anymore. For someone who claims to have studied economics, you sure have a sh*t understanding of economic history and politics. Leftism is based on materialism and class politics, as opposed to liberal ideology which is often rooted in philosophical idealism and even conservatism (which is partly based on classical liberalism as well, see Burke) is built on a number of liberal assumptions, most of them ahistorical. Also, sociology is not necessarily leftist (Weber was a liberal), it just happens to be massively populated by leftist investigators because we live in class societies and the whole of leftism is based on class analysis and capitalism as it actually exists: in fact the whole characterization of capitalism comes from its critics. I lol'd at the STEMlord speech too. Finally, claiming to be a serious scholar works better if you don't use terms like "retards".

Edited May 10, 2016 by Black_MiD

[Fonz]

double posted by mistake

Edited May 10, 2016 by Black_MiD

[Sir Michael]

On that conversation about the fighter jets, I remember the F-22 program being one of the more expensive ones in the past few years. Back in 2011, the program totaled $66.7 billion with each individual unit being $354.9 million... putting it into perspective, the new Gerald Ford-class carriers unit cost $13 billion per ship, and only the Pentagon knows how many of those they want to produce. I used to think the idea of a stealth fighter was cool, but looking back, "stealth" technology on fighter jets seems fairly impractical, not to mention how high-maintenance and expensive the material can potentially be for something that's going through mass production like the F-35 and (formerly) the F-22.

 

Maybe the stealth tech makes it harder for missiles to lock on to the plane, but with advances in weapons technology and the not-too-likely scenario where the fighter jet in question needs to use its cannons instead of destroying its target from afar, the idea of "stealth" becomes somewhat obsolete.

[Clem Fandango]

 

Communists don't make presidential bids, because they don't support the state. This is my issue: that you are incapable of even fathoming a conception of social change that doesn't involve the state.

To be fair Mel this way of thinking is ingrained into the social fabric of the West now. The number of comfortable people has reached a critical mass

I agree that a majority of the population isn't desperately dissatisfied with their conditions. But real life Capitalism is unstable and our entitlements are rapidly being stripped away. I think in 10-15 years we'll find our lives to be intolerable.

 

There are other problems than people working too long for not enough money, unique to late Capitalism. People are alienated, forced into uncreative and stressful work, have tumultuous personal lives to the extent that we talk about a 'mental health epidemic', there are a slew of other, intersecting forms of oppression besides class which are being actively challenged and we live with the knowledge that our global civilisation is on the verge of physical destruction. The issue as I see it is that people don't connect these things because they aren't educated about the nature of their society. People are desperate for more authentic emotional experience, more meaningful participation in work and education, and for more practical administration (there's crime that can't be dealt with and traffic jams, not enough buses etc.), but our class system and mode of production are just so normalised that people don't implicate them.

 

 

 

At the same time I don't like to see the traditional voter base of the US derided as it is as it just makes liberals come off as petty. By all means ridicule the extremes (conservatives love ripping into the loony left), but it's no good to paint vast swathes of people as slack-jawed racists when many of them are just people whose families have always worked in industry or in the military and have been massively let down in terms of education.

I don't know why you're telling me this as if I'm running around doing a mock Southern accent making jokes about brother-cousins. In fact I posted a video on the last page titled 'tea party republicans are people with real grievances' where ya boy explains the conditions and media influences that cause people to react to modernity this way.

 

 

 

If there's any sort of socialist(ish) policy I'd want in the US/UK would be more standardised training schemes for people not going to university. If you're not deemed good enough for a degree there must be meaningful training schemes for you in areas like basic programming for council databases, or a push to get more people in the army. The mentality of "work hard, get a job, get a house, get married" remains, but the free market has pushed reality towards "become rampantly overqualified, accrue massive debt, take many interviews, hopefully get a job...". Also more shared housing. I find it remarkable how much of a nightmare getting decent housing can be. Privately owned houses can be a real issue as you're at the mercy of a landlord and unreliable housemates, not to mention the exorbitant costs involved. It's hard to get on the property ladder if you're at the mercy of debts and contracts as well.

See here you admit that the system is built on unrealistic expectations. I don't see how you can blame that on a lack of training schemes when Capitalism is inherently premised on the idea that individuals are responsible for their own economic well being, despite their being no means to change your economic conditions.

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

 

They have indeed been cast aside. But they weren’t thrown aside by either the Democrats or the Republicans single-handedly. They were thrown aside by a modernized labor market…a market that is worshiped by the free-market fundamentalist in the Republican party until it performs to their detriment. Why would you pay an American to do the same job for 2 or 3 times the cost? American labor ensures quality perhaps, but more frequently in the case of "skilled" labor.

I hate when people talk about globalization and free markets and forget to mention that the consumer benefits greatly from reduced prices. White blue collar working class voters have a hard time not because of free market ''fundamentalism'', but because of a changing economy.

 

You can tariff everything in every market and ensure that Americans do every single job in the economy, to the detriment of the trade and exchange of goods globally (and human progress that comes from said exchange) and the consumers disposable income. This isn't anything new. Income Substitution Industrialization is an old mid-20th century economic philosophy that has utterly failed. It leads to inferior consumer products, a nations GDP only growing as large as it's nations borders extend, and massive turmoil when said nation finally decides to trade globally in order to expand. In lower income nations the issue is that it's much more beneficial to compete where they have an advantage, such as low level manufacturing. In higher income nations their economies are better geared towards areas where they have competetive advantages in, such as higher tech, entertainment, medicinal progress, etc (all areas the us has advantages in globally and has trade deals to its benefit).

 

The US dollar is strong which means increased wages and standards of living. Globalism didn't destroy American manufacturing, rising wages did. What globalism did do is make it cheaper for American consumers to have all manner of technological equipment which means even the poor have all sorts of gizmos in their pockets, meaning more people benefit from technological progress and that seeps its way into all manner of life.

 

The problem is you have a massive portion of the US populace that is trying to compete in industries it has no business competing in.

 

 

For one, you are responding as if I proposed protectionism. Protectionism is counterproductive. I was pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans who preach the gospel of the almighty free markets until their jobs get sent overseas to more efficient producers. Then all of a sudden it’s everybody else’s fault that the manufacturing jobs went abroad. In fact, I don’t even miss these jobs because they will be among the first to get automated. So we needed to take these economic training wheels off anyway and further develop a high-skilled service-oriented workforce.

 

Secondly, what wages are you referring to? Real wages have been nearly flat for 40 years.

 

And finally but more importantly, American manufacturing was not destroyed. Saying so would be a terrible misunderstanding of how the sector is structured. The top US manufacturers did not pick up and move their headquarters to countries with cheap labor. They only shifted manufacturing operations to these countries because the US still maintains a comparative advantage in other business areas. This is where you kind of proved my original point. Today’s liquid labor markets have driven out many domestic manufacturing workers (i.e. Rust Belt) because they were inefficient labor. In the aggregate, outsourcing and offshoring can actually benefit the national economy because it allows that nation’s firms to operate more efficiently. The issue is not a lack of economic performance in the US. Our economy has adequately grown. The issue is the unfair distribution of gains from that growth.

 

Imagine the internet if only upper class rich predominantly white people inhabited it. Where would our black memes come from?

We have a long way to go.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Triple Vacuum Seal

[Spaghetti Cat]

If the anemic state of the economy is considered 'adequately grow(ing)' then we must really be in the new normal.

 

See it's not just the wages paid to workers. There are many other factors that business must take into account. For one the many many regulations that a business must follow. Local, State, Federal, IRS, EPA, now Obamacare. All of that takes away both time and money.

 

A number of business find it more competitive to relocate overseas. That doesn't make the American workers bad workers, it's just the government has made them less competitive. If we have some pro-growth pro-business policies then we might see that competitive edge return. That will grow wages, which in-turn, grows the tax revenue.

[sivispacem]

Hasn't the US unemployment rate declined quite dramatically since the 2008 crisis? Down from 10% at its worst to 5.5% now, similar to pre-crisis levels. If US workers were uncompetitive for whatever reason, the unemployment rate be declining would it? Generally not, though it's a bit more complex than that.

 

US growth is equal to or better than that of most developed economies at the moment. Given global economic conditions, it's hardly bad. Now that aedauacy might not be enough to satisfy you, but it doesn't really speak to US businesses being strangled by costs and regulations. The US ranks pretty highly for ease of doing business.

[Abel.]

 

 

Communists don't make presidential bids, because they don't support the state. This is my issue: that you are incapable of even fathoming a conception of social change that doesn't involve the state.

To be fair Mel this way of thinking is ingrained into the social fabric of the West now. The number of comfortable people has reached a critical mass

I agree that a majority of the population isn't desperately dissatisfied with their conditions. But real life Capitalism is unstable and our entitlements are rapidly being stripped away. I think in 10-15 years we'll find our lives to be intolerable.

 

There are other problems than people working too long for not enough money, unique to late Capitalism. People are alienated, forced into uncreative and stressful work, have tumultuous personal lives to the extent that we talk about a 'mental health epidemic', there are a slew of other, intersecting forms of oppression besides class which are being actively challenged and we live with the knowledge that our global civilisation is on the verge of physical destruction. The issue as I see it is that people don't connect these things because they aren't educated about the nature of their society. People are desperate for more authentic emotional experience, more meaningful participation in work and education, and for more practical administration (there's crime that can't be dealt with and traffic jams, not enough buses etc.), but our class system and mode of production are just so normalised that people don't implicate them.

 

 

 

At the same time I don't like to see the traditional voter base of the US derided as it is as it just makes liberals come off as petty. By all means ridicule the extremes (conservatives love ripping into the loony left), but it's no good to paint vast swathes of people as slack-jawed racists when many of them are just people whose families have always worked in industry or in the military and have been massively let down in terms of education.

I don't know why you're telling me this as if I'm running around doing a mock Southern accent making jokes about brother-cousins. In fact I posted a video on the last page titled 'tea party republicans are people with real grievances' where ya boy explains the conditions and media influences that cause people to react to modernity this way.

 

 

 

If there's any sort of socialist(ish) policy I'd want in the US/UK would be more standardised training schemes for people not going to university. If you're not deemed good enough for a degree there must be meaningful training schemes for you in areas like basic programming for council databases, or a push to get more people in the army. The mentality of "work hard, get a job, get a house, get married" remains, but the free market has pushed reality towards "become rampantly overqualified, accrue massive debt, take many interviews, hopefully get a job...". Also more shared housing. I find it remarkable how much of a nightmare getting decent housing can be. Privately owned houses can be a real issue as you're at the mercy of a landlord and unreliable housemates, not to mention the exorbitant costs involved. It's hard to get on the property ladder if you're at the mercy of debts and contracts as well.

See here you admit that the system is built on unrealistic expectations. I don't see how you can blame that on a lack of training schemes when Capitalism is inherently premised on the idea that individuals are responsible for their own economic well being, despite their being no means to change your economic conditions.

 

 

What I'm basically for is improved employment opportunities. Trump talks about "bringing back blue collar jobs", but the US economy is not at that stage, and the legacy of American deregulation means that only huge levels of protectionism will actually produce this scenario, which would cripple the US economy. I'm suggesting that the classic qualifications like the HND and NVQ be modernised and made meaningful again. In the 70s and 80s an engineering HND was a rigorous, meaningful qualification attainable at a sixth form college. The equivalents now are universally looked down upon, are woefully out of date, are crippled by bureaucracy and don't translate easily to employment. Not only have these qualifications been grossly oversimplified due to the crisis in mathematics education in British secondary schools, they simply don't meet the demands of the modern labour market (which needs things like programming).

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

...it's just the government has made them less competitive. If we have some pro-growth pro-business policies then we might see that competitive edge return. That will grow wages, which in-turn, grows the tax revenue.

Care to elaborate on "pro-growth" and "pro-business" policies? "Competitiveness" lacks an explicit definition as well. There are two dominant interpretations of "pro-growth"/"pro-business" policies. On the left, it means subsidizing high quality education, modernizing our workforce, and upgrading our infrastructure to support the future of commerce. Economic development should follow. On the right, it's often code for deregulation, tax cuts, and the typical "trickle down economics" myth. Notice how such policies actually have no beneficial effect on the quality of products offered by US firms. Widening inequality and the illusion of growth should follow. Both sides could realistically agree on further modernizing our workforce, employing blue-collar workers in infrastructure projects in the meantime, and playing to our existing economic strengths.

 

 

Let me reiterate. US businesses are relatively successful. They are cautiously optimistic and uncertain, hence the increasing consolidation of firms within many industries. But the issue is not a lack of competitiveness at the firm level. The issue is a lack of in-demand skills at the employee level and to a much lesser extent, a lack of economic growth globally.

 

Tax revenue is not necessarily inadequate either. Our spending habits with that revenue is inadequate.

Edited May 11, 2016 by Triple Vacuum Seal

[E.A.B.]

 

Ah, so you know jack sh*t about politics, capitalism or socialism.

 

Calm down, just state where you believe I went wrong instead of calling someone a f*cking idiot.

 

 

Socialism means social ownership of the means of production. Nazi Germany was a capitalist regime built on private ownership of the MoP, commodity production and capital… y'know, capitalism. The distinctive feature of fascism is corporatism, but all fascism is capitalism. The National Socialist Workers' Party name was an umbrella term meant to appeal to nationalists, socialists and the working class, but in fact every single left-leaning person who had originally joined the NSDAP was killed.

 

The Nazi party advocated the abolishment of ''unearned income'', otherwise known as income received from owning property and the rents that coincide with lending it out. It also punished, by death, lenders of money and ''profiteers''. The totally capitalist National Socialist party also nationalized various industries for ''the public welfare'' and pushed for land reforms as well as an overbearing centralized state that interfered in all aspects of public life.

 

Hitler's Germany took its cue from Mussolini's Fascist ideology, which came about because the socialist party he was a part of disagreed with him on Italian interventionism and aspects of his nationalistic rhetoric (which he believed superceded class consciousness), which led to him forming his ''third way'', which was supposed to be a mid ground between socialism and capitalism.

 

I'm not arguing that Hitler's Germany was entirely left wing as the enemy of Fascism was ideologies that placed the state below the citizen and called for a unified global class conscious, in other words Marxism. But if you're going to tell me economic policies that are reminiscent of import substitution industrialization are right wing then I must've dreamed the 1980 Latin American debt crisis and the entirety of the American right wing chastising these policies whilst praising East Asian export oriented economies. Corporatism inherently requires state intervention and a large central authority in order to exist.

 

Just because it has 'corporate' in the word doesn't automatically make it capitalist. Corporatism necessitates the elimination of capitalist competition.

 

 

I'm not going to bother with your comments on sociology and Marx as it's hilariously clear you haven't read a page by him

You know, if you're just going to ignore arguments instead of actually debating me then I can just do the same. I must've dreamed reading the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, then. Not that it matters because I was talking about the ''advancements'' you claim leftist ideology has made in academia. I asked you what it is you're talking about and how you ascribed political ideology to learned knowledge in areas where it isn't explicit. I'm still waiting for you to tell me. I'm guessing you're talking about sociology and related fields that are critiques of western society, as their roots can be traced to Marxism and the social critique of western inequalities.

 

but I'm guessing because you still haven't told me how, and I'll quote myself here: ''Huh? You mean sociology and all related fields dealing with social critique? Because that's all I can think of when it relates to leftist ideology and ''shaping studies''. The only 'studies' I can think of that the left has shaped are sociology and other departments dealing with observing society from a critical perspective [...] Please tell me how left wing ideology is, ''smarter'', because I'm pretty sure you're not the only one in this thread that has said so. How did you come to the conclusion and how did you attribute political ideology to research advancements. If you're telling me left wing ideology has 'advanced various fields of study' then its up to you to tell me how, not up to me to debate how not.''

 

Elaborate instead of shooting down what I assumed you were talking about, because you sure as hell aren't making it easy to debate someone that is vague as hell on some points and doesn't bother to answer my questions.

 

 

, but as far as free markets go, did you know that between 1830 and 1850 (the peak of economic liberalism) public expenses rose by 75% in the US? Free markets are just that, pipe dreams (or nightmares, really), and the social mobility myth has been so thoroughly debunked that not even the blindest liberals around believe it anymore.

 

I don't understand what pubic expenses has to do with debunking the 'pipe dream' of free market capitalism or social mobility. Give me a source, I'll look it over. I don't know what you're trying to tell me, that in an era that has been vetted as being the 'most free and open markets in the US's economic history'' still had massive public expenses?

 

Like I said, cite it for me and elaborate your argument. Maybe I'm just stupid (jump on the chance to agree), but I take it your argument is that in a 20 year period public expenses where high despite it being the peak of economic liberalism, thereby disproving the idea behind free market capitalism. The idea being that public expenses should be low, yeah? Because I don't understand what aspect of free market capitalism is negated by large government expenditures. That government expenditures are needed the most when the market is allowed to reign free?

 

As for social mobility I don't get what part of the ''myth'' has been debunked. So you're saying that social mobility is impossible without a large state apparatus redistributing wealth? I feel like you're debating points I never made.

 

 

For someone who claims to have studied economics, you sure have a sh*t understanding of economic history and politics.

 

Yeah I'm f*cking stupid, aren't I. Again maintain your composure, I don't even know you. When you personally attack someone like that it comes across as you taking things on a level deeper than need be.

 

Cause nigga I don't f*cking know you. You sure have a sh*t understanding of economics. I see you know jack sh*t about Nazi Germany. lol nice leftist speech.

 

see what I mean. Calm down.

 

 

Also, sociology is not necessarily leftist (Weber was a liberal), it just happens to be massively populated by leftist investigators because we live in class societies and the whole of leftism is based on class analysis and capitalism as it actually exists

 

I'd say more on western societal critiques from a western perspective without historical context. Each area of critical theory (which is where most of what I assume are the advancements in research you're talking about as it relates to the left, you've yet to elaborate) as it is taught in colleges criticizes western culture without mentioning how its not unique to western culture or how the context in which various practices (such as slavery) existed make slavery seem less about racism and more about economics. It's narrative forming-wait I'm repeating myself here.

 

 

I lol'd at the STEMlord speech too. Finally, claiming to be a serious scholar works better if you don't use terms like "retards".

 

STEMlord? what? Again if you aren't going to bother tackling the merits of my argument don't bother at all. Just quote the text and say, ''lol''. It's just as effective and wastes less time. Or just say, 'f*ck you', it gets the message across clearer. I could just ignore swaths of your argument and/or just say, ''lol'' but I'm under the impression that you actually are debating points with merit.

 

What's a STEMlord? Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics lord? I never majored in any of those fields. If you're trying to insult someone do it right.

 

and I'm not a scholar, I'm just telling niggas that they're retarded.

 

 

Yes, joking about slavery is f*cking hilarious.

 

Please don't completely ignore everything I said and respond to two words. It's intellectually dishonest, because I know you read my larger point but chose to completely ignore it. Either because you didn't have a response or because you just didn't want to. If you don't want to respond to something go for it, but don't pretend as if I said slavery is the most hilarious thing to have occurred in human history. I made a larger point and you either missed it or chose to ignore it.

 

 

For one, you are responding as if I proposed protectionism. Protectionism is counterproductive. I was pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans who preach the gospel of the almighty free markets until their jobs get sent overseas to more efficient producers. Then all of a sudden it’s everybody else’s fault that the manufacturing jobs went abroad. In fact, I don’t even miss these jobs because they will be among the first to get automated. So we needed to take these economic training wheels off anyway and further develop a high-skilled service-oriented workforce.

 

Agreed 100%

 

 

And finally but more importantly, American manufacturing was not destroyed. Saying so would be a terrible misunderstanding of how the sector is structured. The top US manufacturers did not pick up and move their headquarters to countries with cheap labor. They only shifted manufacturing operations to these countries because the US still maintains a comparative advantage in other business areas.

 

Ah, sorry. I'm being loose here with my speech. Yeah, headquarters remain in the US; I meant operations that are done by cheap laborers. So low-level assembly line work.

 

As for market gains being unequal I agree, to a point. In the aggregate I still believe it's a net plus, but government aid for retooling and aiding workers displaced from their industries in the form of re-education would go along way, provided there are jobs in other industries but a workforce unable to participate in said fields due to lack of education. Otherwise all you have is an unemployed, educated workforce.

[Svip]

Welp... in most election years (US presidential specific), at this point in the calendar, the news would grow a bit quiet, as a presumptive nominee had been found.

 

But this is not most election years. First of all; Donald Trump is the Republican Party's presumptive nominee and the Democrats are still slugging it out.

 

In the former case, the news are abound with stories of an internal division within the party. And there is particularly growing chatter about a viable third party candidate - particularly if Clinton is the Democratic nominee. While Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are likely to see a great year in terms of raw votes, they are unlikely to score any electoral votes. Moreover, even in the case of a really strong third party candidate, it would most likely be a spoil candidate, that is unable to win any state outright, and purely come second in a lot of states.

 

In the latter case, Sanders continues his viability course without actually managing the kind of wins necessary to secure the nomination. But he is not betting on an outright win anymore, just a contested convention, which actually seems likely (about 60% chance, I'd argue).[1] While I am not sure whether he thinks this could give him the nomination, I do believe he is able to make a serious mark on party's programme this year.

 

While I won't talk so much about the division in the GOP about Trump as their standard bearer, I should point to those considering longing for a strong third party candidate: Donald Trump is a third party candidate that is using the GOP as his vehicle for his candidacy. In fact, Bernie Sanders is attempting the same. Both candidates were effectively independent before announcing either campaign.

 

So if you really think about it, there is no Republican candidate this November to vote for. Unless, of course, some members of the GOP mounts a serious third party bid. There is still a chance Bloomberg will run if Sanders manages somehow to get the Democratic nomination, and he has the money and influence to actually appear on enough ballots to win the general election.

 

But will he though? Who knows? I don't know.

 

[1] IMPORTANT NOTE: When I say 'contested convention' for the Democrats, I mean that it will technically be the superdelegates making the decision, because neither candidate have enough pledged delegates to secure the nomination with those alone. So don't necessarily expect floor fights or multiple ballots.

[Fonz]

Calm down, just state where you believe I went wrong instead of calling someone a f*cking idiot.

 

Sorry for the hostility, but it's pretty annoying to see people pretending a right-wing party is somehow leftist and then to spew the "Hitler was a socialist" meme, which is actually a common joke in polisci forums and the like. At one point you say liberalism is left-wing, and then that a fascist was a leftist? Huh?

 

 

The Nazi party advocated the abolishment of ''unearned income'', otherwise known as income received from owning property and the rents that coincide with lending it out. It also punished, by death, lenders of money and ''profiteers'

 

Yes, the point of fascism is state monopoly capitalism. Opposing individual rentier capitalists to enlarge the capitalist function of the state has zero to with socialism and everything to do with aligning the economic interests of state power and corporate power (though there are democratic forms of corporatism in the Nordic countries). The rhetoric of fascism was to come up with a syncretic economic theory that was both anti-liberal and anti-socialist, and that's where the Third Position comes from. That represented Mussolini's complete break from socialism, which is why he slanders socialism in The Doctrine of Fascism. Latin America didn't experience left-wing politics that much apart from the Sandinistas (wartime), who then went on to become typical center-left social democrats. Cuba is also in practice social democratic, but it seems there are plans for market socialism à la Yugoslavia in the future. In the 70s I can think of Allende, but he was murdered to make way for neoliberalism.

 

 

 

The totally capitalist National Socialist party also nationalized various industries for ''the public welfare'' and pushed for land reforms as well as an overbearing centralized state that interfered in all aspects of public life.

 

Just because it has 'corporate' in the word doesn't automatically make it capitalist. Corporatism necessitates the elimination of capitalist competition.

 

 

Nationalization has no connection to socialism. Nationalizing things means they're now part of the public sector of capitalism where the state can directly manipulate the profit. Even the rabidly anti-socialist Pinochet nationalized strategic sectors; socialism isn't a set of policies. It means breaking way from production for profit. As for welfare, the modern welfare state was set up as a clever political tactic by the conservative statesman Bismarck, along with anti-socialist laws, in order to pacify working class action and the political relevance of socialism in Germany. Other than that, even liberals like Thomas Paine called for the establishment of a welfare state. And pretty much every major current of socialism opposes states. The ones that didn't (like Lassalle or Blanqui's state socialism) are pretty much irrelevant and have been for over a century. So no, centralized states, welfare and nationalization have nothing to do with socialism. "Therefore, we repeat, state ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism – if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials – but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism." (James Connolly).

A liberal is as capitalist as a fascist because capitalism is a mode of production and not a school of thought—they only disagree on how to implement it politically.

 

 

You know, if you're just going to ignore arguments instead of actually debating me then I can just do the same. I must've dreamed reading the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, then. Not that it matters because I was talking about the ''advancements'' you claim leftist ideology has made in academia. I asked you what it is you're talking about and how you ascribed political ideology to learned knowledge in areas where it isn't explicit. I'm still waiting for you to tell me. I'm guessing you're talking about sociology and related fields that are critiques of western society, as their roots can be traced to Marxism and the social critique of western inequalities.

 

 

Well, the Communist Manifesto is more of a propaganda piece and it only vaguely outlines the materialist conception of history (the German Ideology is where it's properly explained) and yes, it ends up with a series of short-term demands that include nationalization, but it was a political manifesto of a specific party at the time, the Communist League, and the demands are there because Marx thought it was worth it to push for some reforms even if they weren't going to advance socialism. But if you say you've read Capital, how on Earth did you come out of it thinking socialism is nationalization or that Hitler was a socialist? He only vaguely outlines it there, but it's clear enough to see that it had nothing to do with states.

 

The second part of your point is fair enough, although I didn't say that leftist ideology was 'smarter' (I said most modern conservatives have very little to do with what conservatism originally was). Sociology was naturally very influenced by Marx (as it was by Durkheim also), but also a great deal of heterodox and critical economics, post colonialism, studies in orientalism, contributions to psychiatry by people like Fanon, influence in education by John Dewey and his followers in the Deweyite tradition, or people who derived their political views from their careers in biology (check out Kropotkin or Pannekoek's writings on Marxism and Darwinism) and even most modern historiography is Marxist in nature, even if people don't think of it as such: the Carlyle theory of history is bunk and I don't think any serious historian accepts an idealist theory of history as a reasonable explanation, so the MCoH is pretty much the dominant one because it's the only one capable of dealing with things like the history of industrial capitalism satisfactorily. You don't seem to give sociology enough credit as a field of study. Critical theory, as in the Frankfurt School, had less to do with criticizing the West (as they also criticized the Soviet Bloc and the capitalist mode of production in general) than to reclaim the historical significance of the theory of alienation. I don't see your point on the lack of historical context, because every foundational text of sociology save for 'Suicide' is a detailed critique informed by historical materialism. Narrative forming, as you put it, is much more related to the Situationist International and people like Guy Debord than Marcuse and gang, even though most Situationist texts are critiques of late capitalism in general and as a soon-to-be global mode of production (remember they writing in the late 60s, before the major processes of globalization). And yea, you're right that critical theory was heavily Eurocentric at first, but if you check out other contributions, it's been expanded pretty impressively. You now have texts dedicated entirely to southern epistemologies. Like I said, this doesn't mean those fields are entirely guided by leftist ideology, but that leftist methods of analysis like Marxism or general materialism played an important role in shaping them. It just seemed that your speech was ant-intellectual as hell, but if that was my misreading, then I apologize.

 

 

I don't understand what pubic expenses has to do with debunking the 'pipe dream' of free market capitalism or social mobility. Give me a source, I'll look it over. I don't know what you're trying to tell me, that in an era that has been vetted as being the 'most free and open markets in the US's economic history'' still had massive public expenses?

Like I said, cite it for me and elaborate your argument. Maybe I'm just stupid (jump on the chance to agree), but I take it your argument is that in a 20 year period public expenses where high despite it being the peak of economic liberalism, thereby disproving the idea behind free market capitalism. The idea being that public expenses should be low, yeah? Because I don't understand what aspect of free market capitalism is negated by large government expenditures. That government expenditures are needed the most when the market is allowed to reign free?

 

 

I was mainly talking about how the main thesis of classical liberalism of the market as the determining factor of society from an anti-statist point of view has never actually happened and can't really happen under capitalism (though it is logically possible that it would under market socialism): even a liberal state is always doing something and bureaucracy grew during those years, state functions became more prominent etc. Hell, even under neoliberalism in the 80s this happened. It was mostly an argument against right-"libertarianism" or, at its most extreme, anarcho-capitalism. If you're not either of those, then that probably doesn't apply to you, no. For more on that, check out Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution/Capital/Empire trilogy. It's pretty detailed and well sourced, and just a good read in general. The social mobility point was about how even liberal and social-democratic economists like Piketty have long abandoned the illusion of a meritocratic capitalism because the sheer concentration of capital and wealth is absurd. If you read his book Capital in the 21st Century, you'll find a ton of detailed data on how that is the case, except since Piketty is a social democrat, the proposed solutions are just more weak-ass reforms to "make capitalism great again!". To answer the other part of your question (can't quote it), no, I'm not advocating a redistributive welfare state. I'm a communist, I support no states.

 

 

Please don't completely ignore everything I said and respond to two words. It's intellectually dishonest, because I know you read my larger point but chose to completely ignore it. Either because you didn't have a response or because you just didn't want to. If you don't want to respond to something go for it, but don't pretend as if I said slavery is the most hilarious thing to have occurred in human history. I made a larger point and you either missed it or chose to ignore it.

 

 

You said stereotypes about the left are easy to propagate as well, and my point was that what most people complain about when they mention the 'PC conspiracy' is how they can't say outrageous sh*t in public anymore without a reaction, so of course if you bring up outrageous things like slavery, people are going to react. It has nothing to do with 'political correctness' (whatever it means) and everything to do with basic decency. To be fair, though, yeah, you see a lot of those stereotypes coming from alt-right circles (the 'nice person' crowd) and others.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Black_MiD

[X S]

There is still a chance Bloomberg will run if Sanders manages somehow to get the Democratic nomination, and he has the money and influence to actually appear on enough ballots to win the general election.

 

He can't anymore due to the ballot box rules. He's admittedly saying, it's too late, and then explains why the electoral college is to blame for the two party system.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-03-07/the-2016-election-risk-that-michael-bloomberg-won-t-take

[Megumi]

Bernie is really the only candidate that is deserving of a vote and the US Presidency. The democratic establishment has crucified him because their pet candidate wanted to be coronated. Sanders went from zero to 100 in a very uphill battle with constant daggers being thrown and Clinton started at 99. She has been forced down to 48 and Trump has not yet started tearing her apart.

 

What is the worse Trump can do to Bernie, say he is a socialist?? The US voting public no longer sees socialism as a four letter word. Capitalism has not worked for the masses (and neither has communism by the way). But if the US is ever to recover and move forward, the oliogarchs are not the class to do it but rather the other 90% plus of the US population.

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

As for market gains being unequal I agree, to a point. In the aggregate I still believe it's a net plus, but government aid for retooling and aiding workers displaced from their industries in the form of re-education would go along way, provided there are jobs in other industries but a workforce unable to participate in said fields due to lack of education. Otherwise all you have is an unemployed, educated workforce.

 

Now we are touching on the more structural issues with the US economy. These people won't necessarily be unemployed. But they will certainly be underemployed. This is why Trump and Bernie are resonating with so many voters. People feel that they "did everything right" and still came up short economically. The low unemployment rate is severely lacking in transparency. The US workforce is rife with underemployment. The white collar corporate jobs and the higher paying blue collar jobs that make up the bread and butter of the now-shrinking middle class hasn't really recovered from the recession. The vast portion of jobs "created" since the financial crisis are low-paying retail, sales, admin., and food service jobs. There are numerous workers with good grades from masters programs who make $10 per hour at retail stores. Not to mention the fact that similar to the NEETs in the Japanese workforce, some young US workers are starting to abandon the workforce altogether. Though they are a small cohort, NEETs are not included in unemployment stats either.

 

 

Now the root causes of this phenomena are numerous. Our education system (or lack thereof) is partly to blame. Someone with a degree that earns them a $65,000 salary straight out of school pays the same tuition as someone whose degree earns them $25,000. While they won't necessarily default on their student loan debt due to underemployment, they certainly won't be spending enough $ to stimulate economic growth.

Edited May 11, 2016 by Triple Vacuum Seal

[Spaghetti Cat]

Hasn't the US unemployment rate declined quite dramatically since the 2008 crisis? Down from 10% at its worst to 5.5% now, similar to pre-crisis levels. If US workers were uncompetitive for whatever reason, the unemployment rate be declining would it? Generally not, though it's a bit more complex than that.

 

US growth is equal to or better than that of most developed economies at the moment. Given global economic conditions, it's hardly bad. Now that aedauacy might not be enough to satisfy you, but it doesn't really speak to US businesses being strangled by costs and regulations. The US ranks pretty highly for ease of doing business.

While you are technically correct that the unemployment rate has trended lower, it doesn't tell the entire story.

 

Warning: GRAPHS GALORE.

 

I believe the misunderstanding comes from this graph tweeted out by the chief economist for the Obama Administration:

 

 

 

 

 

Let's set aside blatant misinformation for the time being. Can we not agree that an Administration would want to put out stats that make them look favorable. For example, what a pure unemployment figure doesn't show is the worker that was either laid off or had his/her hours reduced (due to Obamacare) and now has to work two jobs. Yes, a figure will show higher employment, but it's that quality employment that's important. Is it a part-time job with little to no benefits or is it a full-time job with benefits like healthcare, retirement, 401k, etc. There is a huge difference that a pure unemployment figure doesn't indicate.

 

Let's dig a little deeper and check out the latest month we have numbers for:

 

 

The U.S. labor market grew in April at its weakest pace in seven months, new government data showed Friday, as more firms held off on hiring amid anxiety about broader economic weaknesses.

Employers added 160,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate held steady at 5.0 percent.

The latest jobs data provided an unexpectedly downcast signal about the nation’s labor market: A surge of Americans dropped out of the workforce and hiring in several key industries, including construction and manufacturing, all but stalled. The Department of Labor also revised downward jobs gains in the prior two months by a combined 19,000.

The last part is important because it tells us the Administration is putting it's best foot forward. The jobs numbers are routinely revised, usually downward. But by the time the revised numbers come out the headlines have moved on. The Administration wants us to think it's X, but it's often times less than X.

 

 

Continuing...

 

The deceleration in jobs growth provides the first potential signal that the nation’s recent economic sluggishness — the result of a still-strong dollar, thinned corporate profits and cautious business and consumer spending — could be spilling into the labor market. Economists said Friday that employers are growing wary about expanding their payrolls and adding costs.

“This 160,000 is more consistent with the slower pace of the economy,” said John Silvia, managing director and chief economist at Wells Fargo. “Maybe the aberration is not this month, but the prior six months.”

In those earlier months, the U.S. had maintained robust employment growth, even though the rest of its economy was stuck in second gear. Last week, data showed that the U.S.’s gross domestic product grew only 0.5 percent on an annualized basis in the first quarter, and economists have said the contradictory mix of rapid hiring and weak growth is unsustainable.

“We still kind of have this puzzle” in which the economy is offering mixed signals, said John Robertson, senior policy advisor and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

...

The U.S. economy is facing headwinds from diminished demand abroad and, of late, slowed purchasing by households and businesses. Business spending on basic equipment plunged in the first quarter of this year at a pace not seen since 2009, the depth of the economic crisis. That weakness has put the breaks on hiring, particularly in the manufacturing sector, which has shed 23,000 jobs so far this year. The struggles of that industry show how sluggish overall growth can undercut employment; U.S. manufacturers had added 208,000 jobs in 2014 and 26,000 in 2015.

“Manufacturers are pretty cautious right now about the overall economy,” said Chad Moutray, the chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers. “They are pulling back on both hiring and capital spending based off of really weak numbers on demand.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/06/u-s-to-release-jobs-data-for-april/

Two points (hello new font) First, those quality jobs aren't being offered because of a weak economy, both here and overseas. I would place some blame with the federal government with regards to regulations in a sluggish economy teetering on another recession. Secondly, and traditionally after a recession, there is a bounce-back. Orders for products and services goes up, which requires more workers, which helps the economy improve.

So, let's try the inverse. What would the employment figure look like tied to population. How many people are NOT working:

 

Which doesn't look so good.

But hey, we've got the first black president, surely he has improved the minority employment

 

 

Ok well, the Democrat party is the party of the working man. How does the non-college educated fare?

 

 

That doesn't look so good. Maybe some of our recent college grads can tell us about the job offers they've received. Anybody here have a nice starting job right out of college?

Here's the point. We've had nearly eight years of the Obama economy, the new normal if you will. Seems pretty crap-tastic don't you guys think? Take your list of regulations, from Obamacare, to the EPA, to the IRS, add in the State and local crowd, and you have a heavy weight on this economy. With low energy prices and a relatively stable dollar we should be growing by leaps and bounds. The question is why are we not growing? A main culprit would be the onus placed on businesses by the various governments.

​(apologies for the weird font changes)

[Svip]

Yes, the unemployment rate is not the same as it was prior to the financial crisis. But considering how many risks people were willing to take back then, including hiring a lot of people, it makes sense the same levels have not been reached and we may not be able to reach them.

 

Moreover, beyond the financial crisis, things have changed in particularly technology, it's unlikely to say that all those people could simply get their old job back or a similar job. In a cautious industry, we are going to see less people employed until they can be reasonable assured it is worth the risks.

 

Beyond that, what do you want President Obama to do? Create a government programme to employ millions of people? That'll solve it! Work for everyone.

[sivispacem]

I just saw a lot of graphs showing that employment rates anongst certain demographics haven't returned to pre-crisis levels, but nothing you've just posted disagrees with the notion things are currently improving. Literally every graph you've posted shows a current positive trend.

 

Returning to within a few tenths of percentage points of pre-crisis employment figures despite the poor state of the global economy is hardly worthy of derision. The big problem in the US is income disparity, not to mention working conditions. And economic issues are hardly a problem confined to the White House. I don't see Republican-led Congress (either house) doing much other than repeatedly playing chicken with the federal budget.

[Clem Fandango]

Beyond that, what do you want President Obama to do? Create a government programme to employ millions of people? That'll solve it! Work for everyone.

Is this not a reasonable policy?

[Tchuck]

 

Beyond that, what do you want President Obama to do? Create a government programme to employ millions of people? That'll solve it! Work for everyone.

Is this not a reasonable policy?

 

 

But yeah Spaghetti Cat, every single graph you posted to support your point has actually weakened it more and more. All of them show positive trends. Given the magnitude of the financial crisis, it's obvious it will take some work and time to get things back to where they were or better.

 

Now, imagine how much better things could be if the congress wasn't trying to block every single thing the president tried to do. If you wanna shoulder the blame for things not being good enough, despite obviously being much better than when he started, you can shift most of it to the republicans and the congress.

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

Not to mention the oil and gas slump that has hindered the global economic recovery. We have the Saudi government to thank for that. They are intentionally trying to bankrupt as many natural gas producers as possible because of its inevitable potential to replace crude oil as the main energy source. The days of relying on OPEC nations are fading and the Saudis are frankly scared sh*tless.

Edited May 13, 2016 by Triple Vacuum Seal

[Svip]

 

Beyond that, what do you want President Obama to do? Create a government programme to employ millions of people? That'll solve it! Work for everyone.

Is this not a reasonable policy?

 

This might have worked 50 years ago, but as technology is automating more and more tasks and replacing humans in an unprecedented fashion, it won't be long before we simply cannot employ all of humanity, without putting them in pointless jobs that serve no one.

 

Personally, I propose that we introduce what is called 'basic income' for all citizens since we are entering an era, where - through no fault of their own - millions of people will be unable to get a job, even in excellent financial times.

 

But more to the point; I doubt any policy of this kind by the US federal government would be akin to the 'reasonable policy' you are imagining. Hardly a socialist vision where the workers control the means of production, but rather a federal programme to simply lower unemployment. Now sure, the US has a serious infrastructure problem that could be rightly solved by a large federal programme, employ thousands (if not millions?) of people. And I am sure there are other areas where the government could spend for the betterment of ordinary Americans.

 

But you know - as well as I - none of this is going to happen.

 

But then again, I suppose, neither is a basic income. Well... at least not at present.

[Tchuck]

 

 

Beyond that, what do you want President Obama to do? Create a government programme to employ millions of people? That'll solve it! Work for everyone.

Is this not a reasonable policy?

 

This might have worked 50 years ago, but as technology is automating more and more tasks and replacing humans in an unprecedented fashion, it won't be long before we simply cannot employ all of humanity, without putting them in pointless jobs that serve no one.

 

Personally, I propose that we introduce what is called 'basic income' for all citizens since we are entering an era, where - through no fault of their own - millions of people will be unable to get a job, even in excellent financial times.

 

But more to the point; I doubt any policy of this kind by the US federal government would be akin to the 'reasonable policy' you are imagining. Hardly a socialist vision where the workers control the means of production, but rather a federal programme to simply lower unemployment. Now sure, the US has a serious infrastructure problem that could be rightly solved by a large federal programme, employ thousands (if not millions?) of people. And I am sure there are other areas where the government could spend for the betterment of ordinary Americans.

 

But you know - as well as I - none of this is going to happen.

 

But then again, I suppose, neither is a basic income. Well... at least not at present.

 

 

Aren't a couple of European countries now trying out the basic income policy? I know Switzerland is putting it to a vote, and Finland is considering a trial program for it.

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

This might have worked 50 years ago, but as technology is automating more and more tasks and replacing humans in an unprecedented fashion, it won't be long before we simply cannot employ all of humanity, without putting them in pointless jobs that serve no one.

 

Our values are outdated. Republicans want to procreate people but they don't seem to procreate jobs. These same people would sh*t a brick if we proposed a universal basic income policy. Considering the abundance of resources, the US is light years away from being overpopulated. But a large portion of our population does seem like useless dead weight from a capitalistic perspective.

[Svip]

Aren't a couple of European countries now trying out the basic income policy? I know Switzerland is putting it to a vote, and Finland is considering a trial program for it.

Indeed they are. I was thinking in the United States; I think basic income policies are coming to Europe faster than most people would expect it (myself included).

[Kratos2000]

Hasn't the US unemployment rate declined quite dramatically since the 2008 crisis? Down from 10% at its worst to 5.5% now, similar to pre-crisis levels. If US workers were uncompetitive for whatever reason, the unemployment rate be declining would it? Generally not, though it's a bit more complex than that.

 

US growth is equal to or better than that of most developed economies at the moment. Given global economic conditions, it's hardly bad. Now that aedauacy might not be enough to satisfy you, but it doesn't really speak to US businesses being strangled by costs and regulations. The US ranks pretty highly for ease of doing business.

There's the bubble theory.

Now I don't know if it's right or not, but it compares the history of economic crises with US election cycles and various other components,

The basics are that every time the economy is growing, people invest more, everything looks fairly great as the economic buble continues to grow; people expect the economy to just keep growing and make more profits until it all goes down. i.e bubble rises and rises, everything looks great and then it crashes. 2000, 2008, and now at 2016. Before each one you have a flourishing economy with experts saying everything's perfect and then boom.

 

 

ignore the trump association at the beginning if you find him uncredible, same for the book they're trying to promote, there's plenty of explanations later.

Edited May 13, 2016 by Kratos2000

[sivispacem]

Economic growth only becomes a bubble when large amounts of trade are done significantly above the intrinsic value of the assets being traded. It's typically a product of a lack of regulation; nations with proper hybrid economies which the government owns controlling/influencing stakes in tend not to experience the phenomenon to anything like the same degree.

 

The US is bubble prone because of the lack of regulation in certain sectors, particularly financial services. This has been the case for a great while, but since the crash the US had started actually legislating and regulating to try and prevent a repeat. Of course, it's this regulation many Republicans want to rip apart.

[860]

Aren't a couple of European countries now trying out the basic income policy? I know Switzerland is putting it to a vote, and Finland is considering a trial program for it.

 

The Finnish model would basically be automation of the welfare system, thus shrinking the public sector a bit. The sum would be enough to survive on, but not to thrive on. If you make very little to no money, you get the full sum. If you start making some more, a bit of the "citizen salary" gets taxed away, but only so much that it's always more profitable to work than to not work. If you make a certain amount above that it gets taxed away entirely. The well off people won't get any.

 

It's more complicated than that, but you get the basic idea.

 

Now about the election. Has anyone else been reading what Scott Adams has to say? I think his insight into Trump's persuasive powers is extremely interesting. He's put together a list of all of his blog posts having to do with the Don: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/139541975641/the-trump-master-persuader-index-and-reading-list