gives a nice context for Sanders' role
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...561_story.html
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gives a nice context for Sanders' role
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...561_story.html
Hi - thanks for posting this. Can we open a discussion on the worth of non worth of socialistic thought here ?
Having been indoctrinated as a youth in ¨fair economics" , as in socialism- let us remember that even Marx thought it was just transition to a pure communist state.
Why, he thought the conditioning the masses was so deep, that it would take a basically authoritarian state to organize this level of economic sharing.
The problem I see with progressive politics is that it accepts the unquestioned assumption that more economic sharing works. The old middle class is suggested to have come from FDRś great efforts but history tells us it was war, not government policy that brought us back from the depression. It was indeed also labor unions that fought and gave blood to expand the wealth for workers but it was not socialistic efforts that gave us a higher standard, so just as many of us have argued the silliness of " trickle down¨ economics, we blindly accept that this effort to redistribute wealth will bring back a fair standard of living and will eliminate poverty. There is no evidence to this assumption that I can find.
If war and blood gave us some protections and expanded incomes,, neither is sustainable, so is it that we need more government programs and higher taxes on the more successful ? I have nothing against higher taxes on higher incomes but the math dies quickly holding this out as a solution. The well being many of us grew up taking for granted was a blip on the historical radar gained at the expense of many war torn lives.
History says, we helped destroy the infrastructure of all the major nations of the world and because we had big oceans keeping us from being bombed, as the others, we had our factories and infrastructure still going strong, after the war, so we supplied and financed most major nations for almost 20 yrs. This gave us decent paying jobs and a high standard. The rest of the world was struggling.
This began to end by the mid 60ś. The world began to catch up and we had to compete. This lead to efforts to find cheap labor, as factories began moving South and into Mexico, etc. Now we have most of the wealth and growth resulting from manipulation of currencies and investments.
Bernie S and other rail against TPP and unfair trade but jobs will never be ¨good jobs"again. Why ? We compete in the world for work, the ground floor for millions is so much lower than here that between cheap labor and automation, workers value is low and will continue to get lower. Higher minimum wages help for a few years but the system that keeps them from growing naturally is the global economy that all national economies are linked. We can´t just make and sell to ourselves, that gets us a even much lower standard.
The problem is not to have more fair distribution of a shrinking pie. Also, recognize that the Nordic nations pointed to for where democratic socialism exists use oil revenues to prop up the system, not a real sustainable example.
The wild economic growth numbers we hear thrown around are not actual things made but more things traded and sold. The truth is that unless we find a way to make more real goods or real energy, we collectively can not grow. The pie will keep shrinking somewhere, if we take more than our share of it, leaving others to fight even harder for what they can get. China is getting desperate and will not sit by while we take a bigger share, just we have not but being the political party of socialism is a dead end. This idea belongs on junk heap of history, just as capitalism and feudalism. We wealth creation from things like solar and renewable s, we need cheap food production from mass forms of factory (vegetable farming). We need simply constructed housing units that can be put up most anywhere, powered but the sun and for now, pulling together with everyone on planet to make what we need and not having to have survival connected to work, since we need less and less human labor. I short, we need to stop hitching our hopes on Bernie or any politician or party and for ¨god´s sake¨, stop believing that socialism is some kind of answer- some things were fundamentally flawed from their conception. Think deeper !
Pod - the problem with Bernieś socialist position is not that he has it but that our history with Communist fear mongering. We will surely see the tapes of Bernie praising Sandinista leaders, Castro, H Chavez and other statements suggesting he is a hidden Commie. The country is still not young enough to accept an unproven 74yr old, Jew, with Commie leanings. Sad but true. The down side is the loss of the small safety net, still existing for blacks, latinos, gays, old and unhealthy, will be destroyed by the other side that really does believe we are better off when only the fittest survive. He ain´t that special to risk all of that because he talks good. He is no Santa Claus.
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Posted in reply to the post by podfish:
I don't contest your analysis, or your critique of Sanders. In the short term, I'm much more likely to make pragmatic decisions than idealistic ones.Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Joseph:
I linked the article because I think a lot of people have no idea that the present time isn't at all unique. There's a long history that shaped our current situation, and there are times in the past that reflect today's issues very well.
On other threads, though, I've expressed the idea that we're not necessarily bound by the constraints that Marx and FDR were. The vision of society that led toward the description of 'communist state' may still remain in the broadest sense, but the last 250 years of economic thought were bound in industrial-revolution technological constraints. The more recent invention of 'intellectual property' as an economic factor is still awkwardly evolving. Even the idea of 'control of the means of production' which is a basis for capitalism is getting muddier. So a focus on things like taxation and jobs is so last century. In particular, the equating of having a paying job to participation in the economy is the key idea that's going to belong in the dustbin of history.