catbarf on 26/11/2019 at 15:39
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Yeah, well.
It is weird that most of us here don't regularly espouse our deeply held political conventions. Mostly, we're here to point out that Trump is, in fact, a complete and total dipshit. The closest we get to any actual political discussion here are those rare occasions Slyfoxx puts on his Punisher Skull t-shirt, and bitches about those wily social justice leftists taking away his guns, or when Vae wants to be "ironic."
The funny thing is, on the issue of guns at least, I'd probably side closer with Sly over, say, you or Pyrian. It's a crying shame he's such an obnoxious fucking douche, isn't it? We need more Catbarf up ins.
Since I've been specifically named I'd just like to say that I am not a conservative/Republican in the slightest, so my lack of presence in this thread should not be construed as either tacit approval of Trump or unwillingness to engage like Heywood was talking about. I've been following this thread pretty regularly, but haven't felt a need to chime in with 'fuck Trump' when you guys already have that pretty well covered- I'm more interested in engaging in discussion/debate on subjects where I have something new/different to add.
Quote Posted by Starker
The Nordic welfare state gets a bad rap in the US, but I would argue it results in more social cohesion and a healthier society by having less poverty and more equality.
Something I've been thinking on lately is the general lack of community that I've experienced in the US. I don't know my neighbors, elected representatives, or police officers. This wasn't the case when I lived in Tbilisi or Nairobi, where despite generally worse social conditions there was an expectation that communities would solve their own problems and help one another out. That's just a few anecdotes, so maybe I'm overly generalizing here, but I feel like in the US we rely excessively on adversarial conflict resolution, often with government or the legal system as a proxy.
Social cohesion, I think, goes beyond having healthcare, welfare, and access to psychological care. Those certainly play a big role, and I think the Nordic model is a crystal-clear shining example of how socialism and capitalism can exist side-by-side. But even if we were to implement it in the US, I'm not sure it would lead to the dissolution of 'thin blue line' mentality, or get neighbors to talk to one another rather than complaining to the county, or bring back the days of working for one company for twenty years, or end the extreme partisan political divide.
I guess what I'm getting at is that we have a lot of seemingly disconnected examples of social dysfunction. I really hope that economic and social reform in government can help, but I don't know if that's really the root cause, or if there is a single root cause to begin with.
(Just to be clear I know you weren't suggesting that welfare will fix all our ills- I'm just piggybacking off your comment)
heywood on 27/11/2019 at 01:51
I had that sense of community where I grew up. But neighbor & community relations have changed a lot in my lifetime, and not for the better. I grew up in a middle class suburb of Rochester, NY. Now I'm in my mid-40s raising two kids in another middle class suburb, and I often think about how different things were back in the 70s when I was their age.
For one thing, when I was a kid I knew who lived in every house within a quarter-mile radius or so. Even if it was just some elderly woman who rarely left the house and who I'd never properly met, I still knew the last name. When a house on our street would sell, we would invite the new neighbors over for drinks and hors d'oeuvres, or dinner. Almost everyone shared phone numbers.
By the time we reached Kindergarten, we had some freedom to roam and explore the immediate neighborhood without supervision. If you wanted to play with a friend, you just walked or rode over to their house and knocked on the door - no need for parents to arrange play dates. The elementary school was a little over a half-mile away and by grade 1 most of us walked to school in small groups. As we got older and more proficient on our bicycles, we started to roam further. Older kids helped keep the younger ones safe. Very few neighbors were bothered by our kid antics like running through their property, letting our ball games spill over into their yards, jumping in their leaf piles, etc. But the neighbors were always paying attention, so if I ever got hurt or did something bad, my Mom would get a phone call.
Another thing that made it feel like a stronger community was the fact that almost all of us went through the same experiences. If you were a boy, you went through scouting, at least for a few years. And little league baseball too. In high school, you were expected to compete on at least some school team (even if its the math league) and show some school pride. Also, almost everyone except the Indian and Asian kids was Christian and went to church at least until confirmation, which meant spending some community service time helping at the local soup kitchen, or supporting one of the refugee families from SE Asia who we sponsored, or working at habitat for humanity. However, I have some mixed feelings, because along with the strong sense of community I also remember a lot of pressure to conform.
Things are very different now. We have no common enemy, no collective fear of getting nuked, very little pride in collective accomplishments at either the local or national level, and no shared sense of national purpose since the end of the Cold War. We value diversity now, not conformity. It's no longer a cultural melting pot. You do your thing, I'll do mine. Nobody expects to stay at one employer permanently, so you always have the thought of moving in the back of your head and that prevents you from getting too attached to the community you live in.
But by far the biggest change has been the virtualization of communities. For most people, the community they are most active in is a virtual one. But even in meat space, you're more likely to socialize and build relationships with people who you found online than your neighbors.
Starker on 27/11/2019 at 02:31
Quote Posted by demagogue
The second thing is into structural issues, social cohesion, and the proposed link between high Gini coefficient (high economic inequality) and social problems, I guess populist revolts maybe (I know that's the narrative, but I don't think, e.g., poor whites really revolt and support demagogues like Trump because they want
more welfare, which to them reads like more handouts to lazy minorities, although I understand that being poor and aggrieved is part of their frustration). Poverty by itself is a serious problem, so I'd want to strengthen labor markets to pull people out of poverty, which is a problem even aside from inequality per se (though they're linked of course). Inequality generally, once we've got people out of poverty, is a bigger issue that gets politicized and might get hooked onto proposals that might not be targeting actual, concrete socio-economic harms to actual individuals, in the over-simplified way I'm framing things anyway. Inequality is a real problem I'd recognize, but I'd want to focus on actual socio-economic harms on the ground (like campaign finance rules where big businesses can give obscene amounts of money to or project influence over politicians) rather than an abstract idea of "inequality" per se, so let's raise taxes on the rich as if it's a solution in itself, but there's no thought into what that money is actually redistributed into as part of that whole narrative. I haven't thought it all the way through, I'm happy to learn from others on this, and it'd probably take a lot of long discussions to tease things apart for me to understand what we're talking about. So I don't necessarily disagree! Just needs more discussion.
See, I don't see welfare as handouts to the poor, like it is seen in the US, but rather as one way to combat systemic inequalities and to put everyone on a more equal footing. If you're one medical emergency away from bankruptcy or have to save for decades just to put your kids through college, of course money given to the poor is something you resent. Why do those lazy bastards deserve
free someone else's your money when you're struggling so hard? Why do their kids get to go to (a tax-payer funded) school on a full stomach if their parents haven't earned it? I do understand that mindset and the dogwhistles that go along with it. Your politicians are very good at playing people against each other.
I don't put much stock in the Gini coefficient either. It reduces a complex issue to a number and doesn't really tell you what the situation is. If half your earnings go to pay the rent and there's not much left over after you bought clothes, food, etc, it doesn't really matter that you're not poor. You're still stuck in a rut and your kids have less prospects as well.
I also tend to be skeptical of populist talking points that propose simple solutions to complex problems. I'm not at all convinced that minimum wage is the best solution for poverty or inequality, for one. And the problems the US faces are massively complex. For example, looking at your demographics and how much you spend on social security, it's clear it's unsustainable. But I don't see any path forward that would be able to solve it politically, because it has become an issue that's impossible to touch for either party.
I definitely do agree that things like the campaign finance rules need looking at. The issue of dark money in politics is not only a large part of why the current politics are so corrupt and screwed up, it's actively making things worse for people on the ground. It enables some of the worst predatory business practices of payday lenders, health industry, etc.
As for populist revolts, to be honest, I wasn't thinking of Lord Dampnut, but rather Occupy Wall Street. From the looks of it, it doesn't seem like economic anxiety had a lot to do with getting Lord Dampnut elected:
Quote:
(
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/19/E4330)
Support for Donald J. Trump in the 2016 election was widely attributed to citizens who were “left behind” economically. These claims were based on the strong cross-sectional relationship between Trump support and lacking a college education. Using a representative panel from 2012 to 2016, I find that change in financial wellbeing had little impact on candidate preference. Instead, changing preferences were related to changes in the party's positions on issues related to American global dominance and the rise of a majority-minority America: issues that threaten white Americans' sense of dominant group status.
jkcerda on 27/11/2019 at 15:39
HAVE a safe & happy holiday guys.
heywood on 27/11/2019 at 16:14
I don't think that study shows what she thinks it does.
She ties the "left behind" hypothesis to changes in family finances between 2012 and 2016. Looking for a change in family finances starting from 2012 misses all of the root causes. The people living in the rust belt who gave Trump this victory weren't left behind after 2012 (which was in the middle of a recovery BTW), they were left behind over a period of decades by structural changes, particularly the long term loss of manufacturing jobs that paid middle-class wages. The great recession was the last straw, and in the 2010 elections the Republicans won big all over the Midwest. There was a 63-seat swing from Dem to Rep in the US House, and similar swings in many state legislatures. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota all flipped Dem to Rep in Senate races. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa flipped Dem to Rep in gubernatorial races. The exact same states went for Obama twice, then flipped for Trump in 2016, which is how he won.
The other stupid thing about her research design was tying the "status threat" hypothesis to three indicators that are fundamentally economic: free trade, immigration, and China. The people who were left behind by declining demand for manufacturing and low skilled labor are naturally going to have strong opinions about globalization in general, and will tend to be more opposed to new free trade agreements and further liberalizing immigration. It's also pretty obvious that they will see China as a job sucker rather than an investment opportunity. Her status indicators are simply jobs issues, and therefore this isn't an alternative hypothesis at all.
In these Midwestern swing states, it really is all about the jobs. Despite all of the corruption and dysfunction of the Trump administration, those same states could swing for Trump again if his trade war is perceived to be helping.
EDIT: And now that I'm thinking about it, the populist wave in that part of the country was a factor even in the 2008 Presidential campaign. Ron Paul got a bump from it. And Obama pivoted to economic populism after securing the nomination.
Renzatic on 27/11/2019 at 17:41
Quote Posted by jkcerda
HAVE a safe & happy holiday guys.
You too, broseph!
I intend on eating my weight in stuffing. Considering I've packed on a few pounds from quitting smoking, it's gonna be a challenge this year.
Good thing I like a challenge. :mad:
heywood on 27/11/2019 at 18:27
It takes a certain kind of masochism to get up at O'Dark-thirty and stand outside a big box store in the cold just for the opportunity to cross something off your shopping list early. My sister-in-law and cousin do this every year. They've said it's their favorite day of the year. I don't get it. I never will. I'm taking the kids to the Boston Museum of Science on Friday instead.
Renzatic on 27/11/2019 at 19:19
I've done the Black Friday thing exactly once. I'm never doing it again.
demagogue on 28/11/2019 at 00:23
In Japan the equivalent day is Dec. 31, when all the stores clear out their inventory for new year's. But they sold it in nondescript boxes, sorry "happy boxes", so you didn't know what you were getting, only that it was worth quite a bit more than you were paying. It kind of works once you catch the spirit of the thing. I don't recall doing it in the US anytime recently.
Re the populism wave, it got rolling right after Obama became president with the whole Tea Party counter-movement & populist incoming congressmen and their Freedom Caucus, and then McCain legitimated it for the big time by picking Palin as his running mate. I was in DC in 2010 and remember all the rallies and "don't tread on me" flags there even then. Seemed to me to be much more value-signaling driven than economic, although granting we were in an economic slump (no thanks to W?).
Re: the Occupy movement, that was populist, but that didn't strike me as any kind of solid political movement. I remember a lot of hippies in parks with signs, but aside from "action" and for bankers and the 1% to hang, I'm not sure they themselves were clear what they were pushing for. But the massive difference with it and the Tea Party was when you'd go home to the suburbs and the rural areas, the Tea Party had a massive presence everywhere in small town America, and made Occupy look like a small band of aliens in a few cities. Leftists in small town USA were often cowed into silence at practically any kind of social gathering you could imagine, another thing I saw happening everywhere & all the time the same story. After Trump became president there were also the women's marches, which was fascinating to watch but also didn't really solidify into any actual political movement, and over time the left populist impulses just kind of flagged and spun themselves out of energy.