Wealth inequality continued to grow under Biden, and the average net worth of black families decreased.
This neoliberal obsession with “incremental improvement” is a fucking plague. It’s so easy to blame voters for not recognizing marginal changes, but it’s delusional to think today’s American voters are any different from voters in any other era or part of the world. Not recognizing that is political malpractice on the part of Democrats.
This pattern that we are living through is the same pattern behind every fascist movement since Mussolini. It starts with a failure of leadership from out of touch liberal elitists.
Democrats stand for absolutely nothing. They check the polls to figure out what people think they want to hear, but they never follow through because they have no conviction. Someone who is passionate about starving children doesn’t slow down to brag when starvation falls by 10%. Democrats do, and that registers with voters - consciously or unconsciously. Democrats can point to charts and figures all day long but,without genuine passion, they will always fail to break through.
Voters want conviction. Republicans have it, and Democrats don’t. Shaving half a point off inflation won’t change that.
Biden’s administration was a dam holding back fascism. It was never going to make the river disappear but it definitely slowed things down and if we continued that path we eventually would have real permanent solutions.
People blame Democrats but we haven’t had 50 of them in the senate without caucus in over a decade.
We did continue down that path, and it brought us back to another Trump presidency - not permanent solutions. Fascism was the only place that path was ever going to lead.
We have been hearing constantly about slow and steady progress for 60 years of the hollowing out of the middle class. It’s not fucking working. Not materially in people’s lives, and not politically.
It was Clinton who signed NAFTA. It was Clinton who said “The era of big government is over” as he dismantled federal safety net programs and broke unions. It was Obama who put the impact of the mortgage crisis on the backs of homeowners and bailed out Wall Street. (Then collected millions in speaking fees from Wall Street firms within weeks of leaving office). It was Obama who sidelined real healthcare reform and put in a right wing healthcare system that guaranteed cost increases of 10-15% every damn year.
Biden was a modest improvement, but nothing will forgive his slavish devotion to a genocidal Israel.
Democrats threw the trans community under the bus. They threw immigrants under the bus. Time after time they surrender to Republican framing then wonder why Republicans keep winning.
Know how Hillary got the DNC to put a finger on the scale for her campaign? She bailed them out of near bankruptcy. Why were they bankrupt? Obama funneled money that used to go to the party into his own campaign coffers. That’s how he won a second term while losing Congress. Overall, the Democrats lost over a thousand state and federal seats in the 8 years of his presidency.
This isn’t all about the big bad Republicans. It’s not all about stupid voters. Republicans are no better or worse than they ever were, and voters are no dumber. Democratic leadership has a lot to answer for as well. Quit trying to shield them from the change that desperately needs to happen.
Yeah, the Democrats have actually been doing everything right and have just had a string of bad luck. Bad dice roles on their voter generator. There is no reason for them to reevaluate or change anything. /s
Dude. No one is disagreeing with that. We know the democrats also suck. It’s your ‘whataboutism’ that everyone is taking issue with. You’re not even having the right argument right now.
The Democrats lost ground with every demographic but college educated women. 2020 was an unusually high turnout election. 2024 was a regression to the mean, yet Trump’s vote total went up.
Blaming the voters is just electoral masturbation. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Do you have a plan to get better voters in 2028? Blaming voters is for politicians that don’t care about winning. In other words, it’s for establishment Democrats.
Biden promoted peace which favored Israel, which is a trash stance imo, but it’s a world of difference from Trump admin’s Pete Hegseth promoting literal bare definition genocide, unapologetically.
No. Funding and giving political support to a genocidal state while crushing down on demonstrations against genocide isn’t promoting peace. It’s a very close thing to what the Trump administration is doing, marginally less bad but not “promoting peace” in the slightest.
The full extent of Biden taking any form of action against campus protestors was giving a speech which said things like “Dissent is essential for democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder.”
So I’ve been going on and on about how “democrats bad” is a huge narrative being pushed hard on Lemmy. Always with the caveat that criticism is warranted, when it’s specific and targeted.
This is specific and targeted. This is how you properly criticize Dems. But that wouldn’t jive with the people seeding that other narrative. They don’t want to be helpful. They’re not interested in how to get other people to vote. Their objective is the opposite.
Maybe the Dems should switch their incremental improvement to the fact that they need billionaires to buy them votes before their dollars turn into rubles. Yeah, the number is bigger. Look how much good that does the Russians.
They should be supporting both Elon-style directly, and indirectly through accepting tax policy to allow us to do big things. Find smart policies to support medical school so that we can push for more doctors/nurses the way we did for Software Devs from 1995-2015. Create actual medicare for all to finally get rid of the odd tie between your employer and your healthcare. Support real freight so we can have fewer semis destroying our roads and creating traffic. Support mass transit so we need fewer roads and can have more walkable spaces with more available housing. (Mass transit enables realistic high density housing.) Change Trump’s stupid ass tariffs to be a response to climate change, now that we’ve developed better tech to see where the CO2 is coming from.
Raise the federal minimum wage. Reduce the work week to 36 hours, with real teeth in overtime requirements and salary exemptions. Recreate the Civilian Conservation Corps to make sure everyone who’s willing to put in real work can find a job, even if AI doesn’t like their resume.
Healthcare, traffic, and work are the biggest things everyone in the country has to deal with. Address the things that actually affect people’s lives. This is how your dollars stay dollars instead of turning into rubles. The billionaires might have less of them, but they’re worth more. When people are less desperate, everyone’s lives are better.
Really large sweeping economic changes tends to have significant unexpected problems created from them. It would be bad if we lifted everyone up and then destroyed our ability to maintain that new status in the process.
Voters want conviction. Republicans have it, and Democrats don’t.
Most economies are neoliberal/neoclassical, they’re literally a poverty cult based on empirically proven wrong axioms such as “printing money creates inflation”, “rising the minimum wage creates unemployment”, or “public expenditure in healthcare, pensions and education is bad for the economy”. You should do the opposite of what most economists preach.
they’re literally a poverty cult based on empirically proven wrong axioms
Here’s where the fun begins because the highlighted portion above makes it clear you have never at any point taken a course in economics.
“printing money creates inflation”,
It does which is why monetary policy is important to focus on.
“rising the minimum wage creates unemployment”
This isn’t that common as most of the studies done recently suggests this is not the case. There are some who still maintain that in specific situations this can occur but it isn’t as common as you state.
“public expenditure in healthcare, pensions and education is bad for the economy”.
Please provide either a valid academic source for this or an opinion piece printed in a credible newspaper from an actual economist (eg Robert Reich is not an economist while Krugman and Mankiew are)
You should do the opposite of what most economists preach.
This is the clearest sign you have no education in the field. I have a buddy who focuses on healthcare economics why would you ask him about trade policy? That’s like asking your dentist if you beed elbow surgery.
“Oh, you haven’t taken capitalist propaganda courses regarding economics? Then your opinion is invalid”
As a matter of fact, people who teach against neoliberalism are in some universities. Prof. Richard Wolff, or Dr. Eduardo Garzón are a few of them. The fact that you took your econ-101 course to be gospel about reality without questioning the experimental validity of the models proponed by neoliberals tells me more about you than the name of any courses you’ve taken.
This isn’t that common as most of the studies done recently suggests this is not the case.
It isn’t that common?! For fuck’s sake, mate, it’s literally the main argument used against rising minimum wages every single time the “debate” pops up. Rising minimum wages is such an obviously moral thing to do, that the only possible objection to it for the vast majority of the population is technical. That’s why the CIA put gazillions of dollars in the Economics academia over the past half a century to propagate neoliberalism. Yes, recent empyrical studies suggest this is not the case because most of the information floating around the field of economics is a lie.
Currency minting literally doesn’t serve even as a modest predictor of inflation. Look at a graph of inflation in the EU or in the US for the past 60 years. Try and match it with money creation, and you’ll see exactly 0 correlation. You’ll get the same with Japan and with UK, and with China. Look at the absolutely astonishing amounts of money created by the EU after the 2010 Euro crisis (M2 or M3 aggregates, huh, funny that I know that terminology, even without being brainwashed at the econ faculty?) and the CPI over that time. Now look at a single historical event (2022 Ukraine invasion) and the resulting inflationary tendencies, PROVEN EMPYRICALLY to be caused by rising energy prices due to natural gas, famously NOT because of a money minting event. Seriously, you’re just propagating empirically demonstrated lies.
When I say you shouldn’t trust most economists, I don’t mean you should trust no economist. I mean most contemporary economists have been brainwashed into believing in neoliberal propaganda that permeated academia and public policy since the Reagan/Thatcher/Milton Friedman era, when the CIA decided Keynesian economics weren’t oppressive enough to poor people. Economics is a beautiful field to study, but believing a neoliberal economist with regards to public policy would be like treating cancer with acupuncture.
Yeah, consequences like FDR getting elected President four times in a row. That was the last time the Democrats had a popular President.
I’m not sure if you noticed, but America’s ability to do much of anything is being dismantled before our eyes. The Democrats played it safe, so voters looked elsewhere.
60 years of unbelievable productivity gains and new technologies, and life has only gotten harder. I think we could do better than that. Bullshit excuses are easy to accept when it hasn’t hit you yet.
This isn’t “bullshit excuses” as you are focusing on the potential political gains and I am talking about the economic problems that could come about from sweeping economic changes.
When the New Deal passed the USA was a larger portion of the world economy and it was growing.
It’s absolutely bullshit. Most of what progressives want is stuff we had 50 years ago. The boldest new proposal is Medicare for All. Somehow every single other developed economy in the world can achieve universal healthcare, but the richest country in the world can’t manage it? BULLSHIT! While you wrong your hands people are dying and lives are being ruined every single day. It’s profane, and it’s pathetic. Yes, we can do a hell of a lot better.
I don’t think you are following this thread at all.
Large sweeping economic changes are usually bad. Medicare for all wouldn’t be a sweeping change unless we immediately banned all private insurances which M4A would not do. M4A would be increasing the efficiency of the American economy which is what economists want.
Large sweeping economic changes would be things like adding $5 to the federal minimum wage all at once. The economy would likely grow from an incremental move that added $5 over the course of a few years but spiking it hard and fast will kill a lot of businesses that would have been fine with $1/yr over 5 years. It does not help to increase the minimum wage if it causes rapid widespread unemployment (note: I am absolutely not arguing against a minimum wage increase just against a rapid shift).
And, where in the thread again was an instantaneous $5.00 raise to the minimum wage mentioned? Alluded to? Implied?
You are absolutely right, I’m not following the thread. I’m following the discussion, but the thread is a figment of your imagination, and I don’t know how to do that.
We were talking about whether large sweeping economic changes are a bad idea and whether incremental changes are better. You were arguing against that and I used minimum wage as an example.
Im tired of explaining things to you, so let’s stop here.
Harris stood for many good things. She should’ve also opposed the genocide yes, but the other choice was worse on it, making you a moron for not voting for her as a form of harm reduction.
Yeah, my stocks are almost back to where they were at the beginning of the year, and it’s almost 100% due to Trump messing w/ tariffs. I’m not rich or anything, but seeing my retirement savings fluctuate at Trump’s whims doesn’t feel great.
Harris ran on a continuation of existing beneficial politics with a trend of effectiveness and some tuning after she took over the post.
In short, her position was
** gestures at 4 years of positive tending numbers **
. Oh: and not fucking up the treason trial for Trump.
But the sparkle junkies need everything to pop-pop-pop, so incremental improvement wasnt as good as destruction of America.
Wealth inequality continued to grow under Biden, and the average net worth of black families decreased.
This neoliberal obsession with “incremental improvement” is a fucking plague. It’s so easy to blame voters for not recognizing marginal changes, but it’s delusional to think today’s American voters are any different from voters in any other era or part of the world. Not recognizing that is political malpractice on the part of Democrats.
This pattern that we are living through is the same pattern behind every fascist movement since Mussolini. It starts with a failure of leadership from out of touch liberal elitists.
Democrats stand for absolutely nothing. They check the polls to figure out what people think they want to hear, but they never follow through because they have no conviction. Someone who is passionate about starving children doesn’t slow down to brag when starvation falls by 10%. Democrats do, and that registers with voters - consciously or unconsciously. Democrats can point to charts and figures all day long but,without genuine passion, they will always fail to break through.
Voters want conviction. Republicans have it, and Democrats don’t. Shaving half a point off inflation won’t change that.
Biden’s administration was a dam holding back fascism. It was never going to make the river disappear but it definitely slowed things down and if we continued that path we eventually would have real permanent solutions.
People blame Democrats but we haven’t had 50 of them in the senate without caucus in over a decade.
Don’t blame the broader caucus when people who ran as democrats vote with republicans.
We did continue down that path, and it brought us back to another Trump presidency - not permanent solutions. Fascism was the only place that path was ever going to lead.
We have been hearing constantly about slow and steady progress for 60 years of the hollowing out of the middle class. It’s not fucking working. Not materially in people’s lives, and not politically.
It was Clinton who signed NAFTA. It was Clinton who said “The era of big government is over” as he dismantled federal safety net programs and broke unions. It was Obama who put the impact of the mortgage crisis on the backs of homeowners and bailed out Wall Street. (Then collected millions in speaking fees from Wall Street firms within weeks of leaving office). It was Obama who sidelined real healthcare reform and put in a right wing healthcare system that guaranteed cost increases of 10-15% every damn year.
Biden was a modest improvement, but nothing will forgive his slavish devotion to a genocidal Israel.
Democrats threw the trans community under the bus. They threw immigrants under the bus. Time after time they surrender to Republican framing then wonder why Republicans keep winning.
Know how Hillary got the DNC to put a finger on the scale for her campaign? She bailed them out of near bankruptcy. Why were they bankrupt? Obama funneled money that used to go to the party into his own campaign coffers. That’s how he won a second term while losing Congress. Overall, the Democrats lost over a thousand state and federal seats in the 8 years of his presidency.
This isn’t all about the big bad Republicans. It’s not all about stupid voters. Republicans are no better or worse than they ever were, and voters are no dumber. Democratic leadership has a lot to answer for as well. Quit trying to shield them from the change that desperately needs to happen.
Your opinions are bad, and you should feel bad.
Yeah, the Democrats have actually been doing everything right and have just had a string of bad luck. Bad dice roles on their voter generator. There is no reason for them to reevaluate or change anything. /s
Which is what no one is saying whatsoever, but enjoy your delusional reality. It sounds like a really good time for you.
Yeah. Democrats are saying that they need to move even further to the right. To the point of working with elon the nazi.
I’ve got news for you. The entire party leadership is desperately trying to prevent any change whatsoever.
Dude. No one is disagreeing with that. We know the democrats also suck. It’s your ‘whataboutism’ that everyone is taking issue with. You’re not even having the right argument right now.
Trumps votes barely changed from 2020 to 2024. Whay changed is 8 million less people voted for Kamala tban Biden.
We did not follow the path, we abandoned the DNC and that is why we have fascism.
The DNC abandoned us and expected unconditional votes.
The Democrats lost ground with every demographic but college educated women. 2020 was an unusually high turnout election. 2024 was a regression to the mean, yet Trump’s vote total went up.
Blaming the voters is just electoral masturbation. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Do you have a plan to get better voters in 2028? Blaming voters is for politicians that don’t care about winning. In other words, it’s for establishment Democrats.
My plan is that hopefully enough people get their memory jogged to decide Trump really is a shit candidate who makes literally everything worse.
Also promote the Democrats with logic and reason, and volunteer.
Your plan is the same plan the establishment uses in every single election. It’s the definition of insanity.
There is nothing else. If reason consistently loses to animalistic selfishness then this entire species is doomed.
Holding back fascism within the US*. Biden happily was releasing fascism in Israel.
Anyway, how did that “fascism holding” work out? You mean it did exactly nothing but postpone the thing for 4 years while having presidential powers?
Biden promoted peace which favored Israel, which is a trash stance imo, but it’s a world of difference from Trump admin’s Pete Hegseth promoting literal bare definition genocide, unapologetically.
No. Funding and giving political support to a genocidal state while crushing down on demonstrations against genocide isn’t promoting peace. It’s a very close thing to what the Trump administration is doing, marginally less bad but not “promoting peace” in the slightest.
The full extent of Biden taking any form of action against campus protestors was giving a speech which said things like “Dissent is essential for democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder.”
Trump is literally revoking visas over it.
Fuck off with that “both sides” nonsense.
So I’ve been going on and on about how “democrats bad” is a huge narrative being pushed hard on Lemmy. Always with the caveat that criticism is warranted, when it’s specific and targeted.
This is specific and targeted. This is how you properly criticize Dems. But that wouldn’t jive with the people seeding that other narrative. They don’t want to be helpful. They’re not interested in how to get other people to vote. Their objective is the opposite.
Maybe the Dems should switch their incremental improvement to the fact that they need billionaires to buy them votes before their dollars turn into rubles. Yeah, the number is bigger. Look how much good that does the Russians.
They should be supporting both Elon-style directly, and indirectly through accepting tax policy to allow us to do big things. Find smart policies to support medical school so that we can push for more doctors/nurses the way we did for Software Devs from 1995-2015. Create actual medicare for all to finally get rid of the odd tie between your employer and your healthcare. Support real freight so we can have fewer semis destroying our roads and creating traffic. Support mass transit so we need fewer roads and can have more walkable spaces with more available housing. (Mass transit enables realistic high density housing.) Change Trump’s stupid ass tariffs to be a response to climate change, now that we’ve developed better tech to see where the CO2 is coming from.
Raise the federal minimum wage. Reduce the work week to 36 hours, with real teeth in overtime requirements and salary exemptions. Recreate the Civilian Conservation Corps to make sure everyone who’s willing to put in real work can find a job, even if AI doesn’t like their resume.
Healthcare, traffic, and work are the biggest things everyone in the country has to deal with. Address the things that actually affect people’s lives. This is how your dollars stay dollars instead of turning into rubles. The billionaires might have less of them, but they’re worth more. When people are less desperate, everyone’s lives are better.
Really large sweeping economic changes tends to have significant unexpected problems created from them. It would be bad if we lifted everyone up and then destroyed our ability to maintain that new status in the process.
Agreed
“Changing shit means you have to adapt.”
So you’re saying it’s better to have the devil we know in the form of all the expected problems? What kind of regressive nonsense is this?
No, Im saying sweeping economic changes come with unforeseen consequences which is why many/most economists dont push for massive sweeping change.
Most economies are neoliberal/neoclassical, they’re literally a poverty cult based on empirically proven wrong axioms such as “printing money creates inflation”, “rising the minimum wage creates unemployment”, or “public expenditure in healthcare, pensions and education is bad for the economy”. You should do the opposite of what most economists preach.
Here’s where the fun begins because the highlighted portion above makes it clear you have never at any point taken a course in economics.
It does which is why monetary policy is important to focus on.
This isn’t that common as most of the studies done recently suggests this is not the case. There are some who still maintain that in specific situations this can occur but it isn’t as common as you state.
Please provide either a valid academic source for this or an opinion piece printed in a credible newspaper from an actual economist (eg Robert Reich is not an economist while Krugman and Mankiew are)
This is the clearest sign you have no education in the field. I have a buddy who focuses on healthcare economics why would you ask him about trade policy? That’s like asking your dentist if you beed elbow surgery.
“Oh, you haven’t taken capitalist propaganda courses regarding economics? Then your opinion is invalid”
As a matter of fact, people who teach against neoliberalism are in some universities. Prof. Richard Wolff, or Dr. Eduardo Garzón are a few of them. The fact that you took your econ-101 course to be gospel about reality without questioning the experimental validity of the models proponed by neoliberals tells me more about you than the name of any courses you’ve taken.
It isn’t that common?! For fuck’s sake, mate, it’s literally the main argument used against rising minimum wages every single time the “debate” pops up. Rising minimum wages is such an obviously moral thing to do, that the only possible objection to it for the vast majority of the population is technical. That’s why the CIA put gazillions of dollars in the Economics academia over the past half a century to propagate neoliberalism. Yes, recent empyrical studies suggest this is not the case because most of the information floating around the field of economics is a lie.
Currency minting literally doesn’t serve even as a modest predictor of inflation. Look at a graph of inflation in the EU or in the US for the past 60 years. Try and match it with money creation, and you’ll see exactly 0 correlation. You’ll get the same with Japan and with UK, and with China. Look at the absolutely astonishing amounts of money created by the EU after the 2010 Euro crisis (M2 or M3 aggregates, huh, funny that I know that terminology, even without being brainwashed at the econ faculty?) and the CPI over that time. Now look at a single historical event (2022 Ukraine invasion) and the resulting inflationary tendencies, PROVEN EMPYRICALLY to be caused by rising energy prices due to natural gas, famously NOT because of a money minting event. Seriously, you’re just propagating empirically demonstrated lies.
When I say you shouldn’t trust most economists, I don’t mean you should trust no economist. I mean most contemporary economists have been brainwashed into believing in neoliberal propaganda that permeated academia and public policy since the Reagan/Thatcher/Milton Friedman era, when the CIA decided Keynesian economics weren’t oppressive enough to poor people. Economics is a beautiful field to study, but believing a neoliberal economist with regards to public policy would be like treating cancer with acupuncture.
Went back and read this. I stand by my position. You also should read what I wrote because you are replying to points Im not making at all.
You already made your lack of understanding and education clear, why are you doubling down on that?
Economics is the study of the distribution of scarce resources. It isn’t inherently focused on money and Marxist economics is a thing.
Maybe dont reply and instead address your educational shortfalls.
Yeah, consequences like FDR getting elected President four times in a row. That was the last time the Democrats had a popular President.
I’m not sure if you noticed, but America’s ability to do much of anything is being dismantled before our eyes. The Democrats played it safe, so voters looked elsewhere.
60 years of unbelievable productivity gains and new technologies, and life has only gotten harder. I think we could do better than that. Bullshit excuses are easy to accept when it hasn’t hit you yet.
This isn’t “bullshit excuses” as you are focusing on the potential political gains and I am talking about the economic problems that could come about from sweeping economic changes.
When the New Deal passed the USA was a larger portion of the world economy and it was growing.
It’s absolutely bullshit. Most of what progressives want is stuff we had 50 years ago. The boldest new proposal is Medicare for All. Somehow every single other developed economy in the world can achieve universal healthcare, but the richest country in the world can’t manage it? BULLSHIT! While you wrong your hands people are dying and lives are being ruined every single day. It’s profane, and it’s pathetic. Yes, we can do a hell of a lot better.
I don’t think you are following this thread at all.
Large sweeping economic changes are usually bad. Medicare for all wouldn’t be a sweeping change unless we immediately banned all private insurances which M4A would not do. M4A would be increasing the efficiency of the American economy which is what economists want.
Large sweeping economic changes would be things like adding $5 to the federal minimum wage all at once. The economy would likely grow from an incremental move that added $5 over the course of a few years but spiking it hard and fast will kill a lot of businesses that would have been fine with $1/yr over 5 years. It does not help to increase the minimum wage if it causes rapid widespread unemployment (note: I am absolutely not arguing against a minimum wage increase just against a rapid shift).
And, where in the thread again was an instantaneous $5.00 raise to the minimum wage mentioned? Alluded to? Implied?
You are absolutely right, I’m not following the thread. I’m following the discussion, but the thread is a figment of your imagination, and I don’t know how to do that.
We were talking about whether large sweeping economic changes are a bad idea and whether incremental changes are better. You were arguing against that and I used minimum wage as an example.
Im tired of explaining things to you, so let’s stop here.
I seem to remember something about a genocide, too.
Good thing Trump ended that huh
It sure would have helped if either biden or harris credibly stood for anything else.
Harris stood for many good things. She should’ve also opposed the genocide yes, but the other choice was worse on it, making you a moron for not voting for her as a form of harm reduction.
I voted for harris.
You don’t give a shit. You just want silence from the critics of your genocide.
What does that mean?
Trump: ok so stocks went down 50% because of me, but look since then it’s up 80% !!!
Maga crowd: Yess, wooow!!!
There are absolutely lots of people that don’t understand that down 50% and up 80% means you just lost 10%.
For anyone who’s like me (where math and I are not friends), if you start with $1 and drop 50%, that’s 50¢
Go up 80% from 50¢ and you’re at 90¢
Your original $1 is now worth 90¢.
Yeah, my stocks are almost back to where they were at the beginning of the year, and it’s almost 100% due to Trump messing w/ tariffs. I’m not rich or anything, but seeing my retirement savings fluctuate at Trump’s whims doesn’t feel great.
Well, get over it. Incremental change is over forever, your way failed. It’s time to do things our way now, because liberal democracy is dead.
Yep, that checks out
“You’re from place I don’t like” isn’t a particularly strong counter-argument
It’s the basis of their entire political philosophy.
Your way of sitting on the couch and doing nothing sure has worked wonders.
Incremental improvement (genocide)
I mean, yeah