Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government. A pragmatist would have been more sympathetic for reasons beyond pure capitalist economics.
> I just don’t buy this argument. By global standards, even the poorest Americans (with obvious exceptions like the homeless) are relatively wealthy. Comparison is the theft of joy.
Define wealth. The cheapest option for many foods in other countries is often not only much cheaper, but also of much higher quality than the cheapest option for the same type of item in the US (bread, rice, etc..) in fact their cheap version could easily be pass for the US premium grocery version.
Bad education system and social media contribute too. Manipulating the masses has never been as easy and cheap as it is now. Russia in particular knows how to do it in scale.
I just don’t buy this argument. By global standards, even the poorest Americans (with obvious exceptions like the homeless) are relatively wealthy. Comparison is the theft of joy.
You say comparison is the theft of joy, and then ask us to compare to an irrelevant metric.
If living standards are falling, grocery prices have increased, rents have gone up, wages have stagnated, what does the price of eggs in China have to do with my assessment of the local conditions.
Over what period of time have prices at grocery stores and rents not increased? Food and clothes are cheap by historical standards as a percentage of income.
Well it would be one thing if it were an inevitable natural conclusion. But working people are getting poorer because the owner class is hoarding wealth. It’s simply unjust. It’s the difference between losing your house to a hurricane and having someone burn it down.
> Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government
I don’t buy this anymore. The evidence is for a simpler hypothesis: 20 to 30% of Americans are stupid. They vote against their own economic interests, which doesn’t make sense if wealth is the problem. My personal hypothesis is lead exposure. But further empowering that segment with wealth strikes me as counterproductive.
Doesn't explain it at all. The biggest swing from 2020 to 2024 was people under 45 voting for Trump at a much higher rate, mostly driven by men. Anyone under 45 was born at least 5 years after lead gas was banned in cars. They're mad because they don’t see a path to the future they were promised. Calling them stupid is patronizing and counterproductive, even if true.
I’m not saying all Trump voters are stupid. Just that there is a stupid subset that are not rationally motivated. It’s productive to call this out, because I think it requires reworking our political system to deal with their threat. Fortunately, MAGA seems eager to set the precedents we’ll need in the future. (It’s also not patronising because I don’t care what they do as much as that they don’t cause problems for other people. That’s defensive more than patronising.)
Are you using rationally motivated synonymously with economically motivated?
There there's a lot more that motivates voters besides economics.
My hypothesis is that it is simply broad spectrum culture war. Mass communication and global human mobility have simply raised the stakes or control over social Commons. The same time due to related factors, there is low agreement on shared social rules, vales, and priorities.
In the sense that good fences make good neighbors, there is no clear fence today.
There is no trust in institutional norms to provide protection, so every battle for power seems existential.
I find it hard to argue with this. Real politik and the rule of the jungle have always been in effect. It is just less dramatic when there is consensus on the rules and limitations.
I propose another hypothesis, those that haven’t learned of the desire for real change instead of stagnant leadership will continue to make the same mistake each election cycle.
Learn to read the signs instead of calling people stupid for not agreeing with you, and then following it up with an attempt to force their alignment.
You are speaking as if there is a single objective agreement between people on what constitutes the most pragmatic answer. There is no such agreement. The foundation of liberalism is that we can not agree on first principles. An authoritarian crackdown is just as much an expression of pragmatism if the actor believes they can win.
> Deteriorating conditions for the working class are the main driver of our push toward authoritarian government.
No, they aren't. It's dubious that even the widening relative gap between the working class and the capitalist class plays a major role, though that at least has the virtue of being a real condition and not a fantasy.
If you have an alternative hypothesis, I’m all ears. The lack of good paying jobs and the knock on effects of expanding wealth disparity seems to be underlying most of the issues driving radicalism, left and right, up and down.
In America, at least, workers think tomorrow will be worse than today and they are resorting to populism to try and reverse the trend.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the working class is “resorting to populism to reverse the trend.” If anything, the fact that so many working-class voters support a wealthy oligarchy—one that consistently advances policies benefiting the super-rich at the expense of ordinary people—suggests that a significant portion of the population is being swayed by misinformation and manipulation, not that they’re successfully advocating for their own interests.
Ironically, it’s often the opposite party that actually pushes for policies that would materially benefit the working class. The real fallacy is equating the current wave of so-called “populism” with a genuine effort to improve conditions for workers. In practice, what’s being called “populism” is frequently just another vehicle for entrenched elites to consolidate power, not a movement to empower ordinary people.
All the Democrat led states have paid leave and higher minimum wages/overtime exempt laws. And higher unemployment benefits. And longer leave times for new moms. It’s also the Dem states that have free school lunches for kids and more robust Medicaid funding.
Democrats passed ACA, which made insurance even possible to purchase if you weren’t offered it by employer, and the annual out of pocket maximum, ban on pre existing conditions as a criteria for calculating premiums, and ACA premium credits made it more attainable than it was before ACA.
Build Back Better bill a couple years ago would have made paid leave policies nationwide and provided more assistance with childcare.
> Democrats passed ACA, which made insurance even possible to purchase if you weren’t offered it by employer, and the annual out of pocket maximum, ban on pre existing conditions as a criteria for calculating premiums, and ACA premium credits made it more attainable than it was before ACA.
Have you actually ever purchased a plan from the website? The last time I checked, the costs were the same as if I had a plan on my own. Also you could get policies prior to ACA, but were subject to health exams and non-coverage of preexisting conditions. In fact, one could argue that all ACA accomplished of benefit was forcing coverage of preexisting conditions. But let's also not forget the fine, which was applied to people who did not have health insurance under the assumption that it was a choice. In reality, people don't have health insurance if they can't afford it which made the penalty functionally a tax on the poor.
You speak of ACA like everybody will agree with you. A decade later I'm still mad at Obama and want my $4k back.
>In fact, one could argue that all ACA accomplished of benefit was forcing coverage of preexisting conditions.
Aka giving people access to healthcare.
Health insurance is not real insurance, it’s a facade where we pretend premiums are not taxes.
99% of people could never afford the healthcare they get, they would just die. Which is fine, but there is no situation where healthcare + low taxes (wealth redistribution) exists.
So it’s high taxes + healthcare, but with a flattening and top heavy population age histogram, even that doesn’t work.
The worst is when old people only get healthcare (Medicare, which is all there was before ACA). A country is doomed if it’s just sacrificing the future to eke out a few years its oldest.
> If you have an alternative hypothesis, I’m all ears.
How about if I let you do that:
> In America, at least, workers think tomorrow will be worse than today and they are resorting to populism to try and reverse the trend.
See, belief about likely future conditions is a very different hypothesis than factually-existing current conditions, and a better one. To the extent that, IMO, its at least part of the actual explanation.
It sounds like you think material conditions haven’t gotten worse? Cost of housing, food and healthcare, plus flat wages seem to disagree. I think in this case people’s perception matches reality.
I’ve noticed you refuse to put forward your own reasons, why is that?
> It's dubious that even the widening relative gap between the working class and the capitalist class plays a major role
This description could apply to the French Revolution, Tsarist Russia, the fall of the Weimar Republic, and the Colombian Civil War. Why do you think it is dubious?
This is pretty unhinged, so I’ll only respond to the one interesting thing - it’s pretty obvious that part of the male sexlessness problem is related to a lack of good paying, respectable jobs. Tough to get a good woman if you don’t have that going for you.
What do you think is a driver of that male loneliness? The traditional heterosexual norms of courtship and marriage don't exactly work when your country has a huge swath of people in economic precarity. People put off dating, sex, and procreation because they can't afford it.
Unless you plan to just... force people to fuck? And hope people don't notice their finances getting fucked? Seems like a recipe for drama[0].
> oh wait actually soon Marxist’s are going to do the anti-AI shit of claiming they’re sentient and thus deserve “rights”
As someone who's never read Marx, this feels like a strawman at best? At the very least, "liberate the robots" is a pro-AI position, not an anti-AI one.
