WHAT'S NEXT FOR LIBERALISM?

[Jhhnn]

Hopefully Liberalism is what's next for Liberalism.

I wouldn't count on it, though. Most likely it's Social Marxism under the guise of liberalism.

I know true Liberals. They do not post here.

More obscurato. It's your job, right?

 

[IronWing]

Socialism is just a first step to a dictatorship and ruin.

You're goofy.

 

[desura]

Still hedging & dancing around it. Why would we want to change the voting landscape if it's honest now? Well, other than for purely partisan purposes, the whole point of strict voter ID requirements.

Is there something desirable about American citizens leaving the country to be with their deported family members? They can still vote anyway-

https://www.fvap.gov/citizen-voter

Why? I'm only predicting. Trump's principle issue was immigration. Kris Kobach has a lot of early involvement in his transition. You do know who Kris Kobach is, right? Trump has an incentive to change the electorate through restrictions and deportations: to ensure reelection victory and a lasting GOP majority. The previous immigration reform bills were cast as a bonanza for Democrats as it would result in millions of newly legal residents, who would likely be D voters. Go the opposite direction and the GOP benefits. It only makes sense. And GOP controls pretty much all government down, from local government and now all three branches of the federal government. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter and getting old and will likely be replaced by Trump. The Trump administration will not prosecute voter suppression with 10% of the gusto of the Obama administration. All of this paves the way for a fairly large scale reshaping of the eligible voting demographic which will greatly affect the outcomes going forward.

 

[Jhhnn]

Socialism is just a first step to a dictatorship and ruin.

Any leader cult phenomenon will do. Mussolini set out to restore the glory of Rome. Trump says only he can make America great again.

I figure the Trumpsters will be wearing insignia soon enough.

 

[baydude]

Nothing much is gonna change with Nancy Pelosi still in the House

 

[imported_tajmahal]

You're goofy.

Tell it to the poor starving children in Venezuela that you spit on.

 

[IronWing]

Tell it to the poor starving children in Venezuela that you spit on.

You're still goofy.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

You're still goofy.

And those children in socialist paradise Venezuela are still starving thanks to tools like you.

 

[Jhhnn]

Why? I'm only predicting. Trump's principle issue was immigration. Kris Kobach has a lot of early involvement in his transition. You do know who Kris Kobach is, right? Trump has an incentive to change the electorate through restrictions and deportations: to ensure reelection victory and a lasting GOP majority. The previous immigration reform bills were cast as a bonanza for Democrats as it would result in millions of newly legal residents, who would likely be D voters. Go the opposite direction and the GOP benefits. It only makes sense. And GOP controls pretty much all government down, from local government and now all three branches of the federal government. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter and getting old and will likely be replaced by Trump. The Trump administration will not prosecute voter suppression with 10% of the gusto of the Obama administration. All of this paves the way for a fairly large scale reshaping of the eligible voting demographic which will greatly affect the outcomes going forward.

Their intent is clear, no doubt. They threaten the whole idea of democracy & must be denounced & opposed.

 

[IronWing]

And those children in socialist paradise Venezuela are still starving thanks to tools like you.

What's your take on Norwegian children?

 

[Jhhnn]

And those children in socialist paradise Venezuela are still starving thanks to tools like you.

Can we get a little more diversion over here?

 

[imported_tajmahal]

What's your take on Norwegian children?

Can you say Scandinavian?

 

[IronWing]

Can you say Scandinavian?

Sca sca an scandda scandi nnn n navian. Yes, yes I can.

 

[Victorian Gray]

And those children in socialist paradise Venezuela are still starving thanks to tools like you.

Silly argument deserves silly answer. You're still goofy

 

[Jaskalas]

Socialism is just a first step to a dictatorship and ruin.

How does one maintain the liberty and agency of individual people?

Take, for example, slaves who own nothing. Even if they could flee, they'd have no means. No capital to invest in their escape.

• If one has nothing they beg for food.
• If one has a little money, they can only buy cheap food.
• If one has more money, they can pick and choose the food they eat.

Freedom, Liberty, Independence. A person's agency requires the money to choose for one's self.
Typically that freedom is attained through employment. You are given the liquidity you need to make choices.
But what if being employed no longer meant having enough of a share? Your choices become limited.
Would you still be free?

People can legally be "free" men, but essentially acting as indentured servants. Employed... but for too little to matter.
If a battered spouse, or a fresh immigrant, or a college student wanted to move to find a better life?
They'll need enough income to save for the cost of travel, and a certainty of finding work at their destination.
What if there's no work available, or not enough wages for savings?

My argument is that we're facing a growing crisis, where the middle class is vanishing and people in poverty lose their agency.
This is an argument over how to help these people maintain their freedom in the face of economic blight.

The economy we're facing is a growing concern. No doubt you can regal us with tales of a food stamp President, a bunch of leeches on welfare, or you can agree with Romney's 47%. We ALREADY have so much "socialism" that, quote: "The single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income & benefits of $57,045."

Our current approach is slow, cumbersome, and bureaucratic, while the core issue accelerates. Wages.
It's the value of labor that is failing us, and turning free people back into slaves.
You worry about dictatorship and ruin, how about a desperate, starving people? What hope do they have?

It is time we prepare for automation, and deal with the loss of labor. It's time for basic income, paid for by our booming productivity.
You want people to be free, then you give them the means to act on it.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

Like a gun and a target?

 

[Puffnstuff]

A safety net underpinning a capitalist market does not strike me as Communism.

A hallmark of communism is state owned industries. Seems to me that the taxpayer bailout of the auto industry qualifies as blatant communism. Capitalism would've let them fail like Tucker and AMC.

 

[MrSquished]

A hallmark of communism is state owned industries. Seems to me that the taxpayer bailout of the auto industry qualifies as blatant communism. Capitalism would've let them fail like Tucker and AMC.

In many cases it's not ok to be a strict ideologue but to apply different solutions to different problems at different times. The bailout of the auto industry was ultimately successful and saved somewhere around a million jobs. And it cost us a pittance. The government got rid of its stake in Chrysler and GM in a relatively short period of time and I think we are all the better for it. That's called leadership.

 

[desura]

I definitely think that the amount of debt that the United States can issue at 1% interest will fall within the next decade. This might actually put the crunch on the entire system, requiring either massive tax hikes or massive cuts. For reals.

I believe that ever since Reagan's big deficits the United States has essentially been unmoored from basic economics. Those big deficits should have resulted in big inflation, but thanks to the Japanese buying debt, and later the Chinese, that big inflation never happened.

 

[norseamd]

Chttps://forums.anandtech.com/threads/whats-next-for-liberalism.2494543/page-8an you say Scandinavian?

Can you say hrafnasueltir?

Whats the point of the argument here?

 

[Victorian Gray]

I definitely think that the amount of debt that the United States can issue at 1% interest will fall within the next decade. This might actually put the crunch on the entire system, requiring either massive tax hikes or massive cuts. For reals.

I believe that ever since Reagan's big deficits the United States has essentially been unmoored from basic economics. Those big deficits should have resulted in big inflation, but thanks to the Japanese buying debt, and later the Chinese, that big inflation never happened.

You do know that most of your debt (almost 68%) is internal don't you?

http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/10/news/economy/us-debt-ownership/

 

[desura]

Well, something like 4 trillion of that is held by the federal reserve from quantitative easing, and 3 trillion or so is social security. At the end of the Bush term total debt was around 10-11 trillion. Even if most of the debt is held by US institutions, it still is problematic. Right now interest payments are like 300 billion a year. The main thing is that debt to GDP ratios are approaching dangerous levels--especially if the new Trump administration tries to do Reagan all over again, which is what all GOP administrations try to do.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tates-about-to-hit-it/?utm_term=.bfb73e4b83af

 

[Jhhnn]

Well, something like 4 trillion of that is held by the federal reserve from quantitative easing, and 3 trillion or so is social security. At the end of the Bush term total debt was around 10-11 trillion. Even if most of the debt is held by US institutions, it still is problematic. Right now interest payments are like 300 billion a year. The main thing is that debt to GDP ratios are approaching dangerous levels--especially if the new Trump administration tries to do Reagan all over again, which is what all GOP administrations try to do.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tates-about-to-hit-it/?utm_term=.bfb73e4b83af

It's their starve the beast strategy. Interest on the debt & holding taxes low is the way they intend to limit the power of govt. Whatever else we want to do we have to meet those obligations first.

The whole concept is a holdover from the gold standard, a way for wealth to have leverage against the govt. We're conditioned to see it as a valid concept when we can, in truth, simply create money at will should we choose.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/03/what-is-modern-monetary-theory-or-mmt.html

 

[agent00f]

It's nice that you linked that definition.
But it is wrong.

What you are talking about is communism.
In socialism private ownership is not banned. Socialism is something in between capitalism and communism. In socialism the government want to have more control over stuff than in capitalism. But socialism does not want to own everything.

The only reason why the government controls much of anything in "socialism", or more accurately many socialist states, is that the bourgeois class aren't exactly motivated to relinquish their ownership freely, and thus some more powerful actor is necessary to compel them. Again, worth reading that classic Animal Farm for an easy to understand explanation of how things came to be.

And those children in socialist paradise Venezuela are still starving thanks to tools like you.

Venezuela's lower (you know, indigenous) classes were actually starving before Chavez, much like Cuba's, which is what motivated the uprisings in both countries. But hey, white colonial power. To be fair though, the colonialists outside of the US didn't exterminate the native populations so it's not quite aryan level white power.

A hallmark of communism is state owned industries. Seems to me that the taxpayer bailout of the auto industry qualifies as blatant communism. Capitalism would've let them fail like Tucker and AMC.

Communism is by definition the elimination of ownership altogether. Just because a place calls itself communist doesn't mean much, any more than the Democratic People's Republic of Korea calling itself democratic. Most first world countries are social democracies to one degree or another, whereby state resources are allocated by ostensibly democratic representatives.

 

[desura]

It's their starve the beast strategy. Interest on the debt & holding taxes low is the way they intend to limit the power of govt. Whatever else we want to do we have to meet those obligations first.

The whole concept is a holdover from the gold standard, a way for wealth to have leverage against the govt. We're conditioned to see it as a valid concept when we can, in truth, simply create money at will should we choose.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/03/what-is-modern-monetary-theory-or-mmt.html

I can understand the starve the beast strategy. Ideally you first reduce spending and then reduce taxes. However, all of the incentives in government and relating with a half-informed public are for more spending and inefficient spending that doesn't ask too much from the workers, because the workers vote.

So if you are the fiscally responsible Party, you're always holding the bag and blamed for tax increases. Starving the beast is a pretty extreme position to take which makes sense given the incentives. Everyone views government as a piñata to take a swing at and get something out of.

Anyways, what I am trying to say is that in the Obama years we have lived in an economic unreality. The deficit going over 1.2 trillion in a single year is mind-blowing. That is the same as was accumulated over the entirety of the Reagan years. We have gotten carried away with frivolous culture war issues in our politics. At some point we won't be able to borrow so easily, and when that day comes, politics goes back to normal. Normally you should have to make tradeoffs between growth and inflation. Inflation is supposed to be the feedback mechanism that taxes are too low or spending too high.