Furthermore the notion that if we just move to the right a little the GOP will be fucked is pretty silly
I'm not saying that. I think a center-left Dem can flip TX with a pro-immigration, pro-civil rights, healthcare-forward position. TX urban and southern regions are blue af but an anti-business sentiment doesn't play well anywhere.
The exemplar of this just dropped out because he couldnt bresk out of low single digits and lost his sebate race to ted cruz. Why should we believe this is the path to victory.
The primary already has about a 66% chance of picking a bad nominee.
Also, if Beto v Cruz happened in 2020, that seat is blue. He can't beat Cornyn but only barely lost the midterm.
2018 was a landslide year for Dems and he still lost.
True. I guess the counterargument here is that Texas can't flip, it's a waste of time, we're better off going more left-wing progressive and win some other way.
Requires you believe that the nation isn't very conservative on balance and is only waiting for a left-wing champion to say Fuck the Rich so loudly that Wisconsin and Michigan elect them.
I feel like that's not really a thing that will happen.
/Re-examines statewide results in 2018 in those states.
I dunno.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
I dont think the average voter is very dumb.
Honestly "voters are idiots" is the "you're such a fuckin tryhard" of electoral politics. It's purely born from failure.
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
keep in mind, Badger, that a good set of us here do not believe that it should be the hypothetical "Your business" beyond a certain scale, but that the business should be under collective ownership of all workers employed by the business.
For a good comparison, those of us who are at least some form of circumstance look at saying "Your business" in the same way that a lower-case-d democrat would look at someone describing the United Kingdom as "Queen Elizabeth II's Country"
That is going to be a major disconnect for finding common ground in these primary discussions
EDIT: That is to say, the divide is that under even mainstream US liberalism, there it is not argued that business be autocracy, directed in totality by some form of elite (founder, CEO, moneyed shareholders, what have you). However, among socialists, what is being called for is the democratization of the workplace, of labor, with workers having the power of self-determination in a manner akin to the power of self-determination of a citizen in a democracy.
In this sense, we do not simply see Billionaires as just people who had great success, as people who just have a lot of money, where we're drawing arbitrary lines.
We see them as Kings of their various fiefdoms. And by and large, that is how capitalism basically works; the modernized feudalism, with better accommodations for the serfs.
So when some of us get frustrated with Warren being good with Billionaires existing, to imagine what that's like imagine if a candidate was asked "How would you feel about allowing America to have a King and hereditary royalty with political power over the nation" and they for some reason said "Yeah, I'm fine with that."
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
I dont think the average voter is very dumb.
Honestly "voters are idiots" is the "you're such a fuckin tryhard" of electoral politics. It's purely born from failure.
I've said it before, but I think the more accurate description is "voters are exhausted and trying to keep up with politics as it truly exists instead of Washington Sportsball while trying to actually manage the rest of life's more pressing responsibilities is a Herculean Task at best."
Voters aren't idiots, they just don't give a fuck unless something convinces them to. Sometimes that's bullshit lies like Trump's and sometimes that's lofty hope and goals like Obama's, but most of the time they'll just vote for whoever's name they recognize and don't have a negative reaction to and call it a day. Those voters can be reached, especially this time around where Trump's got such a big negative cloud hanging over his head.
+8
Options
JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
But both sides are very much NOT the same at all. One side wants to raise their taxes so they can lower them for the wealthy. One side wants to make it harder for them to vote. One side wants to make it so they can't afford health care. One side wants to poison their air and water. One side wants to destroy the educational system.
They might THINK that both sides are the same, but they are dead wrong.
Not to be glib, but in what way is that noticeably different from the other side?
like, you can replace "wants" with "has made" in your post. People already can't afford health care. Taxes are already high, voting is already hard. Eight years of the other side in the White House hasn't unpoisoned the air or undestroyed the educational system. There are loads of Democratic politicians who are basically Republican-lite, running not on a platform of reversal but of just doing it less. The current Dem primary frontrunner is running on improving on the great achievements of the ACA, but with the ACA millions of people are still suffering and going broke and rationing insulin every year. The general election candidate in 2016 began to run with the slogan "America is already great", which is an absolutely insane bullshit thing to say of the 2016 United States of America.
the point of "both sides"-ism is that the world/US has been on a downward trend over the years regardless of which "side" was in power. The fact is that one side wants to lower taxes for the wealthy because their backers like more money, and the other side wants to lower taxes because they believe it will benefit the economy or help billionaires be more beneficial to society or something. You need to show an actual meaningful difference in actions of both sides, not just in "wants".
I'm sorry but what the heck are you talking about here? I see nothing coherent about the actual state of America's two political parties in this post.
Just
what.
i mean people have been dying from not being able to afford health care for years, so what makes the one party different from the other in practice? The differences that ElJeffe points to are things that the one (GOP) side has actually achieved, why should one believe that this time the other side will actually meaningfully stop or reverse things?
for sure Biden (or whomever) wants to make health care more affordable and cover up to 97% of Americans, but why would that be a convincing message to someone who can't afford to pay for health care at all and is just living pay check to pay check with maybe a couple hundred in savings like so many Americans?
Sorry, I just
whomever wants to make health care more affordable and cover up to 97% of Americans, but why would that be a convincing message to someone who can't afford to pay for health care at all
Why would someone who can't afford healthcare be convinced by a message of affordable healthcare? That...that's your big 'gotcha' ??
?
They can't afford to pay for health care at all. As in: the money they have available to spend on health care is effectively zero dollars. Making health care more affordable implies you still have to pay money, just less of it. Slashing co-pays and out of pocket costs by half makes health care more affordable, but a lot of people can't really afford half of their out of pocket costs either. And the message of "we will reduce the amount you have to pay to insurance companies" isn't particularly motivating to people who may question the need for insurance to get health care in the first place. If you've been fighting your insurance company to get them to cover necessary care you've received the message that your premiums may go down wouldn't seem particularly satisfying I would think.
And come on man Biden's plan is supposed to insure 97% of Americans, so are we left to assume that 3% of Americans (or 10 million people) are just shit out of luck? The parties couldn't be more different because the Democrats are only telling 10 million people to go fuck themselves while the Republicans are telling it to way more people? One side wants to make it so you can't afford health care, and the other side wants to make it so that you still might possibly not be able to afford health care? Vote Democrat because the odds are higher that you get into the group that allows you to get health care?
But both sides are very much NOT the same at all. One side wants to raise their taxes so they can lower them for the wealthy. One side wants to make it harder for them to vote. One side wants to make it so they can't afford health care. One side wants to poison their air and water. One side wants to destroy the educational system.
They might THINK that both sides are the same, but they are dead wrong.
Not to be glib, but in what way is that noticeably different from the other side?
like, you can replace "wants" with "has made" in your post. People already can't afford health care. Taxes are already high, voting is already hard. Eight years of the other side in the White House hasn't unpoisoned the air or undestroyed the educational system. There are loads of Democratic politicians who are basically Republican-lite, running not on a platform of reversal but of just doing it less. The current Dem primary frontrunner is running on improving on the great achievements of the ACA, but with the ACA millions of people are still suffering and going broke and rationing insulin every year. The general election candidate in 2016 began to run with the slogan "America is already great", which is an absolutely insane bullshit thing to say of the 2016 United States of America.
the point of "both sides"-ism is that the world/US has been on a downward trend over the years regardless of which "side" was in power. The fact is that one side wants to lower taxes for the wealthy because their backers like more money, and the other side wants to lower taxes because they believe it will benefit the economy or help billionaires be more beneficial to society or something. You need to show an actual meaningful difference in actions of both sides, not just in "wants".
I'm sorry but what the heck are you talking about here? I see nothing coherent about the actual state of America's two political parties in this post.
Just
what.
i mean people have been dying from not being able to afford health care for years, so what makes the one party different from the other in practice? The differences that ElJeffe points to are things that the one (GOP) side has actually achieved, why should one believe that this time the other side will actually meaningfully stop or reverse things?
for sure Biden (or whomever) wants to make health care more affordable and cover up to 97% of Americans, but why would that be a convincing message to someone who can't afford to pay for health care at all and is just living pay check to pay check with maybe a couple hundred in savings like so many Americans?
Sorry, I just
whomever wants to make health care more affordable and cover up to 97% of Americans, but why would that be a convincing message to someone who can't afford to pay for health care at all
Why would someone who can't afford healthcare be convinced by a message of affordable healthcare? That...that's your big 'gotcha' ??
?
They can't afford to pay for health care at all. As in: the money they have available to spend on health care is effectively zero dollars. Making health care more affordable implies you still have to pay money, just less of it. Slashing co-pays and out of pocket costs by half makes health care more affordable, but a lot of people can't really afford half of their out of pocket costs either. And the message of "we will reduce the amount you have to pay to insurance companies" isn't particularly motivating to people who may question the need for insurance to get health care in the first place. If you've been fighting your insurance company to get them to cover necessary care you've received the message that your premiums may go down wouldn't seem particularly satisfying I would think.
And come on man Biden's plan is supposed to insure 97% of Americans, so are we left to assume that 3% of Americans (or 10 million people) are just shit out of luck? The parties couldn't be more different because the Democrats are only telling 10 million people to go fuck themselves while the Republicans are telling it to way more people? One side wants to make it so you can't afford health care, and the other side wants to make it so that you still might possibly not be able to afford health care? Vote Democrat because the odds are higher that you get into the group that allows you to get health care?
It feels like the rhetoric of "Affordable healthcare" even from a lot of democratic party candidates that the affordability aspect is the monthly premium and never the actual cost of your care once you get the bill from your insurer.
That is insurance you can buy, but never really use.
“We thank everyone who showed up,” said Michele Roberts of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance during her opening remarks for the first-ever Presidential Forum on Environmental Justice on Friday.
“And for those who didn’t, catch up.”
The forum, a three-hour discussion of climate change and its disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities, was historic, necessary, eye-opening, and—I hate to say it—disappointing.
That’s not because of the event itself. Moderators Mustafa Ali, former environmental justice chair for the Environmental Protection Agency, and Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman asked hard-hitting questions and shed light on all the ways climate change affects every aspect of people’s lives—from housing to farming. The event was disappointing because of the candidates that weren’t there, candidates who might’ve elevated the conversation.
The event, organized by the National Black Caucus of State Legislators and of which Gizmodo was a partner, featured six presidential candidates, but only two guests are currently polling above 1 percent in the most recent national polling average: Senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren. The rest of the candidates were extreme long-shots with little hope of actually capturing the nomination (I did recognize Rich Boy Tom Steyer in my hotel lobby the morning of the event).
Steyer, at least, showed off during the event. He noted during the forum that he’d declare a state of emergency on climate change his first day in the White House, which left me impressed. He left me more impressed than Warren, to be honest. Even the audience reacted more loudly to Steyer than to Warren. She spent much of her time on stage in her comfort zone, talking about transforming the country’s financial system and taking down corrupt corporations. While that’s relevant to the climate crisis, environmental justice is about people. It’s about the air they breathe and the water they drink. It’s about the super fucked up shit they’re dealing with today, right now. And she didn’t pay much homage to that.
That’s unfortunate because, based on her plans at least, Warren sounds quite sophisticated when it comes to her understanding of environmental justice. She’s released a number of climate-related plans that include nods to the inequalities and inequities communities of color face—whether that’s black farmers or indigenous peoples who want pipelines out of their ancestral territories. Those plans, however, didn’t appear to translate into a comfort and confidence in talking about the topic.
So apparently only Warren and Booker showed up, aside from the "Are not going to make the cut, seriously" candidates, to an Environmental Justice forum last night in South Carolina
Sanders reason is likely because of needing to be in Iowa today for another climate event:
In fact, this agenda is likely why he didn’t attend the event. He’s holding a Climate Crisis Summit Saturday in Iowa with big-time names like author Naomi Klein and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. His office didn’t return a request for comment, but I’m disappointed he didn’t prioritize this event, one that showed how the climate crisis is hitting communities of color and low-income people first and worst—organized by leaders from those very communities.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
I dont think the average voter is very dumb.
The average voter is of average intelligence, and knows what you'd expect an average person to know. When you're then asking them to pick who to run the country, they're not going to choose based on their expert knowledge of foreign relations, social policy or economics and the decisions made at this scale have almost not resemblance to the decisions that they would make on a day to day level. They might even know this.
They're also not generally picking an expert in foreign relations, social policy or economics but a manager who does recognise who is a an expert in those fields and will bring them onto their team or has brought them onto their team.
They're a layman trying to judge whether or not two people claiming to be a better judge of expertise both have the voter's best interests at heart (or are at least aligned with their interests) and are actually a good judge of expertise. The people they have to rely on are often pretty heavily entwined with the people being voted for, so making the perfect informed choice is almost impossible and there's no guarantee that of the two people you have to pick between, there is a side that is right and a side that is wrong on every issue.
So the average voter isn't dumb, but given terrible information to make a choice in who they want to make a choice on an issue that both of your probably don't fully understand. They're honestly ignorant (only slightly more than the politicians) and so need to be pitched to at a fairly fundamental level. They're going to make very basic assumptions and will miss things that are counter-intuitive but obvious once you know so aren't going to enter a debate knowing key bits of information.
They're also human so will scale everything to something roughly 100 or so people sized and not process the massive numbers that a state interacts with naturally. A billion is more than a million and a million is a lot. Percentages are hard to think of, but him being the richest of the rich people I know is easy to think of (probably richer than that, but now we're back in the abstract). The richest person I know is relatable, and taking almost all of his money is something I can imagine and I don't think that is fair - the key is assuming that the voters will think along this path that is wrong (but natural) and tackle that, by pointing out that billions is not what they think and something that is unrelatable to the point of being almost unthinkable.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
I dont think the average voter is very dumb.
The average voter is of average intelligence, and knows what you'd expect an average person to know. When you're then asking them to pick who to run the country, they're not going to choose based on their expert knowledge of foreign relations, social policy or economics and the decisions made at this scale have almost not resemblance to the decisions that they would make on a day to day level. They might even know this.
They're also not generally picking an expert in foreign relations, social policy or economics but a manager who does recognise who is a an expert in those fields and will bring them onto their team or has brought them onto their team.
They're a layman trying to judge whether or not two people claiming to be a better judge of expertise both have the voter's best interests at heart (or are at least aligned with their interests) and are actually a good judge of expertise. The people they have to rely on are often pretty heavily entwined with the people being voted for, so making the perfect informed choice is almost impossible and there's no guarantee that of the two people you have to pick between, there is a side that is right and a side that is wrong on every issue.
So the average voter isn't dumb, but given terrible information to make a choice in who they want to make a choice on an issue that both of your probably don't fully understand. They're honestly ignorant (only slightly more than the politicians) and so need to be pitched to at a fairly fundamental level. They're going to make very basic assumptions and will miss things that are counter-intuitive but obvious once you know so aren't going to enter a debate knowing key bits of information.
They're also human so will scale everything to something roughly 100 or so people sized and not process the massive numbers that a state interacts with naturally. A billion is more than a million and a million is a lot. Percentages are hard to think of, but him being the richest of the rich people I know is easy to think of (probably richer than that, but now we're back in the abstract). The richest person I know is relatable, and taking almost all of his money is something I can imagine and I don't think that is fair - the key is assuming that the voters will think along this path that is wrong (but natural) and tackle that, by pointing out that billions is not what they think and something that is unrelatable to the point of being almost unthinkable.
Thought: if religious, you could probably use the story of the woman who just paid the two coins regarding explaining the disparity.
albeit somewhat of the inverse (she paid practically all she had, while the rich paying great amounts barely made a dent in their fortunes)
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
I dont think the average voter is very dumb.
The average voter is of average intelligence, and knows what you'd expect an average person to know. When you're then asking them to pick who to run the country, they're not going to choose based on their expert knowledge of foreign relations, social policy or economics and the decisions made at this scale have almost not resemblance to the decisions that they would make on a day to day level. They might even know this.
They're also not generally picking an expert in foreign relations, social policy or economics but a manager who does recognise who is a an expert in those fields and will bring them onto their team or has brought them onto their team.
They're a layman trying to judge whether or not two people claiming to be a better judge of expertise both have the voter's best interests at heart (or are at least aligned with their interests) and are actually a good judge of expertise. The people they have to rely on are often pretty heavily entwined with the people being voted for, so making the perfect informed choice is almost impossible and there's no guarantee that of the two people you have to pick between, there is a side that is right and a side that is wrong on every issue.
So the average voter isn't dumb, but given terrible information to make a choice in who they want to make a choice on an issue that both of your probably don't fully understand. They're honestly ignorant (only slightly more than the politicians) and so need to be pitched to at a fairly fundamental level. They're going to make very basic assumptions and will miss things that are counter-intuitive but obvious once you know so aren't going to enter a debate knowing key bits of information.
They're also human so will scale everything to something roughly 100 or so people sized and not process the massive numbers that a state interacts with naturally. A billion is more than a million and a million is a lot. Percentages are hard to think of, but him being the richest of the rich people I know is easy to think of (probably richer than that, but now we're back in the abstract). The richest person I know is relatable, and taking almost all of his money is something I can imagine and I don't think that is fair - the key is assuming that the voters will think along this path that is wrong (but natural) and tackle that, by pointing out that billions is not what they think and something that is unrelatable to the point of being almost unthinkable.
Thought: if religious, you could probably use the story of the woman who just paid the two coins regarding explaining the disparity.
albeit somewhat of the inverse (she paid practically all she had, while the rich paying great amounts barely made a dent in their fortunes)
No literally the lesson of the beggar donation story is that it doesn't matter how big a pile you give if it isn't actually a sacrifice god kinda doesn't give a shit. Like yeah you kinda did a good thing, but that lady who gave her last 2 pennies gets into heaven. The rich man that gives 2 pennies doesn't get any recognition because that amount of money is meaningless to them. Like that's entirely the lesson there.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
Taxation is a generally accepted function of the government. Arguments about it have been going on since forever. "You can only have this much wealth", not so much a part of western democracies. As such, some clarification on exactly why you are proposing this idea and why this specific number seems fairly relevant.
Plus, the question of "Why this tax rate?" is pretty simple. To pay for stuff. Which is, in fact, the reason Warren keeps bringing up for her tax increases.
+1
Options
MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
I dont think the average voter is very dumb.
The average voter is of average intelligence, and knows what you'd expect an average person to know. When you're then asking them to pick who to run the country, they're not going to choose based on their expert knowledge of foreign relations, social policy or economics and the decisions made at this scale have almost not resemblance to the decisions that they would make on a day to day level. They might even know this.
They're also not generally picking an expert in foreign relations, social policy or economics but a manager who does recognise who is a an expert in those fields and will bring them onto their team or has brought them onto their team.
They're a layman trying to judge whether or not two people claiming to be a better judge of expertise both have the voter's best interests at heart (or are at least aligned with their interests) and are actually a good judge of expertise. The people they have to rely on are often pretty heavily entwined with the people being voted for, so making the perfect informed choice is almost impossible and there's no guarantee that of the two people you have to pick between, there is a side that is right and a side that is wrong on every issue.
So the average voter isn't dumb, but given terrible information to make a choice in who they want to make a choice on an issue that both of your probably don't fully understand. They're honestly ignorant (only slightly more than the politicians) and so need to be pitched to at a fairly fundamental level. They're going to make very basic assumptions and will miss things that are counter-intuitive but obvious once you know so aren't going to enter a debate knowing key bits of information.
They're also human so will scale everything to something roughly 100 or so people sized and not process the massive numbers that a state interacts with naturally. A billion is more than a million and a million is a lot. Percentages are hard to think of, but him being the richest of the rich people I know is easy to think of (probably richer than that, but now we're back in the abstract). The richest person I know is relatable, and taking almost all of his money is something I can imagine and I don't think that is fair - the key is assuming that the voters will think along this path that is wrong (but natural) and tackle that, by pointing out that billions is not what they think and something that is unrelatable to the point of being almost unthinkable.
Thought: if religious, you could probably use the story of the woman who just paid the two coins regarding explaining the disparity.
albeit somewhat of the inverse (she paid practically all she had, while the rich paying great amounts barely made a dent in their fortunes)
No literally the lesson of the beggar donation story is that it doesn't matter how big a pile you give if it isn't actually a sacrifice god kinda doesn't give a shit. Like yeah you kinda did a good thing, but that lady who gave her last 2 pennies gets into heaven. The rich man that gives 2 pennies doesn't get any recognition because that amount of money is meaningless to them. Like that's entirely the lesson there.
1): You're not wrong
2): I'm absolutely convinced that the democratic party ceding all religious messaging to the GOP is a huge part of why we lose
Taxing billionaires a lot more is popular in polls and billionaires as a group are overall unpopular in polls. Saying billionaires shouldn't exist doesn't appear to be popular in polls.
If you don't trust a Cato survey saying 82% of Americans think billionaires should be allowed to exist, HuffPost/YouGov poll found 20% supported the statement that every billionaire is a policy failure.
It doesn't help that there are billionaires who are pretty popular. Bill Gates is popular regardless of people distrusting billionaires in general. Getting into a fight with Bill Gates is not the same as getting into a fight with Stephen Schwarzman.
That isn't too say that talking about billionaires as something that should not exist couldn't be good for non-electoral reasons, but it can't exactly be expected to help in elections any time soon.
Yeah, my suspicion is that messages like "Tax them a bunch" and "Inequality is bad" and "Fuck these specific rich parasites" (eg - people like Mitt Romney) play well but you will start running into trouble when you start saying things like "No one should ever be allowed to be that rich" or the like because then you are running headlong into issues of fairness, people's aspirations and long-running stereotypes about how progressive politics "hates success" or whatever. And I think those don't play as well with wide-swaths of the electorate, which is reflected in things like the polling above.
Yeah. It's not scary to face a high tax rate on the off-chance you get really rich from your small business (don't we all want that problem.) It is scary to think that you get really rich, your business will be taken from you and you will be publicly shamed as a parasite.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
I dont think the average voter is very dumb.
The average voter is of average intelligence, and knows what you'd expect an average person to know. When you're then asking them to pick who to run the country, they're not going to choose based on their expert knowledge of foreign relations, social policy or economics and the decisions made at this scale have almost not resemblance to the decisions that they would make on a day to day level. They might even know this.
They're also not generally picking an expert in foreign relations, social policy or economics but a manager who does recognise who is a an expert in those fields and will bring them onto their team or has brought them onto their team.
They're a layman trying to judge whether or not two people claiming to be a better judge of expertise both have the voter's best interests at heart (or are at least aligned with their interests) and are actually a good judge of expertise. The people they have to rely on are often pretty heavily entwined with the people being voted for, so making the perfect informed choice is almost impossible and there's no guarantee that of the two people you have to pick between, there is a side that is right and a side that is wrong on every issue.
So the average voter isn't dumb, but given terrible information to make a choice in who they want to make a choice on an issue that both of your probably don't fully understand. They're honestly ignorant (only slightly more than the politicians) and so need to be pitched to at a fairly fundamental level. They're going to make very basic assumptions and will miss things that are counter-intuitive but obvious once you know so aren't going to enter a debate knowing key bits of information.
They're also human so will scale everything to something roughly 100 or so people sized and not process the massive numbers that a state interacts with naturally. A billion is more than a million and a million is a lot. Percentages are hard to think of, but him being the richest of the rich people I know is easy to think of (probably richer than that, but now we're back in the abstract). The richest person I know is relatable, and taking almost all of his money is something I can imagine and I don't think that is fair - the key is assuming that the voters will think along this path that is wrong (but natural) and tackle that, by pointing out that billions is not what they think and something that is unrelatable to the point of being almost unthinkable.
Thought: if religious, you could probably use the story of the woman who just paid the two coins regarding explaining the disparity.
albeit somewhat of the inverse (she paid practically all she had, while the rich paying great amounts barely made a dent in their fortunes)
No literally the lesson of the beggar donation story is that it doesn't matter how big a pile you give if it isn't actually a sacrifice god kinda doesn't give a shit. Like yeah you kinda did a good thing, but that lady who gave her last 2 pennies gets into heaven. The rich man that gives 2 pennies doesn't get any recognition because that amount of money is meaningless to them. Like that's entirely the lesson there.
1): You're not wrong
2): I'm absolutely convinced that the democratic party ceding all religious messaging to the GOP is a huge part of why we lose
Nobody in american politics has ceded the ground on religious messaging. That shit is everywhere.
+4
Options
JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
I mean, the billionaires are absolutely not talking about how they are scared of Sanders, so they obviously think her ideas are more likely to actually happe
Gates was specifically asked about Warren's wealth tax, Sanders wasn't mentioned. This NYT article about billionaires getting nervous mentions Sanders only once, just to note that he has also proposed a wealth tax like Warren. Both Dimon and Cooperman are on Sanders' page, but the article only quotes them as talking about Warren.
I don't think that the billionaires think Warren is more likely to happen, I think that the media is just ignoring Bernie and focusing on Warren.
Warren is also more likely to win both the primary and the general. Sanders is simple for Trump to beat, you just have to pull his long list of pro-Communism quotes and people are going to Nope The Fuck Out and the Dem establishment hates him and said Dem establishment, unlike the GOP establishment, has actual pull with the base.
Hell, look at Bloomberg entering the race just when Warren is about to become the frontrunner since Biden isn't up to snuff, so a better candidate for the centrist wing of the party is getting in.
Warren is also more likely to win both the primary and the general. Sanders is simple for Trump to beat, you just have to pull his long list of pro-Communism quotes and people are going to Nope The Fuck Out and the Dem establishment hates him and said Dem establishment, unlike the GOP establishment, has actual pull with the base.
Warren is also more likely to win both the primary and the general. Sanders is simple for Trump to beat, you just have to pull his long list of pro-Communism quotes and people are going to Nope The Fuck Out and the Dem establishment hates him and said Dem establishment, unlike the GOP establishment, has actual pull with the base.
Hell, look at Bloomberg entering the race just when Warren is about to become the frontrunner since Biden isn't up to snuff, so a better candidate for the centrist wing of the party is getting in.
Bloomberg is not a better candidate. Nobody likes him who doesn't work for a major media organization. And minorities in his home city hate him.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
Taxation is a generally accepted function of the government. Arguments about it have been going on since forever. "You can only have this much wealth", not so much a part of western democracies. As such, some clarification on exactly why you are proposing this idea and why this specific number seems fairly relevant.
Plus, the question of "Why this tax rate?" is pretty simple. To pay for stuff. Which is, in fact, the reason Warren keeps bringing up for her tax increases.
I'm not sure if that's actually the case? FDR's campaigns in the 30s seem to have heavily revolved around the theme of wealth redistribution and the hazards of excess accumulation:
Jackson spends a good deal of his time on the British experience, including the Liberal Party's welfare reforms of the early 1900s and the Labour Party's postwar platform of the 1940s and 1950s. Such episodes can be illuminating for Americans, but the contextual and historical differences tend to outweigh the similarities.
But Jackson is also fascinated with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The hallmark of New Deal politics was economic populism, he contends. FDR's world was populated with villains (bankers, big business) and heroes (workers, farmers). For much of his presidency, FDR tried to pit those groups against each other, marshaling the many against the few. At times he did this in strikingly personal fashion: He had a penchant for naming names, and he gloried in the public disgrace of "economic royalists" (and especially wealthy tax avoiders).
Call it the vindictive style in American politics, but it was nothing if not successful. It worked, at least in part, because Roosevelt cast his political agenda as part of a larger national narrative. "He drew on a perennial republican theme, deeply entrenched in American political culture: the danger posed to the common good of the republic by the accumulation of power and influence in the hands of a self-centred minority," Jackson writes.
FDR was adept at wrapping New Deal policies in the "American" label. He even managed to brand his tax policies. "Taxation according to ability to pay, argued Roosevelt, was 'the American principle,' and the New Deal had 'Americanised the tax structure' by introducing greater progressiveness," Jackson writes. "As a result, Roosevelt argued that his administration had created 'a safer, happier, more American America.'"
Jackson calls this a "discourse of social patriotism," and he holds it out as an example for today's liberal politicians. "By invoking the nation, progressive politicians spoke about a shared identity that transcended class loyalties and contrasted an inclusive community with the exclusive privilege enjoyed by a minority," he writes. Social patriotism can help forge coalitions between low- and middle-income voters, giving progressive politicians a powerful electoral boost.
Tax Talk
FDR's tax rhetoric was not equalitarian. He endorsed a broader distribution of wealth, but he was careful to avoid any call for wholesale redistribution. Instead he promised to break up "concentrated" wealth, which posed a threat to economic and political freedoms, not to mention social harmony. "Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," FDR declared in 1935, "and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."
Roosevelt defended redistribution as a function of economic development. In the modern world, individuals had no exclusive claim to material wealth. Quoting Andrew Carnegie, he noted that "where wealth accrues honorably, the people are always silent partners." As he went on to explain:
The movement toward progressive taxation of wealth and of income has accompanied the growing diversification and interrelation of effort which marks our industrial society. Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market.
Those were powerful and convincing words when Roosevelt spoke them in 1935, all the more so because FDR underscored them with an implicit threat:
Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods. People know that vast personal incomes come not only through the effort or ability or luck of those who receive them, but also because of the opportunities for advantage which Government itself contributes. Therefore, the duty rests upon the Government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes.
Roosevelt's rhetoric helped propel the Wealth Tax Act of 1935 through Congress, raising rates on estates and large incomes. It came during the high tide of New Deal reform, when Roosevelt indulged in the most passionate class-based rhetoric of his presidency (up to and through the 1936 presidential election).
But for all its apparent radicalism, FDR's tax talk never strayed from its majoritarian moorings. As Jackson notes of successful progressive appeals on both sides of the Atlantic: "Redistribution was not presented by these politicians as advancing only the interests of 'the working class' or 'the poor' but as a majoritarian project that improved the economic position of the average citizen and was opposed only by selfish interest groups pursuing a narrow sectarian agenda."
This rhetoric of redistribution is not always pretty or admirable. At times it can be downright ugly. But it has also been notably successful. For the most part, the Obama campaign has avoided the less attractive elements of New Deal rhetoric, avoiding the demonization of enemies (except perhaps when it comes to Wall Street financiers). But it has retained the social patriotism that defines low- and middle-income interests as broadly "American" interests.
FDR's rhetoric, as firebrand as it was, was popular enough that it won him election after election to the point we literally passed an amendment to institute presidential term limits to prevent that from happening again. It seems the more moderate approach to wealth and the billionaire class is a post-war phenomenon rather than an ahistoric sudden twist.
The rhetoric from the socialist wing sure doesn't sound particularly ahistorical, and Sanders recent rally seems to echo some of the social unity component of FDR's rhetoric
The field of 2020 presidential candidates with health care overhaul plans is crowded, and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., is drawing lines of distinction between his proposal and his competitors' plans.
"I mean, the reality is, all these beautiful proposals we all put forward, their impact is kind of multiplied by zero if you can't actually get it through Congress, and it's one of the reasons why I do favor the approach that I have," he said.
Buttigieg would offer public health insurance to those who want it while also keeping private health care plans available. Other candidates' proposals, including "Medicare for All" — backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — would replace the current system with a single-payer, government-run program and eliminate private insurance altogether.
Buttigieg spoke to two undecided Indiana voters and NPR host Scott Simon as part of the Off Script series of interviews with 2020 presidential candidates.
"We make sure that everybody can afford [public health insurance], but we don't require you to take it. And partly I think that's just the right policy, because I think people should be able to choose," he said. "But it's also really important that that's a policy that commands the support of most Americans. ... We have a moment where we can get something that big done and most Americans want it done. That's not true of some of the other ideas out there, which would make it much harder to actually achieve them no matter how good they sound in campaign season."
In the Marist poll, 90 percent of Democrats thought a plan that provided for a public option was a good idea, as compared to 64 percent who supported a Sanders-style Medicare for All plan that would replace private health insurance. The popularity of the public option also carries over to independent voters: 70 percent support it, as compared to 39 percent for Medicare for All.
Warren is also more likely to win both the primary and the general. Sanders is simple for Trump to beat, you just have to pull his long list of pro-Communism quotes and people are going to Nope The Fuck Out and the Dem establishment hates him and said Dem establishment, unlike the GOP establishment, has actual pull with the base.
Hell, look at Bloomberg entering the race just when Warren is about to become the frontrunner since Biden isn't up to snuff, so a better candidate for the centrist wing of the party is getting in.
Bloomberg is not a better candidate. Nobody likes him who doesn't work for a major media organization. And minorities in his home city hate him.
And at best his actual citizen on the street recognition is "Isn't he the rich guy who tried to ban sodas?"
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Its just progressive taxation that scales up to 100% instead of whatever. Why do we know what any level should be in a taxation scheme? We pick nice rounded numbers mostly.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
Taxation is a generally accepted function of the government. Arguments about it have been going on since forever. "You can only have this much wealth", not so much a part of western democracies. As such, some clarification on exactly why you are proposing this idea and why this specific number seems fairly relevant.
Plus, the question of "Why this tax rate?" is pretty simple. To pay for stuff. Which is, in fact, the reason Warren keeps bringing up for her tax increases.
I'm not sure if that's actually the case? FDR's campaigns in the 30s seem to have heavily revolved around the theme of wealth redistribution and the hazards of excess accumulation:
Jackson spends a good deal of his time on the British experience, including the Liberal Party's welfare reforms of the early 1900s and the Labour Party's postwar platform of the 1940s and 1950s. Such episodes can be illuminating for Americans, but the contextual and historical differences tend to outweigh the similarities.
But Jackson is also fascinated with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The hallmark of New Deal politics was economic populism, he contends. FDR's world was populated with villains (bankers, big business) and heroes (workers, farmers). For much of his presidency, FDR tried to pit those groups against each other, marshaling the many against the few. At times he did this in strikingly personal fashion: He had a penchant for naming names, and he gloried in the public disgrace of "economic royalists" (and especially wealthy tax avoiders).
Call it the vindictive style in American politics, but it was nothing if not successful. It worked, at least in part, because Roosevelt cast his political agenda as part of a larger national narrative. "He drew on a perennial republican theme, deeply entrenched in American political culture: the danger posed to the common good of the republic by the accumulation of power and influence in the hands of a self-centred minority," Jackson writes.
FDR was adept at wrapping New Deal policies in the "American" label. He even managed to brand his tax policies. "Taxation according to ability to pay, argued Roosevelt, was 'the American principle,' and the New Deal had 'Americanised the tax structure' by introducing greater progressiveness," Jackson writes. "As a result, Roosevelt argued that his administration had created 'a safer, happier, more American America.'"
Jackson calls this a "discourse of social patriotism," and he holds it out as an example for today's liberal politicians. "By invoking the nation, progressive politicians spoke about a shared identity that transcended class loyalties and contrasted an inclusive community with the exclusive privilege enjoyed by a minority," he writes. Social patriotism can help forge coalitions between low- and middle-income voters, giving progressive politicians a powerful electoral boost.
Tax Talk
FDR's tax rhetoric was not equalitarian. He endorsed a broader distribution of wealth, but he was careful to avoid any call for wholesale redistribution. Instead he promised to break up "concentrated" wealth, which posed a threat to economic and political freedoms, not to mention social harmony. "Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," FDR declared in 1935, "and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."
Roosevelt defended redistribution as a function of economic development. In the modern world, individuals had no exclusive claim to material wealth. Quoting Andrew Carnegie, he noted that "where wealth accrues honorably, the people are always silent partners." As he went on to explain:
The movement toward progressive taxation of wealth and of income has accompanied the growing diversification and interrelation of effort which marks our industrial society. Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market.
Those were powerful and convincing words when Roosevelt spoke them in 1935, all the more so because FDR underscored them with an implicit threat:
Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods. People know that vast personal incomes come not only through the effort or ability or luck of those who receive them, but also because of the opportunities for advantage which Government itself contributes. Therefore, the duty rests upon the Government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes.
Roosevelt's rhetoric helped propel the Wealth Tax Act of 1935 through Congress, raising rates on estates and large incomes. It came during the high tide of New Deal reform, when Roosevelt indulged in the most passionate class-based rhetoric of his presidency (up to and through the 1936 presidential election).
But for all its apparent radicalism, FDR's tax talk never strayed from its majoritarian moorings. As Jackson notes of successful progressive appeals on both sides of the Atlantic: "Redistribution was not presented by these politicians as advancing only the interests of 'the working class' or 'the poor' but as a majoritarian project that improved the economic position of the average citizen and was opposed only by selfish interest groups pursuing a narrow sectarian agenda."
This rhetoric of redistribution is not always pretty or admirable. At times it can be downright ugly. But it has also been notably successful. For the most part, the Obama campaign has avoided the less attractive elements of New Deal rhetoric, avoiding the demonization of enemies (except perhaps when it comes to Wall Street financiers). But it has retained the social patriotism that defines low- and middle-income interests as broadly "American" interests.
FDR's rhetoric, as firebrand as it was, was popular enough that it won him election after election to the point we literally passed an amendment to institute presidential term limits to prevent that from happening again. It seems the more moderate approach to wealth and the billionaire class is a post-war phenomenon rather than an ahistoric sudden twist.
All of that big long pointless quote there is about taxation. Which is the whole point of what I just said. And which is a thing Warren talks about all the time. None of that is about caps on how much weralth you are allowed to have. The distinction between the two being what we were talking about.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
Taxation is a generally accepted function of the government. Arguments about it have been going on since forever. "You can only have this much wealth", not so much a part of western democracies. As such, some clarification on exactly why you are proposing this idea and why this specific number seems fairly relevant.
Plus, the question of "Why this tax rate?" is pretty simple. To pay for stuff. Which is, in fact, the reason Warren keeps bringing up for her tax increases.
I'm not sure if that's actually the case? FDR's campaigns in the 30s seem to have heavily revolved around the theme of wealth redistribution and the hazards of excess accumulation:
Jackson spends a good deal of his time on the British experience, including the Liberal Party's welfare reforms of the early 1900s and the Labour Party's postwar platform of the 1940s and 1950s. Such episodes can be illuminating for Americans, but the contextual and historical differences tend to outweigh the similarities.
But Jackson is also fascinated with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The hallmark of New Deal politics was economic populism, he contends. FDR's world was populated with villains (bankers, big business) and heroes (workers, farmers). For much of his presidency, FDR tried to pit those groups against each other, marshaling the many against the few. At times he did this in strikingly personal fashion: He had a penchant for naming names, and he gloried in the public disgrace of "economic royalists" (and especially wealthy tax avoiders).
Call it the vindictive style in American politics, but it was nothing if not successful. It worked, at least in part, because Roosevelt cast his political agenda as part of a larger national narrative. "He drew on a perennial republican theme, deeply entrenched in American political culture: the danger posed to the common good of the republic by the accumulation of power and influence in the hands of a self-centred minority," Jackson writes.
FDR was adept at wrapping New Deal policies in the "American" label. He even managed to brand his tax policies. "Taxation according to ability to pay, argued Roosevelt, was 'the American principle,' and the New Deal had 'Americanised the tax structure' by introducing greater progressiveness," Jackson writes. "As a result, Roosevelt argued that his administration had created 'a safer, happier, more American America.'"
Jackson calls this a "discourse of social patriotism," and he holds it out as an example for today's liberal politicians. "By invoking the nation, progressive politicians spoke about a shared identity that transcended class loyalties and contrasted an inclusive community with the exclusive privilege enjoyed by a minority," he writes. Social patriotism can help forge coalitions between low- and middle-income voters, giving progressive politicians a powerful electoral boost.
Tax Talk
FDR's tax rhetoric was not equalitarian. He endorsed a broader distribution of wealth, but he was careful to avoid any call for wholesale redistribution. Instead he promised to break up "concentrated" wealth, which posed a threat to economic and political freedoms, not to mention social harmony. "Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," FDR declared in 1935, "and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."
Roosevelt defended redistribution as a function of economic development. In the modern world, individuals had no exclusive claim to material wealth. Quoting Andrew Carnegie, he noted that "where wealth accrues honorably, the people are always silent partners." As he went on to explain:
The movement toward progressive taxation of wealth and of income has accompanied the growing diversification and interrelation of effort which marks our industrial society. Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market.
Those were powerful and convincing words when Roosevelt spoke them in 1935, all the more so because FDR underscored them with an implicit threat:
Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods. People know that vast personal incomes come not only through the effort or ability or luck of those who receive them, but also because of the opportunities for advantage which Government itself contributes. Therefore, the duty rests upon the Government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes.
Roosevelt's rhetoric helped propel the Wealth Tax Act of 1935 through Congress, raising rates on estates and large incomes. It came during the high tide of New Deal reform, when Roosevelt indulged in the most passionate class-based rhetoric of his presidency (up to and through the 1936 presidential election).
But for all its apparent radicalism, FDR's tax talk never strayed from its majoritarian moorings. As Jackson notes of successful progressive appeals on both sides of the Atlantic: "Redistribution was not presented by these politicians as advancing only the interests of 'the working class' or 'the poor' but as a majoritarian project that improved the economic position of the average citizen and was opposed only by selfish interest groups pursuing a narrow sectarian agenda."
This rhetoric of redistribution is not always pretty or admirable. At times it can be downright ugly. But it has also been notably successful. For the most part, the Obama campaign has avoided the less attractive elements of New Deal rhetoric, avoiding the demonization of enemies (except perhaps when it comes to Wall Street financiers). But it has retained the social patriotism that defines low- and middle-income interests as broadly "American" interests.
FDR's rhetoric, as firebrand as it was, was popular enough that it won him election after election to the point we literally passed an amendment to institute presidential term limits to prevent that from happening again. It seems the more moderate approach to wealth and the billionaire class is a post-war phenomenon rather than an ahistoric sudden twist.
All of that big long pointless quote there is about taxation. Which is the whole point of what I just said. And which is a thing Warren talks about all the time.
None of that is about caps on how much weralth you are allowed to have.
FDR's tax rhetoric was not equalitarian. He endorsed a broader distribution of wealth, but he was careful to avoid any call for wholesale redistribution. Instead he promised to break up "concentrated" wealth, which posed a threat to economic and political freedoms, not to mention social harmony. "Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," FDR declared in 1935, "and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."
That certainly sounds functionally like a "cap" on wealth.
+3
Options
JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
But both sides are very much NOT the same at all. One side wants to raise their taxes so they can lower them for the wealthy. One side wants to make it harder for them to vote. One side wants to make it so they can't afford health care. One side wants to poison their air and water. One side wants to destroy the educational system.
They might THINK that both sides are the same, but they are dead wrong.
Not to be glib, but in what way is that noticeably different from the other side?
like, you can replace "wants" with "has made" in your post. People already can't afford health care. Taxes are already high, voting is already hard. Eight years of the other side in the White House hasn't unpoisoned the air or undestroyed the educational system. There are loads of Democratic politicians who are basically Republican-lite, running not on a platform of reversal but of just doing it less. The current Dem primary frontrunner is running on improving on the great achievements of the ACA, but with the ACA millions of people are still suffering and going broke and rationing insulin every year. The general election candidate in 2016 began to run with the slogan "America is already great", which is an absolutely insane bullshit thing to say of the 2016 United States of America.
the point of "both sides"-ism is that the world/US has been on a downward trend over the years regardless of which "side" was in power. The fact is that one side wants to lower taxes for the wealthy because their backers like more money, and the other side wants to lower taxes because they believe it will benefit the economy or help billionaires be more beneficial to society or something. You need to show an actual meaningful difference in actions of both sides, not just in "wants".
I'm sorry but what the heck are you talking about here? I see nothing coherent about the actual state of America's two political parties in this post.
Just
what.
i mean people have been dying from not being able to afford health care for years, so what makes the one party different from the other in practice? The differences that ElJeffe points to are things that the one (GOP) side has actually achieved, why should one believe that this time the other side will actually meaningfully stop or reverse things?
for sure Biden (or whomever) wants to make health care more affordable and cover up to 97% of Americans, but why would that be a convincing message to someone who can't afford to pay for health care at all and is just living pay check to pay check with maybe a couple hundred in savings like so many Americans?
Sorry, I just
whomever wants to make health care more affordable and cover up to 97% of Americans, but why would that be a convincing message to someone who can't afford to pay for health care at all
Why would someone who can't afford healthcare be convinced by a message of affordable healthcare? That...that's your big 'gotcha' ??
?
They can't afford to pay for health care at all. As in: the money they have available to spend on health care is effectively zero dollars. Making health care more affordable implies you still have to pay money, just less of it. Slashing co-pays and out of pocket costs by half makes health care more affordable, but a lot of people can't really afford half of their out of pocket costs either. And the message of "we will reduce the amount you have to pay to insurance companies" isn't particularly motivating to people who may question the need for insurance to get health care in the first place. If you've been fighting your insurance company to get them to cover necessary care you've received the message that your premiums may go down wouldn't seem particularly satisfying I would think.
And come on man Biden's plan is supposed to insure 97% of Americans, so are we left to assume that 3% of Americans (or 10 million people) are just shit out of luck? The parties couldn't be more different because the Democrats are only telling 10 million people to go fuck themselves while the Republicans are telling it to way more people? One side wants to make it so you can't afford health care, and the other side wants to make it so that you still might possibly not be able to afford health care? Vote Democrat because the odds are higher that you get into the group that allows you to get health care?
It feels like the rhetoric of "Affordable healthcare" even from a lot of democratic party candidates that the affordability aspect is the monthly premium and never the actual cost of your care once you get the bill from your insurer.
That is insurance you can buy, but never really use.
"Affordability" in this country is a nightmare of eldritch scale.
I think Biden implied that he ultimately didn't need to borrow from Obama, but it is still insane that this is a thing that was considered. VP Joe Biden talking about considering selling his house because Beau resigning would make it hard to cover the costs as something entirely normal, as just something that showed how good a guy Obama was, is absolutely absurd.
It reinforces the idea that a lot of mainstream Democrats think everybody having health insurance is important but also believe that using up all your savings and more on care when you do get sick is perfectly fine. like they think nobody (but 3%) should pay for the full cost of health care but can't comprehend that the average American can't afford a couple thousand extra on top when they get real sick.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
It is absolutely not necessarily the primary goal of taxation. The most basic justification of taxation is "government is necessary and costs money, and the money has to come from somewhere."
Beyond that, the means by which you collect taxes are based on your other goals. If you want to remove some of the burden from the poor, you make your taxes progressive to varying degrees.
Personally, I don't see redistribution of wealth as a primary goal in itself. Like, if I see a guy with a million dollars and a guy with a hundred thousand dollars, my immediate thought is not, "I need to give the rich guy's money to the less rich guy."
I approach it as: there are certain things that everyone needs in this country, and they should all have the ability to get those things. Moreover, they should all have opportunities to advance themselves into more comfortable positions. We should protect the weak, the unfortunate, and the unlucky. Everyone should be guaranteed adequate food, shelter, health care, education, and so on. Meanwhile, there need to be checks on the wealthy and powerful to make sure they don't abuse their positions.
And realistically, doing all of that functionally requires taking from the rich and giving to nonrich. And that's fine! But I don't think we should be taking money from the rich just because they're rich and we don't like that, or viewing wealth and success as inherently oppressive.
And I think this is why I really like Warren and am lukewarm on Bernie. Because while their policies are superficially similar, the underlying principles that guide them there are quite different.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
My concern with trying to just make sure everyone has enough etc while not enaging in redistribution for its own sake is that youre basically just leaving the power structure as is with some minor tweaking. That same power structure that caused the problem in the first place.
Day One they start clawing back to the bad old days because that benefitted them and youve left them with billions of dollars to do it with. Its trying to win without actually defeating your enemies.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
Taxation is a generally accepted function of the government. Arguments about it have been going on since forever. "You can only have this much wealth", not so much a part of western democracies. As such, some clarification on exactly why you are proposing this idea and why this specific number seems fairly relevant.
Plus, the question of "Why this tax rate?" is pretty simple. To pay for stuff. Which is, in fact, the reason Warren keeps bringing up for her tax increases.
I'm not sure if that's actually the case? FDR's campaigns in the 30s seem to have heavily revolved around the theme of wealth redistribution and the hazards of excess accumulation:
Jackson spends a good deal of his time on the British experience, including the Liberal Party's welfare reforms of the early 1900s and the Labour Party's postwar platform of the 1940s and 1950s. Such episodes can be illuminating for Americans, but the contextual and historical differences tend to outweigh the similarities.
But Jackson is also fascinated with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The hallmark of New Deal politics was economic populism, he contends. FDR's world was populated with villains (bankers, big business) and heroes (workers, farmers). For much of his presidency, FDR tried to pit those groups against each other, marshaling the many against the few. At times he did this in strikingly personal fashion: He had a penchant for naming names, and he gloried in the public disgrace of "economic royalists" (and especially wealthy tax avoiders).
Call it the vindictive style in American politics, but it was nothing if not successful. It worked, at least in part, because Roosevelt cast his political agenda as part of a larger national narrative. "He drew on a perennial republican theme, deeply entrenched in American political culture: the danger posed to the common good of the republic by the accumulation of power and influence in the hands of a self-centred minority," Jackson writes.
FDR was adept at wrapping New Deal policies in the "American" label. He even managed to brand his tax policies. "Taxation according to ability to pay, argued Roosevelt, was 'the American principle,' and the New Deal had 'Americanised the tax structure' by introducing greater progressiveness," Jackson writes. "As a result, Roosevelt argued that his administration had created 'a safer, happier, more American America.'"
Jackson calls this a "discourse of social patriotism," and he holds it out as an example for today's liberal politicians. "By invoking the nation, progressive politicians spoke about a shared identity that transcended class loyalties and contrasted an inclusive community with the exclusive privilege enjoyed by a minority," he writes. Social patriotism can help forge coalitions between low- and middle-income voters, giving progressive politicians a powerful electoral boost.
Tax Talk
FDR's tax rhetoric was not equalitarian. He endorsed a broader distribution of wealth, but he was careful to avoid any call for wholesale redistribution. Instead he promised to break up "concentrated" wealth, which posed a threat to economic and political freedoms, not to mention social harmony. "Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," FDR declared in 1935, "and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."
Roosevelt defended redistribution as a function of economic development. In the modern world, individuals had no exclusive claim to material wealth. Quoting Andrew Carnegie, he noted that "where wealth accrues honorably, the people are always silent partners." As he went on to explain:
The movement toward progressive taxation of wealth and of income has accompanied the growing diversification and interrelation of effort which marks our industrial society. Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market.
Those were powerful and convincing words when Roosevelt spoke them in 1935, all the more so because FDR underscored them with an implicit threat:
Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods. People know that vast personal incomes come not only through the effort or ability or luck of those who receive them, but also because of the opportunities for advantage which Government itself contributes. Therefore, the duty rests upon the Government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes.
Roosevelt's rhetoric helped propel the Wealth Tax Act of 1935 through Congress, raising rates on estates and large incomes. It came during the high tide of New Deal reform, when Roosevelt indulged in the most passionate class-based rhetoric of his presidency (up to and through the 1936 presidential election).
But for all its apparent radicalism, FDR's tax talk never strayed from its majoritarian moorings. As Jackson notes of successful progressive appeals on both sides of the Atlantic: "Redistribution was not presented by these politicians as advancing only the interests of 'the working class' or 'the poor' but as a majoritarian project that improved the economic position of the average citizen and was opposed only by selfish interest groups pursuing a narrow sectarian agenda."
This rhetoric of redistribution is not always pretty or admirable. At times it can be downright ugly. But it has also been notably successful. For the most part, the Obama campaign has avoided the less attractive elements of New Deal rhetoric, avoiding the demonization of enemies (except perhaps when it comes to Wall Street financiers). But it has retained the social patriotism that defines low- and middle-income interests as broadly "American" interests.
FDR's rhetoric, as firebrand as it was, was popular enough that it won him election after election to the point we literally passed an amendment to institute presidential term limits to prevent that from happening again. It seems the more moderate approach to wealth and the billionaire class is a post-war phenomenon rather than an ahistoric sudden twist.
All of that big long pointless quote there is about taxation. Which is the whole point of what I just said. And which is a thing Warren talks about all the time.
None of that is about caps on how much weralth you are allowed to have.
FDR's tax rhetoric was not equalitarian. He endorsed a broader distribution of wealth, but he was careful to avoid any call for wholesale redistribution. Instead he promised to break up "concentrated" wealth, which posed a threat to economic and political freedoms, not to mention social harmony. "Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," FDR declared in 1935, "and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."
That certainly sounds functionally like a "cap" on wealth.
It does not actually. In fact, the quote both notes that he avoided calls for wholesale redistribution and puts his attack on the concentration of wealth in terms of .... taxes. And notably, the things that actually happened were taxes.
I just find the notion of a system of taxation that is both 'fair' and 'allows billionaires to exist' is one of mutual exclusivity, personally. You literally can't have both.
EDIT: At least at the current valuation of currency. I suppose with enough time, and enough inflation, it could become possible.
Javen on
+9
Options
JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
I've said it before, but I think the more accurate description is "voters are exhausted and trying to keep up with politics as it truly exists instead of Washington Sportsball while trying to actually manage the rest of life's more pressing responsibilities is a Herculean Task at best."
I think this ad from Jaime Harrison gets at an important point.
Voters aren't idiots or ignorant, they're just on average very concrete thinkers. The example of the dirt road isn't a sign that voters are selfish, it shows that voters believe in what they can directly see and notice. What happens in the wider world is abstract. And while they can talk about and discuss and think about abstract things, abstract stuff is a bad motivator for voting. (Or actively paying attention to politics.)
I get the feeling that a lot of political activism fails at making things concrete for the people they are talking to.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
It is absolutely not necessarily the primary goal of taxation. The most basic justification of taxation is "government is necessary and costs money, and the money has to come from somewhere."
Beyond that, the means by which you collect taxes are based on your other goals. If you want to remove some of the burden from the poor, you make your taxes progressive to varying degrees.
Personally, I don't see redistribution of wealth as a primary goal in itself. Like, if I see a guy with a million dollars and a guy with a hundred thousand dollars, my immediate thought is not, "I need to give the rich guy's money to the less rich guy."
I approach it as: there are certain things that everyone needs in this country, and they should all have the ability to get those things. Moreover, they should all have opportunities to advance themselves into more comfortable positions. We should protect the weak, the unfortunate, and the unlucky. Everyone should be guaranteed adequate food, shelter, health care, education, and so on. Meanwhile, there need to be checks on the wealthy and powerful to make sure they don't abuse their positions.
And realistically, doing all of that functionally requires taking from the rich and giving to nonrich. And that's fine! But I don't think we should be taking money from the rich just because they're rich and we don't like that, or viewing wealth and success as inherently oppressive.
And I think this is why I really like Warren and am lukewarm on Bernie. Because while their policies are superficially similar, the underlying principles that guide them there are quite different.
Then I think, honestly, this is where our two wings are at an impasse because we have functionally different interpretations of how our society is functioning. This isn't a matter of "we don't like the rich," and I think I and the other socialist posts on here have attempted to articulate something beyond that to a functional interpretation of the interplay between what is, honestly, a wealthy american aristocracy, society at large and the power executed by wealth. And we have two candidates now in this race who are precisely examples of billionaires attempting to use their vast reserves of wealth to directly execute their power in society by jamming themselves into the democratic primary not by any actual real value of their skills as politicians but because they have a shitton of money and believe themselves thus to be qualified by dint of that.
Moreover, that fundamental disconnect comes from that view that their wealth is due to some form of personal success, rather than nature of ownership, rather than through their labors. That success, as FDR Noted* nearly a century ago, is not theirs but that of the people on whom their ownership of labor depended. Hell, in some iteration of this thread, we had the math posted about how much money you'd have to make per hour to become a billionaire, and we started hitting the timescales of centuries at thousands of dollars per hour in order to even approach that level of wealth.
Like, you say that we should protect the weak, the unfortunate and the unlucky. And that everyone should have the food, shelter, education and healthcare they need. But I think the uncomfortable reality to this is, honestly, we could do all those things right now, we have the resources. But most of it gets hoovered up and hoarded by the wealthiest people in the nation by dint of owning the methods of generating that wealth. And they get really really pissy when you get anywhere near the hoard in a meaningful sense.
We don't want there to Not Be Billionaires because Billionaires are some "other"
We don't want there to be billionaires because billionaires get to be such by effectively hoarding the wealth produced by others, and then using that wealth to accrue and execute their own power and prestige while society around them suffers.
That guy making hundreds of thousands of dollars? Yeah, they probably don't need you to give that millionaire's cash to 'em.
But the folks barely scraping by at the low 10s of thousands or less? With rent, medical and other debts chewing away at every last cent? Yeah, maybe they do. And maybe the reason they're only making the low 10s of thousands is because we got a system that exploits their labor, funneling the wealth they produce away from them and into the hands of the folks who own it, and for the most part the post-war period in America has been full of folks in Washington who believe that if you own the means, you decide just how much of the wealth the folks who generate it for you get to keep
*
The movement toward progressive taxation of wealth and of income has accompanied the growing diversification and interrelation of effort which marks our industrial society. Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market.
What I would ask Bernie as a follow-up is: what is the exact number of dollars nobody should be able to exceed, and please tell me how you came to this number? I think this would force him to abandon the dumb artificiality of the question and talk about the core of the point he wants to make.
This is not substantially different than what the GOP does whenever someone wants to raise taxes!
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
Taxation is a generally accepted function of the government. Arguments about it have been going on since forever. "You can only have this much wealth", not so much a part of western democracies. As such, some clarification on exactly why you are proposing this idea and why this specific number seems fairly relevant.
Plus, the question of "Why this tax rate?" is pretty simple. To pay for stuff. Which is, in fact, the reason Warren keeps bringing up for her tax increases.
I'm not sure if that's actually the case? FDR's campaigns in the 30s seem to have heavily revolved around the theme of wealth redistribution and the hazards of excess accumulation:
Jackson spends a good deal of his time on the British experience, including the Liberal Party's welfare reforms of the early 1900s and the Labour Party's postwar platform of the 1940s and 1950s. Such episodes can be illuminating for Americans, but the contextual and historical differences tend to outweigh the similarities.
But Jackson is also fascinated with Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. The hallmark of New Deal politics was economic populism, he contends. FDR's world was populated with villains (bankers, big business) and heroes (workers, farmers). For much of his presidency, FDR tried to pit those groups against each other, marshaling the many against the few. At times he did this in strikingly personal fashion: He had a penchant for naming names, and he gloried in the public disgrace of "economic royalists" (and especially wealthy tax avoiders).
Call it the vindictive style in American politics, but it was nothing if not successful. It worked, at least in part, because Roosevelt cast his political agenda as part of a larger national narrative. "He drew on a perennial republican theme, deeply entrenched in American political culture: the danger posed to the common good of the republic by the accumulation of power and influence in the hands of a self-centred minority," Jackson writes.
FDR was adept at wrapping New Deal policies in the "American" label. He even managed to brand his tax policies. "Taxation according to ability to pay, argued Roosevelt, was 'the American principle,' and the New Deal had 'Americanised the tax structure' by introducing greater progressiveness," Jackson writes. "As a result, Roosevelt argued that his administration had created 'a safer, happier, more American America.'"
Jackson calls this a "discourse of social patriotism," and he holds it out as an example for today's liberal politicians. "By invoking the nation, progressive politicians spoke about a shared identity that transcended class loyalties and contrasted an inclusive community with the exclusive privilege enjoyed by a minority," he writes. Social patriotism can help forge coalitions between low- and middle-income voters, giving progressive politicians a powerful electoral boost.
Tax Talk
FDR's tax rhetoric was not equalitarian. He endorsed a broader distribution of wealth, but he was careful to avoid any call for wholesale redistribution. Instead he promised to break up "concentrated" wealth, which posed a threat to economic and political freedoms, not to mention social harmony. "Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," FDR declared in 1935, "and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."
Roosevelt defended redistribution as a function of economic development. In the modern world, individuals had no exclusive claim to material wealth. Quoting Andrew Carnegie, he noted that "where wealth accrues honorably, the people are always silent partners." As he went on to explain:
The movement toward progressive taxation of wealth and of income has accompanied the growing diversification and interrelation of effort which marks our industrial society. Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market.
Those were powerful and convincing words when Roosevelt spoke them in 1935, all the more so because FDR underscored them with an implicit threat:
Social unrest and a deepening sense of unfairness are dangers to our national life which we must minimize by rigorous methods. People know that vast personal incomes come not only through the effort or ability or luck of those who receive them, but also because of the opportunities for advantage which Government itself contributes. Therefore, the duty rests upon the Government to restrict such incomes by very high taxes.
Roosevelt's rhetoric helped propel the Wealth Tax Act of 1935 through Congress, raising rates on estates and large incomes. It came during the high tide of New Deal reform, when Roosevelt indulged in the most passionate class-based rhetoric of his presidency (up to and through the 1936 presidential election).
But for all its apparent radicalism, FDR's tax talk never strayed from its majoritarian moorings. As Jackson notes of successful progressive appeals on both sides of the Atlantic: "Redistribution was not presented by these politicians as advancing only the interests of 'the working class' or 'the poor' but as a majoritarian project that improved the economic position of the average citizen and was opposed only by selfish interest groups pursuing a narrow sectarian agenda."
This rhetoric of redistribution is not always pretty or admirable. At times it can be downright ugly. But it has also been notably successful. For the most part, the Obama campaign has avoided the less attractive elements of New Deal rhetoric, avoiding the demonization of enemies (except perhaps when it comes to Wall Street financiers). But it has retained the social patriotism that defines low- and middle-income interests as broadly "American" interests.
FDR's rhetoric, as firebrand as it was, was popular enough that it won him election after election to the point we literally passed an amendment to institute presidential term limits to prevent that from happening again. It seems the more moderate approach to wealth and the billionaire class is a post-war phenomenon rather than an ahistoric sudden twist.
All of that big long pointless quote there is about taxation. Which is the whole point of what I just said. And which is a thing Warren talks about all the time.
None of that is about caps on how much weralth you are allowed to have.
FDR's tax rhetoric was not equalitarian. He endorsed a broader distribution of wealth, but he was careful to avoid any call for wholesale redistribution. Instead he promised to break up "concentrated" wealth, which posed a threat to economic and political freedoms, not to mention social harmony. "Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," FDR declared in 1935, "and they have done little to prevent an unjust concentration of wealth and economic power."
That certainly sounds functionally like a "cap" on wealth.
It does not actually. In fact, the quote both notes that he avoided calls for wholesale redistribution and puts his attack on the concentration of wealth in terms of .... taxes. And notably, the things that actually happened were taxes.
Shryke the man literally advocated breaking up concentrated wealth.
1 - Who do you think owned that wealth?
2 - How do you think those of us advocating "America should not permit Billionaires to be a class" would go about it?
Because I'm gonna suggest the answer to 1 is "the millionaires and billionaires of the 1930s" and the answer to 2 is "hefty taxation to achieve that end"
The man literally said that "our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," who do you think "the few" were?
Posts
/Re-examines statewide results in 2018 in those states.
I dunno.
Someone operating on the fear of what will happen to them if they become a billionaire is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions!
You say that like not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions is rare or someone limits said person's ability to vote.
Like, there's often talk about how your average voter is dumb, but I think "your average voter is not operating on a reasonable set of assumptions" is probably closer to the mark.
I dont think the average voter is very dumb.
Honestly "voters are idiots" is the "you're such a fuckin tryhard" of electoral politics. It's purely born from failure.
keep in mind, Badger, that a good set of us here do not believe that it should be the hypothetical "Your business" beyond a certain scale, but that the business should be under collective ownership of all workers employed by the business.
For a good comparison, those of us who are at least some form of circumstance look at saying "Your business" in the same way that a lower-case-d democrat would look at someone describing the United Kingdom as "Queen Elizabeth II's Country"
That is going to be a major disconnect for finding common ground in these primary discussions
EDIT: That is to say, the divide is that under even mainstream US liberalism, there it is not argued that business be autocracy, directed in totality by some form of elite (founder, CEO, moneyed shareholders, what have you). However, among socialists, what is being called for is the democratization of the workplace, of labor, with workers having the power of self-determination in a manner akin to the power of self-determination of a citizen in a democracy.
In this sense, we do not simply see Billionaires as just people who had great success, as people who just have a lot of money, where we're drawing arbitrary lines.
We see them as Kings of their various fiefdoms. And by and large, that is how capitalism basically works; the modernized feudalism, with better accommodations for the serfs.
So when some of us get frustrated with Warren being good with Billionaires existing, to imagine what that's like imagine if a candidate was asked "How would you feel about allowing America to have a King and hereditary royalty with political power over the nation" and they for some reason said "Yeah, I'm fine with that."
That is key to understanding the disconnect in this and any other primary season between more mainstream liberals and the socialist wing of the party.
I've said it before, but I think the more accurate description is "voters are exhausted and trying to keep up with politics as it truly exists instead of Washington Sportsball while trying to actually manage the rest of life's more pressing responsibilities is a Herculean Task at best."
They can't afford to pay for health care at all. As in: the money they have available to spend on health care is effectively zero dollars. Making health care more affordable implies you still have to pay money, just less of it. Slashing co-pays and out of pocket costs by half makes health care more affordable, but a lot of people can't really afford half of their out of pocket costs either. And the message of "we will reduce the amount you have to pay to insurance companies" isn't particularly motivating to people who may question the need for insurance to get health care in the first place. If you've been fighting your insurance company to get them to cover necessary care you've received the message that your premiums may go down wouldn't seem particularly satisfying I would think.
And come on man Biden's plan is supposed to insure 97% of Americans, so are we left to assume that 3% of Americans (or 10 million people) are just shit out of luck? The parties couldn't be more different because the Democrats are only telling 10 million people to go fuck themselves while the Republicans are telling it to way more people? One side wants to make it so you can't afford health care, and the other side wants to make it so that you still might possibly not be able to afford health care? Vote Democrat because the odds are higher that you get into the group that allows you to get health care?
It feels like the rhetoric of "Affordable healthcare" even from a lot of democratic party candidates that the affordability aspect is the monthly premium and never the actual cost of your care once you get the bill from your insurer.
That is insurance you can buy, but never really use.
also I feel like we need to remember that even under the ACA's reforms, Biden, Vice President of the United States still had to borrow money from Obama to afford Beau's care for his cancer (the alternative was selling their house).
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/12/joe-biden-barack-obama-money-house-beau-family
"Affordability" in this country is a nightmare of eldritch scale.
So apparently only Warren and Booker showed up, aside from the "Are not going to make the cut, seriously" candidates, to an Environmental Justice forum last night in South Carolina
Sanders reason is likely because of needing to be in Iowa today for another climate event:
Yes it is!
Because wanting to take an increased proportion of your income as taxes is categorically different than declaring you are not allowed to own more than a certain number of dollars or assets!
Which I'm pretty sure you understand!
Exclamation mark!
The average voter is of average intelligence, and knows what you'd expect an average person to know. When you're then asking them to pick who to run the country, they're not going to choose based on their expert knowledge of foreign relations, social policy or economics and the decisions made at this scale have almost not resemblance to the decisions that they would make on a day to day level. They might even know this.
They're also not generally picking an expert in foreign relations, social policy or economics but a manager who does recognise who is a an expert in those fields and will bring them onto their team or has brought them onto their team.
They're a layman trying to judge whether or not two people claiming to be a better judge of expertise both have the voter's best interests at heart (or are at least aligned with their interests) and are actually a good judge of expertise. The people they have to rely on are often pretty heavily entwined with the people being voted for, so making the perfect informed choice is almost impossible and there's no guarantee that of the two people you have to pick between, there is a side that is right and a side that is wrong on every issue.
So the average voter isn't dumb, but given terrible information to make a choice in who they want to make a choice on an issue that both of your probably don't fully understand. They're honestly ignorant (only slightly more than the politicians) and so need to be pitched to at a fairly fundamental level. They're going to make very basic assumptions and will miss things that are counter-intuitive but obvious once you know so aren't going to enter a debate knowing key bits of information.
They're also human so will scale everything to something roughly 100 or so people sized and not process the massive numbers that a state interacts with naturally. A billion is more than a million and a million is a lot. Percentages are hard to think of, but him being the richest of the rich people I know is easy to think of (probably richer than that, but now we're back in the abstract). The richest person I know is relatable, and taking almost all of his money is something I can imagine and I don't think that is fair - the key is assuming that the voters will think along this path that is wrong (but natural) and tackle that, by pointing out that billions is not what they think and something that is unrelatable to the point of being almost unthinkable.
Is wealth redistribution not a primary policy goal of taxation, as a means of correcting money concentrating in the hands of a few instead of circulating through the system?
If so, is not the disagreement then that we have a difference as to what that redistribution should be at rather than some greater fundamental disconnect?
EDIT: Given that wealth is power, at some point while it seems uncomfortable we are going to have to consider just how much wealth we're actually comfortable with oligarchs in this nation possessing, unless you can figure out some other ways of reigning in their ability to redirect society via spending their massive warchests.
Thought: if religious, you could probably use the story of the woman who just paid the two coins regarding explaining the disparity.
albeit somewhat of the inverse (she paid practically all she had, while the rich paying great amounts barely made a dent in their fortunes)
No literally the lesson of the beggar donation story is that it doesn't matter how big a pile you give if it isn't actually a sacrifice god kinda doesn't give a shit. Like yeah you kinda did a good thing, but that lady who gave her last 2 pennies gets into heaven. The rich man that gives 2 pennies doesn't get any recognition because that amount of money is meaningless to them. Like that's entirely the lesson there.
Taxation is a generally accepted function of the government. Arguments about it have been going on since forever. "You can only have this much wealth", not so much a part of western democracies. As such, some clarification on exactly why you are proposing this idea and why this specific number seems fairly relevant.
Plus, the question of "Why this tax rate?" is pretty simple. To pay for stuff. Which is, in fact, the reason Warren keeps bringing up for her tax increases.
1): You're not wrong
2): I'm absolutely convinced that the democratic party ceding all religious messaging to the GOP is a huge part of why we lose
So Tom Steyers isn't just buying votes he's literally doing some dirty shit.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Nobody in american politics has ceded the ground on religious messaging. That shit is everywhere.
Actually: https://berniesanders.com/anti-endorsements/ (i really just love the fact he has this on his site)
Gates was specifically asked about Warren's wealth tax, Sanders wasn't mentioned. This NYT article about billionaires getting nervous mentions Sanders only once, just to note that he has also proposed a wealth tax like Warren. Both Dimon and Cooperman are on Sanders' page, but the article only quotes them as talking about Warren.
I don't think that the billionaires think Warren is more likely to happen, I think that the media is just ignoring Bernie and focusing on Warren.
Hell, look at Bloomberg entering the race just when Warren is about to become the frontrunner since Biden isn't up to snuff, so a better candidate for the centrist wing of the party is getting in.
Polling so far does not support this
Bloomberg is not a better candidate. Nobody likes him who doesn't work for a major media organization. And minorities in his home city hate him.
I'm not sure if that's actually the case? FDR's campaigns in the 30s seem to have heavily revolved around the theme of wealth redistribution and the hazards of excess accumulation:
Via http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/D90F7AF1A95DFFA1852574E90048A658?OpenDocument
FDR's rhetoric, as firebrand as it was, was popular enough that it won him election after election to the point we literally passed an amendment to institute presidential term limits to prevent that from happening again. It seems the more moderate approach to wealth and the billionaire class is a post-war phenomenon rather than an ahistoric sudden twist.
The rhetoric from the socialist wing sure doesn't sound particularly ahistorical, and Sanders recent rally seems to echo some of the social unity component of FDR's rhetoric
And there's the fact that polling (yes this is a July article) says that most Americans are not for eliminating private insurance:
And at best his actual citizen on the street recognition is "Isn't he the rich guy who tried to ban sodas?"
Its just progressive taxation that scales up to 100% instead of whatever. Why do we know what any level should be in a taxation scheme? We pick nice rounded numbers mostly.
The mocking is nice tho.
All of that big long pointless quote there is about taxation. Which is the whole point of what I just said. And which is a thing Warren talks about all the time. None of that is about caps on how much weralth you are allowed to have. The distinction between the two being what we were talking about.
That certainly sounds functionally like a "cap" on wealth.
I think Biden implied that he ultimately didn't need to borrow from Obama, but it is still insane that this is a thing that was considered. VP Joe Biden talking about considering selling his house because Beau resigning would make it hard to cover the costs as something entirely normal, as just something that showed how good a guy Obama was, is absolutely absurd.
It reinforces the idea that a lot of mainstream Democrats think everybody having health insurance is important but also believe that using up all your savings and more on care when you do get sick is perfectly fine. like they think nobody (but 3%) should pay for the full cost of health care but can't comprehend that the average American can't afford a couple thousand extra on top when they get real sick.
It is absolutely not necessarily the primary goal of taxation. The most basic justification of taxation is "government is necessary and costs money, and the money has to come from somewhere."
Beyond that, the means by which you collect taxes are based on your other goals. If you want to remove some of the burden from the poor, you make your taxes progressive to varying degrees.
Personally, I don't see redistribution of wealth as a primary goal in itself. Like, if I see a guy with a million dollars and a guy with a hundred thousand dollars, my immediate thought is not, "I need to give the rich guy's money to the less rich guy."
I approach it as: there are certain things that everyone needs in this country, and they should all have the ability to get those things. Moreover, they should all have opportunities to advance themselves into more comfortable positions. We should protect the weak, the unfortunate, and the unlucky. Everyone should be guaranteed adequate food, shelter, health care, education, and so on. Meanwhile, there need to be checks on the wealthy and powerful to make sure they don't abuse their positions.
And realistically, doing all of that functionally requires taking from the rich and giving to nonrich. And that's fine! But I don't think we should be taking money from the rich just because they're rich and we don't like that, or viewing wealth and success as inherently oppressive.
And I think this is why I really like Warren and am lukewarm on Bernie. Because while their policies are superficially similar, the underlying principles that guide them there are quite different.
Day One they start clawing back to the bad old days because that benefitted them and youve left them with billions of dollars to do it with. Its trying to win without actually defeating your enemies.
It does not actually. In fact, the quote both notes that he avoided calls for wholesale redistribution and puts his attack on the concentration of wealth in terms of .... taxes. And notably, the things that actually happened were taxes.
EDIT: At least at the current valuation of currency. I suppose with enough time, and enough inflation, it could become possible.
I think this ad from Jaime Harrison gets at an important point.
Voters aren't idiots or ignorant, they're just on average very concrete thinkers. The example of the dirt road isn't a sign that voters are selfish, it shows that voters believe in what they can directly see and notice. What happens in the wider world is abstract. And while they can talk about and discuss and think about abstract things, abstract stuff is a bad motivator for voting. (Or actively paying attention to politics.)
I get the feeling that a lot of political activism fails at making things concrete for the people they are talking to.
Then I think, honestly, this is where our two wings are at an impasse because we have functionally different interpretations of how our society is functioning. This isn't a matter of "we don't like the rich," and I think I and the other socialist posts on here have attempted to articulate something beyond that to a functional interpretation of the interplay between what is, honestly, a wealthy american aristocracy, society at large and the power executed by wealth. And we have two candidates now in this race who are precisely examples of billionaires attempting to use their vast reserves of wealth to directly execute their power in society by jamming themselves into the democratic primary not by any actual real value of their skills as politicians but because they have a shitton of money and believe themselves thus to be qualified by dint of that.
Moreover, that fundamental disconnect comes from that view that their wealth is due to some form of personal success, rather than nature of ownership, rather than through their labors. That success, as FDR Noted* nearly a century ago, is not theirs but that of the people on whom their ownership of labor depended. Hell, in some iteration of this thread, we had the math posted about how much money you'd have to make per hour to become a billionaire, and we started hitting the timescales of centuries at thousands of dollars per hour in order to even approach that level of wealth.
Like, you say that we should protect the weak, the unfortunate and the unlucky. And that everyone should have the food, shelter, education and healthcare they need. But I think the uncomfortable reality to this is, honestly, we could do all those things right now, we have the resources. But most of it gets hoovered up and hoarded by the wealthiest people in the nation by dint of owning the methods of generating that wealth. And they get really really pissy when you get anywhere near the hoard in a meaningful sense.
We don't want there to Not Be Billionaires because Billionaires are some "other"
We don't want there to be billionaires because billionaires get to be such by effectively hoarding the wealth produced by others, and then using that wealth to accrue and execute their own power and prestige while society around them suffers.
That guy making hundreds of thousands of dollars? Yeah, they probably don't need you to give that millionaire's cash to 'em.
But the folks barely scraping by at the low 10s of thousands or less? With rent, medical and other debts chewing away at every last cent? Yeah, maybe they do. And maybe the reason they're only making the low 10s of thousands is because we got a system that exploits their labor, funneling the wealth they produce away from them and into the hands of the folks who own it, and for the most part the post-war period in America has been full of folks in Washington who believe that if you own the means, you decide just how much of the wealth the folks who generate it for you get to keep
*
Shryke the man literally advocated breaking up concentrated wealth.
1 - Who do you think owned that wealth?
2 - How do you think those of us advocating "America should not permit Billionaires to be a class" would go about it?
Because I'm gonna suggest the answer to 1 is "the millionaires and billionaires of the 1930s" and the answer to 2 is "hefty taxation to achieve that end"
The man literally said that "our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few," who do you think "the few" were?