General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 4

Nicely done!

 

Should this thread be for sharing articles as well or should we separate like the other forums?

Nixon Policy Advisor Admits He Invented War On Drugs to Suppress 'Anti-War Left and Black People'

http://jezebel.com/nixons-policy-advisor-admits-he-invented-war-on-drugs-t-1766359595

 

So Rolling Stone endorsed Hillary...

Hillary Clinton for President | Rolling Stone

 

wow rolling stone sucks shocker

 

Which should be common knowledge but unfortunately isn't

 

Was There Election Fraud in Arizona? 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
I don't know if I need a better source on this. I'm also registered as a democrat and my vote was counted as provisional.

edit: Looks like I may have registered a day late and missed my 29 day deadline. That explains my vote, at least, not so much for all of the others.

 

Just my opinion, but I like having the articles posted in here because it's usually what generates most discussion, especially in non-election years.

 

Should this go here?

Radovan Karadzic found guilty of 10 counts of genocide and war crimes.

 

Millennials like socialism — until they get jobs

 

stopped reading when they defined socialism wrong

 

http://www.dictionaryofeconomics.com/article?id=pde2008_S000173

Not really.

 

"The practical issues of socialism comprise the relationships between management and workforce within the enterprise, the interrelationships between production units (plan versus markets), and, if the state owns and operates any part of the economy, who controls it and how."

A government running the economy and businesses is not socialism unless the workers control the businesses themselves, which, if the government runs the economy, necessitates a government run by workers. Which is deeply removed from anything we have in the US right now. The government could nationalize every industry but so long as they are operated by an upper class separated from workers - bourgeois or bureaucracy or aristocracy - it is not socialism.

 

So are you going to refute anything the article states because you think the use of socialism is wrong because it's not talking about a commune?

 

no, I believe the premise on it's face that young Sanders supporters don't want actual socialism but I lost interest in the article as anything other than a vomiting up of statistics after reading that. None of those statistics surprise me at all, but they are used misleadingly in that piece. When you ask, "do you support bigger government in all these areas and higher taxes to fund this," and then say "look! they don't like socialism!" it is misleading. Try asking, "would you like to have more power in your workplace and your economy," along with those questions, and see the answers.

No, Socialism Isn’t Just More Government | Jacobin

Not sure what you're talking about with a commune. Has nothing to do with what I said and I don't think they're particularly important or useful.

 

I think the real take away is younger people want more government programs when they are younger and would benefit them but as the progress in their careers and salary they don't want it because of the take away from what they've earned.

I think it's more of people looking out for themselves at both end of the spectrums as opposed to actually caring about the society as a whole.

 

Simply from an Irish point of view, of course younger people will be wary of the higher taxes when previous governments have shown themselves to be completely useless at adequately using it to help citizens.

 

Lol, well, we'll see how that progresses over time in an economy where if you progress in your career and salary to the extent you're implying you're really quite lucky. And, if you progress to the point where you are no longer a worker in this sense, where you are benefiting from workers' lack of power and ability to influence their workplace and economy, of course you won't support measures to increase workers' power.

Sure, I buy that it's people looking out for themselves, but why do they do that? It's not human nature or any bullshit like that. But, when you are raised in a culture where you are forced to look after yourself in order to survive economically (and literally) it's no surprise that people do so. If they weren't forced to, and conditioned to, why would they?

 

Literally he stated that once people get to the 40-60k range that they are less favorable to 'socialistic ideals'. That salary range isn't that unattainable.

 

I think this article doesn't ask fundamental questions. Taking the polls it cites as fact, there is still more digging to be done in order to fully grasp what they mean. For example, working people are subject to regressive taxes that make them unable to meet their basic needs. There is no trade-off with higher taxes and a single-payer healthcare system, free college and so forth. More often than not, their tax dollars are used to subsidize the "private sector" that then gets to hoard the profits to themselves. In other words, there's no return, so that impacts the negative perspective of taxes. What the millennial perspective on government demonstrates is that there is an understanding that the market cannot resolve all of the conflicts within society. In fact, the market is the primary contributor to many of the issues they face today, eg, education costs, rent, race-based policing and imprisonment, sexism, wages, lack of full-time work and so on. The contradictions of an ideology and structure that purports to lift all boats, in the past eight years, has been laid bare and there's a sense that there needs to be action taken by the government to resolve them, to correct imbalances that seem to be endemic social relations that are birthed by capital. This, of course, is mediated by ideological relations and practices that have reified and ritualized the liberal democratic model, so Scandanavia does seem like a model to strive for, so long as one ignores the contradictions that exist within their social formation. In any case, i think I'm getting further away from the topic at hand, namely that the attitudes, ideas, and practices of the generation are always already mediated by a the aforementioned ideological relations/practices; in other words, the reason their attitudes shift is precisely because of the change in their social position within a wider political culture in which they are trying to achieve subsistence but find themselves cut off at every point. It is made an all or nothing proposition. What the left aims to articulate is that, going beyond the bounds of accepted economics or policy allows us to dismiss that false dichotomy. The social democratic impulse represented by Sanders alludes to this reorientation of "facts" of the world, to make facts which are predicated on egalitarianism, economic and social freedom, and basic human rights to education, a job, an expansive safety net and so forth.

 

I miss the times when I didn't pay attention to politics. It seems like the more I know, the less hope I have in humanity. Am I wrong for thinking this?

 

nope, same

 

I mean, I have no hope for humanity reaching a utopia, but I do think we'll slowly, slowly, figure more and more shit out, perhaps even to an asymptotic point. my gut thinks societies function cyclically - ie rise and fall and burn - and that doesn't give me a ton of hope, but I try to have faith that science + the division of labor + new heights of communication powers will subvert these cycles in ways we haven't seen yet because it's always been too early to tell.

 

I'm waiting for the people to get fed up with capitalism's attempts to account for the rate of profit to decline

 

WW3, baby.

 

I don't know if you've read this, but check it out if you haven't:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0745332404/?tag=absolutepunk-20

Michael Roberts is really good too. Both transformed my understanding of Marxist economics.