Presidential election, 2016

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-13-2016, 04:58 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: For some it seems to me that they are locked into their world view and are unwilling to even attempt to look at any issue from more than one angle.

Really?  Ya think?  

(11-13-2016, 04:58 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I will say however that the notion of what is and is not progress is relative.

Do you mean subjective?  That some will think one thing important, others another?  If so, sure.  It seems you do not care if a capitalist class that controls the means of production is collecting extreme amounts of wealth and power to the point that you are now in denial that this class even exists.  I disagree.  Marx described the problem very well, even if his solutions didn't account for human nature.

(11-13-2016, 04:58 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I too favor human rights and democracy.  Equality however is a pipe dream.  Different people have different needs, different desires, and different abilities.  Everyone's outcomes will be different.  Let us suppose I give two men 100,000 dollars.  One of these men is very frugal but is lazy, the other is less risk averse but is willing work hard to grow his investment in say a food truck.  The former may be able through pinching pennies and spending wisely to live fairly comfortably off that money for several years but at the end of it he still is broke.  The other may take a very big risk in buying the truck, buying food and driving it from place to place making meals and selling them at a modest profit.  Should the economy do poorly or he has a bad product he will end up broke, but should he have a good product and the economy not do exceptionally poorly he would be able to even save money.  Thus we see from this small example that equality does not exist.  At most you can have equality before the law--wherein the laws apply equally to all, but that is as far as human equality is acheivable.

Because of my arguments concerning equality a more even distribution of income is neither wanted nor necessary.  Rather instead, I would desire a more even distribution of opportunity.  It is my view that wherein it is possible to expand opportunities for everyone to pursue their own goals, at their own pace under their own power.

Have you ever been a member of the working class, or sympathized with their needs?  I assure you, quite a lot of people need and want a more even distribution of wealth.

This isn't to say that the janitor is going to have equal pay to the engineer any time soon, or that the dedicated competent workers shouldn't have opportunity to advance ahead of those less so.  Still, in different eras, there are different ways of getting ahead, different forms of inequality that some perceive of as unreasonable.  Being the eldest son of the King was a good thing in the old days.  Being a slave was a bad thing.  These days, having enough funds to invest, enough to be a member of the capitalist elite class, should be the next inequality to be examined.  No, I'm not looking for a revolution, but borrow and spend trickle down gives the capitalist elite ruling class an excessive advantage.

(11-13-2016, 04:58 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

Bob Butler Wrote: In any given S&H crisis, I anticipate a conservative faction attempting to uphold the old values, and with it the political and economic systems that grant the elite ruling class political power and wealth.  The progressive faction will have cultural and economic reasons to overturn the old.  Generally, by the time the 4T rolls around, problems with the old ways of doing things are blatant and obvious.  Often the progressive faction is lead by a new group of elites who wish to diminish or take over from the old elites.

Thus, tax and spend liberalism featured massive taxes on the ruling elites and produced as comfortable an existence for the working classes as has ever existed.  Reagan's Borrow and spend trickle down redistributed wealth back to the elite ruling robber baron class, and created an anemic economy that has many dissatisfied who are aware of what went on during the tax and spend era.  This would suggest that the New Dealers were true progressives, while the unraveling era Republicans have not been.

By and large I think we mostly agree here.  Where we differ is on seeing who is the actual conservative here and who is just the mouth piece of the Establishment.  Given that the Establishment Politicans cannot stand Trump but seem to love Clinton it should be easy to deduce which is which unless one is stuck on labels.  Personally myself I could care less if someone has an R or a D behind their name.  I kind of view the political parties the same way as I view a dispute of the merits of the Crips over the Bloods.

It is for this reason why I can vote for Sanders in the primary and Trump in the general.  Red vs Blue is meaningless to me, and well anyone who isn't a "extreme partisan".  Or perhaps to put it as my Boyfriend does "I didn't leave the Democrats, the Democrats left me."

I'd rather use the arrow of progress on issues rather than individuals.

(11-13-2016, 04:58 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: The wage gap is a myth.

Well, no.  This is one of the places where we live in different realities.  Your politics does blind you, can render you unable to perceive the real world.  I'm not interested in trying to remove your blinders at this point, though.

(11-13-2016, 04:58 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

Bob Butler Wrote:Republicans are traditionally the party of the Robber Barons.  While the Democrats have recently sucked deep at the nipple of Citizens United, they still seem less beholden to the elite ruling class than the Republicans.  This is not a question of black and white, though, not at this point.  It is a question of two shades of very dark grey.

So the GOP has traditionally been beholden to a class that no longer exists.  However, if we have a new elite of internet moguls and such then those are overwhelmingly Democratic.  Lincoln described the two parties and how they function in the US as being like two drunken men in a brawl.  eventually they end up through that brawl wearing each other's coat.

Of course the new elite align with the progressive party.  The system is generally rigged to favor the old elite.  The new elite want to make changes such that the new technology can better thrive.

Still, the internet robber barons use the same methods of manipulating wealth and political power as the other owners of the means of production.  They own stocks, collect dividends, give money to politicians, etc...  They don't need to change the way the game is rigged.  They can use the existing system just fine.  In older times, the robber barons acted to end the special prerogatives of the king and nobles and to end slavery.  In those times the system was rigged in ways that favored the old elites but which were not important to an industrialist.  In the case of the computer robber barons, they see no major need to change the system as the system works just fine for them.

There is much truth in Lincoln's metaphor.  His own party originated in freeing slaves, but became the party of the Southern Strategy.  Before WW II they favored isolationism, but when Mao took over China and the Democrats didn't want to join a land war in Asia, the GOP became the militarist party.  Before Reagan they were truly economically conservative, not trusting Keynes' stimulus theory, pushing consistently for more or less balanced budgets.  After Reagan, they became deficit growing advocates of borrow and spend stimulus in good times and bad.  It's not just the Republicans.  The Democrats often flip whenever the Republicans Flop.

But the constant is that the Republicans have always been the party of the capitalist owners of the means of production.  There aren't enough robber barons to win elections.  They have to push policies that seem to favor the working people.  The generic center of this is saying what is good for business is good for everybody.  "What's good for General Motors is good for America."  Still, yes, if isolationism is popular, they'll be isolationists.  If military strength is popular, they will be militants.  If fundamentalist religion is popular, they'll become holier than thou.  They're (expletive deleted) politicians, after all.  The Democrats will do the same thing, seeking minority votes, union votes, etc...

But the GOP has always been the party of the robber barons.  Well, these days, to a far too great degree, in this time of Citizen's United, both parties are feeding off big money.  I see this as a significant problem.  You seem to be denying that the problem exists?

We've got the best government that money can buy.