08-05-2016, 10:07 AM
Hmm. I seem to have gotten caught up in a stripped post style. Ah, well. Here we go.
Racists have traditionally bemoaned how the latest wave of immigrants could destroy American culture. I'm not worried about it. The new wave is generally assimilated.
While FDR did a lot for the working classes, he didn't make the slightest dent in the capitalist class. Everyone who owned stocks still owned stocks. The structure of owning stocks, factories, large tracts of land, etc... didn't change at all. The old hereditary nobility and the southern slave holding agricultural elites has special laws that gave them a privileged unequal position. These laws had to be changed big time to deprive them of their privilege. While tax rates get trimmed and attempts are made to make stock markets less volatile, there has not yet been a perceived need to get rid of the system by which the Robber Barons maintain power.
New industries have arisen and will continue to arise. I'll mention computers as an example, and suspect genetic engineering is upcoming. Lots more. However, the newly rich elites use the same financial structures and methods as earlier established Robber Barons. They just merge with the capitalist class with no need or desire to alter the forces that give the old elites power. They are not replacing the old elite class. They are joining the existing elite class.
Thus your insistence that crises are about getting rid of an old elite and replacing it with a new elite are erroneous. The concept is inapplicable to the Great Depression aspect of FDR's time and the economic aspect of this time. Capitalistic elites exist, they still have undue influence over the government, and neither protectionism, nativism nor isolationism are long to make the slightest change in this.
Repealing Citizens United to reduce the ability of the elites to influence politicians might help. Being very reluctant to vote for anyone who accepts money from Robber Barons might help. I hope Bernie's approach to campaign finance catches on to the point that you can't win if you don't stick with a small donor campaign finance method. Reversing the unravelling era Republican tax codes intended to move wealth from the poor to the wealthy might help. The focus should be on trimming the influence of the Robber Barons rather than building up a racist hatred of minorities.
Actually, I did live in the south for a time, though some might argue that the Atlanta area doesn't count. Working for a high tech company, I suspect I didn't experience the most distinct rural aspects of southern culture. I do remember an obviously local BBQ Chicken joint located a block from a Boston Chicken franchise. The sign read "Don't eat Yankee chicken!!!" I found there was something to be said for both restaurants.
But I wasn't alive at the time the slave owning culture transformed into Jim Crow culture. All any of us can do is read the history books. Share croppers continued to own land and exploit negroes. I've heard some say that share cropping was the worse system. Slave owners felt some responsibility towards the lives of their property while a share cropper would abuse them financially as much as he could with no concern at all for life style.
Yes, sometimes crises create major law changes that remove superior legal status entirely. When the king goes away, entire ruling classes go away, and someone else will take their place... such as the Robber Barons or Communist party elite. Kings don't go away in every single crisis. After the civil war, slave owners became share cropper land owners. The class continued to exist and continued to oppress, though the mechanisms changed big time. FDR did not get rid of the capitalist class. Sure, there are stories of tycoons jumping out windows the day the stock market collapsed, but for every busted Robber Baron that left the elite class there were others ready to come aboard.
I disagree. The primary problem is in division of wealth. I'm not saying entitlements, regulations and immigration problems are perfect. They need to be reviewed and revised. They will always need to be reviewed and revised. There is a cultural problem. We are still racists. In difficult economic times we will scapegoat minorities, blaming them for our problems. I don't know how to make that go away except time and persistence.
I was pleased that you admitted you were full of (expletive deleted) during your Marxist era, but I'm amazed the degree to which you've become an apologist for the capitalist class.
The last bubble burst in 2008 as a result of deregulation under the Bush 43 administration. There can be too little and too much regulation. I won't say our current system is perfect. I will say there will always be a need to revisit. Republicans will be trying to remove regulations that reduce the profits of the Robber Barons. Democrats will attempt to protect the People and the economy. Both can be guilty of excess zeal. I've no instant answers.
Well, what Hillary has actually done includes getting people health care, get handicapped children access to education and register minorities to vote. There is more to equality than financial policy. Some people are excluded from full participation in the culture in other ways. Yes Trump has hired people, but he's also been known to declare bankruptcy in order to avoid paying people for the work they have done for him.
Very different values.
In your Marxist days, you had an amazing ability to disregard large chunks of very informative history. While you are far more articulate and logical than most Trump supporters, you still have a profound ability to block out stuff that pokes holes in your logic. Trump's problems getting along with people have been making far more headlines recently than any disagreement on issues. You have to be very willfully selective in absorbing truth to have missed it. This selective reading of history more than makes up for your logic and articulation. It invalidates everything you say.
I do care about foreign leaders. We live in a complex world and are not going to be able to build enough walls to get around this. A president of the United States ought to be concerned about fitting in well with the world.
I tend to agree with you that he will change the GOP. He is playing the Reagan/Nixon memes on steroids... tax cuts for the Robber Barons, deregulation, not so subtle racism. Doing this has drawn him the loyalty of a good size chunk of the Republican base that is still very fond of the unravelling, who want the country to continue the unravelling policies and mood indefinitely. He has created a chasm between the gung ho unravelling fans and.., Hmm. Can't think of a good description for the Establishment Republicans.
The split is currently there. The Republican Party has always been the party of the Robber Barons. They have shifted on a lot of big things. They were isolationists before WW II, and militarists after. They freed the slaves and embraced Nixon's Southern Strategy. When Keynes proposed deficits for stimulation in bad times and paying back the debt in good times, they wanted more or less balanced budgets always. Recently they have been the party of borrow and spend, running large deficits in good times and bad. They were once the party of the industrial north, but have become the party of the rural south and west.
This isn't to say that the Democrats haven't changed too. For just about every move mentioned above by the Republicans, the Democrats have made the opposite move. Whenever one party embraces a new block of voters at the expense of alienating another block, it is natural for the other party to go after the alienated block.
But the Republicans have always been the party of the Robber Barons. That's what they are. That's what they do.
But there are not enough Robber Barons to win elections. They can't get their people in power without selling something that lines up the interests of a lot of the common people with the interests of the Robber Barons. There was a cliche. What's good for General Motors was once thought good for America. Pro business is pro America. (Wave flag and play the Stars and Stripes Forever.) Though, Ironically, in the most recent crisis it was Obama that saved General Motors.
Mr. Trump may have driven a big wedge between the Establishment Robber Baron aspect of the Republican Party and the populist side. I'm not sure that I'm describing the split correctly, but there is a big disconnect between the two.
Will this rift heal? Is Trump a one election and gone phenomena? Will someone else copycat his success and make it a long term movement? If the two factions are permanently estranged, will one of them fade into insignificance? Both of them?
I've no clue.
During FDR's crisis, the Democrats grabbed full control of the reigns of power. The Republicans were much diminished until the Democrats were in power long enough for flaws in their approach to become visible. If we do have a progressive regeneracy, if a crisis mind set of working together for the common good resurfaces, the Republicans might again be on the outside looking in for a time. The way US politics works, there are generally two primary parties. The Democrats won't be unchallenged forever, or perhaps even for long. But I can't foresee which Republican party would step up, or whether something entirely new might possibly surface.
FDR had a double crisis. Our current problem is an extension of the Great Depression economic crisis, rather than an extension of World War II. You are obsessed with a false notion that all crises overthrow ruling classes. All crises do not all overthrow ruling classes. Some do. Some don't. Marx's capitalist class was not destroyed in the US during the Great Depression aspect of the last crisis. They are alive, well and very very problematic. If you think back to your Marxist days, you might be able to remember why they are problematic. I am most bemused to see a former Marxist become a capitalist apologist.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:(08-04-2016, 11:14 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: First, I always read S&H as very conservative for a pair of folk who came up with a theory of how transforming change occurs. They always insisted that their theory is non-partisan, that it didn’t favor or justify the theories or principles of either party. I disagree with that.
I would say that you should be right in disagreeing with their insistence that their theory is non-partisan, unless of course they mean that their theory could be applied by any partisan. The fact is that all humans have a bias of one sort or an other. And I would agree with you that S&H are socially conservative, which in the US means that they would as a consequence be Classical Liberals.
The notion that conservatism means Guilded Age Capitalism and liberal means socialist is an out growth of the New Deal and is transitory (though for the people living in this saeculum it seems pretty much permanent). I would argue that in the grand arc of history the US does not really have a conservative party but rather two liberal parties, one Jeffersonian the other Federalist. It is unfortunate that the current Federalist party has moved so far to the left as to openly embrace the destruction of the American culture. It will not end well for them, cultural authoritarianism is in direct opposition to our national character, and always has been.
Racists have traditionally bemoaned how the latest wave of immigrants could destroy American culture. I'm not worried about it. The new wave is generally assimilated.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: When old elites fall a new elite takes their place. At present I cannot detect a new elite as those who would be most likely to be considered the new elite have taken places along side the current elite and are unlikely to break with that as they love their indentured servants. H1B visa anyone?
As such the only solution to the most agregious tumors on the bodypolitic can only be addressed through protectionism, nativism and isolationism.
While FDR did a lot for the working classes, he didn't make the slightest dent in the capitalist class. Everyone who owned stocks still owned stocks. The structure of owning stocks, factories, large tracts of land, etc... didn't change at all. The old hereditary nobility and the southern slave holding agricultural elites has special laws that gave them a privileged unequal position. These laws had to be changed big time to deprive them of their privilege. While tax rates get trimmed and attempts are made to make stock markets less volatile, there has not yet been a perceived need to get rid of the system by which the Robber Barons maintain power.
New industries have arisen and will continue to arise. I'll mention computers as an example, and suspect genetic engineering is upcoming. Lots more. However, the newly rich elites use the same financial structures and methods as earlier established Robber Barons. They just merge with the capitalist class with no need or desire to alter the forces that give the old elites power. They are not replacing the old elite class. They are joining the existing elite class.
Thus your insistence that crises are about getting rid of an old elite and replacing it with a new elite are erroneous. The concept is inapplicable to the Great Depression aspect of FDR's time and the economic aspect of this time. Capitalistic elites exist, they still have undue influence over the government, and neither protectionism, nativism nor isolationism are long to make the slightest change in this.
Repealing Citizens United to reduce the ability of the elites to influence politicians might help. Being very reluctant to vote for anyone who accepts money from Robber Barons might help. I hope Bernie's approach to campaign finance catches on to the point that you can't win if you don't stick with a small donor campaign finance method. Reversing the unravelling era Republican tax codes intended to move wealth from the poor to the wealthy might help. The focus should be on trimming the influence of the Robber Barons rather than building up a racist hatred of minorities.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Bob, you obviously have never lived in the South. The antebellum establishment was crushed there. The same was true for Japan and Germany. After 1789 anyone suggesting rejoining the British Crown was run out of the country into Canada...if they were lucky and I guarantee you that anyone suggesting a return to the policies of Coolidge in the 1950s would have been laughed at--at least.
The 4T destroys the old establishment and creates a new one. It may be possible that in a Mega-Unraveling that this need not happen, but that only sets up a saculum of one crisis after another resulting in Revolution. The French and Russian revolutions being prime examples.
Actually, I did live in the south for a time, though some might argue that the Atlanta area doesn't count. Working for a high tech company, I suspect I didn't experience the most distinct rural aspects of southern culture. I do remember an obviously local BBQ Chicken joint located a block from a Boston Chicken franchise. The sign read "Don't eat Yankee chicken!!!" I found there was something to be said for both restaurants.
But I wasn't alive at the time the slave owning culture transformed into Jim Crow culture. All any of us can do is read the history books. Share croppers continued to own land and exploit negroes. I've heard some say that share cropping was the worse system. Slave owners felt some responsibility towards the lives of their property while a share cropper would abuse them financially as much as he could with no concern at all for life style.
Yes, sometimes crises create major law changes that remove superior legal status entirely. When the king goes away, entire ruling classes go away, and someone else will take their place... such as the Robber Barons or Communist party elite. Kings don't go away in every single crisis. After the civil war, slave owners became share cropper land owners. The class continued to exist and continued to oppress, though the mechanisms changed big time. FDR did not get rid of the capitalist class. Sure, there are stories of tycoons jumping out windows the day the stock market collapsed, but for every busted Robber Baron that left the elite class there were others ready to come aboard.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:Quote:The problem is in correctly identifying the gravest problems, seeing who is trying to solve them, and who represents the Establishment that wants to continue to hold power and profit by leaving the problem unsolved.
At present the gravest problems are a result of welfare stateism, over regulation, labor importation and cultural dilution. HRC represents, nay personifies the establishment propping up those problems. And there are no indications that she is likely to be a renegade like Gorbachev who will try to engineer a softer collapse. After all she's running as Obama's third term, a term of band aid here, patch there never addressing the crumbling foundation. Assuming she gets in, and survives more than a few months we can expect things to get extremely bad.
I disagree. The primary problem is in division of wealth. I'm not saying entitlements, regulations and immigration problems are perfect. They need to be reviewed and revised. They will always need to be reviewed and revised. There is a cultural problem. We are still racists. In difficult economic times we will scapegoat minorities, blaming them for our problems. I don't know how to make that go away except time and persistence.
I was pleased that you admitted you were full of (expletive deleted) during your Marxist era, but I'm amazed the degree to which you've become an apologist for the capitalist class.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Income inequality is largely the result of New Deal regulations gone bad (everything has an expiration date after all), largely due to inept tinkering largely done by Silents. The problem with your theory is that the Robber Barons that currently exist, all exist in China. You are attempting to impose industrial solutions on a deindustrialized economy. It simply won't work.
Rather we should see why there is that income inequality, accept that some people will earn more than others (either they are more productive, smarter, or whatever--and yes that includes that they just may have more capital than others) and to address this in a way that is most equitable to everyone. I have a feeling that cutting out a large portion of the regulatory cruft will go a long way. Also simplifying and streamlining those regulations and making changing them far more difficult will allow for a degree of certainty necessary for people to invest competently. Unless of course you like bubble economies.
The last bubble burst in 2008 as a result of deregulation under the Bush 43 administration. There can be too little and too much regulation. I won't say our current system is perfect. I will say there will always be a need to revisit. Republicans will be trying to remove regulations that reduce the profits of the Robber Barons. Democrats will attempt to protect the People and the economy. Both can be guilty of excess zeal. I've no instant answers.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:Quote:The two people have spent their lives pushing very different causes. For one whose arrow of progress points at equality, human rights and democracy, my choice is absurdly clear.
They have I will admit. While HRC has talked about helping people become more wealthy, Trump actually did it by actually hiring people.
Well, what Hillary has actually done includes getting people health care, get handicapped children access to education and register minorities to vote. There is more to equality than financial policy. Some people are excluded from full participation in the culture in other ways. Yes Trump has hired people, but he's also been known to declare bankruptcy in order to avoid paying people for the work they have done for him.
Very different values.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:Quote:Issues aside, your father does not play well with others. If he is frustrated in any way, he will throw a tantrum, demonize the other person, and throw about insults. It doesn’t matter who he is dealing with… women, minorities, the disabled, reporters, fire marshals, gold star mothers, Republican authorities, even Democrats on occasion, get given the same sort of treatment. I have no reason to expect this will change should he get elected and have to work with foreign leaders, who are already quite alarmed at having to deal with him. Issues and philosophy aside, he just doesn’t have the temperament to work with human beings he can’t just fire should they disagree with him. His personality alone would disqualify him as a candidate in my eyes, even if he did have a history of working for the benefit of others.
First that is an unsubstantiated Democrat talking point. But if you want to incorporate that into your subjective view of reality so be it.
In your Marxist days, you had an amazing ability to disregard large chunks of very informative history. While you are far more articulate and logical than most Trump supporters, you still have a profound ability to block out stuff that pokes holes in your logic. Trump's problems getting along with people have been making far more headlines recently than any disagreement on issues. You have to be very willfully selective in absorbing truth to have missed it. This selective reading of history more than makes up for your logic and articulation. It invalidates everything you say.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Third, I really don't care what foreign leaders think. They have a fiduciary obligation to look out for the best interests of their states/nation-states. Likewise our President has a fiduciary obligation to look out for the best interests of America and Americans. If the French or the Chinese, or the Mexicans or whomever else doesn't like that..then tough titty said the kitty.
A huge part of the problems this country faces now is that for too long the US President has cared more about upholding alliances which long ago outlived their usefulness (NATO) or sought to rack up brownie points with foreign states at the expense of American workers (NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP and etc). Since I have no indication at all that HRC has substantially changed her positions that made her unacceptable to me in 08 she remains unacceptable to me in 16 and thus you have me supporting Trump at the moment.
I do care about foreign leaders. We live in a complex world and are not going to be able to build enough walls to get around this. A president of the United States ought to be concerned about fitting in well with the world.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Regardless of whether he wins or loses I'm convinced he will fundamentally alter the GOP. I could be wrong on this of course, but experience informs me that when my gut and my brain are in agreement on something it most likely is the way those two organs agree upon.
I tend to agree with you that he will change the GOP. He is playing the Reagan/Nixon memes on steroids... tax cuts for the Robber Barons, deregulation, not so subtle racism. Doing this has drawn him the loyalty of a good size chunk of the Republican base that is still very fond of the unravelling, who want the country to continue the unravelling policies and mood indefinitely. He has created a chasm between the gung ho unravelling fans and.., Hmm. Can't think of a good description for the Establishment Republicans.
The split is currently there. The Republican Party has always been the party of the Robber Barons. They have shifted on a lot of big things. They were isolationists before WW II, and militarists after. They freed the slaves and embraced Nixon's Southern Strategy. When Keynes proposed deficits for stimulation in bad times and paying back the debt in good times, they wanted more or less balanced budgets always. Recently they have been the party of borrow and spend, running large deficits in good times and bad. They were once the party of the industrial north, but have become the party of the rural south and west.
This isn't to say that the Democrats haven't changed too. For just about every move mentioned above by the Republicans, the Democrats have made the opposite move. Whenever one party embraces a new block of voters at the expense of alienating another block, it is natural for the other party to go after the alienated block.
But the Republicans have always been the party of the Robber Barons. That's what they are. That's what they do.
But there are not enough Robber Barons to win elections. They can't get their people in power without selling something that lines up the interests of a lot of the common people with the interests of the Robber Barons. There was a cliche. What's good for General Motors was once thought good for America. Pro business is pro America. (Wave flag and play the Stars and Stripes Forever.) Though, Ironically, in the most recent crisis it was Obama that saved General Motors.
Mr. Trump may have driven a big wedge between the Establishment Robber Baron aspect of the Republican Party and the populist side. I'm not sure that I'm describing the split correctly, but there is a big disconnect between the two.
Will this rift heal? Is Trump a one election and gone phenomena? Will someone else copycat his success and make it a long term movement? If the two factions are permanently estranged, will one of them fade into insignificance? Both of them?
I've no clue.
During FDR's crisis, the Democrats grabbed full control of the reigns of power. The Republicans were much diminished until the Democrats were in power long enough for flaws in their approach to become visible. If we do have a progressive regeneracy, if a crisis mind set of working together for the common good resurfaces, the Republicans might again be on the outside looking in for a time. The way US politics works, there are generally two primary parties. The Democrats won't be unchallenged forever, or perhaps even for long. But I can't foresee which Republican party would step up, or whether something entirely new might possibly surface.
(08-04-2016, 08:19 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:Quote:Anyway, my primary thrust is that too much power and wealth is often placed in the hands of an elite class. In any given crisis, the abusive behavior of the elite class must be reduced. In recent history, this elite class is the Robber Barons. No single crisis will totally end the power of elitism, or even destroy a specific elite class. Some issues will be resolved, but the answers are never complete. The battles of one crisis are never fully over.
In a way I actually agree with you. However, I think that you're misdirected. You are looking to fight WWI in France in 1940. This 4T is fundamentally different from the last one, just like that one was fundamentally different from the one before, and so on.
FDR had a double crisis. Our current problem is an extension of the Great Depression economic crisis, rather than an extension of World War II. You are obsessed with a false notion that all crises overthrow ruling classes. All crises do not all overthrow ruling classes. Some do. Some don't. Marx's capitalist class was not destroyed in the US during the Great Depression aspect of the last crisis. They are alive, well and very very problematic. If you think back to your Marxist days, you might be able to remember why they are problematic. I am most bemused to see a former Marxist become a capitalist apologist.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.