What's your generation and how would you change your government?

[Eric the Green]

(03-20-2022, 09:08 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-19-2022, 09:01 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(03-19-2022, 09:06 AM)David Horn Wrote: We don't have any need to look back for demons.  They're here today.  Today's rich and powerful have played the role of Svengali to a tee.  In response, our first step: convince the victims that they are, in fact, victims.  The second step: reclaim what has been stolen.

 
lumping all the rich and powerful into a single group is ideologically lazy at best. alas, "2 easy steps" is not how wealth redistribution works, regardless of whether of the means thereof are political or violent. Arms dealers, politicians, doctors, private business owners, lobbyists and savvy investors are all rich, but neither their methods, their personalities nor the honesty of their dealings are all that comparable.

There are two issues here.  First, the need to restrain ROI, greatly increase the economy's growth rate or both is basic math.  Failure will lead to all wealth in very few hands with little ability to change it.  Second, the core structure of the economy should not be based on a model that makes monopsony the default.  Sorry, but that's where we are today, and that's a no-fault-no-foul model for penury -- evil not required.

Raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Support the lower classes with minimum wages. Support infrastructure and education that can raise the wealth levels of society. Regulate business misbehavior including pollution and climate breakdown. Restore voting rights and democracy. These sorts of measures would dethrone neoliberal Reaganomics and get our country back on track.

Quote:

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:Now, you seem to support the argument that, "This is mine, I stole it fair and square."  And yes, the powerful have used the tools intended to restrain them to restrain us and maximize benefits to themselves.  Here's the question: is turnabout fair play?  I say yes in spades.

Don't get me wrong, I will shoot anyone in the head who tries to break onto my property and steal what belongs to me. This; however, is not the main thrust of my argument because that isn't something I expect you to care much about.

1. Socialist rebellions have a poor track record of success, and an even poorer track record of maintaining civil liberties or quality of life even when they do, whether that's the USSR, Maoist China, Allende's Chile, Venezuela or, perhaps most gruesomely, The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
   
2. millennials aren't that much more fiscally liberal than their Gen X and boomer elders. certainly not enough to rally behind a leader of that ilk
   
3. you would need to get most of the military on your side, and they definitely aren't socialist
   
4. take way property rights and people have little incentive to work (unless you're going luddite with it and want to start an agricultural commune.
   

those can have reasonable success, but even then usually only for like 20 years tops. most don't last 1)

You should be careful about putting words in other people's mouths.  No one in their right mind wants a dictatorship of the left any more than one on the right.  My models are Sweden and Finland, not the USSR. You set up a strawman to knock him down.  If your basic premise is wrong, so is the rest of your argument.  And it's odd that you mention the most socialist enterprise in the nation: our military.  They are provided benefits no one else gets -- from raising their hands to taek the oath until they die.  I know, I'm still benefitting from my service 50 years ago. And again, you try to make a point no one is making.  Private ownership of property is fine with me.  I certainly have some.

It is amazing, isn't it! The same repeated slogans again and again, because the right-wing has no real argument to make. Unfortunately, in a country where civics education, media and participation has been denigrated so thoroughly, the slogans still work and Trump may be two points more popular than Biden.

Quote:

JasonBlack Wrote:

David Horn Wrote:The GIs, including my own parents, maximized benefits to them and theirs, and limited who got to be part of the tribe for reasons unrelated to their own actions.  They were still 19th century thinkers.  Let's not laud them for being wise in that regard, but let's agree that shared responsibility, including burden sharing, is no longer optional.  Let's make the burden and the benefits more broadly shared, certainly.  But let's not give the rapacious a free pass to keep their ill gotten gains either.

keep in mind they built the highways and put in the dues to ensure your generation could attend university far more easily than my own (I had the privilege of going myself, for which I am grateful, but I chose a route that did not require a degree).

This is the problem with our bifurcated politics.  In the last 1T, and I believe the next one too, the liberal view of economic policy was king, but the conservatives controlled the culture.  So we had all the things you mentioned and a stifling culture to enjoy them in.  The last 2T was inevitable, and the next will be as well.

Indeed. Perhaps Jason will enjoy our next 1T, and I won't. I am already totally out of step with Millennial and Gen Z youth culture. What's that Japanese video game people here seem to know about, and I don't? Things won't be exactly the same next time around starting in 2029, but it'll be enough alike so that the cycle goes on. Well, at least unless and until it doesn't. We get off Reaganomics in the 2020s, or we don't turn the cycle. I admit, a start has been made with such actions as the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Bill. A tax increase on the wealthy is still the biggest missing piece, as well as greater action on climate change. Unending rises in the national debt, continued accelerating climate breakdown, and continued gross inequality, will not bring us into the next first turning. We can't get every change we want in the next 7 years, but we must turn the corner.

If we do, then the 1T should see some consolidation of policies begin in the 2020s, and the 2T's early years a further acceleration in the right direction. Let us hope.