The Oligarchy Is Coming: How to Repair the Public Sphere
December 17, 2024 1:49 AM Subscribe
Trump eyes privatizing U.S. Postal Service, citing financial losses - "Told of the mail agency's annual financial losses, Trump said the government should not subsidize the organization, the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations." [link-heavy FPP]
Trump's reelection has sweeping climate change consequences - "Project 2025, an initiative of the Heritage Foundation that included participation by many individuals involved in the first Trump administration, calls for privatizing the National Weather Service and breaking up NOAA. This could leave Americans with no public weather forecasting and warning provider, with a splintering of that life-saving function to a variety of private companies that could charge for such information."
or libraries:
A Way To Think Clearly About 'Medicare For All' Debates - "What if we talked about the fire department the way we talk about healthcare."[2,3,4,5]
invest in public goods for the positive externalities they provide. we all benefit when everyone is healthy, housed and educated with enough free time to care for one another and the environment.
if we don't, then we will condemn ourselves to barbarism, as:
"they suborn the institutions then prove themselves right about the low quality of the institutions." --@interfluidity
Oligarchy is not just a Russian phenomenon. It exists right here in the USA. - "Oligarchy is a global phenomenon and it is headquartered right here in the United States. The fact of the matter is, and we don't talk about it very much but this is the reality, a small number of incredibly wealthy billionaires own and control much of the global economy period, end of discussion. And increasingly they own and control our government through a corrupt campaign finance system."
How GOP Senators Are Secretly Getting Ready to Surrender to Trump - "Trump wants to turn the FBI into something so draconian that the political press may not grasp it until it's too late. And Republican senators are already giving themselves cover to go along with all of it."
President-elect Donald Trump has expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service in recent weeks, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could shake up consumer shipping and business supply chains and push hundreds of thousands of federal workers out of the government.Vy (It holds in the US too):
Trump has discussed his desire to overhaul the Postal Service at his Mar-a-Lago estate with Howard Lutnick,[1] his pick for commerce secretary and the co-chair of his presidential transition, the people said. Earlier this month, Trump also convened a group of transition officials to ask for their views on privatizing the agency, one of the people said.
Canada Post doesn't "lose money". It's a service, it *costs* money. No one ever says the military "loses" billions of dollar a year. No one says the RCMP loses money. No one ever says the police "lose" money.or like NOAA (under lutnick's commerce dept)...
But when it's something that benefits people - suddenly it's not a cost, it's a loss.
Trump's reelection has sweeping climate change consequences - "Project 2025, an initiative of the Heritage Foundation that included participation by many individuals involved in the first Trump administration, calls for privatizing the National Weather Service and breaking up NOAA. This could leave Americans with no public weather forecasting and warning provider, with a splintering of that life-saving function to a variety of private companies that could charge for such information."
or libraries:
- The Renaissance of Public Libraries in the Digital Age
- Why this Austin suburb made a library the centerpiece of its new downtown
A Way To Think Clearly About 'Medicare For All' Debates - "What if we talked about the fire department the way we talk about healthcare."[2,3,4,5]
invest in public goods for the positive externalities they provide. we all benefit when everyone is healthy, housed and educated with enough free time to care for one another and the environment.
if we don't, then we will condemn ourselves to barbarism, as:
- Mark Zuckerberg's Meta donates $1m to Trump fund[6]
- Sundar Pichai and Jeff Bezos head to Mar-a-Lago to schmooze with Trump[7]
Oligarchy is not just a Russian phenomenon. It exists right here in the USA. - "Oligarchy is a global phenomenon and it is headquartered right here in the United States. The fact of the matter is, and we don't talk about it very much but this is the reality, a small number of incredibly wealthy billionaires own and control much of the global economy period, end of discussion. And increasingly they own and control our government through a corrupt campaign finance system."
Elon Musk alone spent at least $277 million to back Donald Trump. How's that. One guy, $277 million, and we saw the results of that investment. Working pretty good for him.
The major defense contractors spent over $38 million this election cycle and you know what, they're going to have a trillion dollar military budget with enormous amounts of waste and fraud in it.
And AIPAC, a billionaire funded super PAC, spent over a hundred million dollars to defeat members of Congress who are critical of the extremist right-wing Netanyahu government in Israel and the horrific war they are waging in Gaza.
My friends you don't have to be a PhD in political science to understand that this is not democracy. This is not one person one vote. This is not all of us coming together to decide our future.
This is oligarchy.
In my view, this issue of oligarchy is the most important issue facing our country and world because it touches on everything else. It touches on climate change. Touches on healthcare. Touches on whether or not working people are going to have a decent standard of living. Touches on whether or not we can eliminate poverty.
And what we are going to be doing now is, over the coming months, we are going to be doing a number of programs exploring how global oligarchy functions. The power that the very, very rich have over our economy and over our political life. We're going to be talking about the tax havens they use and how they avoid paying their fair share of taxes. And we will be talking about the kind of role that the oligarchs will play in the coming Trump Administration.
- Even the Koch Brothers Weren't This Brazen
- Exclusive: Trump team wants to scrap car-crash reporting rule that Tesla opposes[8,9]
And I would just say our big goal maybe finally to finish should be learning the lesson of the New Deal.MAGA's Way or the Highway - "WHAT ALL THE BEST BOOKS MAKE PLAIN about the slow-burning sectional crisis that preceded America's actual hot Civil War is that the thing was driven by an attempt by the slave states to basically try to colonize the rest of the country. The third book of All the Powers of the Earth, Sidney Blumenthal’s multivolume biography of Abraham Lincoln, covers the 1856–1860 period and explains this well. Before it was a battle of guns, it was a battle of laws."
With the New Deal, we taxed the rich very aggressively for some time and did a lot with the money that benefited us. We regulated them pretty intensely, but we never took their wealth away. We taxed their income aggressively, no doubt, but we left most of their giant fortunes relatively intact.
And above all, we let them remain in possession of that corporate equity. They continued to own the corporate world. They kept their ownership of the big capital, the means of production, as they used to say.
And so when the 80s came, there's a fatigue with government. People kind of like Reagan's message. They see their moment and they can move their intellectuals like Milton Friedman, who I also wrote a whole book about.
They move those entities like Friedman and Hayek into media. Friedman gets his PBS show, which is an amazing thing. But the rich were able to do this big push of putting their messages out there, buying media and making them more right wing, pouring money into politics and eventually gaining control over the Supreme Court.
All that happened because we left the resources in their hand during the New Deal. We never, as we say in economics, expropriated their productive capital. We never said, why are you and your jerky company in charge of the oil refineries in this country? Why do you own all the land that makes our food for consumption and export? Why do you get to own TV networks that shape the ideas people hear and don't hear? At least there should be some public input into the decisions made by these entities.
And that's what expropriation means. It means to take that property away from the private sector in some way. Maybe that's a nationalization.
I myself tend to like just straight socialization. Maybe you have widespread unionization in your economy. And then you do some big sit down strikes in a coordinated manner.
And you do a general sit down strike. That's how you expropriate properties, by making rich people realize if we don't let them have the factories, they won't leave us with a single mansion to hang out in. And that's a big distinction.
I think if we had done some of those things in the 40s and 50s, when the social democracy had its big popular push after World War II, we could be living in a very different reality these days. And the only thing I'd like to finish with expropriation is just to say it worked great the first time. The one time in the United States where we did a big, major expropriation of wealth, we did one of them.
In the 1860s, with the Emancipation Proclamation, when we took away wealthy Southerners' valuable slave assets, just because we decided that they're people with rights and you shouldn't be able to own and sell them and sell their kids off if you want. That's the biggest expropriation we ever did. My view, we should just continue that to the other forms of property that still give the rich the ability to rule over us.
How GOP Senators Are Secretly Getting Ready to Surrender to Trump - "Trump wants to turn the FBI into something so draconian that the political press may not grasp it until it's too late. And Republican senators are already giving themselves cover to go along with all of it."
- How Would Kash Patel Compare to J. Edgar Hoover?
- We've Seen Kash Patel's Enemies List. It's Terrifying.
There is, however, an alternative possibility. It's that capitalism itself has developed forces which reduce growth. I'll list five, though they are interconnected...Repairing the public sphere - "In 1968 Garrett Hardin wrote an essay, The tragedy of the commons, in which he argued that common ownership of assets such as land or fishing waters was incompatible with people being the selfish rational maximizers of economic theory. This is because if every herdsman can graze his cattle for free on commonly-owned pasture land each will want to put as many cattle on it as he can - until the land becomes over-grazed and barren. In this way wrote Hardin, 'freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.'"[11]
Finally, in creating winners capitalism creates powerful groups with a vested interest in maintaining stagnation: incumbent companies wanting to restrict competition; financiers wanting the low interest rates that economic stagnation brings; lawyers and accountants wanting a complex tax system that strangles growth; or landlords opposing new building or property taxes. Why bother investing in new projects if you have a monopoly position with a cushy job and big income? Why should you set up a new company if you have a big salary from a corporate bureaucracy? And why bother competing in a market economy when you can lobby government instead for protection, subsidies and tax breaks? As Joel Mokyr wrote:Technological progress encounters resistance from various groups that believe they stand to lose from innovation. These pressure groups will try to manipulate the political system to suppress successful innovation….Under fairly general conditions, it can be shown that the single economy will move inexorably to an absorbing barrier of technological stagnation.All this of course echoes Marx:At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.We might have reached this stage of development. If so, raising economic growth requires more than deregulation and the harassment of fat people and the depressed. It requires instead an attack on rich and powerful vested interests.
The problem is, though, that there is no political debate about this. Questioning capitalism is off the agenda. Faith in it is based more in ideology and wishful thinking than in evidence. Refusing to engage with the left, however, now means refusing to engage with reality.
The same problem, warned Hardin, applies to pollution:The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them. Since this is true for everyone, we are locked into a system of "fouling our own nest," so long as we behave only as independent, rational, free-enterprisers.[...]
Many on the right used to be alert to this. They criticized alternative lifestyles such as "free love" and homosexuality on the grounds that they eroded traditional communities.
Today, though, we face the conflict in another context - that of the public sphere, the area in which questions get (or don't get!) debated.
This, like common land, a public good. A culture which values free scientific inquiry and the pursuit of truth, for example - and which embeds these in institutions such as universities - is likely to produce technologies and medicines which benefit us all. Likewise, most people believe that it's in all our interests that political debate facilitate good policies and good governance. One reason why John Stuart Mill and his followers valued freedom of speech and thought was that they believed these fostered better ideas from which we all might benefit.
Which brings us to the problem. Our public sphere as it now exists does not do this. Under Musk's ownership Twitter has degraded from a common forum into what Christina Pagel has called a means of weaponizing anger and disinformation. And Hardeep Matharu writes:Social media platforms rife with conspiracy, disinformation, and hate are what people are seeing daily – and where they develop their sense of the world they live in. Social media is now the media. In this ecosystem, what matters is what resonates, regardless of how outrageous.Which vindicates Hardin. Musk's pursuit of self-advantage has ruined a (once-) important part of the commons. But the problem is not just Twitter. Anyone who remembers the Sun in the 80s knows that the legacy media has always pumped out lies and hate. What's more recent, though, is that in an attempt to staunch losses caused by falling circulation, newspapers have slashed the number of specialist reporters. That, writes Sam Freedman in Failed State, "has degraded the quality of coverage and made it easier for politicians to pursue bad policy and avoid scrutiny." And our political ecosystem too often selects for snake-oil sellers, charlatans, liars and the incompetent.
We have therefore a tragedy of the commons.
So what are the alternatives?
[...]
This leaves another possibility: common ownership. Hardin's tragedy of the commons could be retitled the tragedy of private ownership, because if cattle or fishing boats were commonly owned the community could agree to restrain their exploitation of the commons. In our context, this argues for common democratic ownership of the media or at least for a media ecosystem more diverse than one controlled by a few billionaires.
- Audrey Tang: Learning From Taiwan's Digital Civic Experimentation - "The island-country's digital minister has radical ideas for using open-source technology to provide public goods. Her approach is called Plurality and it's gaining attention across the world."[12,13]
- The hacker turned politician using digital tech to reimagine democracy - "Taiwan's first ever minister of digital affairs has transformed politics, using online platforms and AI to give power to the country's citizens."[14,15]
The Hamilton Nolan piece (last link in this chain) is a really wonderful bit of polemic. Totally worth it.
The Democratic Party is such a dispiriting collection of careerists that it can be frustrating to continually speak about what they should be doing, while watching them always choose to instead continue the things that serve the careerists. But let us speak rationally here, regardless. We have a two-party system and the Democratic Party is the opposition. We know what needs to be done and we know that the Republicans are going to do the opposite. The only move for the Democratic Party—the rational move, the reasonable move—is to get more radical. Pundits will call this “going further left” but really what we are talking about is pulling harder in the direction of where the nation needs to go, in response to a Republican Party that is pulling harder towards plutocracy. If billionaires are destroying our country in order to serve their own self-interest, the reasonable thing to do is not to try to quibble over a 15% or a 21% corporate tax rate. The reasonable thing to do is to eradicate the existence of billionaires. If everyone knows our health care system is a broken monstrosity, the reasonable thing to do is not to tinker around the edges. The reasonable thing to do is to advocate Medicare for All. If there is a class war—and there is—and one party is being run completely by the upper class, the reasonable thing is for the other party to operate in the interests of the other, much larger, much needier class. That is quite rational and ethical and obvious in addition to being politically wise. The failure of the Democratic Party, institutionally, to grasp the reality that it needs to be running left as hard as possible is a pathetic thing to watch. When the current situation is broken and one party is determined to break it further, the answer is not to be the party of “We Want Things to Be Broken Somewhat Less.” The answer is to be the party that wants to fucking fix it. Radicalism is only sensible, because lesser measures are not going to fix the underlying state of affairs.
posted by chavenet at 2:59 AM on December 17, 2024 [59 favorites]
The Democratic Party is such a dispiriting collection of careerists that it can be frustrating to continually speak about what they should be doing, while watching them always choose to instead continue the things that serve the careerists. But let us speak rationally here, regardless. We have a two-party system and the Democratic Party is the opposition. We know what needs to be done and we know that the Republicans are going to do the opposite. The only move for the Democratic Party—the rational move, the reasonable move—is to get more radical. Pundits will call this “going further left” but really what we are talking about is pulling harder in the direction of where the nation needs to go, in response to a Republican Party that is pulling harder towards plutocracy. If billionaires are destroying our country in order to serve their own self-interest, the reasonable thing to do is not to try to quibble over a 15% or a 21% corporate tax rate. The reasonable thing to do is to eradicate the existence of billionaires. If everyone knows our health care system is a broken monstrosity, the reasonable thing to do is not to tinker around the edges. The reasonable thing to do is to advocate Medicare for All. If there is a class war—and there is—and one party is being run completely by the upper class, the reasonable thing is for the other party to operate in the interests of the other, much larger, much needier class. That is quite rational and ethical and obvious in addition to being politically wise. The failure of the Democratic Party, institutionally, to grasp the reality that it needs to be running left as hard as possible is a pathetic thing to watch. When the current situation is broken and one party is determined to break it further, the answer is not to be the party of “We Want Things to Be Broken Somewhat Less.” The answer is to be the party that wants to fucking fix it. Radicalism is only sensible, because lesser measures are not going to fix the underlying state of affairs.
posted by chavenet at 2:59 AM on December 17, 2024 [59 favorites]
also related: Royal Mail takeover by Czech billionaire approved
posted by chavenet at 3:00 AM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 3:00 AM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]
Thank you for this thought: "Canada Post doesn't "lose money". It's a service, it *costs* money. No one ever says the military "loses" billions of dollar a year. No one says the RCMP loses money. No one ever says the police "lose" money. But when it's something that benefits people - suddenly it's not a cost, it's a loss."
posted by nostrada at 3:24 AM on December 17, 2024 [60 favorites]
posted by nostrada at 3:24 AM on December 17, 2024 [60 favorites]
"Both parties seem to have the Scooby Doo theory of capitalism: 'I'd have succeeded if it weren't for those meddling kids.'"
Ruh-ro!
posted by y2karl at 3:55 AM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]
Ruh-ro!
posted by y2karl at 3:55 AM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]
I said it at the very beginning of this campaign, i think that this is nothing less than a full court push to privatize everything. The power grid like in texas, the water utilities, natural gas, all of it. Anywhere it isn't already private, it will be.
Charter schools many years ago were the beachhead, and that campaign has advanced without honestly... any real effective resistance, war of attrition style. It was slowed, but never stopped. Now they're not even trying to slowly apply pressure, they're just going for it.
"These public things don't work, starve the beast" will be aimed at everything, no holds barred. And i expect them to move fast.
It's actually darkly fascinating to me how much things like this were normalized im my lifetime. Privately owned parking meters in an entire city like chicago? Private traffic cams that send out real tickets? Private toll lanes that take a cut before paying the state(or the road itself)?
In a dark way, it's fascinating to think of public services in this flop of a country as being a quaint 100 year experiment. The MTA is a great example. We went from private competing companies, to publicly owned, to arguing that the MTA is a waste of money and needs to be gotten rid of/sold off/broken up.
or the fire dept...
This sounds kooky and ridiculous now, but i expect it to be normalized as a topic of discussion and thing to do within just a year or two. They're going to push us right into collapse, rolling blackouts, and brown tapwater with this one.
After all, how else do you squeeze the last five dollars out of a corpse?
great post by the way
posted by emptythought at 4:34 AM on December 17, 2024 [36 favorites]
Charter schools many years ago were the beachhead, and that campaign has advanced without honestly... any real effective resistance, war of attrition style. It was slowed, but never stopped. Now they're not even trying to slowly apply pressure, they're just going for it.
"These public things don't work, starve the beast" will be aimed at everything, no holds barred. And i expect them to move fast.
It's actually darkly fascinating to me how much things like this were normalized im my lifetime. Privately owned parking meters in an entire city like chicago? Private traffic cams that send out real tickets? Private toll lanes that take a cut before paying the state(or the road itself)?
In a dark way, it's fascinating to think of public services in this flop of a country as being a quaint 100 year experiment. The MTA is a great example. We went from private competing companies, to publicly owned, to arguing that the MTA is a waste of money and needs to be gotten rid of/sold off/broken up.
or the fire dept...
This sounds kooky and ridiculous now, but i expect it to be normalized as a topic of discussion and thing to do within just a year or two. They're going to push us right into collapse, rolling blackouts, and brown tapwater with this one.
After all, how else do you squeeze the last five dollars out of a corpse?
great post by the way
posted by emptythought at 4:34 AM on December 17, 2024 [36 favorites]
The funny thing is, society has changed and the upcoming generation (largely) no longer uses the USPS directly unless it has to. If we’re being myopic, it’s a relic of the past. But that’s only on the surface and one perception.
The reality is obviously more nuanced and complex, but it’s worth noting the lack of support to protect and modernize USPS is an optics issue. People are so obsessed with cost cutting based on a deliberately arrogant lack of understanding of how these services work and their impact to our nation.
But then again, understanding how things work rewires the arguments in ways that require everyone to do their homework. We all know how much us Americans can’t be bothered…
posted by WorkshopGuyPNW at 4:47 AM on December 17, 2024 [14 favorites]
The reality is obviously more nuanced and complex, but it’s worth noting the lack of support to protect and modernize USPS is an optics issue. People are so obsessed with cost cutting based on a deliberately arrogant lack of understanding of how these services work and their impact to our nation.
But then again, understanding how things work rewires the arguments in ways that require everyone to do their homework. We all know how much us Americans can’t be bothered…
posted by WorkshopGuyPNW at 4:47 AM on December 17, 2024 [14 favorites]
I got confused yesterday because I was reading an essay on the post office defaulting but kept finding names I hadn't heard in a while, then realized the piece was from thirteen years ago. Latest in Deficit Terrorism: Postal Service Default
posted by mittens at 4:59 AM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]
posted by mittens at 4:59 AM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]
The failure of the Democratic Party, institutionally, to grasp the reality that it needs to be running left as hard as possible
And get absolutely fucking killed in elections. Herein lies the problem. Outside of gerrymandered dark blue districts and college towns, openly leftist candidates will be slaughtered. Even people who would clearly benefit from a leftist approach just haaate leftists, and only part of this is due to right-wing propaganda.
Part of this is because the socially left issues always seem to have to come in tandem with the economically left ones, and whereas many people are at least receptive to the economic issues, they're really turned off by the fringe social issues, the language policing, etc. And fucking Gaza. "We just want better working conditions: stop fucking telling us to capitalize the B in black and shit." Stop fucking telling us to stop eating meat, JFC.
Part of it is because the people advocating what passes for (economically) "left" in the USA tend to be obvious assholes and/or clearly unemployable. Look at The Young Turks or Chapo Trap House: they're always just the worst jerks around, and anyone who isn't already a jerk stops paying attention to the message. TYT constantly undermined Harris, who for an institutional Dem was at least trying to move the needle. I'm not remotely convinced that TYT and others are not paid operatives of and/or useful idiots for the oligarchy.
Unless and until you have friendly left people who advocate for community, and keep the message essentially entirely focused on economics, only bringing up social issues to point out how the oligarchy uses them as wedges to divide us, "running left as hard as possible" just results in Republican supermajorities. Look at Saint Bernie himself, who I find loathsome but also have to admit that for some people he really did have some charisma, and he did even worse in 2020 than in 2016. And this entirely leaves out the issue of how to wrest control of the Democratic Party to even make "running left" possible.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:09 AM on December 17, 2024 [18 favorites]
And get absolutely fucking killed in elections. Herein lies the problem. Outside of gerrymandered dark blue districts and college towns, openly leftist candidates will be slaughtered. Even people who would clearly benefit from a leftist approach just haaate leftists, and only part of this is due to right-wing propaganda.
Part of this is because the socially left issues always seem to have to come in tandem with the economically left ones, and whereas many people are at least receptive to the economic issues, they're really turned off by the fringe social issues, the language policing, etc. And fucking Gaza. "We just want better working conditions: stop fucking telling us to capitalize the B in black and shit." Stop fucking telling us to stop eating meat, JFC.
Part of it is because the people advocating what passes for (economically) "left" in the USA tend to be obvious assholes and/or clearly unemployable. Look at The Young Turks or Chapo Trap House: they're always just the worst jerks around, and anyone who isn't already a jerk stops paying attention to the message. TYT constantly undermined Harris, who for an institutional Dem was at least trying to move the needle. I'm not remotely convinced that TYT and others are not paid operatives of and/or useful idiots for the oligarchy.
Unless and until you have friendly left people who advocate for community, and keep the message essentially entirely focused on economics, only bringing up social issues to point out how the oligarchy uses them as wedges to divide us, "running left as hard as possible" just results in Republican supermajorities. Look at Saint Bernie himself, who I find loathsome but also have to admit that for some people he really did have some charisma, and he did even worse in 2020 than in 2016. And this entirely leaves out the issue of how to wrest control of the Democratic Party to even make "running left" possible.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:09 AM on December 17, 2024 [18 favorites]
Citizens United was the final nail in the coffin of American "democracy." The South lost the Civil War, but the Confederacy won it. Britain lost the Revolutionary war, but the aristocracy won it. The problem is not that people aren't willing to fight for freedom, it is that they are not willing to completely purge the old ruling class once the war is won.
posted by JohnFromGR at 5:29 AM on December 17, 2024 [20 favorites]
posted by JohnFromGR at 5:29 AM on December 17, 2024 [20 favorites]
And get absolutely fucking killed in elections.
You should read the Nolan piece, it's really good!
posted by mittens at 5:30 AM on December 17, 2024 [5 favorites]
You should read the Nolan piece, it's really good!
posted by mittens at 5:30 AM on December 17, 2024 [5 favorites]
Unless and until you have friendly left people who advocate for community
Yeah, but whose community? Aren't the people who advocate for so-called "fringe" social issues just advocating for their own minority communities? Aren't "fringe" social issues by definition minority issues?
and keep the message essentially entirely focused on economics, only bringing up social issues to point out how the oligarchy uses them as wedges to divide us
Let me introduce you to Luigi Mangione. Perhaps you've heard of him? He's been very successful at doing precisely what you're advocating. Maybe you should read his manifesto? I hear it's entirely focused on economics and doesn't have any of those distasteful "fringe" social issues you dislike.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:34 AM on December 17, 2024 [13 favorites]
Yeah, but whose community? Aren't the people who advocate for so-called "fringe" social issues just advocating for their own minority communities? Aren't "fringe" social issues by definition minority issues?
and keep the message essentially entirely focused on economics, only bringing up social issues to point out how the oligarchy uses them as wedges to divide us
Let me introduce you to Luigi Mangione. Perhaps you've heard of him? He's been very successful at doing precisely what you're advocating. Maybe you should read his manifesto? I hear it's entirely focused on economics and doesn't have any of those distasteful "fringe" social issues you dislike.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:34 AM on December 17, 2024 [13 favorites]
And get absolutely fucking killed in elections. Herein lies the problem. Outside of gerrymandered dark blue districts and college towns, openly leftist candidates will be slaughtered. Even people who would clearly benefit from a leftist approach just haaate leftists, and only part of this is due to right-wing propaganda.
Ah yes, better to lick the boot than to fight it, I see.
I'd rather be a leftist (albeit a fairly quiet one) than be a centrist who falls for the "hurr durr leftists are bad and for some reason I make fun of vegetarians because hurr durr a leftist" propaganda.
posted by Kitteh at 5:35 AM on December 17, 2024 [36 favorites]
Ah yes, better to lick the boot than to fight it, I see.
I'd rather be a leftist (albeit a fairly quiet one) than be a centrist who falls for the "hurr durr leftists are bad and for some reason I make fun of vegetarians because hurr durr a leftist" propaganda.
posted by Kitteh at 5:35 AM on December 17, 2024 [36 favorites]
You should read the Nolan piece, it's really good!
It's well-written, that's for sure. I don't disagree with anything he says. But like many pieces like this, it just uses Underpants Gnome Logic. 1) the rich are winning the class war, 2) ????, 3) a robust unionized/leftist résistance!
Ah yes, better to lick the boot than to fight it, I see.
I'm saying the "fight" hasn't worked for shit so far. In fact, things are worse.
for some reason I make fun of vegetarians because hurr durr a leftist" propaganda.
As shorthand for trying to force an entire social agenda down people's throats.
Anyway, have a nice day.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:40 AM on December 17, 2024 [7 favorites]
It's well-written, that's for sure. I don't disagree with anything he says. But like many pieces like this, it just uses Underpants Gnome Logic. 1) the rich are winning the class war, 2) ????, 3) a robust unionized/leftist résistance!
Ah yes, better to lick the boot than to fight it, I see.
I'm saying the "fight" hasn't worked for shit so far. In fact, things are worse.
for some reason I make fun of vegetarians because hurr durr a leftist" propaganda.
As shorthand for trying to force an entire social agenda down people's throats.
Anyway, have a nice day.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:40 AM on December 17, 2024 [7 favorites]
One of the problems inherent in striking a blow against the oligarchy is, of course, Jello's Second Law of Rioting:
But you get to the place
Where the real slave drivers live
It's walled off by the riot squad
Aiming guns right at your head
So, you turn right around
And play right into their hands
And set your own neighborhood
Burning to the ground instead
Oligarchs did not reach that state by being easily reachable or capable of being influenced, whether through economic, legal, societal, electoral or Luigi-esque means. As a nation, our "We ----- Me" slider bar is jammed solidly to the right because few even stop to consider whether "Me" is PART OF "We." The everpresent message is that THEY (the undefined and sinister Other, not the oligarchs) are stealing your money and jobs and future and privilege away from You (the Real Americans[tm]), and if you vote in leftists THEY will replace you after murdering you in your bed. Rugged Individualism[tm] is the American way, not working towards a common interest; that's Godless Communism!
Fixing this is left as an exercise for the reader. Generally, it involves a nationwide collapse so dire and far-reaching that formerly-complacent masses rise up demanding change, and specifically change pushing hard to the left in numbers that cannot be ignored or dismantled. I am open to hearing alternative means.
posted by delfin at 5:44 AM on December 17, 2024 [5 favorites]
But you get to the place
Where the real slave drivers live
It's walled off by the riot squad
Aiming guns right at your head
So, you turn right around
And play right into their hands
And set your own neighborhood
Burning to the ground instead
Oligarchs did not reach that state by being easily reachable or capable of being influenced, whether through economic, legal, societal, electoral or Luigi-esque means. As a nation, our "We ----- Me" slider bar is jammed solidly to the right because few even stop to consider whether "Me" is PART OF "We." The everpresent message is that THEY (the undefined and sinister Other, not the oligarchs) are stealing your money and jobs and future and privilege away from You (the Real Americans[tm]), and if you vote in leftists THEY will replace you after murdering you in your bed. Rugged Individualism[tm] is the American way, not working towards a common interest; that's Godless Communism!
Fixing this is left as an exercise for the reader. Generally, it involves a nationwide collapse so dire and far-reaching that formerly-complacent masses rise up demanding change, and specifically change pushing hard to the left in numbers that cannot be ignored or dismantled. I am open to hearing alternative means.
posted by delfin at 5:44 AM on December 17, 2024 [5 favorites]
My post office no longer handles local mail. Except for the boxes, all local delivery routes come from a warehouse several towns over. In the mornings there's only a single postal employee there to do retail. She sits there at a window with her cell phone on speaker occasionally conversing with another postal employee who is sitting a solitary vigil in another post office. The entire building, which was built by the Works Progress Administration, has been reduced to a cavernous place to weigh packages and buy stamps.
This change happened on Biden's watch. He couldn't even fire DeJoy. We're worried about Trump privatizing the whole system while Biden didn't even bother firing the guy Trump appointed.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:45 AM on December 17, 2024 [33 favorites]
This change happened on Biden's watch. He couldn't even fire DeJoy. We're worried about Trump privatizing the whole system while Biden didn't even bother firing the guy Trump appointed.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:45 AM on December 17, 2024 [33 favorites]
As shorthand for trying to force an entire social agenda down people's throats.
A social agenda like making abortion illegal, banning treatments for trans kids, and revoking approvals for the polio vaccine?
As far as social agendas being forced down people's throats, how can someone calling you out for accidentally using the wrong pronoun or eating meat even compare to any of that?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:58 AM on December 17, 2024 [29 favorites]
A social agenda like making abortion illegal, banning treatments for trans kids, and revoking approvals for the polio vaccine?
As far as social agendas being forced down people's throats, how can someone calling you out for accidentally using the wrong pronoun or eating meat even compare to any of that?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:58 AM on December 17, 2024 [29 favorites]
The funny thing is, society has changed and the upcoming generation (largely) no longer uses the USPS directly unless it has to.
FWIW, I’d say a good 50% of my Amazon and other internet deliveries are handled by USPS. It might not be what the authors of the Constitution imagined when writing the Postal Clause.
posted by rh at 5:59 AM on December 17, 2024 [11 favorites]
FWIW, I’d say a good 50% of my Amazon and other internet deliveries are handled by USPS. It might not be what the authors of the Constitution imagined when writing the Postal Clause.
posted by rh at 5:59 AM on December 17, 2024 [11 favorites]
I mean, outgrown_hobnail's not wrong about the social agenda. It's the basic to-and-fro of neoliberalism versus neoconservativism that we've seen for years: "I can't promise you any greater power over your working and economic life, but I can recognize the value of your identity!" followed extremely quickly by "Your identity is wrong and must be punished."
What keeps your identity safe is greater power over your working and economic life. And that's something the Democrats have consistently failed to offer.
The fear really is that as the oligarchy takes firm hold--as these billionaires gain not only economic power but now direct political power by being appointed to the administration--even the timid incrementalism of the Democrats will be hollowed out. We think they're bad now, but they could get even weaker, if they hold on to their current strategy, and that will be absolutely poisonous to any social agenda.
posted by mittens at 6:10 AM on December 17, 2024 [18 favorites]
What keeps your identity safe is greater power over your working and economic life. And that's something the Democrats have consistently failed to offer.
The fear really is that as the oligarchy takes firm hold--as these billionaires gain not only economic power but now direct political power by being appointed to the administration--even the timid incrementalism of the Democrats will be hollowed out. We think they're bad now, but they could get even weaker, if they hold on to their current strategy, and that will be absolutely poisonous to any social agenda.
posted by mittens at 6:10 AM on December 17, 2024 [18 favorites]
Medicare for All, which if I recall correctly, has the support of 88% of Democrats, and about two-thirds of independents and even a little over 50% of Republicans... And it's just because we had a candidate that was willing to talk about it on national TV.
Yeah, we didn’t have any of those this time.
posted by Lemkin at 6:12 AM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
Yeah, we didn’t have any of those this time.
posted by Lemkin at 6:12 AM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
Radicalism is only sensible, because lesser measures are not going to fix the underlying state of affairs.
While I strongly agree from a policy perspective, I also wonder if the system is so broken that is not even possible to run without millionaire donors these days.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:13 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
While I strongly agree from a policy perspective, I also wonder if the system is so broken that is not even possible to run without millionaire donors these days.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:13 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
god it’s so fucking grim. a new gilded age is upon us. i only hope i live long enough for the correction
posted by dis_integration at 6:13 AM on December 17, 2024 [17 favorites]
posted by dis_integration at 6:13 AM on December 17, 2024 [17 favorites]
This would really bother me if every avenue of reselling my stuff i no longer need hadn't already been so thoroughly enshitified I now just throw stuff in donation bins rather than go through the excruciating and extractive hoops of places like ebay where you now pretty much have to buy ads to sell stuff otherwise nobody will see it.
Privatization would be the loss of a valuable and useful public service but everything around it is already turned to shit and seems an awful lot like things like the post office are fingers in a dyke that is no longer there.
Also FedEx and UPS can snoop in your packages and mail if they want. The Post Office is constrained in the snooping they are allowed to do by actual laws and not just vague notions of respecting customers.
posted by srboisvert at 6:26 AM on December 17, 2024 [15 favorites]
Privatization would be the loss of a valuable and useful public service but everything around it is already turned to shit and seems an awful lot like things like the post office are fingers in a dyke that is no longer there.
Also FedEx and UPS can snoop in your packages and mail if they want. The Post Office is constrained in the snooping they are allowed to do by actual laws and not just vague notions of respecting customers.
posted by srboisvert at 6:26 AM on December 17, 2024 [15 favorites]
The Post Office is constrained in the snooping they are allowed to do by actual laws
Let me tell you about this man named Edward Snowden.
posted by Lemkin at 6:29 AM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]
Let me tell you about this man named Edward Snowden.
posted by Lemkin at 6:29 AM on December 17, 2024 [3 favorites]
while Biden didn't even bother firing the guy Trump appointed
There are facts available that can add a lot more context to what Biden could and couldn't do; what Biden did and didn't do, and we can have a more productive conversation if people didn't resort to this sort of ill-informed despairing rhetoric.
posted by stevil at 7:20 AM on December 17, 2024 [12 favorites]
There are facts available that can add a lot more context to what Biden could and couldn't do; what Biden did and didn't do, and we can have a more productive conversation if people didn't resort to this sort of ill-informed despairing rhetoric.
posted by stevil at 7:20 AM on December 17, 2024 [12 favorites]
There are facts available that can add a lot more context :
[slate]
posted by HearHere at 7:25 AM on December 17, 2024 [5 favorites]
[slate]
posted by HearHere at 7:25 AM on December 17, 2024 [5 favorites]
they're really turned off by the fringe social issues, the language policing, etc. And fucking Gaza. "We just want better working conditions: stop fucking telling us to capitalize the B in black and shit." Stop fucking telling us to stop eating meat, JFC.
The counter argument to this is that they're "turned off" by this because there's a massive right-wing propaganda machine, led by the largest cable "news" network, buttressed by the rest of the "mainstream" media, and also fed to the general public via social media algorithms, that constantly harps on this - they take the most outré nonsense radical leftist post by a random 16-year-old on Twitter and pretend that it represents the mainstream Dem position.
Just for one example, Michael Hobbes on BlueSky brings receipts for how The Atlantic does this:
The counter argument to this is that they're "turned off" by this because there's a massive right-wing propaganda machine, led by the largest cable "news" network, buttressed by the rest of the "mainstream" media, and also fed to the general public via social media algorithms, that constantly harps on this - they take the most outré nonsense radical leftist post by a random 16-year-old on Twitter and pretend that it represents the mainstream Dem position.
Just for one example, Michael Hobbes on BlueSky brings receipts for how The Atlantic does this:
Every single one of these articles is the same: Blame Democrats for capitulating to "progressive advocates," blithely note that no one in power has actually done that, then tell Democrats to do exactly what they're already doing.posted by soundguy99 at 7:29 AM on December 17, 2024 [32 favorites]
The USPS needs to change. Currently it's an independent federal agency, meaning it's mostly self funded but still has to follow certain fed government laws and practices.
But mail volume is not what it is, and these days a lot of mail is spam (personal opinion, having delivered mail for a while). It's slowly shifting to being able handle mostly packages, but the management structure and the agency itself is messed up and has been gamed by Amazon and private companies. It absolute needs a major revamping, but privatizing it isn't the way to go.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:31 AM on December 17, 2024 [9 favorites]
But mail volume is not what it is, and these days a lot of mail is spam (personal opinion, having delivered mail for a while). It's slowly shifting to being able handle mostly packages, but the management structure and the agency itself is messed up and has been gamed by Amazon and private companies. It absolute needs a major revamping, but privatizing it isn't the way to go.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:31 AM on December 17, 2024 [9 favorites]
There are facts available that can add a lot more context to what Biden could and couldn't do; what Biden did and didn't do, and we can have a more productive conversation if people didn't resort to this sort of ill-informed despairing rhetoric.
Of course there's more context, but that doesn't change anything. Somehow Trump has the power to completely privatize the post office, yet for Biden to have even fired Trump's appointee it would have been a full-on constitutional crisis.
This is why people despair. Because even though there may be some technical reason for this disparity, the optics still suck. Biden's hands were always tied and yet Trump somehow gets to do whatever the fuck he wants.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:38 AM on December 17, 2024 [45 favorites]
Of course there's more context, but that doesn't change anything. Somehow Trump has the power to completely privatize the post office, yet for Biden to have even fired Trump's appointee it would have been a full-on constitutional crisis.
This is why people despair. Because even though there may be some technical reason for this disparity, the optics still suck. Biden's hands were always tied and yet Trump somehow gets to do whatever the fuck he wants.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:38 AM on December 17, 2024 [45 favorites]
My only consolation these days is that I am old and, hopefully, will die before the worst of it sets in.
posted by briank at 7:43 AM on December 17, 2024 [4 favorites]
posted by briank at 7:43 AM on December 17, 2024 [4 favorites]
When he returns to office, Trump could have several options to exert control over the mail agency — though he may not have the authority to unilaterally privatize it.That's buried wayyyyy down in the article.
The Postal Service has three vacancies on its nine-member governing board. Among sitting members, three are Republicans, and two of those are Trump appointees. Biden has three pending nominees, but the Senate does not appear poised to confirm them before Trump’s inauguration.I wonder if there are more facts available to describe why the Senate isn't bothering to do this? One can only hope they're too busy confirming judges to have the time...
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:00 AM on December 17, 2024 [18 favorites]
"Just go left" is a silly proposition for Democrats, because the Democratic Party entirely relies upon the support of people and institutions whose interests are not served by left-wing economic policies, and would switch to Republicans were that the only viable alternative. Social policy is a bit of red herring - as I've said here the problem it poses to persuadable voters is not that they dislike transgender rights or BLM or whatever, but that emphasizing those things strikes them as evidence of bad priorities.
I don't know what to do with the USPS but more of the same is definitely not the answer. First class letter mail is dead. Media mail is close to dead. Junk mail is dying; even the people who promote it admit it is useless to reach anyone born after 1975 and of limited impact for anyone born after 1965. E-commerce last mile has more competitors daily.
posted by MattD at 8:03 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
I don't know what to do with the USPS but more of the same is definitely not the answer. First class letter mail is dead. Media mail is close to dead. Junk mail is dying; even the people who promote it admit it is useless to reach anyone born after 1975 and of limited impact for anyone born after 1965. E-commerce last mile has more competitors daily.
posted by MattD at 8:03 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
Well, I live in a country where the mail service has been privatised. You can probably guess how well that works.
Spoiler: not very well.
posted by Too-Ticky at 8:04 AM on December 17, 2024 [11 favorites]
Spoiler: not very well.
posted by Too-Ticky at 8:04 AM on December 17, 2024 [11 favorites]
As shorthand for trying to force an entire social agenda down people's throats.
What, like abolitionism?
posted by Sphinx at 8:18 AM on December 17, 2024 [16 favorites]
What, like abolitionism?
posted by Sphinx at 8:18 AM on December 17, 2024 [16 favorites]
Dear outgrown_hobnail, my calculus is simple:
I'm not going to throw my trans friends, my disabled child, or my immigrant self to the wolves just because it is politically expedient for you.
And if America dies as a consequence, then America is not worth saving.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:20 AM on December 17, 2024 [35 favorites]
I'm not going to throw my trans friends, my disabled child, or my immigrant self to the wolves just because it is politically expedient for you.
And if America dies as a consequence, then America is not worth saving.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:20 AM on December 17, 2024 [35 favorites]
(And I don't even think you're correct. Trump is winning "low propensity" voters. Democrats gave up on young voters decades ago. And even in this cycle Harris made a decision at some point to ditch young voters in favor of Dick Cheney Republicans, which didn't work.)
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:24 AM on December 17, 2024 [8 favorites]
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:24 AM on December 17, 2024 [8 favorites]
By the way, now that Milei has saved Argentina we will never stop hearing that now we have firm objective scientific proof that gutting the government can fix the economy.
posted by mittens at 8:30 AM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 8:30 AM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
Liberals ran so fast towards Clinton-era "we have to oppress the queers to save them" that they seem to have overshot right into parroting Focus on the Family talking points.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 8:35 AM on December 17, 2024 [12 favorites]
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 8:35 AM on December 17, 2024 [12 favorites]
The counter argument to this is that they're "turned off" by this because there's a massive right-wing propaganda machine, led by the largest cable "news" network, buttressed by the rest of the "mainstream" media, and also fed to the general public via social media algorithms, that constantly harps on this - they take the most outré nonsense radical leftist post by a random 16-year-old on Twitter and pretend that it represents the mainstream Dem position.
here in rural western Canada I found myself at a dinner table telling someone that No, they don't install litter boxes in our classrooms so kids can identify as cats. the reach of this toxic shithose of lies is not to be underestimated. I'm getting angrier and angrier talking to someone who could easily phone the superintendent or any number of teachers in our community, but she is going with this hateful bullshit she sees on her Facebook or whatever, then she has the gall to tell me "someone who works in the school TOLD me this" and I'm just fucking done with the lies.
if you think the Democratic Party (in the US) or the Liberal Party of Canada is getting hammered "because woke" you are part of the problem and you might want to reconsider your fucking media diet
posted by ginger.beef at 8:36 AM on December 17, 2024 [38 favorites]
here in rural western Canada I found myself at a dinner table telling someone that No, they don't install litter boxes in our classrooms so kids can identify as cats. the reach of this toxic shithose of lies is not to be underestimated. I'm getting angrier and angrier talking to someone who could easily phone the superintendent or any number of teachers in our community, but she is going with this hateful bullshit she sees on her Facebook or whatever, then she has the gall to tell me "someone who works in the school TOLD me this" and I'm just fucking done with the lies.
if you think the Democratic Party (in the US) or the Liberal Party of Canada is getting hammered "because woke" you are part of the problem and you might want to reconsider your fucking media diet
posted by ginger.beef at 8:36 AM on December 17, 2024 [38 favorites]
No, they don't install litter boxes in our classrooms so kids can identify as cats.
What's even sadder about this myth is that many teachers do have cat litter in their classrooms. It's because school shootings are so rampant that they need something cheap and readily available to soak up blood on the floors.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 8:45 AM on December 17, 2024 [6 favorites]
What's even sadder about this myth is that many teachers do have cat litter in their classrooms. It's because school shootings are so rampant that they need something cheap and readily available to soak up blood on the floors.
posted by Glegrinof the Pig-Man at 8:45 AM on December 17, 2024 [6 favorites]
I think you might be incorrect. Schools in Colorado have equipped classrooms with cat litter buckets so students have a place to go while sheltering in place. But if you've got an example of a school using it to soak up blood, please share it because that's also disturbing.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:49 AM on December 17, 2024 [9 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:49 AM on December 17, 2024 [9 favorites]
My wife is a teacher and has had to deal with the litter box urban legend a bunch of times. It is ridiculous. The stories are always weirdly specific about what school and grade of class, and always purported to be from someone who personally witnessed it. I guess just to give them a whiff of authenticity.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:51 AM on December 17, 2024 [4 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:51 AM on December 17, 2024 [4 favorites]
People on the right do not have a monopoly on either repeating things uncritically or just making shit up.
posted by box at 8:51 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by box at 8:51 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
By the way, now that Milei has saved Argentina we will never stop hearing that now we have firm objective scientific proof that gutting the government can fix the economy.
Yes, this is frustrating and I really hope that Dems are armed with talking points to combat it. Off the top of my head: it’s way easier to cut government spending when 55% of the working population is employed by the government (compared with 2% in the US).
I am a big proponent of making economic arguments for leftist policies. Want to increase government spending? It’s an investment that will generate returns. Want to increase taxes? We’re increasing revenue. Want to enact social policies? They’re cheaper than letting the problem fester. Climate policy? Ditto.
Over and over again, and it has to be a consistent message. Yes, this isn’t new, and yes, the Democratic Party has done it before, but never with credibility. I think the Bernie has this type of credibility, and even though his rhetoric tends toward egalitarian language than strictly economic language, I think what he chooses to talk about, over and over, as highlighted by this post, never falls into the type of politics that Americans hate to listen to.
posted by Room 101 at 8:55 AM on December 17, 2024 [5 favorites]
Yes, this is frustrating and I really hope that Dems are armed with talking points to combat it. Off the top of my head: it’s way easier to cut government spending when 55% of the working population is employed by the government (compared with 2% in the US).
I am a big proponent of making economic arguments for leftist policies. Want to increase government spending? It’s an investment that will generate returns. Want to increase taxes? We’re increasing revenue. Want to enact social policies? They’re cheaper than letting the problem fester. Climate policy? Ditto.
Over and over again, and it has to be a consistent message. Yes, this isn’t new, and yes, the Democratic Party has done it before, but never with credibility. I think the Bernie has this type of credibility, and even though his rhetoric tends toward egalitarian language than strictly economic language, I think what he chooses to talk about, over and over, as highlighted by this post, never falls into the type of politics that Americans hate to listen to.
posted by Room 101 at 8:55 AM on December 17, 2024 [5 favorites]
Your local might be empty, but the PO I went to yesterday in the early afternoon was packed with holiday customers. There was road rage on the surrounding streets because people couldn't get into the parking lot and cars were lined up on the street. The line at the windows was bad, but there were also more than 5 people in line for the machine. USPS has a mandate to serve both of those communities. USPS and the IRS are the easiest targets because they are some of the most common interactions people have with the federal government.
posted by soelo at 8:56 AM on December 17, 2024 [14 favorites]
posted by soelo at 8:56 AM on December 17, 2024 [14 favorites]
Neither snopes nor wikipedia mention anything about cat litter in classrooms being used for blood.
Barring any evidence, let's not repeat this incorrect information. Having cat litter in the classroom so kids hiding from an active shooter can relieve themselves is already pretty disturbing.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:58 AM on December 17, 2024 [15 favorites]
Barring any evidence, let's not repeat this incorrect information. Having cat litter in the classroom so kids hiding from an active shooter can relieve themselves is already pretty disturbing.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:58 AM on December 17, 2024 [15 favorites]
Honestly, the whole "should Democrats be more or less Left" feels like a derail here. There is nothing Leftist about having a national postal service that works. The people who rely most on the postal service (and cost the most money to service) are rural people, who tend to lean right.
One of my parents' friends was a lifelong mailman who retired roughly a decade ago. He was a lefty, but had some criticisms with some decisions that upper management had made, mainly feeling they were slow to address the impact of email, etc. Seems likely there are things they could have done better.
But a key issue is the Postal Act of 2006. To quote from this interview in Slate:
posted by coffeecat at 8:59 AM on December 17, 2024 [18 favorites]
One of my parents' friends was a lifelong mailman who retired roughly a decade ago. He was a lefty, but had some criticisms with some decisions that upper management had made, mainly feeling they were slow to address the impact of email, etc. Seems likely there are things they could have done better.
But a key issue is the Postal Act of 2006. To quote from this interview in Slate:
In 2006, Congress and the George W. Bush administration started looking at the future of the Postal Service. Everybody could see that volume was trending downward, and that probably wasn’t going to stop. So they passed a big postal reform bill. What they were concerned about was that postal workers get very generous health benefits. And there was this concern that at some point in the future, mail revenue wouldn’t be able to cover that. During that time, the Postal Service was still doing pretty well. The economy was doing really well. So Congress passed a law saying that the agency had to pay about $5 billion a year to pre-fund those retiree health benefits. And the Postal Service could do it for about two years. Then the bottom fell out of the economy, mail volume kept going down, and the USPS just got crushed.Also since the 1970s Postal Reorganization Act:
Now the agency can’t close a post office without going through this extensive review. And there’s always a lot of backlash. Nobody in Congress wants to let a post office close. Oftentimes that basically keeps the USPS from doing so. Also, it can’t raise prices. The Postal Service would like to raise prices, but again, that has to go through a long review before the Postal Regulatory Commission, which sort of treats it like an arbitration. And there’s always a lot of pushback from the big mailers, the junk mailers and such. They don’t want prices to go up.Last Week Tonight did a good segment on the USPS in 2020.
posted by coffeecat at 8:59 AM on December 17, 2024 [18 favorites]
People on the right do not have a monopoly on either repeating things uncritically or just making shit up.
posted by box
hey man, I appreciate that we all get stuck in our bubbles and stuff but I'm reading the post title and comments and I'm just wondering, specifically, what is your point
posted by ginger.beef at 9:44 AM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by box
hey man, I appreciate that we all get stuck in our bubbles and stuff but I'm reading the post title and comments and I'm just wondering, specifically, what is your point
posted by ginger.beef at 9:44 AM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
It is in reference to the comment about cat litter being use for blood vs urine which lead to a tiny derail.
posted by soelo at 10:02 AM on December 17, 2024
posted by soelo at 10:02 AM on December 17, 2024
David Graeber has a great bit in Utopia of Rules on the long, slow defunding of the American post post office because it’s the most frequent point of contact every day Americans have with the federal government, and they need to be convinced that federal government cannot work, but secondary is resentment that the post office was one of the first places that Black Americans could get hired and get a middle class salary, join a union, and have benefits. Punishing the post office for being less racist then the American baseline has long been part of the American right’s agenda of petty grievances and I don’t doubt it’s woven into the fabric of Trump’s political agenda.
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:17 AM on December 17, 2024 [21 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:17 AM on December 17, 2024 [21 favorites]
Do we have examples of left politicians or Democrat politicians saying not to eat meat, or are we just repeating right wing media accusations?
I am using the "don't eat meat" comment form outgrown_hobnail as an example, but there are multiple examples in this thread where we are not arguing about what the Democrats actually did versus what they should do so much as what Republicans pretend they did versus what they should do.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:22 AM on December 17, 2024 [12 favorites]
I am using the "don't eat meat" comment form outgrown_hobnail as an example, but there are multiple examples in this thread where we are not arguing about what the Democrats actually did versus what they should do so much as what Republicans pretend they did versus what they should do.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:22 AM on December 17, 2024 [12 favorites]
Kamala Harris Urges Americans to Reduce Red Meat to Help Save the Earth, Despite Saying 'I Love Cheeseburgers'
posted by mittens at 10:30 AM on December 17, 2024
posted by mittens at 10:30 AM on December 17, 2024
Thank you, mittens! Sincerely.
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:31 AM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:31 AM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
When you treat government like a business, cost centers become loss centers. This is the case of every organization I've worked in which changed from a public benefit non-profit to an organization arranged to extract money from one sector or another of it's community. The operations cost become losses on the balance sheet and everything possible is done to minimize those losses, including cutting services that were the presumed basis of the organization to start with.
Do not let anyone tell you government would be better run as a business. Businesses in the US only exist to make profits, which is made possible by the exploitation of their workers, their suppliers, and their communities. Government should not be a profit-oriented endeavor.
posted by drossdragon at 10:34 AM on December 17, 2024 [15 favorites]
Do not let anyone tell you government would be better run as a business. Businesses in the US only exist to make profits, which is made possible by the exploitation of their workers, their suppliers, and their communities. Government should not be a profit-oriented endeavor.
posted by drossdragon at 10:34 AM on December 17, 2024 [15 favorites]
Reducing the consumption of red meat across the board would be an unalloyed social, global, and personal good, actually.
posted by Gadarene at 10:39 AM on December 17, 2024 [13 favorites]
posted by Gadarene at 10:39 AM on December 17, 2024 [13 favorites]
> Medicare for All, which if I recall correctly, has the support of 88% of Democrats, and about two-thirds of independents and even a little over 50% of Republicans... And it's just because we had a candidate that was willing to talk about it on national TV.
Yeah okay sure. Ask these people if they would approve having their private insurance taken away and replaced with rationed government healthcare and show me those numbers.
posted by BeginAgain at 10:44 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
Yeah okay sure. Ask these people if they would approve having their private insurance taken away and replaced with rationed government healthcare and show me those numbers.
posted by BeginAgain at 10:44 AM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
Yeah okay sure. Ask these people if they would approve having their private insurance taken away and replaced with rationed government healthcare and show me those numbers.
Why, since that's not what would happen?
It's like the media feeding frenzy in Fall 2019 when Elizabeth Warren was leading in the polls to get her to admit that her health care plan would raise taxes--notwithstanding the fact that those increased taxes would be accompanied by significantly lowered costs resulting in a net reduction of money paid by health care consumers.
Just thoroughly disingenuous.
posted by Gadarene at 10:47 AM on December 17, 2024 [18 favorites]
Why, since that's not what would happen?
It's like the media feeding frenzy in Fall 2019 when Elizabeth Warren was leading in the polls to get her to admit that her health care plan would raise taxes--notwithstanding the fact that those increased taxes would be accompanied by significantly lowered costs resulting in a net reduction of money paid by health care consumers.
Just thoroughly disingenuous.
posted by Gadarene at 10:47 AM on December 17, 2024 [18 favorites]
It is in reference to the comment about cat litter being use for blood vs urine which lead to a tiny derail.
I appreciate the distinction
to continue the derail
"left" cat litter is to soak up blood resulting from a school shooting vs. cat litter is in case a school shooting results in extended lockdown and kids need to use the bathroom
"right" cat litter is so kids can identify as cats
this shit is exhausting, as we say
posted by ginger.beef at 10:48 AM on December 17, 2024 [4 favorites]
I appreciate the distinction
to continue the derail
"left" cat litter is to soak up blood resulting from a school shooting vs. cat litter is in case a school shooting results in extended lockdown and kids need to use the bathroom
"right" cat litter is so kids can identify as cats
this shit is exhausting, as we say
posted by ginger.beef at 10:48 AM on December 17, 2024 [4 favorites]
Oh holy shit like saying we should eat less meat for health and environmental reasons (true!) is some kind of clench on people's behavior what a fucking evil thing to say amirite
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:54 AM on December 17, 2024 [6 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 10:54 AM on December 17, 2024 [6 favorites]
what a fucking evil thing to say amirite
I think the problem is, there's this entire world of coercion that is very lightly hidden from us behind layers of markets and complexity--we feel its force but cannot name it. This builds up an asymmetry where we talk about nagging vs freedom, which is not the true nature of the battle.
Like, first off, yes, absolutely, everyone should eat less red meat! I, a vegetarian, could spend hours explaining why morally, environmentally, and cardiologically, it's the right choice.
But that word 'choice' is problematic. If Harris says "eat less red meat," the world cries out about how the commies want a stranglehold over your dinner plate. But what is hidden from us--as just one example--is how the makers of that red meat have started giving more and more money to Republican candidates.
Similarly, as we saw with the recent UHC assassination, we are very unprepared to talk about how healthcare actually works. BeginAgain's "private insurance taken away and replaced with rationed government healthcare" is a great example of that asymmetry, because it points to how our discussions are taking place in a fantasy world. "I wouldn't want my insurance taken away!" thinks someone who doesn't realize their insurance company is also a pharmacy, a pharmacy middleman, a bank, a drug manufacturer, an owner of physician practices, and then some.
This is why we've got to be careful how we simplify. There are good simplifications (it's better when people have power over their work and lives) and bad ones (Democrats want to take your steak away), and the bad ones are so much more pervasive.
posted by mittens at 11:13 AM on December 17, 2024 [13 favorites]
I think the problem is, there's this entire world of coercion that is very lightly hidden from us behind layers of markets and complexity--we feel its force but cannot name it. This builds up an asymmetry where we talk about nagging vs freedom, which is not the true nature of the battle.
Like, first off, yes, absolutely, everyone should eat less red meat! I, a vegetarian, could spend hours explaining why morally, environmentally, and cardiologically, it's the right choice.
But that word 'choice' is problematic. If Harris says "eat less red meat," the world cries out about how the commies want a stranglehold over your dinner plate. But what is hidden from us--as just one example--is how the makers of that red meat have started giving more and more money to Republican candidates.
Similarly, as we saw with the recent UHC assassination, we are very unprepared to talk about how healthcare actually works. BeginAgain's "private insurance taken away and replaced with rationed government healthcare" is a great example of that asymmetry, because it points to how our discussions are taking place in a fantasy world. "I wouldn't want my insurance taken away!" thinks someone who doesn't realize their insurance company is also a pharmacy, a pharmacy middleman, a bank, a drug manufacturer, an owner of physician practices, and then some.
This is why we've got to be careful how we simplify. There are good simplifications (it's better when people have power over their work and lives) and bad ones (Democrats want to take your steak away), and the bad ones are so much more pervasive.
posted by mittens at 11:13 AM on December 17, 2024 [13 favorites]
Ask these people if they would approve having their private insurance taken away and replaced with rationed government healthcare and show me t
As opposed to all the rationed health care they already get from private insurance because they can't afford better insurance plans and have to fight tooth and nail to get those private insurers to actually pay for the health care their health professionals say they need?
OK buddy.
posted by soundguy99 at 12:07 PM on December 17, 2024 [9 favorites]
As opposed to all the rationed health care they already get from private insurance because they can't afford better insurance plans and have to fight tooth and nail to get those private insurers to actually pay for the health care their health professionals say they need?
OK buddy.
posted by soundguy99 at 12:07 PM on December 17, 2024 [9 favorites]
Let me introduce you to Luigi Mangione. Perhaps you've heard of him? He's been very successful at doing precisely what you're advocating. Maybe you should read his manifesto?
A little confused about the point being made here in a comment that otherwise seems skeptical of “focusing on economic issues.” I’m sure Luigi Mangione is not as popular in real life as he is online, but doesn’t the sympathy he’s gotten illustrate that actually those economic issues do cross partisan boundaries?
The counterargument is more that the Biden admin has made a fair number of populist economic moves but nobody noticed.
posted by atoxyl at 12:58 PM on December 17, 2024
A little confused about the point being made here in a comment that otherwise seems skeptical of “focusing on economic issues.” I’m sure Luigi Mangione is not as popular in real life as he is online, but doesn’t the sympathy he’s gotten illustrate that actually those economic issues do cross partisan boundaries?
The counterargument is more that the Biden admin has made a fair number of populist economic moves but nobody noticed.
posted by atoxyl at 12:58 PM on December 17, 2024
"'The failure of the Democratic Party, institutionally, to grasp the reality that it needs to be running left as hard as possible'
And get absolutely fucking killed in elections. Herein lies the problem. Outside of gerrymandered dark blue districts and college towns, openly leftist candidates will be slaughtered. Even people who would clearly benefit from a leftist approach just haaate leftists, and only part of this is due to right-wing propaganda.
Part of this is because the socially left issues always seem to have to come in tandem with the economically left ones, and whereas many people are at least receptive to the economic issues, they're really turned off by the fringe social issues, the language policing, etc. And fucking Gaza. "We just want better working conditions: stop fucking telling us to capitalize the B in black and shit." Stop fucking telling us to stop eating meat, JFC.
Part of it is because the people advocating what passes for (economically) "left" in the USA tend to be obvious assholes and/or clearly unemployable. Look at The Young Turks or Chapo Trap House: they're always just the worst jerks around, and anyone who isn't already a jerk stops paying attention to the message. TYT constantly undermined Harris, who for an institutional Dem was at least trying to move the needle. I'm not remotely convinced that TYT and others are not paid operatives of and/or useful idiots for the oligarchy.
Unless and until you have friendly left people who advocate for community, and keep the message essentially entirely focused on economics, only bringing up social issues to point out how the oligarchy uses them as wedges to divide us, "running left as hard as possible" just results in Republican supermajorities. Look at Saint Bernie himself, who I find loathsome but also have to admit that for some people he really did have some charisma, and he did even worse in 2020 than in 2016. And this entirely leaves out the issue of how to wrest control of the Democratic Party to even make "running left" possible."
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:09 AM on December 17 [13 favorites +] [Flagged]
It strikes me, as it has struck me for a long time on MetaFilter, that it is people who represent this particular position who are the real opposition to everything we'd like to get done in this thread. The people who, seeing a conversation about how popular social democratic positions and programs are, feel the need to come in hot to say, "Well, of course, I support all these things, I recognize how obviously necessary they are, it's just this silent majority which opposes them and which determines that we should in fact adopt the positions of the opposing party."
And my response to [basically the entire Democratic establishment] is: look man, if you want to be a Republican, if your commitment to the will of some theoretical middle voter is so strong that you have to bust into a thread where no-one has mentioned it to malign having compassion for "fucking Gaza" please, be our guest, go join the Republican party.
Because I just cannot understand the logical path where, because socialist policies and protections for minorities are unpopular to people who watch Fox news, we should jettison those positions in order to win. Win to do what? Win to implement the Republican platform? I dunno man
posted by TheProfessor at 1:03 PM on December 17, 2024 [34 favorites]
And get absolutely fucking killed in elections. Herein lies the problem. Outside of gerrymandered dark blue districts and college towns, openly leftist candidates will be slaughtered. Even people who would clearly benefit from a leftist approach just haaate leftists, and only part of this is due to right-wing propaganda.
Part of this is because the socially left issues always seem to have to come in tandem with the economically left ones, and whereas many people are at least receptive to the economic issues, they're really turned off by the fringe social issues, the language policing, etc. And fucking Gaza. "We just want better working conditions: stop fucking telling us to capitalize the B in black and shit." Stop fucking telling us to stop eating meat, JFC.
Part of it is because the people advocating what passes for (economically) "left" in the USA tend to be obvious assholes and/or clearly unemployable. Look at The Young Turks or Chapo Trap House: they're always just the worst jerks around, and anyone who isn't already a jerk stops paying attention to the message. TYT constantly undermined Harris, who for an institutional Dem was at least trying to move the needle. I'm not remotely convinced that TYT and others are not paid operatives of and/or useful idiots for the oligarchy.
Unless and until you have friendly left people who advocate for community, and keep the message essentially entirely focused on economics, only bringing up social issues to point out how the oligarchy uses them as wedges to divide us, "running left as hard as possible" just results in Republican supermajorities. Look at Saint Bernie himself, who I find loathsome but also have to admit that for some people he really did have some charisma, and he did even worse in 2020 than in 2016. And this entirely leaves out the issue of how to wrest control of the Democratic Party to even make "running left" possible."
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:09 AM on December 17 [13 favorites +] [Flagged]
It strikes me, as it has struck me for a long time on MetaFilter, that it is people who represent this particular position who are the real opposition to everything we'd like to get done in this thread. The people who, seeing a conversation about how popular social democratic positions and programs are, feel the need to come in hot to say, "Well, of course, I support all these things, I recognize how obviously necessary they are, it's just this silent majority which opposes them and which determines that we should in fact adopt the positions of the opposing party."
And my response to [basically the entire Democratic establishment] is: look man, if you want to be a Republican, if your commitment to the will of some theoretical middle voter is so strong that you have to bust into a thread where no-one has mentioned it to malign having compassion for "fucking Gaza" please, be our guest, go join the Republican party.
Because I just cannot understand the logical path where, because socialist policies and protections for minorities are unpopular to people who watch Fox news, we should jettison those positions in order to win. Win to do what? Win to implement the Republican platform? I dunno man
posted by TheProfessor at 1:03 PM on December 17, 2024 [34 favorites]
Ask these people if they would approve having their private insurance taken away and replaced with rationed government healthcare and show me
This is just the negative spin on the same policy. Indeed the main defense made of the insurance industry is that somebody has to do the rationing - we all know that rationing happens. If you mean that’s a spin that’s worked in the past, sure, but the whole point “economic populists” are trying to make is that people actually do care about these issues and think the system sucks, and thus it should be possible to spin the other way.
posted by atoxyl at 1:04 PM on December 17, 2024 [4 favorites]
This is just the negative spin on the same policy. Indeed the main defense made of the insurance industry is that somebody has to do the rationing - we all know that rationing happens. If you mean that’s a spin that’s worked in the past, sure, but the whole point “economic populists” are trying to make is that people actually do care about these issues and think the system sucks, and thus it should be possible to spin the other way.
posted by atoxyl at 1:04 PM on December 17, 2024 [4 favorites]
I feel like the entirety of TFG's incoming administration can be summed up by this speech from Henry IV pt. 2:
Harry the Fifth is crown'd: up, vanity!
Down, royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence!
And to the English court assemble now
From every region, apes of idleness!
Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum:
Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,
Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit
The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?
Be happy, he will trouble you no more;
England shall double gild his treble guilt,
England shall give him office, honour, might;
For the fifth Harry from curb'd licence plucks
The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.
O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!
When that my care could not withhold thy riots,
What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?
O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:46 PM on December 17, 2024 [6 favorites]
Harry the Fifth is crown'd: up, vanity!
Down, royal state! all you sage counsellors, hence!
And to the English court assemble now
From every region, apes of idleness!
Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum:
Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,
Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit
The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?
Be happy, he will trouble you no more;
England shall double gild his treble guilt,
England shall give him office, honour, might;
For the fifth Harry from curb'd licence plucks
The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.
O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!
When that my care could not withhold thy riots,
What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?
O, thou wilt be a wilderness again,
Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:46 PM on December 17, 2024 [6 favorites]
Because I just cannot understand the logical path where, because socialist policies and protections for minorities are unpopular to people who watch Fox news, we should jettison those positions in order to win. Win to do what? Win to implement the Republican platform? I dunno man
It's almost like the Democratic party isn't supportive of its base at all! Sort of a paradox, eh?!
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 8:50 PM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
It's almost like the Democratic party isn't supportive of its base at all! Sort of a paradox, eh?!
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 8:50 PM on December 17, 2024 [1 favorite]
Mittens, another aspect of the simplification is that sometimes the simple version is a mental shortcut for different things to different people. I am younger than many people on this site, but was old enough during Elizabeth Warren’s campaign to have a job with healthcare that I was reasonably satisfied with. I was too young to have my parents and their friends covered by Medicare, so my general impressions of it were just from the media.
I know Medicare for all sounds good to most people here, but I thought I would go from paying a nominal copay to needing to come up with 20% out of pocket, and then even Medicare Advantage-like options would be forbidden under the “no private insurance allowed” rules. If so, it would be a real barrier to care for me as an early career person with minimal savings. I also had the general sense that Medicare/Medicaid offered volume to medical offices but at the low reimbursement rates and lots of billing hassles. If we lost all the private payors who are effectively subsidizing the government plans, I could imagine lots of upheaval and then healthcare wages either going down or some clinics closing.
Was that realistically what Elizabeth Warren had in mind? Probably not, but she didn’t stay in the race long enough for me to do the research on it.
posted by puffinaria at 9:12 PM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
I know Medicare for all sounds good to most people here, but I thought I would go from paying a nominal copay to needing to come up with 20% out of pocket, and then even Medicare Advantage-like options would be forbidden under the “no private insurance allowed” rules. If so, it would be a real barrier to care for me as an early career person with minimal savings. I also had the general sense that Medicare/Medicaid offered volume to medical offices but at the low reimbursement rates and lots of billing hassles. If we lost all the private payors who are effectively subsidizing the government plans, I could imagine lots of upheaval and then healthcare wages either going down or some clinics closing.
Was that realistically what Elizabeth Warren had in mind? Probably not, but she didn’t stay in the race long enough for me to do the research on it.
posted by puffinaria at 9:12 PM on December 17, 2024 [2 favorites]
If a Democrat president gets elected in 2028, will they be able to undo this, or will this be like when Trump chose the next Postmaster General and Biden couldn't do anything about it?
posted by BiggerJ at 1:07 AM on December 18, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by BiggerJ at 1:07 AM on December 18, 2024 [1 favorite]
[main post text]: Medicare for All, which if I recall correctly, has the support of 88% of Democrats, and about two-thirds of independents and even a little over 50% of Republicans... And it's just because we had a candidate that was willing to talk about it on national TV.
BeginAgain: Ask these people if they would approve having their private insurance taken away and replaced with rationed government healthcare and show me those numbers.
atoxyl: This is just the negative spin on the same policy. Indeed the main defense made of the insurance industry is that somebody has to do the rationing - we all know that rationing happens. If you mean that’s a spin that’s worked in the past, sure, but the whole point “economic populists” are trying to make is that people actually do care about these issues and think the system sucks, and thus it should be possible to spin the other way.
I reject the premise that there's similar or worse rationing in outside the USA than the rationing done by profiteering denials of the current USA system. (And it's such an ugly word, rationing.) If you nationalise healthcare provision or create a single nationial insurance pool, there's a whole lot of extra funding available that doesn't go to profits, amplified by economies of scale sharing the risk across a wider insurance pool. I understand that the current funds transferred between an insurer and a hospital for an example six- or seven-figure hospital visit are often much less than the value on the invoice, all for a tax write-off.
Turning that shareholder-welfare into everyone-welfare seems a worthy challenge.
posted by k3ninho at 2:00 AM on December 18, 2024 [6 favorites]
BeginAgain: Ask these people if they would approve having their private insurance taken away and replaced with rationed government healthcare and show me those numbers.
atoxyl: This is just the negative spin on the same policy. Indeed the main defense made of the insurance industry is that somebody has to do the rationing - we all know that rationing happens. If you mean that’s a spin that’s worked in the past, sure, but the whole point “economic populists” are trying to make is that people actually do care about these issues and think the system sucks, and thus it should be possible to spin the other way.
I reject the premise that there's similar or worse rationing in outside the USA than the rationing done by profiteering denials of the current USA system. (And it's such an ugly word, rationing.) If you nationalise healthcare provision or create a single nationial insurance pool, there's a whole lot of extra funding available that doesn't go to profits, amplified by economies of scale sharing the risk across a wider insurance pool. I understand that the current funds transferred between an insurer and a hospital for an example six- or seven-figure hospital visit are often much less than the value on the invoice, all for a tax write-off.
Turning that shareholder-welfare into everyone-welfare seems a worthy challenge.
posted by k3ninho at 2:00 AM on December 18, 2024 [6 favorites]
If a Democrat president gets elected in 2028, will they be able to undo this,
That depends on which "this" you're talking about, how Trump and his administration and a Republican-majority Congress plan on implementing it, and whether the Dems can grab a majority in one or both houses of Congress in 2026 and/or 2028.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:03 AM on December 18, 2024
That depends on which "this" you're talking about, how Trump and his administration and a Republican-majority Congress plan on implementing it, and whether the Dems can grab a majority in one or both houses of Congress in 2026 and/or 2028.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:03 AM on December 18, 2024
There will not be another Democratic president until 2044.
posted by Captaintripps at 8:35 AM on December 18, 2024
posted by Captaintripps at 8:35 AM on December 18, 2024
There will not be another Democratic president until 2044.
There is something fundamentally broken and rotten about this country that a single Democratic administration cannot fix it fast enough for people for people to notice, let alone reward it. Good things are still worth doing, but it's hard to see why politicians should be enthusiastic about doing good when most people simply don't care.
I'm not feeling defeated, and maybe I am coping, but in the wake of the election, I felt that even if Harris-Walz had been elected, the criticisms and opposition would have been beyond nasty. They dodged a bullet, and like Hillary, I think losing might have saved their lives.
I'm focusing less on the politicians and more on why people are the way they are, and what this means for us going forward.
posted by ichomp at 9:55 AM on December 18, 2024 [8 favorites]
There is something fundamentally broken and rotten about this country that a single Democratic administration cannot fix it fast enough for people for people to notice, let alone reward it. Good things are still worth doing, but it's hard to see why politicians should be enthusiastic about doing good when most people simply don't care.
I'm not feeling defeated, and maybe I am coping, but in the wake of the election, I felt that even if Harris-Walz had been elected, the criticisms and opposition would have been beyond nasty. They dodged a bullet, and like Hillary, I think losing might have saved their lives.
I'm focusing less on the politicians and more on why people are the way they are, and what this means for us going forward.
posted by ichomp at 9:55 AM on December 18, 2024 [8 favorites]
“ If a Democrat president gets elected in 2028, will they be able to undo this,”
Why does this country elect Republicans to fuck up the country and then expect Democrats to fix things? A lot of folks are calling on the Democrats to fix things now, somehow, while the Republicans hold the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.
posted by coldhotel at 2:55 PM on December 19, 2024 [3 favorites]
Why does this country elect Republicans to fuck up the country and then expect Democrats to fix things? A lot of folks are calling on the Democrats to fix things now, somehow, while the Republicans hold the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Supreme Court.
posted by coldhotel at 2:55 PM on December 19, 2024 [3 favorites]
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