I will never understand why leftists constantly say you shouldn’t vote. Like, if you can’t even motivate people to do step one do you really think you’re going to motivate them to revolution?
Right? I’m tired of being called a bro dude because I don’t see sexy women in video games anymore, I’m not even a man.
I’m left as fuck, but why can’t I just see some titties during my free time without the people who provide me the titties being called misogynists? There are girls who like girls. Show me the titties.
Like anyone on the right actually cares about fixing problems. It’s all about how they can benefit from a situation, how they can spin things to their advantage.
They know deep down they are supporting the trainwreck, they just want a media ecosystem that blames others so they don’t feel personally responsible for it.
Yes, the Right is a monoculture. When you get the tshirt you trade in your brain too. So unlike the Left in this way. Your outrage is entirely justified and you have no choice but to persecute them all. Good job.
Ah the right wing are persecuted by the left wing are they. You know you are allowed to criticize them right? No matter how much they complain about it.
Haven’t you heard about the WAR on baby jesus itself?? Poor little guy’s self-esteem is gonna be DESTROYED when he finds out people use the wrong word to describe the placing of his half-birthday’s celebration to coincide with other religions!
I honestly would probably vote Republican if they put up a candidate that had solutions to economic problems they swear is caused by the left.
But they don’t have any, because all their candidates bluster about the economy while they run on platforms centered around identity politics, religious law, and reducing women’s bodily autonomy.
Every day I have to hear conservatives complain about how “Biden ruined the economy” but they don’t seem to care all that much about fixing it. They just want to ban abortion, suppress the gays , and put Christ back in Christmas.
It honestly feels like the left doesn’t know how to fix the economy and the right just doesn’t want to.
Yeah, I’m a leftist, I just think landlords have their place, billionaires are job creators, and if we disrupt the status quo too much the global south might stop giving us resources for nothing- A Great Mind
I think exactly that way and am as left as you can be in the Finnish mainstream party system, with the exception of small sub-1% parties like the Communist Party.
Landlords & Billionaires = living, breathing taxation waiting to happen
Even if we were to tax a billionaire by 80%, they would probably still be a billionaire. However, they would also indeed be creating jobs, wealth and sustainable growth. School systems, medicine, hospitals, city infrastructure, job placement programmes, you name it, they fund it.
Corporate tax is also grossly under-utilized.
Capitalism isn’t bad if you tax it hard and use the money for the welfare of citizens.
However, they would also indeed be creating jobs, wealth and sustainable growth.
Not really. They don’t create jobs, at best they are the organizers. And since they are usually heirs, there might be much better people to manage such a large organization. We don’t need them at all.
The best course of action is to remove the possibility for people concentrating such vast amounts of power in the first place. Billionaires can always buy legislation back, which is why that tight regulation or taxation will never really happen under capitalism.
I mean just look at how inactive democrats are at office compared to current conservatives at passing the things people actually want. We have been trying this forever already, but they are most probably in the pockets of bigger fish at this point.
None of that stops you from, say, joining an union though.
I’m answering from the perspective of living in a country with functional democracy, so it’s hard to see the power the wealthy have over it.
Lobbying and representative campaign funding are more transparent here. No party has majority seats alone, coalition governments are a necessity. Legislation is consensus driven.
Finland is very much operating in a capitalism driven economy while still supplying its citizens socialism driven security.
Capitalism is like fire. It’s a good tool, but a bad master. With appropriate legislative checks in place, it won’t get out of control.
In the States it already has, but that doesn’t mean that capitalism is bad. Just that nobody was tending the fire.
Don’t be mistaken, the billionaires still rule in there too, they just somehow allow you a better life. Usually this comes because they have neocolonies abroad to exploit intead of you. This is usually the case in europe. The only real masters of capitalism are the burgeois and how they are choosing to use it.
Finland seems to be the one exception in the world where I dont think you’ve been that historically aggressive with fucking others over (at least compared to the rest of europe), but theres probably some neocolonialism over africa to mantain it, I’m not that familiar with Finland to say much for sure.
In any case we can’t base our assumptions around an exception when the overwhelming majority of capitalist “democracies” never really worked for the common people.
edit: China seems to be implementing a bit of both, as an example.
If we’re discussing the scope of a nation, strong enough tax laws and safeguards for unions prevent ludicrous growth within its own contained system. This can allow people to experience a reasonably fair society.
Finland definitely is still benefiting off of cheap labour from poorer nations though. How to solve that especially if our country wants to retain its status, I would not know where to start. World domination?
The opposite, we end capitalism. We really can’t expect to carry the scorpion across the lake without repeatedly being stung. There are many political branches that tells us how it could be, and even some that have been applied in the real world with varying degrees of success but generally, we need to start working amongst ourselves like we used to do in the past and remove those actually in power, not only their squabbling representatives every election. It’s about time. Safeguards only delay the problem, those are being systematically dismantled all around the world because capital is running out of space to expand.
What’s your worry about status? I see a nation with good infrastructure that isn’t heavily depending on exploitative dynamics on other countries as a nation without much to lose, honestly. Things tend to not go as well as planned on places where it was already bad in the first place.
If one country begins sharing resources and wealth, it will get stomped by the others that don’t.
Capitalism can’t be stopped without a violent revolt of colossal proportions. We’re talking billions of people dead, displaced or left vengeful. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Peaceful options won’t work at global scale. Even if people begin to vote with their hearts en masse, it won’t change nations where voting is moot.
I’m against violence, so the best I can see happening in my lifetime is me understanding and living with the system we inhabit and trying to alter what little I can in my small country for future generations.
Nobody is advocating for sharing with bad actors. Billions of people dead? No, revolution is violent but history shows it is usually very far away from this number. Capitalism killed more in the third world.
I’m not thrilled for getting state violence on my ass because I want a better life either, but I don’t think capitalism will ever be able to deal with climate change, which will be the biggest killer in humanity. In fact it is only getting worse and we are running out of time fast. We have been trying gradual change for decades with barely any actual results…
True. What is the nation if not the workers of that nation. So what’s good for the nation is good for the workers. How do we measure what’s good for the nation? By looking at what’s good for the top 1%
There are people I agree with from different leftist traditions, but then again there are people I disagree with on all these traditions, too. I even have overlap with some (lower case) conservative people when it comes to ecological questions
Considering the Right has a unified goal (complete removal of “them” and codifying perceived hierarchy into law), they don’t care about the process
The Left does NOT have a unified goal OR process. Off the top of my head, the Contrapoints/Hasanabi “millionaires are ok, thinking otherwise is immature and envious”, the Maupin/Coffin Red Browns, the Vaush/Xanderhal “it should be codified that I should be able to say the N word”, the “all theft should be legal” webcomic artists, the Sinfest “feminism went too far when it allowed trans/queer people”, the tiktok “any intercourse information made public should be an assault charge”
I agree. What we call the “Left” in the US is a largely heterogenous group of people separated by decades of infighting and a mountain of conflicting interests. There’s the types you mentioned, then there’s the trans activists, the eco activists, black/BIPOC activists, socialists, anarchists, liberals, feminists, and on and on.
Suppose you are a Democratic House or Senate candidate. To actually win the election, you need two things, votes and funding. You know there are things your voter base cares passionately about, that they have no hope of ever getting from Republicans, but unfortunately they are also things the big ticket donors despise. So, what do you do? You’ll have to steer away from policies that will break the coalition and split the vote. You’ll have to steer away from topics that will frighten the donor class. When faced with that challenge of keeping the Left (mostly) united AND getting that sweet donor cash, most mainstream Democrats tend to pivot away from wedge issues and policies, and focus more on process. Y’know, uncontroversial things like bipartisanship, decorum, and compromise. And while we’re all sick of the lack of these things in DC, they’re not things Democrats can make happen all by themselves, and more importantly, none of them are results, they’re means.
Lol no way. They are eroding workers rights, putting kids to work on many states, deepening inequality, allowing more oil than ever before to be extracted and burned, financing a genocide… Take your pick. They probably already have a plan drawn up for their next term chairing the executive branch.
And most of the so called " democratic" party in your country (including the president) seem to be helping them out, or letting them do it because they are covertly siding with corporations too. The difference is they are not as outwardly fascistic.
From the perspective of someone from outside the US, their policy towards us is exactly as shitty too.
I’ve never really ever seen this. I think there is a perception of it happening but where is the evidence?
I think however I have seen plenty of lefties choose not to vote, or abandon the parties that should have backed them and didnt (eg UK Labour Party and Green Party). Or turn their backs on groups because of infighting.
“Every family has that one family member everyone else shits on behind their back. And if you’re sitting there thinking ‘hang on, my family doesn’t do that…’, I’ve got bad news for you.”
It cracks me up how antivaxxers on the right try using the slogan “Lions not sheep”. It reminds me of how Fox News used to call themselves “Fair and Balanced”.
Interesting. Why are people getting cancelled for opposing leftist views? Why are you automatically considered a nazi if you don’t agree with every facet of the left? I may be wrong here, but none of that sounds like freedom of thought. The right is full of dumb ideas, but at least they let them all be heard.
Everything you said is bullshit and d r I p p I n g in so much propaganda filth I don’t think you are an actual real person! Literally Nobody talks like this.
The part where the left cancels everything but the poor pitiful free speech respecting conservatives are totally innocent. Lol. Right wingers are the all time world champions of cancel culture.
You really gonna gaslight about the left not canceling anything? Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Land o Lakes… You all couldn’t wait to get rid of minorities in advertising. How about people’s careers ended and lives ruined because of allegations of them saying something that goes against whatever is currently trendy, even if the comment was twenty years ago. JK Rowling was beloved by everybody and then said something someone didn’t like and now she’s hated by those very same people. Roseanne had a hit show with 18 million viewers to be kicked off for a comment. Even Dr. Suess couldn’t escape it. But according to you, none of that happened. Maybe I just have a wild imagination.
In my opinion it sounds a lot like what would be concluded by somebody too distant from the subject to notice details if being fed entirelly by the “opinion forming” newsmedia that has does propaganda for a specific side.
I’ve seen the exact same thing when I lived in the UK and certain newspapers kept publishing stories about very specific poor people who had morally repreensible behaviours and painting it as “all poor people are like this” (for example, they showed entire families who had lived of social security for 3 generations as portray it as a “something the poor do” even though in a country of 50 million there was a grand total of 4 families which had had 3 generations living of social security) - plenty of people who were capable of reasoning (but lacked skepticism or any analytical thinking) would, as they were meant to, conclude that “the poor are lazy and lack morals”.
People will most definitely and very genuinelly have their opinion formed against a group or ideologic domain they don’t really know well, by being fed stories of extreme cases labelled as “from that side” and their simpleminded reasoning pushed to conclude those extreme cases are actually representative.
(The same thing is done to a lot of people who genuinelly believe themselves “leftwing” - the dominant “left” thinking in places like the US and UK is shaped by “opinion makers” that claimed the “left” label, rather than being something people build by themselves “from basic principles” - it’s not by chance that the thinking of Chomsky is a lot more all-around consistent and generic than what comes out the self-proclaimed lefties in the Democrat party).
Genuine Free-thinkers are incredibly rare nowadays.
I wasn’t aware of that, nor was it my intention, but I can see how it can be interpreted that way as a “lifestyle” is a way people choose to live. Gay people aren’t choosing a gay lifestyle any more than white people are choosing a white lifestyle.
It’s also about implying promiscuity, but yeah the terminology was definitely an effective bit of rhetorical warfare, most people use it out of habit without considering the implications.
fair, I never used that word not because of any knowledge of negative connotation, but because it just seemed off, like it was never really the right word. Seeing you describe the potential negative connotations certainly will make me more careful.
I understand the opinion, but I don’t know if I agree. If you say someone has a “poor” lifestyle, that’s not a choice necessarily. I always assumed the word includes intrinsic and extrinsic factors.
Still, it might be the wrong word if some people do think in a way that causes harm.
Dude, people on the left don’t agree with everything on the left. That’s the entire point of this post. Grow up and have some nuence in thought. Learn to analyze what you’re told and think critically, not just repeat things you hear other people say.
This is true. People can be quick af to jump to conclusions and even won’t believe you when you say you’re not disagreeing with them as a whole, just on some nuance.
Why are people getting cancelled for opposing leftist views?
From the people who tried to cancel D&D, Rock music, The Dixie Chicks, Drag shows, LGBTQ…
Why are you automatically considered a nazi if you don’t agree with every facet of the left?
From the people who started asking if the ultra-religious speaker of the house was “secretly a Democrat” because he simply acknowledged the difficulties his adopted black son has that his white son doesn’t.
I may be wrong here, but none of that sounds like freedom of thought. The right is full of dumb ideas, but at least they let them all be heard.
From the people who shouted down a reporter for simply asking the question “do you believe the 2020 election was stolen?”
You’re both profoundly ignorant of the subject matter and very confident you know a lot about it, a.k.a. an excellent example of the Dunning-Krugger effect.
Consider the possibility that what you hear about “The Left” (just the idea that it’s an unified thing is ridiculous) from the media you consume (American, right?!) are the shocking things that will make you form the opinion others want you to have - in other words, you’re being treated as an useful idiot.
Even in the US, were whatever passes for “Left” is very much captured by the local Duopoly Of Power politics and doesn’t really tries to effectivelly achieve the “Greatest good for the greatest number” (otherwise they would be way, WAY, WAY more worried about wealth inequality and not obcessed with fragmented identitarian infighting), leftwing thinking is a range - though narrower than elsewhere - not a unified anything.
The difference of life expectation between rich and poor is more than a decade: income inequality quite literally dictates how long somebody lives.
You must live an unbelievably sheltered life in an extremelly isolated and limited ideas bubble and having lived a life with an extraordinarilly narrow range of life experiences if you think wealth inequality doesn’t make a difference.
You’ve changed the definition of “income inequality” to match a very specific non-standard metric, which of course is a “meaningless statistic” since that’s exactly what you redefined it to be - that’s what’s commonly known as a “straw man”.
The problem is not how many “wealth tokens” people have, it’s that in the system we live under at the moment there is a gatekeeping by amount of “wealth token” of access to important things such as food, the place somebody can live in, the opportunities their children have, their access to healthcare, how much free time they have, and even their freedom (having to work doing something you don’t want to do to barelly survive isn’t Freedom).
Nobody would give a shit about “wealth” if how many “wealth tokens” somebody has only affected luxuries, and in such an environment there wouldn’t even be a life expectation difference between people with lots of “wealth tokens” and people with few “wealth tokens”.
The problem is the combination of wealth inequality and a system were wealth dictates access to life essentials rather than merelly to luxuries. If all “wealth tokens” bought were bragging rights and a few luxuries, few would care.
If that’s what you mean with “were the floor is” then we’re probably more in agreement than it seemed at first sight.
You’ve changed the definition of “income inequality” to match a very specific non-standard metric, which of course is a “meaningless statistic” since that’s exactly what you redefined it to be - that’s what’s commonly known as a “straw man”.
I’m using the standard definition of income inequality.
I not sure what your overall point is here, but the total distribution of wealth is a meaningless statistic. If you had all your needs taken care of, UBI, didn’t work etc and one person had a quadrillion dollars under that same system, you would not give a shit.
You definition: “Income inequality is the difference between highest and lowest earners.” The IMF definition as per your source: “Income Inequality, which refers to the extent to which income is evenly distributed within a population”
They’re not the same thing: you picked a very specific metric, not the general definition which is what I was using.
But yeah, if there was UBI that took care of life’s essentials, “one person with a quadrillion dollars” would not matter.
Then again that wouldn’t be possible in the Mercantilistic Economic System we have because in this system monetary tokens (such as dollars) are claims on a fraction of the goods, services and assets of a country, and I really can’t see how it would be possible to both provide for the life’s essentials for everybody AND have somebody with enough monetary tokens to lay claim to most of the wealth produced in the country (unless we’re talking about worthless dollars, such as the ones in Zimbabwe at some point, in which case most people would be quadrillionaires anyway).
Now, if “dollars” were only claims to very specific kinds of things that excluded essentials and things necessary to provide them (which would also mean Land, since that’s necessary for building places for people to live in), then how many such tokens somebody had would be irrelevant, but the closest to such a “money is not needed for essentials” environment we ever had was basically the USSR and we all know just how well that specific experiment worked.
In a centralized state control system “Income inequality” is is indeed not the problem: there the problems are in the production and distribution of goods and services, not affordability (i.e. the scenario where everybody can afford bread but there is no bread), plus centralized state control is by necessity authoritarian, so forget about Democracy in that one, which brings yet another big-box-of-problems.
It’s only in trying to find an ideology to deal with the social side of policy whilst Capitalism deals with trading and resource provision, that you end up with the wealth concentration problem: if dollars are claims to goods, services and assets, then the fewer the hands holding those claims the more the State has to tax them to provide the essentials to everybody and as you might have noticed, those with lots of money use it to buy legislators and agents of the State to make sure they’re taxed as little as possible.
You definition: “Income inequality is the difference between highest and lowest earners.” The IMF definition as per your source: “Income Inequality, which refers to the extent to which income is evenly distributed within a population”
This is the same thing written conversationally and professionally.
More to the point, it’s clear we’re discussing the same thing through context, so why choose this hill to repeatedly die on?
Then again that wouldn’t be possible in the Mercantilistic Economic System we have
You’re not serious here right? I don’t need to address this? You’re not being literal?
I really can’t see how it would be possible to both provide for the life’s essentials for everybody AND have somebody with enough monetary tokens to lay claim to most of the wealth produced in the country (unless we’re talking about worthless dollars, such as the ones in Zimbabwe at some point, in which case most people would be quadrillionaires anyway).
It’s important to understand that “lots of paper dollars” does not mean wealth. For instance, here, you conflate having lots of paper dollars with being wealthy while also suggesting that the money is worthless (which is correct), but you’re missing that people can still own a significant portion of wealth in a country even if that country is destitute.
Having lots of money doesn’t mean you pay claim to lots of wealth. That’s backwards. Having lots of wealth is represented by you having easy access to money. Billionaires aren’t sitting on vaults full of cash. That would be insanely stupid. Their money is invested.
I’d highly recommend doing some reading on the various aspects you’re not understanding here.
Clearly you so desperatelly need to feel you won an argument that you’re critizing the very thing you brought to the discussion (I used “token” up to then because - No Shit Sherlock! - “wealth is not just money”, and then you started talking about “dollars” so I went along with it only to be criticised for going along with it) and are figurativelly lying dead on the very hill you hinted I should not die on (way to display a huge lack self-awareness there!) after being disproven by the very link you provided which was meant to prove your statement.
You and your never-ending line of strawmen should probably get a room.
Anyways: I’ll leave you with the statisfaction of knowing you won.
I really can’t beat you in that shit, that’s for sure.
They never have infighting about how to make things better though… Like they don’t fight weather we should help single mothers with X or just Y… No they argue if billionaires should get pay no taxes or negative taxes…
Leftism is intersectional. So having communities that agree with one another but disagree with others is often the state of things. One community can get more accomplished if they agree internally. Liberals are not leftists.
Majority of people who vote left wing are liberals and most leftwing policy in the west is based in liberal values. It seems to be only a small set of people on the left that are not liberal.
“Leftism” is a philosophy, namely that collectivist solutions are the correct answer to all societal problems. It is the purview of a “leftist” or someone who adheres to communist (or otherwise generally some type of Marxist or post-Marxist) thought.
I definitely understand the confusion if you didn’t know that.
This is confusing. Liberalism isn’t leftwing, it’s right-of-center at best. Most often it’s right-wing economic policies with socially left-wing ineffectual lip service. Especially with how far right the Democrats have trended since the 80s and their adoption of a corporate focused form of third-wayism. There are only a handful of representatives who could even be considered slightly left-of-center progressives.
Especially with how far right the Democrats have trended since the 80s and their adoption of a corporate focused form of third-wayism
You might wanna give "third way’ a Google, because you do not know what it means.
There are very few actual leftists at any point in US politics because leftists don’t exist as a substantive bloc of US voters. Bemoaning that people who aren’t leftists don’t do leftist things doesn’t really make a lot of sense
Tangent, but there’s a lesson with the third way that’s often forgotten.
It worked.
Conservatism was way too popular. The country was just not at a point to go further left, as unfortunate as it was. Reagan ushered in an era of conservative dominance that we’re only just now emerging from.
Really? The right around here is burning books, claiming their religious beliefs should be enshrined in laws forced on others, and openly supporting a wannabe dictator while calling anyone in their party who doesn’t agree a ‘Rino’ (Republica in name only). To say nothing of the connection to churches and their ‘flocks’
That is a lot of trying to force viewpoints on others and create a uniform viewpoint
grouping everyone on a binary political scale with no nuances
not thinking that you’re either left OR right, but realise that you can have different opinions and preferences in different areas and those can’t always be forced into a left/right box, and that you can agredisagree with anyone, regardless if you vote for the same party or not
I mean if someone doesn’t want to put in the energy to performatively come to their own opinion, I still think it’s alright if that opinion isn’t “you know, we SHOULD support the boot that wants to stamp on our faces forever!”
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