Great vid. The key takeaway from me is what is going to get the next president elected, whoever it is. Trump wasnt wrong when he said the system was rigged. The "drain the swamp" motto, the...
Great vid. The key takeaway from me is what is going to get the next president elected, whoever it is. Trump wasnt wrong when he said the system was rigged. The "drain the swamp" motto, the personality/'honesty' based platform, the idea that the nations greatness has fallen to the wayside - these things are all true, Trump just omitted the part where he and people like him were the cause.
My hope is that a huge swath of america has woken up to that last bit since 2019, and that the candidate that gets out in front (preferably Sanders or someone like him minus the hard socialist label) can scream "drain the swamp" just as loudly... And point at the republican institution while they do.
The problem with a successor to Trump, and even the fear factor on both sides of another demagogue, is how much of an outsider will it take, beyond common sense and charisma? "We won't be fooled...
The problem with a successor to Trump, and even the fear factor on both sides of another demagogue, is how much of an outsider will it take, beyond common sense and charisma? "We won't be fooled again" may drive people who knows where in seeking another leader.
True that. The rational part of me says that people will be looking for a moderate, because it makes more sense from a logical perspective. The realist part of me says people are idiots, and we're...
True that. The rational part of me says that people will be looking for a moderate, because it makes more sense from a logical perspective. The realist part of me says people are idiots, and we're just going to double down on the insanity.
i dunno if i'd be as bold as to say he's the most likely next president of the US considering he still has what'll probably be a brokered primary and a general election to get through if he wants...
i dunno if i'd be as bold as to say he's the most likely next president of the US considering he still has what'll probably be a brokered primary and a general election to get through if he wants the office, but yeah, if people were looking exclusively for moderation he would not be a frontrunner and the second choice for a lot of voters. sanders is still radical for a democrat, and with a lot of the places he's not radical anymore, it's more because he basically pulled the entire party to the left on the issue than anything.
I would post every Robert Reich video here, but let's start with this one. A key point from this video is that the only way to fight the movement that elected Trump (Authoritarian Populism) is...
I would post every Robert Reich video here, but let's start with this one. A key point from this video is that the only way to fight the movement that elected Trump (Authoritarian Populism) is with Progressive Populism.
Trump's movement was more Populist and less Authoritarian. While Trump himself definitely is authoritarian in many ways, his movement mostly relied on populist ideals (along with bigotry and...
Trump's movement was more Populist and less Authoritarian. While Trump himself definitely is authoritarian in many ways, his movement mostly relied on populist ideals (along with bigotry and xenophobia). Additionally, I don't think that Trump can be compared to other Authoritarian Populists, as he is not a populist at all, from what we have seen through his presidency.
I'm not liking it. I actually agree with a lot of the principles he's talking about but I think he makes a very weak case for them, and suggests a few bad policies. Offhand I think a job guarantee...
I'm not liking it. I actually agree with a lot of the principles he's talking about but I think he makes a very weak case for them, and suggests a few bad policies. Offhand I think a job guarantee is almost certainly a mistake, a progressive wealth tax might be good (for example, if it were a land value tax) but the actual proposals he'd make are probably bad, and I'm a little iffy about 'breaking up' Google/Amazon/Facebook. I can definitely see arguments in favor, but I'd need to do more research.
I'm not sure where's he's getting the "median wages haven't rose" numbers from, here's Real Median Personal Income in the United States and here's Real Median Household Income in the United States . That's certainly not the full story as healthcare costs have gone up, but the story is just complicated. I'm not sure why everyone has convinced themselves life was better in 1970/1960/1950 than it is now. We certainly have problems, but even if it were true that your real income or compensation has stagnated since 1979, there are still loads of qualitative changes that would make your life marginally better (or substantially better if you have a disease that is now curable or treatable).
I also don't really find the "money in politics" thing wholly convincing. It's an easy thing to blame, and it sure feels right to me, but I want to stay skeptical here. In 2016 we saw every candidate who spent the most money lose: Jeb in Florida, Bernie in the Dem. primary, and Hillary in the general. Clearly there's a relationship, but it's complicated.
Regarding the "only alternative to authoritarian populism is progressive populism": 2018 was essentially a landslide for the Dems, but it wasn't the progressive populists who won all those seats, it was mostly moderates and generic Dems. I do think we need a better social safety net, but what little I know about history doesn't inspire me with confidence in populism (whether progressive or nationalist).
You should study the break up of the trusts during the last crisis caused by monopolization. It's not something I know a lot about but the way that these firms dominate their sectors is...
I'm a little iffy about 'breaking up' Google/Amazon/Facebook
You should study the break up of the trusts during the last crisis caused by monopolization. It's not something I know a lot about but the way that these firms dominate their sectors is problematic in historically similar ways.
In 2016 we saw every candidate who spent the most money lose .. it's complicated
I don't see what is complicated about tihs. This is not just an issue for elections. Congress members spend a lot of their time soliciting donations and little of their time speaking to people in their districts. The pass boilerplate legistlation written by a corporate lobbying group called ALEC. Studies of policy preferences of voters and the voting records of elected representatives show that what the people want is not what legislators pass in to law.
what little I know about history doesn't inspire me with confidence in populism
Are you familiar with where the 40 hour/5-day work week comes from? The legalization of unions? Women's suffrage? Black suffrage? All of these are progressive populism in action. Again, not sure why you are on the fence about this but I am more than curious.
I agree it's a problem. We could raise taxes and fund elections federally, but the question immediately becomes arguing over who actually foots the bill. Plus there is a problem with the symbolism...
Congress members spend a lot of their time soliciting donations and little of their time speaking to people in their districts.
I agree it's a problem. We could raise taxes and fund elections federally, but the question immediately becomes arguing over who actually foots the bill. Plus there is a problem with the symbolism of federally funding an election campaign for some of the loonier politicians, e.g. Steve King. I actually would be in favor of federal funding of elections, but I want higher taxes in general.
The pass boilerplate legistlation written by a corporate lobbying group called ALEC.
This sounds like a conspiracy theory a la 'AIPAC controls US foreign policy'.
Studies of policy preferences of voters and the voting records of elected representatives show that what the people want is not what legislators pass in to law.
Well, my first objection is that there is no well defined notion of "what the people want". You have to drink the Rousseaultian flavor-aid to believe in it. People's desired and preferences can change drastically on the same issue depending on wording. A more direct response is that things are not as bad as you might expect. Politicians seem to generally do what they believe is best for the long term health of their constituency, and constituencies generally vote for people whose beliefs largely agree with their own.
Are you familiar with where the 40 hour/5-day work week comes from? The legalization of unions? Women's suffrage? Black suffrage? All of these are progressive populism in action. Again, not sure why you are on the fence about this but I am more than curious.
I wouldn't call any of those populist actually. To me populism is about demagoguery and rhetoric of elites vs 'the people'. So I'd consider Sanders populist but not Warren, for example.
When I think of left wing populism I don't think of labor rights or unions, but e.g. rent control / price controls in general, anti-trade policies, nationalizing industries, the "70% tax rate" thing.
It's literally not though. ALEC writes a law, they hand it off, and it is passed word-for-word in multiple states. Yeah it sounds absurdly corrupt and nefarious but it is also happening. And I'm...
This sounds like a conspiracy theory a la 'AIPAC controls US foreign policy'.
It's literally not though. ALEC writes a law, they hand it off, and it is passed word-for-word in multiple states. Yeah it sounds absurdly corrupt and nefarious but it is also happening.
And I'm sorry I'm not taking Vox and the University of Chicago's word for it that our democracy is working.
To me populism is about demagoguery and rhetoric of elites vs 'the people'. So I'd consider Sanders populist but not Warren, for example.
Again, study your history. These were absolutely framed as issues of elites are repressing the poor. Progressive income tax (the 70% thing as you so deftly put it), rent control, and economic nationalization are certainly all parts of an economic populist platform.
First, using John Oliver as a source is ridiculous. Read a book. An academic book, not pop history crap. You could read the academic articles linked/referenced by the , and if you find serious...
First, using John Oliver as a source is ridiculous. Read a book. An academic book, not pop history crap.
And I'm sorry I'm not taking Vox and the University of Chicago's word for it that our democracy is working.
You could read the academic articles linked/referenced by the , and if you find serious problems you could publish a refutation. But your real problem is you've already decided the facts and are unwilling to accept the possibility you're wrong.
Second, populism is mostly about framing, not necessarily the actual policies. Even something like rent control isn't inherently populist, it's just that in the wild it's generally sold by populist leaders. None of the things you listed are inherently populist, and as far as I know the populist part of those movements wasn't integral to their success. 8 hour days took decades to become law and it wasn't until it was actually economically feasible that they did. Unions were 'made legal' by court rulings, not legislative action. Reagan nationalized a few banks.
You should check out Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. His goal was to focus on the stories and interests of the working class, natives, slaves, and immigrants throughout...
I do think we need a better social safety net, but what little I know about history doesn't inspire me with confidence in populism (whether progressive or nationalist).
You should check out Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. His goal was to focus on the stories and interests of the working class, natives, slaves, and immigrants throughout American history. I started listening to an audiobook series on Youtube a few months ago and stopped right around the post WWII. It was entirely worthwhile.
His book is pretty plainly polemical, IIRC. When I say "little I know about history" I mean trying to read academic papers and professionally done historical books.
His book is pretty plainly polemical, IIRC. When I say "little I know about history" I mean trying to read academic papers and professionally done historical books.
i don't think anybody genuinely believes this beyond suburbanite white people, personally, but it's also pretty disingenuous in the context of this thread and the OP video because the "qualitative...
I'm not sure why everyone has convinced themselves life was better in 1970/1960/1950 than it is now. We certainly have problems, but even if it were true that your real income or compensation has stagnated since 1979, there are still loads of qualitative changes that would make your life marginally better (or substantially better if you have a disease that is now curable or treatable).
i don't think anybody genuinely believes this beyond suburbanite white people, personally, but it's also pretty disingenuous in the context of this thread and the OP video because the "qualitative changes" you talk about have absolutely no bearing on the issues being discussed here. me not fucking dying of polio like i might in 1950 doesn't change the fact that my grandparents could buy a house, go to college, and live their lives pretty well just by getting a minimum wage job, whereas a minimum wage job for me literally wouldn't even cover rent for most of the apartments around here, much less pay my tuition or allow me to live comfortably irrespective of the former two things. it's a very real issue that our money simply does not go as far as it used to because everything is several orders of magnitude more expensive today than it used to be even with inflation accounted for, and that wages have not risen in a way that reflects that, even though on the whole people are getting richer and median incomes and whatnot are going up. at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if a generation gains an additional $5,000 in average wealth on their parents if they have to spend literally doubt or triple that amount just to live like their parents did.
I find this disingenuous. The qualitative changes are massive. If we're talking from 1950: telephones, electricity, gas stoves, medicine, roads, washing machines/driers, roads, ... No. Maybe this...
because the "qualitative changes" you talk about have absolutely no bearing on the issues being discussed here
I find this disingenuous. The qualitative changes are massive. If we're talking from 1950: telephones, electricity, gas stoves, medicine, roads, washing machines/driers, roads, ...
my grandparents could buy a house, go to college, and live their lives pretty well just by getting a minimum wage job
No. Maybe this was true for a very small portion of people, but it was never the norm. I just learned of a 'fun' fact: when Ladybird Johnson was touring the US to evaluate the school systems she ran into areas where the kids had never seen a book before going to school, hadn't been socialized with non-family members etc. You're taking an extremely rose-tinted view of the past that never applied to more than a tiny fraction of Americans. This is exactly what I meant when I asked why people thought the 1970s were better.
it's a very real issue that our money simply does not go as far as it used to because everything is several orders of magnitude more expensive today than it used to be even with inflation accounted for, and that wages have not risen in a way that reflects that, even though on the whole people are getting richer and median incomes and whatnot are going up.
Please make a more specific claim here. I can appreciate cost of living changes, but those aren't a nationwide thing. Further the links I posted are CPI adjusted, not just raw inflation adjusted. It's certainly not perfect, though. Cost of living is very high in CA, OR, DC, and most of New England and I can appreciate that life might be much harder in these areas. But I would argue that that's largely due to local politics being dysfunctional, and that it can really only be solved by fixing local politics. On the non-sympathetic side of things: in the past when people were priced out they just moved, and they moved between states far more often than we do now.
it doesn't really matter if a generation gains an additional $5,000 in average wealth on their parents if they have to spend literally doubt or triple that amount just to live like their parents did.
People don't live just like their parents/grandparents did, they consume far more and do far less domestic labor in cleaning and food preparation. You can still live like that and do a lot of cleaning and food prep by hand, in fact millions of Americans already do. There's even a group of people who live community oriented lives and work in trades, shunning consumerism and individualism and are apparently happier for it.
Pardon my bluntness, but this is flat out wrong. Minimum wage in 1950 was $7.98 in today's dollars, but the costs of living were drastically more in line with that wage. Let's see how that breaks...
No. Maybe this was true for a very small portion of people, but it was never the norm.
Pardon my bluntness, but this is flat out wrong. Minimum wage in 1950 was $7.98 in today's dollars, but the costs of living were drastically more in line with that wage. Let's see how that breaks down for college and housing.
As far back as 1931, college tuition was ~$19,000 in 2016 dollars for the most expensive college in the nation. In 2016, the average cost of tuition was $13,500. The school which had the $19,000 tuition in 1931 now has a tuition of $72,990. For $19k tuition, it required 60 (40 hour) week's wages. To afford a $72,000 tuition, that would require 225 weeks wages. This holds true across the board...there were and still are more affordable options, but broadly speaking, it was affordable in 1950 for someone to save for a few short years on minimum wage to afford a college education. This is no longer possible today.
Housing is a similiar story: Median home price (in 2016 dollars) in 1950 was $73k. Median home price in 2016 was $300k. To buy a house with cash: ~230 weeks (4.5 years) of work in 1950, ~940 weeks (18 years) in 2016.
Yes but there are significant changes in quality and availability of both college education and housing. Those things were still not accessible due to availability issues, so I don't think it's...
Yes but there are significant changes in quality and availability of both college education and housing. Those things were still not accessible due to availability issues, so I don't think it's fair to call it the norm.
oh, my mistake, i misspoke--in the opposite direction you're implying, though. nowadays, you can have all sorts of fun trying to buy a 200 dollar shot of insulin because drug companies are...
I find this disingenuous. The qualitative changes are massive. If we're talking from 1950: telephones, electricity, gas stoves, medicine, roads, washing machines/driers, roads, ...
oh, my mistake, i misspoke--in the opposite direction you're implying, though. nowadays, you can have all sorts of fun trying to buy a 200 dollar shot of insulin because drug companies are exploitative as shit even though insulin is deathly cheap to make, or you can also look forward to living in an apartment with no laundry facilities because a lot of them either don't have them or have them in very limited, shared capacity. these aren't exactly problems our parents had.
No. Maybe this was true for a very small portion of people, but it was never the norm. I just learned of a 'fun' fact: when Ladybird Johnson was touring the US to evaluate the school systems she ran into areas where the kids had never seen a book before going to school, hadn't been socialized with non-family members etc. You're taking an extremely rose-tinted view of the past that never applied to more than a tiny fraction of Americans. This is exactly what I meant when I asked why people thought the 1970s were better.
nobody said it was the norm, buddy, all i said was that it was pretty realistic to be able to work a single job and actually be able to afford to go to college and get a house because that was a thing that people actually did back then. my mother for example literally double majored in college, and while she covered her tuition with scholarships, her tuition was, at the absolute most, $2,000 a year in a time where working even part time would basically cover the entire bill with significant room to spare. just my tuition for this single year is about $12,000/yr, before books, and the only reason i am able to cover that in any capacity is because i have a bunch of scholarships and a pell grant--and this is (a) not a particularly prestigious school and (b) pretty good compared to tuition in most of the country. the only other major university in this city has tuition of literally $70,000/yr. good luck covering that shit even with a good job.
Please make a more specific claim here. I can appreciate cost of living changes, but those aren't a nationwide thing. Further the links I posted are CPI adjusted, not just raw inflation adjusted. It's certainly not perfect, though. Cost of living is very high in CA, OR, DC, and most of New England and I can appreciate that life might be much harder in these areas. But I would argue that that's largely due to local politics being dysfunctional, and that it can really only be solved by fixing local politics. On the non-sympathetic side of things: in the past when people were priced out they just moved, and they moved between states far more often than we do now.
cost of living is very high basically everywhere but the doldrums where nobody lives, lol. ever seen what a living wage is in most of the country? because it's sure as fuck not federal minimum wage anymore, nor is it even state minimum wages in a lot of places. colorado has a good minimum wage, relatively speaking, and it's still three dollars off of a living wage in my comparatively pretty cheap part of the state. the economic reality for probably half the people in the country is that they're buoyed by a small amount of savings if they're lucky, but otherwise they're one or two paychecks off from oblivion. this was not the economic reality of my parents, and it was certainly not the economic reality for my grandparents. and no, local politics don't miraculously fix this issue--it's not like some city can exactly make up the gap where the state or the federal government fails miserably at providing for its citizens, after all. usually if anything, cities make living worse for people because of factions like NIMBYs that have entrenched interests.
People don't live just like their parents/grandparents did, they consume far more and do far less domestic labor in cleaning and food preparation.
refer to this point:
at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if a generation gains an additional $5,000 in average wealth on their parents if they have to spend literally doubt or triple that amount just to live like their parents did.
we consume far more because there is greater diversity in what we can consume to begin with and we quantitatively have more money than our parents did, not necessarily because our money actually goes farther than theirs ever did.
You can still live like that and do a lot of cleaning and food prep by hand, in fact millions of Americans already do. There's even a group of people who live community oriented lives and work in trades, shunning consumerism and individualism and are apparently happier for it.
the biggest commonality of households that are able to do things like extensive cleaning and cooking basically from scratch is that they're upper middle-class or upper-class white people. they have the ability to do that because they have the money and time to do so in the first place, or otherwise have the community structure necessary to facilitate that. most people--even in the middle class--just do not have the time, the money, the energy, or the effort necessary to live that way. actually, you're kinda making my case for me here by highlighting how shunning consumerism and individualism has been monopolized and capitalized on by people who rich or are in privileged enough positions to not have to rely on the system because nobody else has the emotional, social, or fiscal capital to be able to just uproot their lives and live that way. the amish can live that way because they have the structure to do so and have for three hundred plus years; rich people can live that way because they have the money to blow on living that way; your average american, though, could never hope to live that way in a hundred million years because very few of them have the flexibility necessary.
Insulin is one example where the cost is far higher now in the US. But you're implicitly portraying it as the norm. Yeah, if you don't have laundry facilities it's rough, but people used to have...
oh, my mistake, i misspoke--in the opposite direction you're implying, though. nowadays, you can have all sorts of fun trying to buy a 200 dollar shot of insulin because drug companies are exploitative as shit even though insulin is deathly cheap to make, or you can also look forward to living in an apartment with no laundry facilities because a lot of them either don't have them or have them in very limited, shared capacity. these aren't exactly problems our parents had.
Insulin is one example where the cost is far higher now in the US. But you're implicitly portraying it as the norm. Yeah, if you don't have laundry facilities it's rough, but people used to have to hand wash and hang dry everything. It takes hours of involved work to wash laundry. You're again and again taking the perspective of the most fortunate in the past and comparing it to the least fortunate of today. That is deeply disingenuous.
the biggest commonality of households that are able to do things like extensive cleaning and cooking basically from scratch is that they're upper middle-class or upper-class white people.
You're delusional. I grew up around a lot of poor undocumented people and that's how many of them get by. It's easier and cheaper than ever given that you can get slow cookers for like $30 now. I am just astounded by how ridiculously privileged your attitude and beliefs about life are.
it is basically the norm, lol. a very large number of important things like housing, tuition, car loans, and medicine have outpaced wage increases and inflation in expense. your dollar, again,...
Insulin is one example where the cost is far higher now in the US. But you're implicitly portraying it as the norm.
it is basically the norm, lol. a very large number of important things like housing, tuition, car loans, and medicine have outpaced wage increases and inflation in expense. your dollar, again, literally does not go as far as your parents or your grandparents' dollars did, even with those factors in mind. people spend more to get less nowadays.
Yeah, if you don't have laundry facilities it's rough, but people used to have to hand wash and hang dry everything. It takes hours of involved work to wash laundry. You're again and again taking the perspective of the most fortunate in the past and comparing it to the least fortunate of today. That is deeply disingenuous.
my grandfather was actually one of those least fortunate people you talk about, seeing as he lived literally for the first thirty years of his life without power, was well behind the curve on getting a television, and his family wasn't that well off financially. he still went to college, still became a respectable businessman, and retired pretty comfortably despite all of that because you simply did not need to be nearly as well off as you are now to buy a house or a car, or get luxury items you describe like a television set, or go to college.
You're delusional. I grew up around a lot of poor undocumented people and that's how many of them get by. It's easier and cheaper than ever given that you can get slow cookers for like $30 now. I am just astounded by how ridiculously privileged your attitude and beliefs about life are.
it's funny that you say this, because my family currently lives on less than $20,000/yr in an apartment complex full of people in a similar socioeconomic strata. i can say, pretty confidently, that most of those people aren't out here cleaning shit constantly or cooking from scratch--if they're lucky, they might have the money to cover bleach and some detergent, and have some leftover in their wallet to buy dinner from like, mcdonalds or wherever (or get some fucking hamburger helper from the local walmart). cooking and cleaning takes time and money and energy and effort that a lot of people simply do not have when they are poor as shit. given that you're also drawing your conclusions from a somewhat abnormal population here, i do suspect that your observations aren't exactly reflective of how most poor people currently live--after all, most poor people aren't at constant threat of being thrown out of the country or entirely excluded from segments of society due to their immigration status.
You're both so catastrophically wrong and smug. You give no citations to your assertions, and simply regurgitate 'woke' crap. Please go read actual scholarly work about urban/rural poverty in...
it is basically the norm, lol
You're both so catastrophically wrong and smug. You give no citations to your assertions, and simply regurgitate 'woke' crap. Please go read actual scholarly work about urban/rural poverty in 1950. It was both worse and more common than poverty today.
my grandfather was actually one of those least fortunate people you talk about, seeing as he lived literally for the first thirty years of his life without power, was well behind the curve on getting a television, and his family wasn't that well off financially. he still went to college, still became a respectable businessman, and retired pretty comfortably despite all of that because you simply did not need to be nearly as well off as you are now to buy a house or a car, or get luxury items you describe like a television set, or go to college.
Not having power was roughly normal then. Not 'least fortunate'. Just use common sense: why are kids now taller and healthier than kids in 1950? At least 60% of people didn't even finish high school in 1950. ~20% of people lived below the poverty line, and there would be pretty much no available medical care in these areas. Yes, we can do more for the poor now, but it's still better than it was then.
Great vid. The key takeaway from me is what is going to get the next president elected, whoever it is. Trump wasnt wrong when he said the system was rigged. The "drain the swamp" motto, the personality/'honesty' based platform, the idea that the nations greatness has fallen to the wayside - these things are all true, Trump just omitted the part where he and people like him were the cause.
My hope is that a huge swath of america has woken up to that last bit since 2019, and that the candidate that gets out in front (preferably Sanders or someone like him minus the hard socialist label) can scream "drain the swamp" just as loudly... And point at the republican institution while they do.
The problem with a successor to Trump, and even the fear factor on both sides of another demagogue, is how much of an outsider will it take, beyond common sense and charisma? "We won't be fooled again" may drive people who knows where in seeking another leader.
True that. The rational part of me says that people will be looking for a moderate, because it makes more sense from a logical perspective. The realist part of me says people are idiots, and we're just going to double down on the insanity.
i dunno if i'd be as bold as to say he's the most likely next president of the US considering he still has what'll probably be a brokered primary and a general election to get through if he wants the office, but yeah, if people were looking exclusively for moderation he would not be a frontrunner and the second choice for a lot of voters. sanders is still radical for a democrat, and with a lot of the places he's not radical anymore, it's more because he basically pulled the entire party to the left on the issue than anything.
I would post every Robert Reich video here, but let's start with this one. A key point from this video is that the only way to fight the movement that elected Trump (Authoritarian Populism) is with Progressive Populism.
Trump's movement was more Populist and less Authoritarian. While Trump himself definitely is authoritarian in many ways, his movement mostly relied on populist ideals (along with bigotry and xenophobia). Additionally, I don't think that Trump can be compared to other Authoritarian Populists, as he is not a populist at all, from what we have seen through his presidency.
I'm not liking it. I actually agree with a lot of the principles he's talking about but I think he makes a very weak case for them, and suggests a few bad policies. Offhand I think a job guarantee is almost certainly a mistake, a progressive wealth tax might be good (for example, if it were a land value tax) but the actual proposals he'd make are probably bad, and I'm a little iffy about 'breaking up' Google/Amazon/Facebook. I can definitely see arguments in favor, but I'd need to do more research.
I'm not sure where's he's getting the "median wages haven't rose" numbers from, here's Real Median Personal Income in the United States and here's Real Median Household Income in the United States . That's certainly not the full story as healthcare costs have gone up, but the story is just complicated. I'm not sure why everyone has convinced themselves life was better in 1970/1960/1950 than it is now. We certainly have problems, but even if it were true that your real income or compensation has stagnated since 1979, there are still loads of qualitative changes that would make your life marginally better (or substantially better if you have a disease that is now curable or treatable).
I also don't really find the "money in politics" thing wholly convincing. It's an easy thing to blame, and it sure feels right to me, but I want to stay skeptical here. In 2016 we saw every candidate who spent the most money lose: Jeb in Florida, Bernie in the Dem. primary, and Hillary in the general. Clearly there's a relationship, but it's complicated.
Regarding the "only alternative to authoritarian populism is progressive populism": 2018 was essentially a landslide for the Dems, but it wasn't the progressive populists who won all those seats, it was mostly moderates and generic Dems. I do think we need a better social safety net, but what little I know about history doesn't inspire me with confidence in populism (whether progressive or nationalist).
You should study the break up of the trusts during the last crisis caused by monopolization. It's not something I know a lot about but the way that these firms dominate their sectors is problematic in historically similar ways.
I don't see what is complicated about tihs. This is not just an issue for elections. Congress members spend a lot of their time soliciting donations and little of their time speaking to people in their districts. The pass boilerplate legistlation written by a corporate lobbying group called ALEC. Studies of policy preferences of voters and the voting records of elected representatives show that what the people want is not what legislators pass in to law.
Are you familiar with where the 40 hour/5-day work week comes from? The legalization of unions? Women's suffrage? Black suffrage? All of these are progressive populism in action. Again, not sure why you are on the fence about this but I am more than curious.
I agree it's a problem. We could raise taxes and fund elections federally, but the question immediately becomes arguing over who actually foots the bill. Plus there is a problem with the symbolism of federally funding an election campaign for some of the loonier politicians, e.g. Steve King. I actually would be in favor of federal funding of elections, but I want higher taxes in general.
This sounds like a conspiracy theory a la 'AIPAC controls US foreign policy'.
Well, my first objection is that there is no well defined notion of "what the people want". You have to drink the Rousseaultian flavor-aid to believe in it. People's desired and preferences can change drastically on the same issue depending on wording. A more direct response is that things are not as bad as you might expect. Politicians seem to generally do what they believe is best for the long term health of their constituency, and constituencies generally vote for people whose beliefs largely agree with their own.
I wouldn't call any of those populist actually. To me populism is about demagoguery and rhetoric of elites vs 'the people'. So I'd consider Sanders populist but not Warren, for example.
When I think of left wing populism I don't think of labor rights or unions, but e.g. rent control / price controls in general, anti-trade policies, nationalizing industries, the "70% tax rate" thing.
It's literally not though. ALEC writes a law, they hand it off, and it is passed word-for-word in multiple states. Yeah it sounds absurdly corrupt and nefarious but it is also happening.
And I'm sorry I'm not taking Vox and the University of Chicago's word for it that our democracy is working.
Again, study your history. These were absolutely framed as issues of elites are repressing the poor. Progressive income tax (the 70% thing as you so deftly put it), rent control, and economic nationalization are certainly all parts of an economic populist platform.
First, using John Oliver as a source is ridiculous. Read a book. An academic book, not pop history crap.
You could read the academic articles linked/referenced by the , and if you find serious problems you could publish a refutation. But your real problem is you've already decided the facts and are unwilling to accept the possibility you're wrong.
Second, populism is mostly about framing, not necessarily the actual policies. Even something like rent control isn't inherently populist, it's just that in the wild it's generally sold by populist leaders. None of the things you listed are inherently populist, and as far as I know the populist part of those movements wasn't integral to their success. 8 hour days took decades to become law and it wasn't until it was actually economically feasible that they did. Unions were 'made legal' by court rulings, not legislative action. Reagan nationalized a few banks.
You should check out Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. His goal was to focus on the stories and interests of the working class, natives, slaves, and immigrants throughout American history. I started listening to an audiobook series on Youtube a few months ago and stopped right around the post WWII. It was entirely worthwhile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCHuPpyoyBQ&list=PLYUr4j9fnsUzHJA6iP-0x0vPdDzskPWiU
His book is pretty plainly polemical, IIRC. When I say "little I know about history" I mean trying to read academic papers and professionally done historical books.
i don't think anybody genuinely believes this beyond suburbanite white people, personally, but it's also pretty disingenuous in the context of this thread and the OP video because the "qualitative changes" you talk about have absolutely no bearing on the issues being discussed here. me not fucking dying of polio like i might in 1950 doesn't change the fact that my grandparents could buy a house, go to college, and live their lives pretty well just by getting a minimum wage job, whereas a minimum wage job for me literally wouldn't even cover rent for most of the apartments around here, much less pay my tuition or allow me to live comfortably irrespective of the former two things. it's a very real issue that our money simply does not go as far as it used to because everything is several orders of magnitude more expensive today than it used to be even with inflation accounted for, and that wages have not risen in a way that reflects that, even though on the whole people are getting richer and median incomes and whatnot are going up. at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter if a generation gains an additional $5,000 in average wealth on their parents if they have to spend literally doubt or triple that amount just to live like their parents did.
I find this disingenuous. The qualitative changes are massive. If we're talking from 1950: telephones, electricity, gas stoves, medicine, roads, washing machines/driers, roads, ...
No. Maybe this was true for a very small portion of people, but it was never the norm. I just learned of a 'fun' fact: when Ladybird Johnson was touring the US to evaluate the school systems she ran into areas where the kids had never seen a book before going to school, hadn't been socialized with non-family members etc. You're taking an extremely rose-tinted view of the past that never applied to more than a tiny fraction of Americans. This is exactly what I meant when I asked why people thought the 1970s were better.
Please make a more specific claim here. I can appreciate cost of living changes, but those aren't a nationwide thing. Further the links I posted are CPI adjusted, not just raw inflation adjusted. It's certainly not perfect, though. Cost of living is very high in CA, OR, DC, and most of New England and I can appreciate that life might be much harder in these areas. But I would argue that that's largely due to local politics being dysfunctional, and that it can really only be solved by fixing local politics. On the non-sympathetic side of things: in the past when people were priced out they just moved, and they moved between states far more often than we do now.
People don't live just like their parents/grandparents did, they consume far more and do far less domestic labor in cleaning and food preparation. You can still live like that and do a lot of cleaning and food prep by hand, in fact millions of Americans already do. There's even a group of people who live community oriented lives and work in trades, shunning consumerism and individualism and are apparently happier for it.
Pardon my bluntness, but this is flat out wrong. Minimum wage in 1950 was $7.98 in today's dollars, but the costs of living were drastically more in line with that wage. Let's see how that breaks down for college and housing.
As far back as 1931, college tuition was ~$19,000 in 2016 dollars for the most expensive college in the nation. In 2016, the average cost of tuition was $13,500. The school which had the $19,000 tuition in 1931 now has a tuition of $72,990. For $19k tuition, it required 60 (40 hour) week's wages. To afford a $72,000 tuition, that would require 225 weeks wages. This holds true across the board...there were and still are more affordable options, but broadly speaking, it was affordable in 1950 for someone to save for a few short years on minimum wage to afford a college education. This is no longer possible today.
Housing is a similiar story: Median home price (in 2016 dollars) in 1950 was $73k. Median home price in 2016 was $300k. To buy a house with cash: ~230 weeks (4.5 years) of work in 1950, ~940 weeks (18 years) in 2016.
Yes but there are significant changes in quality and availability of both college education and housing. Those things were still not accessible due to availability issues, so I don't think it's fair to call it the norm.
oh, my mistake, i misspoke--in the opposite direction you're implying, though. nowadays, you can have all sorts of fun trying to buy a 200 dollar shot of insulin because drug companies are exploitative as shit even though insulin is deathly cheap to make, or you can also look forward to living in an apartment with no laundry facilities because a lot of them either don't have them or have them in very limited, shared capacity. these aren't exactly problems our parents had.
nobody said it was the norm, buddy, all i said was that it was pretty realistic to be able to work a single job and actually be able to afford to go to college and get a house because that was a thing that people actually did back then. my mother for example literally double majored in college, and while she covered her tuition with scholarships, her tuition was, at the absolute most, $2,000 a year in a time where working even part time would basically cover the entire bill with significant room to spare. just my tuition for this single year is about $12,000/yr, before books, and the only reason i am able to cover that in any capacity is because i have a bunch of scholarships and a pell grant--and this is (a) not a particularly prestigious school and (b) pretty good compared to tuition in most of the country. the only other major university in this city has tuition of literally $70,000/yr. good luck covering that shit even with a good job.
cost of living is very high basically everywhere but the doldrums where nobody lives, lol. ever seen what a living wage is in most of the country? because it's sure as fuck not federal minimum wage anymore, nor is it even state minimum wages in a lot of places. colorado has a good minimum wage, relatively speaking, and it's still three dollars off of a living wage in my comparatively pretty cheap part of the state. the economic reality for probably half the people in the country is that they're buoyed by a small amount of savings if they're lucky, but otherwise they're one or two paychecks off from oblivion. this was not the economic reality of my parents, and it was certainly not the economic reality for my grandparents. and no, local politics don't miraculously fix this issue--it's not like some city can exactly make up the gap where the state or the federal government fails miserably at providing for its citizens, after all. usually if anything, cities make living worse for people because of factions like NIMBYs that have entrenched interests.
refer to this point:
we consume far more because there is greater diversity in what we can consume to begin with and we quantitatively have more money than our parents did, not necessarily because our money actually goes farther than theirs ever did.
the biggest commonality of households that are able to do things like extensive cleaning and cooking basically from scratch is that they're upper middle-class or upper-class white people. they have the ability to do that because they have the money and time to do so in the first place, or otherwise have the community structure necessary to facilitate that. most people--even in the middle class--just do not have the time, the money, the energy, or the effort necessary to live that way. actually, you're kinda making my case for me here by highlighting how shunning consumerism and individualism has been monopolized and capitalized on by people who rich or are in privileged enough positions to not have to rely on the system because nobody else has the emotional, social, or fiscal capital to be able to just uproot their lives and live that way. the amish can live that way because they have the structure to do so and have for three hundred plus years; rich people can live that way because they have the money to blow on living that way; your average american, though, could never hope to live that way in a hundred million years because very few of them have the flexibility necessary.
Insulin is one example where the cost is far higher now in the US. But you're implicitly portraying it as the norm. Yeah, if you don't have laundry facilities it's rough, but people used to have to hand wash and hang dry everything. It takes hours of involved work to wash laundry. You're again and again taking the perspective of the most fortunate in the past and comparing it to the least fortunate of today. That is deeply disingenuous.
You're delusional. I grew up around a lot of poor undocumented people and that's how many of them get by. It's easier and cheaper than ever given that you can get slow cookers for like $30 now. I am just astounded by how ridiculously privileged your attitude and beliefs about life are.
it is basically the norm, lol. a very large number of important things like housing, tuition, car loans, and medicine have outpaced wage increases and inflation in expense. your dollar, again, literally does not go as far as your parents or your grandparents' dollars did, even with those factors in mind. people spend more to get less nowadays.
my grandfather was actually one of those least fortunate people you talk about, seeing as he lived literally for the first thirty years of his life without power, was well behind the curve on getting a television, and his family wasn't that well off financially. he still went to college, still became a respectable businessman, and retired pretty comfortably despite all of that because you simply did not need to be nearly as well off as you are now to buy a house or a car, or get luxury items you describe like a television set, or go to college.
it's funny that you say this, because my family currently lives on less than $20,000/yr in an apartment complex full of people in a similar socioeconomic strata. i can say, pretty confidently, that most of those people aren't out here cleaning shit constantly or cooking from scratch--if they're lucky, they might have the money to cover bleach and some detergent, and have some leftover in their wallet to buy dinner from like, mcdonalds or wherever (or get some fucking hamburger helper from the local walmart). cooking and cleaning takes time and money and energy and effort that a lot of people simply do not have when they are poor as shit. given that you're also drawing your conclusions from a somewhat abnormal population here, i do suspect that your observations aren't exactly reflective of how most poor people currently live--after all, most poor people aren't at constant threat of being thrown out of the country or entirely excluded from segments of society due to their immigration status.
You're both so catastrophically wrong and smug. You give no citations to your assertions, and simply regurgitate 'woke' crap. Please go read actual scholarly work about urban/rural poverty in 1950. It was both worse and more common than poverty today.
Not having power was roughly normal then. Not 'least fortunate'. Just use common sense: why are kids now taller and healthier than kids in 1950? At least 60% of people didn't even finish high school in 1950. ~20% of people lived below the poverty line, and there would be pretty much no available medical care in these areas. Yes, we can do more for the poor now, but it's still better than it was then.