I think a class analysis which pretends that racism is less important than income level in American society is flawed. The New York Times hasn't spent the last three years interviewing Black Working Class Clinton voters hanging out in diners in rural Mississippi, and I'm sure you know why. Trying to draw a hard distinction between the American class system and our system of white supremacy is a fool's errand, IMHO. I'm not advocating parsing society down to the individual level, but I think we need multiple axes to understand the ways in which Americans make implicit "class" distinctions we're often not fully conscious of.
He wrote The Communist Manifesto as a direct reaction to the failure of the 1848 revolutions, as well.
I disagree. What the 2016 election showed us is that race matters as much, if not more so, than economics. Those who are afraid of being taken over by non-White foreigners are real, and we need to be honest that they really have that fear. And it is legit, from their standpoint because it is going to force them to change their way of life, a way of life they are not comfortable changing. But even if those people end up being Republican, there are Dems who have similar views. As an example, I was talking to somebody yesterday who is very much an environmentalist and a "lefty." She is also an ELL teacher. But we go into a discussion about the cycle of poverty/incarceration, specifically for Black males, and she put it on "life choices." She also said that the state government should not increase funding to urban (in the context of the conversation, Black school districts). And while that is a singular example, she has no clue as to how poor minorities struggle in the urban area, because her focus is not in that part of the world. And that is quite common. And that is the problem being on the left. Even though we all are anti 1%, we still hold some tribalism which makes it difficult to comprehensively unite.
Explain. Has nothing to do with what I mentioned. Are you going to imply that due to this hypothetical class war Nobody except the rich will be able to invest? please elaborate
Only in a strictly linear sense. Its publication in February 1848 in London could not have been well-timed with revolutions starting as little as two days later across the continent. I don't know as much about history as, say, @taosjohn , but my guess is that many German and French revolutionaries wouldn't have had access to the text before they planned their revolts. Maybe I'm wrong.
You are, in a sense, both right I think. I'm not an expert and would readily cede an argument to anyone claiming to be in this field, but I'm quite sure that: 1. Marx didn't invent anything, just compiled into a coherent structure a cluster of ideas that had been sort of free floating looking for a collective home since at least the peasant revolts in the eastern Balkans in the mid 14th century, probably since Spartacus. 2. The power of the printing press was newish, almost immediate from the pov of contemporaries, and huge-- once Marx published, there surely were intellectuals and lumpenproletariat involved in the turbulences of 1848 who had read him; but he wasn't, I think, causative so much as symptomatic, giving people a framework to understand the things they felt and the things they were already going to try to achieve anyway. But surely the great masses in the riots and revolt. were not conversant with the "Manifesto" and were not even particularly literate. There just was a lot of power lying in the streets for proto-Lenins to pick up. What I think Marx actually achieved was more a matter of initiating the separating-out process which distinguished socialists and communists from real anarchists, and began the process whereby monarchists, capitalists, and fascists-- authoritarians-- who had previously conflated the two, began to understand that there was an actual difference.
I'll be damned--you're right. It was released at the beginning of the revolutions, so written ahead of time. That's a lazy assumption I've always made--thanks for setting me straight.
The anti-statist theology that has dominated our politics for so long has been victims well removed from the poor. There are huge amounts spent to support farmers but they are going bankrupt at high rates. The combination of oversupply and low prices are driving dairy farmers out of business. I think the added stupidity of US farm policy trends was apparent starting during the Clinton administration where we had a "Freedom to Farm Act." Feel free to correct me on any memory lapses.
People seriously underestimate the "tiers" in the country/world. You do have the super rich that will continue to do very well. You have college educated (in careers that pay well) that will continue to do well. You have non college educated with professional jobs that will continue to get by. You then will also have those that can'/won't get a job at the very bottom. Meh, the top10-25% are comfortable enough, some will be willing to support Democrats sometimes, until they vote to raise taxes, then they will go vote for Trump 2.0 or republicans. Trump does well with uneducated whites, specially wealthier uneducated whites. The bottom tier mostly votes in lower numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections
Is it possible to change the title of this thread to "Elon Musk's Tesla is unstoppable" or are there too many short sellers around here for that?
Remember when Paul Krugman said "If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never."? Ah, good times!
And in any event, if you read what Krugman actually wrote, I don't see what he is wrong about. Of course he didn't anticipate the Trump bump as the markets reacted eagerly to the promised free for all in FS etc - traders knew about this stuff but Krugman is an economist. But as far as fundamentals go I think he is still correct. How will the markets recover from the incoming recession where all the fiscal tools are already deployed?
I just hope a Democratic president can save us from a sky rocketing stock prices and dangerously high employment rates. What a depressing economic mess.
IMO that is pretty much still the risk of what can happen. It’s true that we’ve been adding jobs at a pretty good pace and are quite close to full employment. But we’ve been doing O.K. only thanks to extremely low interest rates. There’s nothing wrong with that per se. But what if something bad happens and the economy needs a boost? The Fed and its counterparts abroad basically have very little room for further rate cuts, and therefore very little ability to respond to adverse events. Now comes the mother of all adverse effects — and what it brings with it is a regime that will be ignorant of economic policy and hostile to any effort to make it work. Effective fiscal support for the Fed? Not a chance. In fact, you can bet that the Fed will lose its independence, and be bullied by cranks. So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...-night-2016/paul-krugman-the-economic-fallout
One of the great ironies is the GOP/Trump have basically done huge stimulus since Trump was elected, but at the top of the cycle. So it hasn't moved the needle much
Fed policy has been particularly accommodating for well over a decade now. Funny how it is only now you noticed it.
Sure, the Fed has been accommodating for more than a decade. The question is whether the stimulus of low interest rates is still necessary now that the economy has recovered.
Which is part of the overall irony that Republicans are the stimulus party, while (generally successfully) campaigning against Democrats as being the stimulus party.