It's your vote but consider this. I'm very skeptical of Sanders platform and one reason is that I don't think he can implement it. On the other hand we are seeing a continuous erosion of Constitutional principles from a president who not only has authoritarian leanings but is profiting off of the Presidency. He is doing so with a compliant Senate and if Trump (or Sanders) wins, I don't think the Senate flips. Issues of tax, environmental, and health care policy pale to a Presidency doing things like ripping off the Secret Service when they protect him at his own resorts, selling out our foreign policy to people like the Saudis, pardoning people like Rod Blagojevich, filling the intelligence services with whose primary qualification is their loyalty, and most dangerous of all bending he DOJ to his own political benefit. I might not agree and be very critical of Sanders but I don't think he will do any of the above. The choice I see here is what is more important. Restoring the country to Constitutional principles or paying less in taxes while the country slouches towards being Erdogan's Turkey.
What a biased view. This post is equivalent to a low IQ facebook forwarded post. Surely you don't really believe all that crap. Comparing Trump to Erdogan? Selling out foreign policy to the Saudis has been happening for decades. Did you not see how Obama weaponized the DOJ and FBI? You need to diversify the sources where you get your political information. You're in an echo chamber.
I'll give you an overly educated answer. First I really recommend reading or at least reading about The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. That is the basis of Communism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital When we talk about "Communism" here in the US we often are talking about Soviet Russia or the Peoples Republic of China. Neither of which are truly Communist. True Communism isn't an authoritarian one party state but actually an anarchic state where there is no central government. Everyone contributes collectively to the economy, everyone benefits collectively from the economy, and decisions are made collectively. A true Communist country would be like the Borg (minus Borg Queen) on Star Trek. Here on Earth true Communism has existed on Kibbutzs and small towns. The problem is once you start getting to a city size it get's impossible to make decisions collectively. With states that call themselves "Communist" they really are "Socialist" which Marx and Engelss considered a transition step to Communism. That means there is a strong central government that owns or greatly intervenes in the means of production. What Sanders is proposing isn't even true Socialism as he isn't advocating the state ownership of industry just a lot more regulation. Regarding the relationship of the individual and the state what Marx and Engels believed was that all value was created by labor and that things like management and entrepreneurship weren't as important as the laborers who actually did the work. To use a current example the wealth of Amazon isn't from Jeff Bezos but the people who ship Amazon packages and the coders who update Amazon's website. Sanders very much believes this and said so when he told Bloomberg that his workers were the ones who made him rich not Mike Bloomberg himself. Besides that it is almost impossible to make collective decisions in large groups of people if we centralize ownership and control of industry there is al a lot of risk of corruption and mismanagement because there isn't a market check. The massive starvations in the Soviet Union, PRC, Cambodia and other countries that called themselves Communist is an example of the failure of radical central planning. At the same time the question of who actually generates wealth, laborers or those who create, invest in and manage companies, has a big impact on tax and spending policies. To take the Socialist argument that wealth is created by labor then taxing the wealthy at higher rates is essential. If instead it's that creative people who take risk investing and creating company along with managing companies are the ones who create wealth then we shouldn't tax them so much to encourage more investment. Politicians often talk about this as "job creation". Those who argue against Socialism will say that if we tax and regulate investors, entrepeneurs and management too much that will stifle economic creativity and development.
People here are wildly overplaying the power of the presidency. At the end of 2018, had the Fed not completely reversed course with trying to normalize rates and QT, we would be in a severe recession right now. The stock market was in a free fall and Munichin was on the phone with all the major banks trying to see how well capitalized they were in the event of another financial crisis. The Fed then turned tail and started easing again, and ever since the bubble is blowing ever bigger. That the stock market is completely unhinged from anything happening in the real economy is a testament to this bubble. Their only hope is that we can pull off some miracle and outgrow and inflate away the debt. Not going to happen. This economy is trapped, and it has almost nothing to do with the policies of whomever is president.
Political terms are fluid throughout time, contested and highly individualized in reason/meaning of use to each person, this is why I said Bernie’s rhetoric and policies match social democracy and not his self proclaimed democratic socialist. I find it better to follow someones words and actions then a label which he may have a different meaning for than compared to what the current definition is. With that being said, democratic socialism is not plain old socialism either, democratic socialism heavily overlaps with social democracy, democratic socialism was a reaction against authoritarian socialism. Many highly developed countries have democratic socialist parties holding varying numbers of seats within parliamentary systems today in countries like Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden. Bernie has said multiple times he does not support control of the means of production, has said multiple times that he wants to imitate the Nordic model, and more important than just rhetoric, his policies back his rhetoric. People also argue that social democracy is supposed to a step towards socialism as well, but the reality is, social democracy is just great alongside capitalism, the mixture of social democracy and capitalism has created is what I would argue are the best countries in the world, and the best social and welfare programs in the world. America has been so red scared into fearing anything with a hint of socialism, to the point that the word social triggers a thought pattern that leads to the assumption of a full-blown authoritarian socialist /communist economy and country which is silly, again the entire world is a mixture of socialism and capitalism. Are the Nordic systems just bridges to eventual communism? Are they regulating and taxing business to death before taking full control? Or have they put in common-sense regulations, with commons sense taxation, that has lead to the creation of the highest quality of life for entire countries that the world has seen? Yeah and we find white supremacists and Nazis tend to support Trump? So is Trump now supportive of Nazi's? As for Bernie flirting with socialism, you have to understand that no country is full capitalist or fully socialist, every country is a mixture of both systems. The USA is a mixture of both systems, Europe is a mixture, Australia and New Zealand is a mixture. Socialist programs alongside capitalism ='s great countries and great quality of life for citizens. If the USA never "flirted" with socialism we wouldn't have social security, we wouldn't have public education. Where any country goes bad is corruption and authoritarianism, which are two things that have WAY more in common with Trump than Bernie.
Good point. I've brought this up before that many of the tools that we've used to combat recession have instead been used to keep the good times rolling. I think we've forestalled recession but once it hits it will probably be worse.
I largely agree with everything here. I dont think we are headed for a severe recession. The president absolutely has a significant impact on the market, however they do not have the power completely drive the market in a particular direction. An example is Trumps trade war with China. Largely the market is doing well because the rest of the world knows Trump will do whatever it takes to keep the market in overdrive. Now the moment [if] Sanders wins the presidency...... We are not in a position we were back in the last recession. Regulations were put in place ot help reduce the cascading events that led to the last recession. Much of the risk has been spread out through the global economy. Americans will not be interested in bailing out the private sector again. In the next recession, I believe we will see a significant spike in unemployment in relation to the cooling off of the market. I also feel Amazon is very vulnerable along with many of the media giants such as ATT. If I had a crystal ball and could see 10 years in the future, I would say the political parties will have the largest shakeup.
Because it's been the case in every single instance in human history? Other than that, no reason at all.
Quality Post. As a Sanders supporter, I believe in things like entrepreneurship/creativity/leadership and their ability to galvanize people to do new and exciting things. I would love to start and lead a successful business one day if the right opportunity presents itself. I also expect a higher payout as a reward for successfully building a thriving business. But I also believe in taking care of workers so that they can live with dignity and respect. I also believe people should be given the basic opportunity/foundation by which they can choose to do whatever they want. Things like education, health, clean environment, water/food etc. That's just basic economic freedom in my view. However, I have seen some Sanders' supporters that really believe Sanders' social democracy movement is a movement towards real socialism, and some (maybe one or two I have seen on the internet) see it as a step towards communism. Personally, I don't really see any of that stuff working out mainly because there is no empirical evidence to suggest it can work. I also don't believe in the idea that humans can be so collectivist with no individual desire for ownership. But, I will read the Marx's manifesto since you linked to it. Not sure if I buy this whole "grand theory" that one or two people made up but I do see terminology associated with Marx used often (class struggle, proletariat, etc) so good to know at least where it comes from.
It doesn't seem like there's much of a difference who you elect as the president. All of them would be able to achieve roughly the same amount. All of the big corporations have everyone (both democrats and republicans) in their pockets to prevent any real change. This election circus just seems like a clever distraction for the masses.
I might be living in a fantasy universe, but I think what might be the only way to spur meaningful growth and find a way out of this fiscal mess is to bring manufacturing back to the USA. From shoes to machinery. Americans consume a ton of stuff, we should be making at least a good chunk of what we use. Globalization is just not working out for the masses in developed countries where manufacturing has been gutted. Tech and finance sectors will never cut it. They support a small % of the total population. It's not enough. There would be a lot of pain, but people need meaningful jobs and manufacturing is it. Most will say this is impossible, but who knows, with something like the coronavirus it just might expose the vulnerabilities of globalization to the point where we are forced to manufacture here again. Manufacturing in this country got screwed by Wall St. greed and CEOs looking for maximum shareholder profit. If Wall St. hadn't turned into the parasite it has become, company profit would probably go back to generating jobs, not just buybacks, bonuses, and share value.
And just to make my position clear, in no way at all is Bernie Sanders a communist, hell he's only nominally a socialist. eta: and speaking of rat b*stard commies...I'm watching the 30 for 30 about the Miracle on Ice as we speak
I have said so myself. Instead of lowering the deficit in good economic times like Obama did before he left office. The gop has increased the deficit almost twice the amount Obama left the office with. The reason I said GOP instead of trump because I don’t want those GOP to later blame Trump for the mess that will eventually leave the rest of us with.
Bringing back manufacturing jobs is not that easy. You are competing against others who have a competitive advantage one of them being cheap labour. Everyone wants to complain about how american jobs go overseas while at the same time go to Walmart to buy the cheapest items they can buy. It is not only Wall Street it is consumer behaviour.
After that rocketsjudoka slap-down: (OK I really just wanted to post the scared baby cheetah photo and this seemed like a good pretext.)
People just don't seem to realize that productivity is what drives an economy and without production , there is nothing to tax. Every time I think about how can you fix the wealth gap I come up with only one solution - legislation forcing companies to spend a greater percentage of profits on labor / employee's. Kinda like the NBA / NFL have collectively bargained. We need the government to bargain on our behalf since unions are all but a thing of the past. Thing is , that's not going to fix it for everyone but its a hell of a lot more palatable than government jobs that have little to no value to society and suck disposable income away from the producers. What I see Bernie's plans doing is creating two factions , a wealthy private sector and the public sector that encompasses everyone else that feeds off of the productivity of that private sector and the earnings gap between them will be vast.
