Democratic Primaries
Related: About this forumBernie Isn't Trying to Start a Class War. The Rich Are Trying to Finish One.
David Brookss latest column asserts that, in the United States, workers wages are determined largely by the value of what they produce. The quality of the well-paid pundits ensuing argument fatally undermines its own premise.
(snip)
Even if there were a way to increase the measured productivity of those who perform socially necessary care work, this still would be insufficient to eliminate poverty. You need to progressively redistribute income in order to accomplish that. And American billionaires are, in fact, trying to prevent that from happening by rigging our political economy. Although there are some high-profile exceptions, about 64 percent of billionaire political donors give exclusively or primarily to Republican candidates and conservative organizations; which is to say, to a party and movement that opposes major expansions of the welfare state, and supports eroding the existing safety nets fiscal security by slashing taxes on billionaires.
The billionaire classs investment in the GOP is one reason why our historically wealthy nation has an aberrantly stingy welfare state. And our aberrantly stingy welfare state is a leading cause of our nations extraordinarily high levels of economic inequality. If Brookss thesis were correct and Americas inequality problem were driven overwhelming by gaps in productivity rather than policy choices then inequality in the U.S. and Western Europe should have grown at roughly similar rates over the past four decades, as both regions were subject to the same basic economic developments. But this did not happen, because Western Europes plutocrats arent quite as good at class war as the ones weve got over here.
Fortunately for Brooks, precisely because his column is so exquisitely wrong, its wrongness will have no adverse impact on his economic condition. The market for all-explaining cartoons that comfort the comfortable is a lucrative one, and he is indisputably a master of his trade.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/bernie-sanders-david-brooks-class-war.html
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
Magoo48
(4,721 posts)Todays economic conditions are calculated, oppressive, and relentless. Corporate Dems who want to play pretty with Wall Street are an unnecessary and shameful hurdle in the daily trudge of the working classes and the poor.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
bucolic_frolic
(43,395 posts)when Karl Marx began 'class consciousness'. He was accused of 'turning reality on its head'. Ever since the rich have tried to flip class consciousness on the lower classes, the proletariat to use Marx's term. They shout "Class warfare!" and blame liberals. They are particularly vehement about the labor theory of value, denying that products are worth the labor that is used in manufacture. Right wing economists even go crazy over the term "political economy" - the term used for economics in most of Europe, even western Europe. In America, using the term gets one accused of being a pinko Bolshevik economist.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
Evolve Dammit
(16,788 posts)Few years ago. Pretty sure I got the quote right.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)Again B Actor Reagan started the ball rolling slashing the top marginal tax rate drastically, to comfortably lower than it has been since Herbert Hoover. He also went along with axing the long standing Fairness Doctrine.....and since then Fox News, Limbaugh etc have been convincing middle and lower classes to call any serious attempt to raise rates on the super wealthy as socialism they are partially right but it is democratic socialism.
But loyal Fox viewers are convinced it is Communistic, Class Warfare etc.
Now it has led to electing a rich stupid clown as President.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
DanieRains
(4,619 posts)Mike Papantonio.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
thanks for posting
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
LiberalArkie
(15,730 posts)primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
George II
(67,782 posts)primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
David__77
(23,559 posts)And it should be done. It can be done through tax policy, and establishing broader guarantees to health care, education, and housing.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
PETRUS
(3,678 posts)primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
Uncle Joe
(58,469 posts)primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
PETRUS
(3,678 posts)Thanks for your posts in general.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
msongs
(67,465 posts)primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden