I assume that nobody posting ITT follows AOC on twitter.
I follow AOC on twitter, AMA
― jaymc, Monday, 9 November 2020 00:05 (three years ago) link
I follow her on Twitter too!
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, 9 November 2020 00:08 (three years ago) link
The perception that change is impossible isn't solely (or even mostly) the product of a propaganda campaign, it's the product of lack of positive change. People who've lived through the last thirty years - 16 of them under Clinton and Obama - and didn't see an improvement in their lives (climbing inequality, the destruction and non-recovery of Black and Latino household wealth after 2008, exploding housing costs, etc., ever-decreasing union participation) - why would they believe that change is possible?
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 00:16 (three years ago) link
You could have a 3% decrease in poverty rate since 1990 which is pretty good considering the worst recession in almost a century happened during that time and no one would ever celebrate that because it's human nature to focus on the bad.
― Van Horn Street, Monday, 9 November 2020 00:34 (three years ago) link
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Gay_flag_7.svg/128px-Gay_flag_7.svg.png
hi milo
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, 9 November 2020 00:38 (three years ago) link
I mean... that's the problem. Pointing to a marginal improvement in an artificially low poverty rate (the relative poverty rate has increased slightly over the last 30 years), which is still the worst of the G7 by a fair margin. That's not people "focusing on the bad," that's not actual positive change.
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 00:43 (three years ago) link
When positive changes do occur (ACA) you just mark them as total failures because they're not ideal changes
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 00:46 (three years ago) link
Incrementalism is the worst, literally telling people to be happy with scraps. Even the coldest hearted, biggest corporatist stooge of a politician should understand that hungry and desperate people won’t continue to tolerate decline in their living conditions forever. It’ll spill out one way or another.
― liberté, égalité, scampé (gyac), Monday, 9 November 2020 00:49 (three years ago) link
Barely half the country has a positive opinion of the ACA, only within the last two years, and only because of measures that could be taken without pouring subsidies into Blue Cross/Blue Shield. That's not a winning policy, no.
Pointing to the ACA - or great successes that came in spite of political parties (like LGBTQ rights) - is not going to sell the disaffected or young POC who switched from Clinton to Trump in 2020 on the possibility of material change. Non-voters are poorer, less white and (far) less likely to have a college degree.
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 00:53 (three years ago) link
Disaffected people don't have a negative view of the future because John Mulaney made a joke about Joe Biden being old, white and status quo - they have a negative view because things have gotten worse for people like them over the course of their lives.
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 00:56 (three years ago) link
Once again you're arguing against the position that nobody has made. I didn't say ACA was perfect, merely that it's better than what came before it. (The fact that you mention "subsides pouring into Blue Cross/Blue Shield" tells me that you don't even understand it). And you're changing the argument: you said there was a perception that change is impossible because it's objective truth that zero change has happened. You're wrong.
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:01 (three years ago) link
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Sunday, November 8, 2020 7:16 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink
some good things that have happened:
- medicaid expansion in 2014 cut the number of uninsured low income households in half
- many state and city level minimum wage increases. after the 2020 election just under 50% of the population live in states or cities where the minimum wage is or is on track to be 15$ per hour
- legalization of marijuana in 15 states, decriminalized in another 16 states
- wages among the bottom 25% of earners started to increase for the first time since the nineties and increased faster than for the rest of the earnings distribution (until the pandemic hit). and it’s not just because of minimum wage increases; the same trend holds for states that didn’t pass minimum wage increases. it happened under trump but largely because of the tight labour market he inherited from obama. this is imo part of why trump did so well with black and latino voters. the gallup surveys on personal finances from before the pandemic hit were insane; like 61% of people saying their personal finances are improving and 75% saying they are improving or expect them soon to improve. that’s unseen since late 90s. things turned around after april but were still surprisingly high in like September
- not a fashionable policy on the left at the moment (for some good reasons that im very sympathetic to) but 26 states expanded their earned income tax credits, and several cities did too
none of these things are “enough” obvs and I’m not sure why dem politicians don’t campaign on them and similar policies that put money into people’s hands more, but they did happen and are good relative to what existed before imho
― flopson, Monday, 9 November 2020 01:05 (three years ago) link
i see that while i was writing that the goal post shifted from “nothing good has happened” to “what happened wasn’t good enough”
― flopson, Monday, 9 November 2020 01:07 (three years ago) link
I didn't say "nothing good has happened."
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:08 (three years ago) link
There are thousands of people who now have their heath insurance fully subsidized by the govt, some of them or someone in their family having health conditions that before ACA would've meant they couldn't get health insurance no matter what. Yes, private health insurance should've been rendered unnecessary, but perhaps some of these people would disagree with your stance.
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:09 (three years ago) link
Forgive me for interpreting there's been "a lack of positive change" as "nothing good has happened"
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:11 (three years ago) link
Lol the disingenuous shit itt is too much
― liberté, égalité, scampé (gyac), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:12 (three years ago) link
This isn't a referendum on the existence of the ACA?
I'm arguing against the idea that people don't believe in the possibility of change (via electoral politics most of all) because of propaganda, rather than it being a reaction to what they've actually lived, what they've experienced from electoral politics.
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:14 (three years ago) link
You're arguing something different in every post, who can keep up
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:17 (three years ago) link
Granny, do you think life has gotten better or worse for most Americans since 1990?
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:19 (three years ago) link
Milo, do you think there have been zero positive changes since 1990?
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:20 (three years ago) link
Changes to what?
― The Bosom Manor Michaelmas Special (silby), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:20 (three years ago) link
You think MY question is the one that's more vague and difficult to answer?
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:22 (three years ago) link
guys
― it bangs for thee (Simon H.), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:23 (three years ago) link
Yes?
― The Bosom Manor Michaelmas Special (silby), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:23 (three years ago) link
Texting beats the hell out of ever calling someone. That's certainly a positive change.
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:24 (three years ago) link
He made that point a few posts ago.
It’s true that incremental change is harder to see and even quantify milo, as I noted, a 3% change in poverty rate doesn’t seem much (even if it means tens of millions of people) but the reality is that countries that have less inequality, better health-care, countries that are closer to what you want the US to look like, well they got those changes incrementaly.
So I think it’s always worth noting that while incremental change is not always the best possible change, it’s still a positive step forward.
― Van Horn Street, Monday, 9 November 2020 01:24 (three years ago) link
xxp - if you think things are generally getting better for most people, then I imagine that it makes more sense to think that disaffected people are being fooled. I think most people are pretty rational about their lives in general.
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:31 (three years ago) link
... and yet they vote for centrists and their stupid policies, or even worse, the GOP.
― Van Horn Street, Monday, 9 November 2020 01:39 (three years ago) link
People have been shown to be irrational actors in just about every facet of life.
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:42 (three years ago) link
I think most people are pretty rational about their lives in general.
lol
― pomenitul, Monday, 9 November 2020 01:43 (three years ago) link
Funny because that is one of the core assumptions of neolibs.
― Van Horn Street, Monday, 9 November 2020 01:45 (three years ago) link
Or they don't vote (which is the group I think is more important) in normal times.
We saw it in exit polling in the SC primary - most Biden voters supported Medicare For All but didn't trust Bernie Sanders (or anyone else) to deliver it so they voted for the safer centrist. That's not the result of propaganda, it's lived experience telling them good things won't be given to them (since the Democrats abandoned the transactional politics of the mid-20th century).
Likewise, the percentage of young men of color who switched to Trump in 2020 - their lives pre-COVID probably didn't get worse from Obama to Trump (because actually the decline in life expectancy, for one, reversed, unemployment held steady, etc.) and he at least promises things.
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:46 (three years ago) link
Or you can write them off as dumb and/or hateful in some way, rather than responding to the material conditions of their lives.
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:49 (three years ago) link
You go from "most people are pretty rational about their lives" to people voted for a lying conman cause he promises things
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:49 (three years ago) link
gyac OTM.
Of course things have become marginally better, in many respects. I'm weird white guy married to a weird brown guy, and I would have died last year without the ACA. These issues actually aren't abstract to me.
But we also spent years homeless, living out of a U-Haul truck parked under a freeway or next to our friends' warehouse, or later, on very isolated land projects in nowhere towns of rural California. We had jobs or gigs, but they were part-time and/or seasonal, always with side hustles, too. It was fucking awful in most respects, and it all happened during the Obama administration. Part of the reason I didn't post much here for years and years was because of unreliable access to internet! I bathed in a river for almost a year because we didn't have running water!
So things have gotten better, sure. But as the class of serfs continues to grow because of the way the economy works, the consequences of that growth are appearing more and more dire.
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:52 (three years ago) link
Incrementalism is the worst, literally telling people to be happy with scraps.
In my view, incrementalism is happily embraced only by those who fear change because it might be inconvenient to their present comfort. It is grudgingly accepted by those who only prefer scraps of progress when the alternative is no change at all or retrogression.
I, for one, would be ecstatic to discover there is a visible path within US politics that delivers even-handed justice and ensures FDR's Four Freedoms more rapidly than incrementalism. I'm open to anyone who can describe that path to me in such a way that I can see it and help to implement it. Please, someone, rescue me from this damnable creeping pace toward a just society. I'm as impatient for it as the rest of you.
― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:56 (three years ago) link
Aimless, sarcasm isn't helping
table otm in the post above
both of these things can be true:
and
hungry and desperate people won’t continue to tolerate decline in their living conditions forever. It’ll spill out one way or another.
― howls of non-specificity (sleeve), Monday, 9 November 2020 01:59 (three years ago) link
TF was sarcastic about Aimless's post?
― OrificeMax (Old Lunch), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:00 (three years ago) link
I think incrementalism vs. radical change is largely an illusion, things happen slowly and then quickly without an immediately obvious cause in many cases. I'd love to see capitalism have a Berlin Wall moment but who knows when/how that will come, in the meantime I will continue to work for "pragmatic anarchism" as sarahell memorably put it
OL I really don't have to parse that post do I?
― howls of non-specificity (sleeve), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:02 (three years ago) link
Please, someone, rescue me from this damnable creeping pace
this is his usual snide, superior centrist garbage FYI
― howls of non-specificity (sleeve), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:03 (three years ago) link
I think incrementalism vs. radical change is largely an illusion, things happen slowly and then quickly without an immediately obvious cause in many cases
I believe a long-dead Russian guy might have said something like this once
― it bangs for thee (Simon H.), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:07 (three years ago) link
xp to sleeve. So, do you not find this creeping pace to be damnable? Do you not ardently wish that a way could be found to speed it up? How the living FUCK is that thought "snide, superior centrist garbage"? Get out of my face, asshole.
― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:08 (three years ago) link
I took Aimless' post as sincere.
― it bangs for thee (Simon H.), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:09 (three years ago) link
And you can take the subsequent one as sincere, too.
― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:10 (three years ago) link
If there's a shtick to Aimless, it's being very earnest
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:10 (three years ago) link
I'd love to see capitalism have a Berlin Wall moment
Capitalism works very well for other countries, thank you.
― Van Horn Street, Monday, 9 November 2020 02:11 (three years ago) link
I took the post in question as sincere, Aimless, fwiw
― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:13 (three years ago) link
Even where capitalism hasn’t consigned 20% of the populace to permanent misery, it’s boiling the seas. Depends on your definition of working.
― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Monday, 9 November 2020 02:15 (three years ago) link
imo milo’s point is that despite some good things happening, bad things also happened and those overwhelmingly dominate and therefore people who have lived through the last 30 years haven’t seen a net improvement in their lives; some people now make 15$ an hour or are now insured under medicaid, but they also lost their life savings in 2008
it’s an important point and worthwhile distinction to keep in mind. is policy (and other sources of increases in well being) outpacing the other countervailing forces making people’s lives worse?
in terms of post-tax income, i think the answer is yes. in fact, most people’s lives have improved. however, it’s very underwhelming for the bottom half of the income distribution. if you look at the distribution of pre-tax income 1980-2014, it declined by 25% for those in the bottom 20% of the income distribution. however, post-tax, it increases by 4%. so policy is outpacing the headwinds, but just barely. compare this to the previous period 1946-80, where income for this group doubled. for the next 30 percent, those in between the 20 and 50th percentile, income increased by 7% pre-tax and 26% post tax.
― flopson, Monday, 9 November 2020 02:16 (three years ago) link