Alan M. Dershowitz wrote a piece in the Globe or NY Times today about the need for a moderate in the White House. (I read the paper at work and do not have the funds for an on-line subscription, otherwise I’d supply a link).
Yeah, I get it. Brexit is all extremists and Donald Trump is an extremist so let’s elect Hillary because Hillary is a moderate and moderates are safe. Moderates are a compromise. Moderates take care of both sides. The USA needs “moderates”….
Excuse me?
Some 95% of 2009-2012 Income Gains Went to Wealthiest 1%
This under the “moderate” President Obama.
Let’s not forget that under the “moderate” President Clinton, much the same was going on.
Can someone, anyone, the guy from Somerville, Christopher, or any of the Clinton admirers and I presume, Obama admirers tell me what is “Moderate” about a government’s economic policy that gives ALL one faction and NOTHING to the other?
Hello? Anyone Bueller? Hello?
Please share widely!
It’s a very specific, narrow and terribly radical policy — neoliberalism.
“Moderate” is a branding, and a bad one (for the country — a great one for millionaires and billionaires).
The average voter doesn’t know what neoliberalism is. Heck, the average well informed voter often doesn’t, because they simply assume it’s some kind of ‘new’ or ‘moderate’ left — when it’s anything but.
And the lack of understanding across the country of what this is, and how prevalent it is, is probably the #1, #2 and #3 reasons why it’s been able to continue this long — infecting both parties at their core.
There is nothing moderate about this. It is destroying the livelihoods of 90% of the country in a land where there used to be a stronger middle and working class than anywhere else on earth.
As soon as people understand, the neoliberals will lose and we can get back in the business of being a country that’s chiefly concerned with a strong, vibrant middle class that provides opportunity for all.
…but I also fundamentally reject the premises of your question.
n/m
But a President Trump will be bad for working people.
Trump would appoint corporate sympathizers to the National Labor Relations Board, undercutting any union negotiations and unionization elections. Having Democratic appointees on the NLRB is good and having a Democratic Secretary of Labor helps workers get better contracts.
See how Trump’s own website promises “No family will have to pay the death tax. You earned and saved that money for your family, not the government. You paid taxes on it when you earned it.”
Trump’s pretty oily here: The Estate Tax only applies if your estate is over $5.4 million. I’ll wager the John T. May “estate,” like the Joel T. Patterson “estate” is not in that bracket.
Hillary Clinton, as opposed to Trump, will make the top 0.02% pay their fair share of taxes with a surcharge on people making more than $5 million a year.
You gotta vote Hillary, if you want a fairer America for the working class.
Dershowitz is still wrong. The choice of Hillary v Trump is a very easy one. It’s not close.
The idea that only an absolute centrist can be a good president is wrong, though. Trump is dangerous for this country and the world. The implication in the piece about ideas pushed by those like Sanders as being equally dangerous is laughable. Of course a centrist Democrat would think a centrist Democrat would be best.
Also, it’s kind of hard to overlook Dershowitz’s support of non-centrists in Israel. He has interesting things to say on law; on politics, he’s terrible.
Yup, Trump will be very, very, very bad for labor and Hillary will be “status quo” with labor, meaning more years of zero wealth gain just like the past 40+ years. Somehow I am not that excited.
But it’s incumbent on the Clinton campaign to explain how she will be beneficial to working people, and not just assume they understand the nuances of her policies or that scaring them from the choas of Trump will be enough to win them over.
A guy like me who almost went into the foreign service and understands why NATO and the EU are pillars of global stability threatened by Brexit and Trump won’t convince a plumber in NH to vote for Hassan and Hillary on that basis. It would have to be that she will put money in his pocket, make sure his kids have good schools, and keep the cost of living down.
It’s actually quite easy-Trudeau, Warren and Franken have made the case before. Hillary can make it too. Something that can fit on a notecard and emphasizes fairness.
I recently saw a FB post that made the point that it’s not really the loss of manufacturing people lament, though that’s what they have been told to think – it’s the loss of strong unions. That should be the angle from which our side attacks this issue, along with pointing out Trump’s hypocrisy about not making his labelled products in the USA.
Two reasons:
1. The reputation of unions has sunk quite a bit since the days of Eisenhower when Republicans sought union endorsements. Witness Scott Walker’s surviving a recall election in Wisconsin, for example. Wisconsin isn’t exactly a red state either.
2. Income stagnation has other roots as well not just a lack of bargaining power.
The union thing is definitely important on a policy level. The recent track record, from Reagan smashing the air traffic controllers’ union to ever more hostile state governments, does not make it a winning political issue.
At least not without some work.
…for Democrats to fight to raise them back up in the public esteem, including getting to previous levels of membership by pursuing policies making it easier to organize, etc? Those not in a union shouldn’t be envious of those who are; they should be trying to join their ranks.
We urgently need to raise them in public esteem.
That’s different though from saying, “If we support unions loudly, we’ll win.”
that trolls BMG: Alan Douchawitz needs to be defended by Tom, Christopher, and anyone else who disagrees with JTM, whose thoughts hover in the same general area but never line up into a coherent argument.
Really, really pathetic.
Yes, it’s the same stupid post John has been posting over and over, no bumper stickers this time. But starting to name individuals is the creepy part. I had always thought John would start going unhinged, and it’s starting to happen. I do think he’s still a Republican at heart, just how the way he defines issues. But maybe it’s starting to be more than the regular idiotic trolling we have been used to.
John take a vacation for a while from the site, might do you some good.
JohnK, it’s clear that you are suffering from Stockholm syndrome, as are others in this group. Calling me a “Republican” for my stand that workers ought to demand a just wage, health care, and more makes it clear to me that you’ve drifted to the side of your captors.
NOBODY — absolutely NOBODY — is disagreeing with your “demands” for a “just age, health care, and more”.
It is your relentless, relentlessly personal, and increasingly rude and boorish attacks on Hillary Clinton and her family (including her son-inlaw, for crying out loud) and on those of us who support her candidacy that support the charges that you sound like a Republican.
Most of your commentary here echoes right-wing Limbaugh-style talking points. You misquote external sites, then refuse to acknowledge your error. That’s just plain dishonest. Your “debate” style is to make outrageous and baseless allegations, then hold your eyes and ears when the victims dare to respond. That’s just plain bullying — another Limbaugh-style tactic.
Don’t delude yourself about the rejection your commentary faces here. That rejection has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with anyone’s rejection of the populist agenda.
When you spend months attacking, bullying, and harassing members of a community, you should expect those people to respond with hostility.
But then, that may be what you seek — and THAT’S why some of us ask if you ever actually left the GOP.
I think what we have to recognize is that, in the OP’s impractical world of idealism and cultishness, a Democrat’s support of Clinton or Obama is just exactly like the OP’s magical thinking about what his favored candidates can accomplish. Thus, by that not-too-intelligent view, one is elevated from someone who might vote for and work for Hillary Clinton into a total devotee of everything Clinton who thinks Clinton herself is the pinnacle of all things progressive and wonderful.
And you know, if I believed that of anyone, I might come down hard too.
First, the 1% get way too much, but they don’t get it all. Second, .1% is not 1%. Gross exaggerations like that just show your insecurity and actually weaken your point.
But your biggest problem is that you aren’t arguing FOR anything. We all know you hate Clinton. So what? Are you really arguing that working class voters should go for a guy who has made his living scamming overly-trusting members of the working class?
…and the Massachusetts Democratic State Convention. I guess you’d call her a liar if you saw it. That would be fun to watch.
And no, I do not hate Clinton. But that straw man works for you and so many here. I do not like her economic choices of the past nor do I like her husband’s economic choices during his administration. Oh, I know the Clintons and their supporters love to play the martyr card and anyone who is not in line “hates” them or is out to get them.
I am arguing FOR a $15 national minimum wage, universal single payer health care, and a complete overhaul of our nation’s banking/investment laws, regulations, and returning it to the dull, basic, ordinary service to the community that it once was, not the vampire squid that it has turned into thanks to the neoliberal policies of certain Democrats.
…who has gone so full-throttle for Clinton in the past month that many speculate she is auditioning for VP, right?:)
Did Warren in fact say that “.1%” get ALL the benefit? I doubt it. And even if she did say it, is it true? No, it is not.
The facts are damning enough as it is without having to multiply everything by ten and write it in caps.
In any case, if you want to continue to argue for the particular populist issues you care about, you will probably find mostly agreement here. But you did not do that in this diary. Not even close.
you would have recalled a slide during her presentation that effectively said the same thing. While not word for word, the same result.
The guy who posts a link that disproves his point and never retracts downrates someone who points out his further intellectual dishonesty.
If your case is strong, johntmay, you shouldn’t need to lie and distort and ignore facts and repeat the same things over and over to prove it.
Strikes again!
Governor Martin O’Malley lamented that wages haven’t improved in 12 years. Senator Bernie Sanders pointed out how bad the jobless numbers really are. But Clinton told the Globe that she would give Obama an “A” for “saving our economy,”.
And you want to believe in that “A”, eh?
Sounds like “Stockholm syndrome” is your latest attempt at a talking point.
It doesn’t work. Perhaps you might learn more about what it actually means — especially to its victims.
‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’
Source
Obviously, by downrating, Mr May thinks the following is not true:
Obviously, then lying, distorting, ignoring facts, and repeating oneself are necessary!
I think a better way to frame this debate is how do progressives talk to the broken and defeated working class voters genuinely torn between Trump and Clinton. The real racists will vote for Trump no matter what, but how about the Detroit grocer or the Carrier workers who feel he stood up for them while Clinton hasn’t talked about their concerns? Forget that she has made some speeches in Ohio or has a coal plan or a website with 10 point proposals to expand EITC and community college credits, what about the basic gut check question?
For Warren the message is simple. The game is rigged against the middle class, we are going to fix it so it’s fair again. Make America Fair Again could fit on a baseball hat and is an inclusive agenda. Thoughtful liberals like Tom, Christopher, Kbusch, and the editors have to recognize “big enough to fit on a baseball hat” isn’t beneath them. It’s essential to win in this electoral environment.
John can you please make this argument without resorting to personal attacks on Clinton or her supporters or realitigating a finished primary? You’ve done this brilliantly in the past, your failure to do this now undermines a compelling case too many folks here and the campaign itself are ignoring at their peril.
But I don’t think that the thoughtful liberals in your list (and you left out hrs-kevin and Mark, one of the most thoughtful) are occupying even the same planet as our OP.
The income stagnation of the big majority of wage earners has to be addressed within the political system with all the limitations our current political system has. That effort has to be two-pronged. It means getting the maximum achievable within the current environment coupled with mass movements to change the political environment itself.
Johntmay, whose thinking is so idealistic as to be plain impractical, refuses to recognize the current limitations in our world. To recognize those limitations is not to endorse them and, with characteristic intellectual dishonesty, that’s what we hear too much of, i.e. that acknowledgement = endorsement. To ignore the limitations is to believe in some kind of magical power.
And that magic power springs from authoritarian thinking.
One might imagine that the OP, with his roots in conservative talk radio, comes at this from an authoritarian perspective. By that perspective, Obama, being The Leader, should be able to single-handedly change the social contract. Other Great Leaders could do this, i.e., Sanders and, before him, Berwick. Hence this diary makes perfect sense. The entire economic system is Obama’s fault because he’s The Leader. Blaming Congress is just whining.
That’s nonsense, of course, but it coincides nicely with how a number of conservatives think — and perhaps with how this recently conservative liberal does too.
*
In any case, the political point here is that this unstoppable avalanche of muddled thinking is precisely what no one needs in order to keep an actual right-wing authoritarian out of the White House. And maybe it’s a useful stimulus to figuring out messaging. What it definitely isn’t is a discussion.
We live in a culture that confuses brevity with conciseness. I’ve never disputed the importance of concise messaging, and I’m growing a bit weary of needing to say so here.
That observation isn’t relevant or helpful here. This particular contributor has the “talk” button pressed ALL THE TIME. Anyone who has used a two-way radio knows that the result is that all communication stops.
There is nothing Hillary Clinton could say or do that will change the tenor of contributions from this participant in any way whatsoever. A cohort of Americans, heavily influenced by the enormous amounts of money invested by the extreme right, is similarly hostile to Ms. Clinton.
We don’t need this group of voters to win the election, they won’t be changed by anything we say, and any policy movements we contemplate to attract this cohort will in fact alienate the much larger groups of voters that are already leaning towards us.
In my view, our best policy is to move on and leave this mob behind.
Embrace health care as a right, as it is in every developed nation.
She could be for a $15 minimum wage.
If she did those three things, it would change the tenor of this participant. Heck, I’d send a $1,000 donation to her campaign.
So stop the BS and personal attacks. Stop the lies. Stop the straw man arguments.
Perhaps some part of “Our best policy is to move on and leave this mob behind” is confusing to you.
The irony of you demanding a stop to the “BS and personal attacks”, “lies”, and “straw man arguments” is rich.
I have no clue who you are in real life, I can only respond to your commentary here. Based on that commentary, you epitomize the segment of the voters (the “60%” piece of the Venn diagram of jconway) that Ms. Clinton and any other Democrat should ignore.
Am am a 61 year old American laborer who has not seen a raise in wages for the past 45 years, not experienced health care as a right (unlike my friends in Canada, France, and Denmark), watched as my fellow workers got laid off and tossed aside, witnessed the growing wealth of the .1% in the USA, became horrified at the size of our prison population AND growing rates of childhood poverty. Recently I have experienced a job loss and replaced it with another, albeit at a 70% pay cut. (shocking at first until I spoke with dozens of others in the past year with similar or worse results) All while Democrats have been in power.
Who are you?
your “practical” solution to getting a raise is, as you stated earlier, spending inordinate amounts of time haranguing people to make the Democratic Party care about you.
but you can’t overcome the disqualifying fact that you made an obviously false assertion, claimed it was supported by a link, and then never retracted.
There’s no reason to believe anything you say until you show some kind of fealty to truth.
I’ve posted too may pearls that go unnoticed by too many.
The idea that everyone else has single-payer and we don’t is a myth. A number of countries have mixed public-private systems just as we do with the ACA.
Switzerland:
Healthcare in Switzerland is universal[3] and is regulated by the Swiss Federal Law on Health Insurance. There are no free state-provided health services, but private health insurance is compulsory for all persons residing in Switzerland (within three months of taking up residence or being born in the country).[4][5][6] International civil servants, members of embassies, and their family members are exempted from compulsory health insurance. Requests for exemptions are handled by the respective cantonal authority and have to be addressed to them directly.[7] (Wikipedia)
Italy
Healthcare is provided to all citizens and residents by a mixed public-private system. The public part is the national health service, Sistema sanitario nazionale (SSN), which is organized under the Ministry of Health and is administered on a regional basis. (Wikipedia)
Germany
Germany has a universal[1] multi-payer health care system with two main types of health insurance: “Statutory Health Insurance” (Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung) known as sickness funds (Krankenkasse) and “Private Health Insurance” (Private Krankenversicherung) (Wikipedia)
Belgium
Healthcare in Belgium is composed of three parts. Firstly, there is a primarily publicly-funded healthcare and social security service run by the federal government, which organizes and regulates healthcare; independent private practitioners; and public, university and semi-private hospitals and care institutions. There are a few (commercially run for-profit) private hospitals.[1] Second is the insurance cover provided to patients and finally the industry, which covers production and distribution of healthcare products, and research and development, although an important part of the research effort is done in universities and hospitals. (Wikipedia)
We don’t need a shill from the insurance companies here. We all know that one means when one says that universal single payer is a reality in all the developed nations of the world but still “impossible” in the USA. Your notes are correct, but do not detract from the reality that health insurance in the USA is focused on shareholder return on investment, not public health.
Shill indeed. Pointing out reality is not the same as endorsing it.
Say hi to your unicorn for me.
Indeed. And a WMD as well (Wall-Street Manipulated Democrat)
…Clinton mentioning Carrier specifically earlier in the primary season, I think as an example of a company our government assisted and then jumped ship anyway, and it certainly wasn’t with approval of their actions. She’s running for President, for crying out loud. She (and others who want to be credible) NEEDS an actual plan and explain to voters how she will take care of them. She has been fighting for people all her life, but as SomervilleTom puts it from time to time, there is none so blind…
n/t
Can I stop the personal attacks? Have you seen how many times I am attacked? Please, gimme a break. Can I stop attacking Clinton’s economic plans that do squat for labor? Okay, in other words, shut up, get in line, support the nominee and watch another 8 years of zero wage growth, horrific health care, and little else…..let the good times roll…
why you get the treatment you receive. It has nothing to do with your opinions, which again, almost everyone agrees with. It has everything to do with your failure to understand anyone else and inability to offer unreasonable, illogical arguments. You live in your own world, immune to others, and any attempt to break you out of it results in more stupidity and the victim card. Any reasonable person would look at the number and quality of the people disagreeing with him and question himself and how he’s communicating. Not you. You’re immune to anyone’s perspective other than your own.
What’s there to discuss. This election cycle, we have a mediocre and a terrible choice.
… to the entire remainder of the planet — that is to say, to those living outside the United States — you (and, it must be said, I) are the one percent. It’s difficult to feel sympathy for your diatribes against America’s ‘elite’ and against globalization when your circumstances depend on an uncomfortable similar relationship.
I’m reading this blog while I’m watching the Red Sox game on Fox and an advertisement come on in which Matthew McConaughey is jumping, fully clad, into a pool likely utterly ruining a tuxedo that probably costs more than I make in an entire month. All this nonsense in the hopes of selling me on the purchase of a Lincoln land yacht. The entire commercial probably costs more to make than I make in an entire year. All this during a game in which the pitcher probably ‘earns’, per pitch, more than I make in a month. This sort of profligacy is unremarked upon and that is because if we did so we would, in acknowledging how much the players make and the ads cost, have to confront the sheer wealth of our country. And this should, I would argue, likely moot our rage at those who have so much more than us because we ourselves have so much more than others.
Yeah, I really can’t afford to attend every Red Sox game in person but for a relative pittance I can see every game on the TV and attend a few per seaons. I can call up, on my phone, any piece by Beethoven, or Bach, or Roy Orbison and listen to it as many times as I want. With a moments internet search I can probably locate any book I want and purchase it with a click. I can’t afford an Audi R8, my dream car, but my dreams are contextual, I can afford a solid car that’ll get me where I want to go in comfort. I can go to the grocery store and a huge and dizzying array of options is spread before me.
In short, America, and that means you and I, is a fabulously, perhaps even obscenely, wealthy country.
I don’t blame you for not seeing that, myopia is an altogether human failing (and, indeed, goes a long way to explaining the greed of the so-called “1%”), but I am getting tired of your aversion to self-reflection. It’s might not be right that America’s richest have so much more than we do… but that just makes our relative place on the planet that much more an indictment. If you should want to re-distribute wealth from the so-called “1%” to you, and I believe you might, you should also want to re-distribute wealth from you to the rest of the world’s poor…
Also, Alan Dershowitz is the worlds’ foremost practitioner of sophistry. He’s lying to himself, likely because the truth would leave him incontinent with fear, and that means he’s lying to you, also.
should stop being grumpy, because at least we aren’t subsistence farmers or earning a $1 a day in a Bangladesh plant manufacturing clothes?
It’s a nice argument — especially for the wealthy elite.
I’m not even saying you’re wrong, Petr, but that argument does absolutely nothing to resolve the broad economic inequities in the US — or even abroad.
And when someone is laid off at 60 and can never get the same kind of job they had before (or anything near its quality) because that generation has been cast off from employers who want young, ‘hip,’ and cheap, shrugging your shoulders at their problems and saying how much better they have it than a person who makes a hundred iphones a day in China isn’t very helpful or productive.
There are broad economic inequalities around the world, but the causes are often systemically the same. Neoliberalism — and governments more concerned with trade figures than worker rights and livelihoods.
The agreements that have screwed American workers and European workers and Japanese workers and Korean workers are also screwing workers in poor countries, as well. Just look at the Mexican factory workers forced to work in deeply unsafe poverty-wage jobs, where even their own government colludes with the corporations to take down any worker who has aspirations of earning more than $7 a day.
While many of these deals have created jobs for people in poor countries, not everyone were winners. Some were pushed from being poor farmers (where at least they’d have a home and food) to being poor factory workers, having to work much harder, for more hours and in much more dangerous jobs, sharing an apartment with 10 people, without the time or resources to start a family, and under the constant threat of being fired if they didn’t work fast enough, complained or sometimes even for things like bathroom breaks. These countries have reacted to their workers — when they have struggled for better pay and worker conditions — in much the same way ours did a hundred years ago: cracking down on them, often violently, on behalf of the powerful elite.
Our world should work much better for people in the working class and middle class — all of us. And it can, if enough of us demand it to. I’ve never met someone concerned with the plight of the middle or working class in the US on the left who wasn’t also concerned with the plight of the poor in other countries, as well. The left recognizes we’re all on the same side — and that for all of us on the same side, no matter which country we live in, our opposition is also the same.
…the positioning of “at least we aren’t” suggests a dualism, perhaps even a hierarchy, of competing “grumpiness,” some of which is moral and some of which is, decidedly, not moral.
Perhaps we simply don’t have a right to be grumpy. The grasp with which you, and others, hold on to your resentment certainly suggests an entitlement and not a right. I will take this opportunity to remind you: resentment against the so-called wealthy elite is an altogether far more selfish state than compassion for the poor… especially given the fact that you are much farther away from the poor than you are from the wealthy.
I don’t know that it is an argument, per se, as much as it is a perspective. Especially since, as pointed out, we — you and I — are members of the wealthy elite. Relativistic self-pity, also, isn’t the same thing as compassion for the poor.
1.
That scent of privilege, wafting in the air. It’s so odorous and empowering that my olfactory nerves are tingling even from where I’m sitting. It must have congealed, somewhere, into some fancy cheese.
Maybe that’s how poor and struggling Americans are actually the wealthy elite? The economy is booming because of all the people who don’t understand what it’s like to be struggling that it creates excess fancy cheese — and all we poors have to do is just find it, and sell it.
That’s why we all belong to the “wealthy elite,” no matter much we struggle — and the people who are still poor just haven’t been looking hard enough, because there must be some fancy cheese for them to sell nearby, too. /snark off
2.
You do not know me, my family or our situation. Trust me when I say this: you are not only wrong, you are insulting. I consider it one of my proudest achievements that despite everything that has happened to my family, we have been able to keep it together and stay in our house, which ain’t no mansion.
Many others have failed, and it wasn’t their fault. The economy and our country is broken. You just clearly don’t get that.
I am deeply worried about the next recession, and just how many of those who have survived this last one will manage to survive another, or even any kind of issue popping up with a cost that the wealthy elite would consider trifling, but for struggling families is a huge issue — like needing to fix a car or get plumbing work done.
Will my family be able to survive the next recession? A totaled car? A health disaster? I don’t know.
That is not wealthy elite. I am not exactly the same as someone who’s poor or struggling in countries that are a lot worse off than the US, but we’re similar enough that we’re all bannermen in the same army, fighting in the same struggle against the wealthy elite — who have long employed “us against them” divide and conquer techniques as their chief tactic against us. That is why I thoroughly reject the premise of your pedantically-described “perspective.”
It is an argument, a very common and old one, and that argument has always — always — been used to keep the struggling, poor or disadvantaged where they are, so the wealthy elite can become richer even quicker.
3.
You need to understand the scale to which you are wrong.
It’s not just a few people, it’s tens of millions — and these aren’t just little issues these families face, they’re the biggest kinds, like keeping a roof over one’s head or even life or death.
Our low unemployment rates in this country mask the actual, huge unemployment problem, because it doesn’t take into account people who are under-employed, or people who have been forced to settle for part time, or shift to work by contract or through temporary agencies. Maybe they’ve even found work they like (I like mine), but it’s work that lacks in some combination of hours, wages, benefits or job security.
The unemployment rate also doesn’t take into account people who were unemployed for so long that our government has decided they aren’t looking for any work again — not that the government bothered to ask. There are millions of these people, a huge cost on our society, but an even larger opportunity cost.
I work in a ‘quickly growing’ field in the economy — people who work by contract for hire. This is also a ‘field,’ with rapidly fluctuating incomes (among other issues), in which the Affordable Care Act does not work. I was not the wealthy elite when, because I work by contract and people who work by contract don’t fit easily into the ACA, I was without health insurance and stepped on a nail. The wealthy elite do not worry about whether or not they can afford a tetanus shot — a disease that kills over 10% of the people who get it, is horribly, excruciatingly painful and can take months/years to recover from. They just get one.
As do people in any other industrialized country in the world — and many countries that are poor, but at least aspire to one day be something else. Heck, any Cuban could get a tetanus shot for free, because they have universal health care. We don’t.
Americans who are struggling — by the millions — are struggling immensely. Many of them, sadly — tragically — have failed, and become homeless. Boston, for example, has the highest rate of homelessness out of any major city in the country — so high that there are more homeless people living in Boston than LA. The really shocking thing? More than 25% of people in Boston who have had to use homeless shelters have jobs.
Boston’s homeless are not the wealthy elite.
It should be surprising that as Boston’s been blessed with more prosperity than it’s ever enjoyed in its history, it’s also been faced with record numbers of homeless, but it’s not. That prosperity hasn’t been shared, and is driving up prices for the 90% of the city who are not enjoying in the economic success of the “recovery” or Boston’s booming fields. And the people who aren’t enjoying in that prosperity have been suffering from all the employment problems in our country — underemployed, part time, work-for-hire, and gigs, stagnating wages, loss of benefits and few opportunities for change.
Living in Massachusetts or the US does not make them a member of the wealthy elite, just by virtue of one’s address. The struggling and poor are struggling and poor, and oppressed by the same kind of forces that are keeping people poor and oppressed all around the world.
Moreover, this is not just a problem for the poor. It’s also a problem for the forgotten.
It’s not a coincidence the opiod epidemic is occurring during an epic age of austerity. I’ve had three people I knew well and graduated high school with, two of whom I went to kindergarten with, who have died from overdoses.
They were not members of the elite.
They were good people, from good families, who struggled in a country and sate without compassion or help, and their families lost them — families who were not poor, but were poor in access because we live in a country with a health care system that (as the Globe Spotlight just pointed out) isn’t even trying to address the needs of these families.
There are millions out there who struggle with addiction or mental health, or who have developmental diseases or disorders, who aren’t getting the help that they need — and our system isn’t designed to help.
They are not the wealthy elite, just because they live in America.
Many countries, with real health care systems, address these problems. Maybe not perfectly, but they at least try. We aren’t.
4.
It is not “entitlement” for people who have these problems, or have family members going through these problems, and expect to get help. It is decency.
It is not “entitlement” for people who have jobs, or are trying to find jobs, to be able to pay basic bills and keep a roof over their heads, and have training/education opportunities they can afford. It is civilization.
You have remarkable privilege in not understanding these issues.
I am very happy that you don’t know what it’s like to be poor in America, or to be struggling with or have a family member who’s struggling with an issue our system is not designed to help with.
Truly, you are blessed.
But check your privilege at the door.
Once again, you fail to distinguish what I said from what you feel. The altitude of your high horse has deprived you of oxygen.
We can get into a pissing contest about our relative, and relatives, suffering and probably come out even. But even in the depths of some pretty intense suffering in my family, we’ve never used it as an excuse to hate nor even to indulge in a cancerous resentment. THAT”s an entitlement that’s not your due. That life is hard is not somebody elses fault. Life is just hard.
I’ll repeat: Relativistic self-pity isn’t the same thing as compassion for the poor. Perspective matters.
And by suggestion that poor people deserve their plight, you’ve made clear that you lack any and all of it.
It is not “relativistic self-pity” that I’m concerned with families who have lost loved ones struggling from drug abuse or mental health because *the system does not work*. It is not “relativistic self-pity” that I am outraged people who have jobs are *homeless* in Boston, because *the system does not work*.
It’s just outrageous, and it’s happening to people by the millions. And there’s no reason it ever should — other than the wealthy seizing all of the growth of our economy for the past several decades while simultaneously failing to pay their fair share in taxes.
The economy is growing. 90% of the population is not sharing in it. That is not fair or just.
It is broken.
And yet you don’t care.
Our system cannot work under that weight. People cannot continue to make it when they work harder and get paid less each year. They cannot continue to make it when their schools and roads see less and less investment every year, as the wealthy continue to fail to pay their fair share.
This just does not work, it cannot add up. It is not civilization; it is the steady decline of civilization, and a prelude to its breakdown if we don’t do something to stop that eventuality.
That perspective matters — the ability to see the trajectory of the course we’re on. And you’re blind to it, and apparently think all the people struggling under the weight of that trajectory deserve their plight. After all, they’re the “wealthy elite.”
…that indicates that he thinks the poor deserve their plight or that he doesn’t care.
… of the old saying, “Life happens in that space between not enough coffee and too much whisky.”
You have, however, wholly inverted this: eschewing the wide expanse of mean, you’ve grabbed the extremes; groggy from a lack of intellectual rigor yet simultaneously drunk with your own preciousness, you cling to your resentment as though it is a perfectly plausible rationale for making shit up. So like a child.
And, before you go all whiny that I’m insulting you let me be clear: I’m not insulting you, I merely describe you.
What part of believing that the 90% of the population who get 0% of our economic growth should share in some of it is resentment?
What part of believing that the wealthy should pay their fair share of taxes is some kind of resentment?
That you believe socioeconomic justice is resentment is telling.
I was looking for Branko Milanović’s recent work on income inequality and distribution of incomes. He has a graph that describes a lot of what’s going on:
https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/2percentile_distribution_of_global_real_income_growth_1988-2008__income_growth_chartbuilder-1.gif?w=640
I find it referenced in this article:
http://qz.com/626076/the-hidden-economics-behind-the-rise-of-donald-trump/
Globally, U.S. incomes, even very low U.S. incomes stand at about the 80th percentile globally. Looking at the chart, it’s clear that there has been a remarkable lift in income for percentils 25 – 70. For example the global middle class (which is mostly Chinese) has seen a 75% growth income in the 1998-2008 decade while U.S. incomes were flat or close to it.
So while the super-rich are certainly getting a large portion of the global real income growth so is most everyone who is much poorer than lower middle class Americans.
And yes, it is weird for comfortable Americans to be pointing this out to less comfortable Americans for sure, but Chinese, Indians, Indonesians, and Pakistanis are people too. Unacceptable working conditions with puny earnings turn out to be a step up for a whole lot of fellow humans who don’t live in the U.S.A.
You listed a lot of trinkets but left out a few things.
Our middle class is shrinking. We remain the only nation in the developed world without health care as a right. In many of our demographics, life spans are shortening.
More than one in five American children fall below a relative poverty line, which UNICEF defines as living in a household that earns less than half of the national median.
But hey, the game’s on the television….so it’s all good.
It’s important to remain reality based, here is the reality. The Republicans have nominated the most odious, repellent, and inexperienced nominee in modern political history. At least Wilkie actually ran a successful business and had interesting ideas to advance in his party. Trump has neither.
The Democrats have nominated an ethically compromised, widely unpopular, nominee too close to the very folks responsible for the financial crisis. She is also one of the greatest policy minds of her generation, has a long time commitment to reviving Great Society ambitions against poverty, has championed women’s rights and LGBT rights around the world, and is the steadiest and most experienced foreign policy hand to be able to govern on day 1 since HW Bush. This is the essential contradiction of Hillary Clinton. A brilliant policy intellect with lousy short term political instincts.
A Democratic Senate and reduced House majority for the Republicans will create the kind of space needed to pass many of the policy reforms we want. Gun control? Publicly financed elections? They happen when the Scalia seat is filled by a liberal. That happens under President Clinton with a Democratic Senate. A public option? They happen if we take back the House by 2020. Immigration reform could happen on day 1, Paul Ryan already wants it and losing Latinos by a 7-1 margin might finally wake Republicans up that they have to play ball.
Not to mention an executive that acknowledges climate change, believes in collective security and campaigned on expanding the social safety net. We have a rising crop of young progressives rising up in the House and entering the Senate. Will Kamala Harris roll over for Hillary? Will Elizabeth Warren? Will Katherine Clark or Seth Moulton? I don’t think so. Will Bernie Sanders and the millions of young people he brought into politics roll over, or will they run for office and start winning primaries?
Progressives are winning the long game, and ensuring that Hillary Clinton is elected is how we win the short game and avoid a true economic and humanitarian disaster in the form of President Trump. I absolutely think her campaign and supporters are arrogant and aloof from the electorate, all the more reason for me to vote for her and make sure she wins the popular vote and every electoral vote she can. This will be a close and unpredictable election, nasty, brutish and long. Now is not the time for infighting on the left, it’s literally a privilege we can’t afford.
1. I’m not sure I even understand how you arrived at:
2. The “ethically compromised” stuff is difficult to judge clearly given Scaiffe’s project in the nineties.
As an somewhat irrelevant side, I would like to see a clear and vigorous debate about Geithner’s approach to the Great Recession.
why you get the treatment you receive. It has nothing to do with your opinions, which again, almost everyone agrees with. It has everything to do with your failure to understand anyone else and inability to offer unreasonable, illogical arguments. You live in your own world, immune to others, and any attempt to break you out of it results in more stupidity and the victim card. Any reasonable person would look at the number and quality of the people disagreeing with him and question himself and how he’s communicating. Not you. You’re immune to anyone’s perspective other than your own.
JTM.
1. I think there is still a belief within Democratic campaign circles that one can beat Donald Trump running the Jeb! playbook (choas candidate, disrespectful to women, minorities and the disabled) and reassembling the Obama coalition of upwardly mobile whites, minorities and women by leading on the culture war issues.
I think there has been either a dismissal of the resonance Trumo and his arguments are having with downscale whites, not just those had have trended conservative but to those who are self identified independents, moderates, or even Democrats. We dismiss the appeal at our own peril and misread the electorate simply by running in the status quo.
2. Is this Mellon Scaife? I don’t care about the 90s and frankly, neither do most voters. Hillary overcame the 90s and had the highest favorable a of any potential nominee coming into 2015 that was ripped to shreds by the email
Investigation. I would’ve been fired and possibly inprisoned for bringing classified material out of the Acheson Buillding, why does she get to play by a different set of rules? It’s that impression, fair or not, that has destroyed her ratings particularly with independents. She has lower trustworthy ratings than Donald Trumo, and that’s a worrying factor we can’t dismiss.
When I mention 1 and 2 I do so with my political scientist hat on and as someone who has spent the better part of this year trying to organize the unenrolled voter. This means I am operating outside of the BMG bubble and able to poke holes in some of its preconceptions. As partisan Democrats, you’re statistically inclined to dismiss these factors as irrelevant or illegitimate, but the voters are repeatedly telling you they are. 47% of the Democratic Party didn’t suddenly accept socialism, it rejected Clinton. Asking why and discovering the answer is what a good partisan should be doing if they want their candidate to win. That’s my judgment anyway.
I want her to win and she will have an easier tine winning if she abandons the neoliberal “Third Way” tried & failed Clinton agenda and became her own woman, a woman of the people, not in her husband’s shadow and not in the back pocket of Wall Street.