90% of what goes on at The New Yorker can be explained by Vulgar Marxism

Dress it up how you will, it’s all horse race, all the way down. What she means is that kids are stupid because they don’t know Bernie can’t win.

Speaking from an Australian context i’d be fairly certain the socio-economic cultural divide is exactly that big, if not greater. As a priveleged young Australian the only thing that incidentally exposed me to genuine hardship was the fact of my sexuality and the slightly more diverse world that exposed me to. Given the reality that inequality is far more deeply entrenched politically/culturally within the USA (or at least that’s the impression one gets) I can easily understand how a young woman like this could be so far removed from the grotesque economic position of so much of her cohort.

Do people here think Sanders turning out and winning the youth vote (<30) can be a major factor in his winning the general election? Without the Democratic candidate turning out big and winning big the Latino and Black vote the Democratic candidate probably has little chance even if /she wins the youth vote big; and s/he can probably win as long s/he wins the Latino and Black vote big even if youth turnout is not near its historic high point. I remember this analysis http://news.mit.edu/2009/racialpolarization-0120
It's easy for academics to fetishize youth concerns because the youth tell us everyday about the great weight that should be given to their preferences, but politicians are not academics and can have a more balanced understanding of how important the youth vote is.

Oops. Too soon about Driftglass. He’s still at it: http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2016/02/seems-like-old-times.html

“But does she have no friends or relatives who are struggling with student debt, low-paying or nonexistent jobs?”

Well, for sure she didn’t meet them at the Brearley School or Yale! She undoubtedly has less-wealthy family, but family connections in such circumstances are usually strained. Someone raised that wealthy travels in wealthy social circles; in some ways such people are like immigrants in their own countries.

I keep wondering why, with people of color faring so poorly in this depression (the minority employment numbers are as bad as the youth employment numbers, and young minorities, my gods), there is any support at all from PoC for the Clintons.

There is, I suppose, intersectionality: in the USA race and “class” are not separate, but rather reinforce each other. I am surprised this point, which is hardly a new one, is not made more often. What else is white supremacism if not the ideology and practices of a class system? And what else was US white supremacism founded on if not the desire to gain wealth by enslaving Africans? These are not subtle points and yet somehow they are lost when Americans discuss race, wealth, and class.

Also: the prose

“The stuff of an invitation to a 2008-election theme party.”

Yeesh.

I have often in the past wondered why you never really seemed to get Very Serious People of the centre-left. Was it lack of opportunity? Or was it something to do with the concept itself?

It appears I now have the answer: lack of opportunity.

Which isn’t to say that arguments for Clinton vis a vis Sanders are bad, I think most of them are pretty sound, it’s just that none of the Clinton supporting pundits seem to be able to make any kind of good faith understanding of what motivates Sanders supporters (the best that you ever get is a patronizing ‘oh you silly naive people’ like in the Schwartz article).

It’s kind of weird.

As others have said, the sheer incomprehension of lives of others is telling.

A reminder as well that “literature” doesn’t automatically build empathy.

If folks are trying to understand who are the modern aristocrats, Corey’s introduction to the author of the New Yorker piece ticks many of the boxes. Unlike Corey, perhaps, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I did my undergraduate studies at school famous for its fraternities. Now, there may be some very positive aspects of fraternity and sorority life. What I saw I didn’t like, no need to dwell on the particulars. I was extremely grateful, however, that the Greek groups wore caps and other insignia confirming their membership in these ‘exclusive’ societies. I could see them coming at a distance. Writers at the New Yorker are the first to proudly explain that their role is to teach culture and to identify political deviance. Not only do they generally know nothing of people outside their tiny universe, many are struggling to obliterate from their memories and their personas any vestige that might betray their rube roots or contacts.

They have all the sophistication of Don Draper, a character I understand from former friends long in the ad game, whose terror of being found out render him incapable of understanding even himself. We can all count ourselves lucky, imho, that we don’t feel the need to strive for the bogus status conferred by membership in this insular community. They’re to be pitied, for the idealism of the youthful Sanders supporters is a painful reminder of lost idealism, not innocence. I’m looking forward to HRC explaining how her alphabet salad was worth 675 k to the bank. Only Cruz is currently worse.

I haven’t relished so many comments so quickly in a thread… ever I guess. Thanks all (@PlutoniumKim, especially yours and, @fledermaus, I will probably quote yours).

Hillary took $600,000 in one year from Goldman Sacks, a company that has paid $5 billion dollars in fines. How is that not corruption? It definitely shows a lack of judgement for someone already planning to run for president. It also makes her seem far removed from Joe Average, in much the same way as John Edwards’s $400 haircut.

To many of us, it seems you have a choice between Corporate Party A and Corporate Party B. We choose None of the Above.

Perhaps the Incroyables is closer – they’re about display, not substance.

” My own, vague and Baby-Boomer, notions, have been informed and clarified by Propane Jane’s stellar tweets about “When racism gets in socialism”.”

I don’t agree. Obama is fine but I am pretty sure that Blacks could support candidates with a more progressive agenda. (Not that Sanders is going to get that support.)

Jesse Jackson’s campaign platform is really looking good now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson#1984_presidential_campaign

Campaign platform
In both races, Jackson ran on what many considered to be a very liberal platform. In 1987, The New York Times described him as ” a classic liberal in the tradition of the New Deal and the Great Society”.[2] Declaring that he wanted to create a “Rainbow Coalition” of various minority groups, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Arab-Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, family farmers, the poor and working class, and homosexuals, as well as European American progressives who fit into none of those categories, Jackson ran on a platform that included:

Creating a Works Progress Administration-style program to rebuild America’s infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans,
Re-prioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for drug users (which he views as racially biased) and more on harsher punishments for money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the “supply” end of “supply and demand”
Reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans and using the money to finance social welfare programs
Cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over the course of his administration
Declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation
Instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union
Supporting family farmers by reviving many of Roosevelt’s New Deal–era farm programs
Creating a single-payer system of universal health care
Ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment
Increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free community college to all
Applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and
Supporting the formation of a Palestinian state.

Of course Cassidy is onto something (his book on the failure of markets is really very good), but speaking of vulgar Marxism, we can say that those who see their fates tied up with the stock market due to their own portfolios and/or the effect the stock market has on real estate values are tending towards Clinton while those who have no wealth (the young and those with incomes <50K) are overwhelmingly Sanders supporters, though Sanders may not do as well with the minorities who are disproportionately in what should be his base. But Clinton may well be dismayed by the results in South Carolina.
Clinton did a get a jab in yesterday. In fact she produced what she calls an artful smear of her own. The Sanders supporters have to deal with the fact that he did vote for the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which had more to do with the financial crisis than the repeal of Glass-Steagall. And a few years after that vote, Bernie Sanders was a US Senator–correct? Clinton could have been understood to have implied that Sanders may well have been rewarded by Wall Street for that vote.

@ 30

“The Sanders supporters have to deal with the fact that he did vote for the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which had more to do with the financial crisis than the repeal of Glass-Steagall. ”

We don’t really need to deal with it. That legislation was included in the big bill to keep the government running.

Sanders has criticized the Fed for the December Fed hike and for fearing phantom inflation. Hillary never mentions the Fed. Sanders is for a financial transaction tax. Hillary isn’t.

Hillary has taking a lot of money from Wall Street. All of Sanders’s money comes from small donors.

Hillary waffled Keystone and the TPP trade deal.

“We don’t really need to deal with it. That legislation was included in the big bill to keep the government running.” Sanders did not justify the vote that way; nor am I sure that it can be rationalized that way. Link?

I don’t see anything in PJ’s prescription that leads to a viable strategy. Her idea that “distancing from Obama” was the problem in 2010 and 2014 seems utterly wrong; candidates in 2014 lost even when they embraced the president wholeheartedly. Key elements of the Democratic coalition didn’t show up.

More to the point – if you think that no one is going to change their vote because of an appeal to economic interest, do you think that calling them racists will work?

Racism exists in the US, but claiming that it explains everything is poorly justified.

Corey:

Of course I agree with you that we need More Data, always. South Carolina should be somewhat clarifying.

Re: boomer women supporting Hillary v millennial women supporting Bernie. I don’t think it’s that (we) older women are more complacent, at *all* — I actually think we’re less trusting of shouty male politicians, and more eager to see a woman president, goddammit. We’re the ones who grew up hearing that a woman could never be elected president. Millennial women grew up knowing female governors are completely possible and not necessarily a big deal.

We’re also, in many ways, more angry and appalled at the War on Women, the assault on reproductive rights. We *know* it’s not the way things have to be, unlike the younger generation who are maybe more used to it.

The younger voter thing is doing all kinds of work, as it implies naivety and inexperience. But if you look at the demographics it’s really the under 40s (straw polling at my office would suggest a little over 40). This is a demographic thing.

I’d love to see good data on class/income. As everything I’ve seen suggests that this is really a fight between well heeled Democrats (100K and over) and the rest. Which working class Democrats really going for Bernie. If that’s true – this is a new thing, a fascinating thing and potentially a hopeful thing.

Doctor Science @40: “I actually think we’re less trusting of shouty male politicians, and more eager to see a woman president, goddammit.”

Fair enough. How will you feel, though, if you turn out to have elected (to take a fairly extreme example) a version of Margaret Thatcher? I do not believe that Clinton will suddenly turn into a liberal when elected any more than Obama did. That is a false hope. There is a conflict between the symbolic weight of the Presidency and the work of political leader, chief executive, and commander in chief. Maybe the symbolism is more important at this time, and I believe Clinton’s conservative feminism to be genuine which a major thing and may push her to the left – one cannot take issues of home and family seriously without also addressing inequality of wealth -, but letting the big money further consolidate its hold on power, taking more steps on the road to a formal class system, is going to hard to be accept, especially for younger voters, who will come to the realization that they are never going to be well off. That is the stuff of revolution.

Foreign policy and domestic immigration policy may dominate both the election and the next Presidency, making all these issues moot. Clinton supporters hope she will turn into an economic liberal, which seems unlikely, and Sanders supporters hope he will somehow be able to get sweeping reforms through a Congress that has charged off a cliff to the right, which also seems unlikely. Maybe the best possible outcome is for Hillary Clinton to become President, the Republicans to self-destruct, and Sanders go on to found a new liberal party. But that also is a hope, and matters can go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye.

That racism is the biggest factor in explaining how we got where we are doesn’t imply that present-day racial animus is the strongest force that holding the status quo in place. Whites despise poor whites. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/who-turned-my-blue-state-red.html

Historically speaking, it might be the case that racism has a lot to do with why whites came to despise poor whites. But once that trend was established it took on a life of it’s own. Even if you waved a magic wand the eliminated all the racism, we would still hate the poor. If you waved the same wand to give us a classless society, we would still be racists. If you waved it twice to eliminate all class distinctions and anti-black racism, we’d still probably be imperialist xenophobes (note, for example, skepticism of immigration reform among working-class blacks http://prospect.org/article/how-african-americans-view-immigration-reform ). We have more than one problem, that’s just how life works.

Meanwhile, Sanders’ candidacy may well be derailed by lack of support from non-whites. But I’m deeply skeptical of the idea that this is because Sanders disrespects Obama. For one thing, it doesn’t explain why Latinos fail to support Sanders, despite Obama’s approval rating among them being much lower than it is among African Americans. For another, HRC’s contempt for Obama in 2008 was much greater than anything Sanders has demonstrated since then.

There’s a much simpler explanation. Minorities have much more to lose under a GOP regime than white Democrats do. They’ve been familiar with Clinton for a long time, so they–reasonably, perhaps correctly–think she’s a safer bet against the GOP.

“does she have no friends or relatives who are struggling with student debt, low-paying or nonexistent jobs?”
as PlutoniumKun and The Raven say, almost certainly not.. David Brooks has shown the way to riches for a pundit is by comforting the comfortable. It’s hard for the rest of us to know to what extent the bars of the gilded cage exclude reality.
The son of a friend of mine just graduated with a degree in IT and logistics management. He’s making $40k per annum. That’s about what I made in 1990 as an underpaid immigrant fresh off the boat (well, airplane really). He is the lucky one – another acquaintance, top-of-class graduate from a good MBA program four years ago, is still working retail at considerably less than that. We’re not exactly among the Morlocks here, these are people who thought they would be middle-class, but find themselves poor. I’d be radicalized too.

“Has she not read an American newspaper or magazine in the last twelve months?”
Even if she had read articles on inequality in those publications, most of them would have been denialism or apologetics. It’s easy to miss the few that are not, when your salary depends on it.

“Is the cognitive divide between the have’s and the have-not’s that stark, that extreme?”
Yep. As witness, the amazement, shock and awe at Trump’s success..
My wife had to endure the enthusiastic encomiums of a Trumpeter old lady. When asked her opinion my wife said, “. I’m an immigrant. Why would I vote for Trump ?”
and a thousand flowers of cognitive dissonance bloomed..

“Is the cognitive divide between the have’s and the have-not’s that stark, that extreme?”

Yes!!! Absolutely!!!

Ronan@50: in 1980 that would have been $14,000/yr (deflator based on US core CPI data.) A steady 2-3% inflation rate has eroded our intuition about a good salary. Many liberal economists seem to think that a modest inflation rate is a good thing; I’m not too clear on why. But it sure makes negotiating salaries harder.

It’s true that Schwartz graduated from the tony Brearley School in Manhattan (annual tuition: $43,000) in 2005 and Yale (annual tuition, fees, and costs: $65,000) in 2009, whereupon, after a few detours, she landed a spot at The New Yorker, from which she reports on Paris (cost: priceless). But does she have no friends or relatives who are struggling with student debt, low-paying or nonexistent jobs?

Having known a few people like from this kind of trajectory personally, my experience is that generally they don’t.

As a voter north of twice thirty, south of thrice twenty-five, I have to ask: why would this young woman intentionally, voluntarily, make herself sound like a retired British Colonel, ex India, writing to the Times of London to complain about the Dagos taking over the City?

What a horrible human being she makes herself sound. I hope that some of her age-mates smack her around on Twitter until she comes off it.

I teach at a community college. My students are mostly Latino and working class. The younger students have never expressed much interest in politics before this year. This semester, I’ve actually encountered some strong interest in the election because of Sanders. Why? Because they are worried and angry about the economy. As Corey Robin points out, the economic recovery has not been there for younger, poorer Americans. Pundits and the like enjoy making snide remarks about the Millennials without taking serious the issues facing this generation. Why? It has much to do with class as it does age. The Hillary supporters I encounter are not only older but more financial secure. They like the status quo.

Easily the most disturbing feature of this election cycle and the Schwartz piece for me is the fact that one side (Dems) entered the cycle having first completely abandoned any possibility of offering voters a choice of candidates.

Ms. Schartz’s traumatic experiences on teh Twitter notwithstanding, her ‘article’ suggests that Sanders supporters are betraying a trust by not lining up behind their elders and the high priests and priestesses of what is and what is not allowed. Now, we can plausibly argue that all of the seventeen candidates on the Republican side are all interchangeable and that each represents a different flavor of crazy. Republicans do have a real choice and the outcome is far from settled. That’s a feature of democracy.

Rather than whine about the Sanders supporters, Schwartz and the rest of the ‘settled science’ Democrat establishment should be down on their hands and knees thanking Sanders and his gang for making the nomination process a race, not an anointing.

Schwartz and the rest of our betters may simply be too dense to grasp the difference.

And finally (really) and to provide greater context to the challenges young Andrea faces, Jack Schafer asks why a 35-year old who earns 65k per speech and earns several six-figure salaries continues to be ‘off-limits’ to the press: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/chelsea-clinton-press-213596

ZM@60: to my considerable disgust, it appears that Berniebros are a thing and not just an excuse of Clinton supporters. Apparently there are sexual harassers which are using the Sanders campaign as an excuse to harass Hillary Clinton and her supporters. That lot may just cost Sanders the election.

Consumatopia@47: “Even if you waved a magic wand the eliminated all the racism, we would still hate the poor. If you waved the same wand to give us a classless society, we would still be racists.”

Is not racism a major unspoken justification for eliminating social insurance programs? Conversely, without racism, an enormously powerful tool of class division is lost. These things are not separable in the USA. Nor is this a new observation; why else was Richard Wright a Communist? Why else was the motivation of Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign?

” Minorities have much more to lose under a GOP regime than white Democrats do. They’ve been familiar with Clinton for a long time, so they–reasonably, perhaps correctly–think she’s a safer bet against the GOP.”

That sounds so rational. Far too rational, I think, to describe actual voting motivations. In actual voting there is a great deal of identity-based intuition and just plain weirdness.

That lot may just cost Sanders the election.

Personally, I supported him because I agreed with universal health care and reining in Wall Street but since I heard Alexandra Schwartz got some abuse on Twitter I’ve decided to vote for Madam Warmonger.

The Raven@65

Such threats are reprehensible. And I recommend Glenn Greewald’s take on whether such abuse is really uniquely done by (real or fake) Sanders supporters.

https://theintercept.com/2016/01/31/the-bernie-bros-narrative-a-cheap-false-campaign-tactic-masquerading-as-journalism-and-social-activism/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/hillary-is-the-candidate_b_9168938.html
Important criticism of Hillary Clinton on foreign policy; probably should mention that Sanders also supported the Kosovo War, voted for the Iraq Liberation Act, and supported Israeli policy in Gaza; and did not oppose the overthrow of Qaddafi (perhaps he too was convinced by Susan Rice and Samantha Powers that Qaddafi would have committed genocide). I am not sure Jeffrey Sachs has a favored candidate in the Democratic Primary, though Sanders does not support NATO expansion. I do not think this difference has been been really discussed in the debates yet–is this true? So far, the Democratic Primary is coming down to differences in health care reform and the regulation of Wall Street.

It’s also not true that the discussion is focused “exclusively” on rape threats. If you read Anita Sarkeesian etc. on this, e.g., there are plenty of death threats. It’s just that the violence—including of the death threat variety—is (usually) sexualized, on which see oldster directly above.

oldster @57 *applause*

Longer I watch these cycles, the more I am convinced that the positionings of people – evidenced in their punditry, etc. – are correlated to their distance from the Great Depression. I believe the Depression struck so much wider than anything since (bar WWII which is a different matter), and taught far more people humility. That humility and respect for the struggles of others fades as living experience and stories from friends and relatives literally dies.

It’s also not true that the discussion is focused “exclusively

Okay, “almost exclusively” or “primarily”

It shows that what drives the attacks is not the content of what the speakers are saying, or their political affiliation, but primarily sexism and misogyny.

Threatening rape shows that whereas threatening non-sexual forms of violence doesn’t? (I’m not saying this is necessarilywrong)

Unfortunately, for some people, the Sanders campaign is an excuse to shout their misogyny, like drunk frat boys. They are uninvited bad publicity for Sanders. I’m sure Sanders and his campaign do not support them and wish they would go away, but, regardless, they reflect on Sanders.

If discussions of class ignore discussions of racism and misogyny — and at times they do — then people of color and women are going to eye anyone who talks about class issues with suspicion, until they prove their bona fides. If we mean to break the hold of supremacism in all its forms, racism and misogyny have to be included in the discussion. Sanders is aware of this, but he’s still going to have to make his case, and his first national campaign may not be enough time to do it. I am having trouble believing I have to explain that sex, race, and class issues are intertwined in the USA. It is hardly a new insight, or a subtle one. Yet here I am writing this.

Rakesh B @70
Just read the opening graph of that Jeffrey Sachs piece. What’s a little surprising to me is not the content but *who* is writing it: I would not have thought Jeffrey Sachs would do this tone (not that there’s anything nec. wrong w the tone, I just don’t associate Sachs w these anti-mil/ind-complex pieces). He usually writes about development (was a big proponent and initiator w others of the Millennium Dev. Goals) and global warming etc. Maybe he ties the two issues together in the course of the piece… wdn’t be hard to do (i.e. more money spent on mil and related matters means, generally speaking, less available to be spent on development).

It’s an easier case for her, since she is a woman with a history of feminism in her politics. I think, really, that the feminism is where her strongest political loyalties lie. I think toughness — and she really is tough, in a less sexist world, I think she might have become career military — her sex, and her feminism are likely to win the election for her.

Also, much voting behavior is not rational and this is never moreso in a propaganda-saturated environment like we live in.

Rakesh Bhandari@83: back in the 1960s, they actually did it in California, so it was possible. Many academics think that the US public higher ed system, like the US health care system, has enormously bloated expenses. But then, in the USA, there are always attempts to make the not-very-rich pay for their own charity and, as a certain squirrel was wont to say, “That trick never works.”

The idea that young voters would support Sanders in order to get free tuition sounds much too like the usual Republican line that voters (with hints of these voters being black) vote for Democrats to get “free stuff.” My social circle is mostly over 45 but I do know some young Sanders supporters. Their reasons for supporting Sanders overlap with my own; inequality, the environment, wars past and future and social justice in general.

I’ve been surprised that Clinton is running such a tone-deaf campaign. I haven’t seen any effort to triangulate Sanders, a la Bill C., by adopting some of his positions. Her campaign reeks of DC insider entitlement. Bringing up her close relationship with Henry Kissinger in the last debate was simply bizarre and is further evidence of her being out-of-touch with a lot of Democrats of all ages.

Sorry Dr. Hilarious, I only read until “tone deaf” :)

When I Was a Prisoner in Iran, I Came to Fear the Sound of Hillary Clinton’s Voice
Why did she prod Tehran when four Americans’ freedom was still on the line?
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/iran-hillary-clinton-hostages

I have never been a fan of John Kerry, but the contrast is remarkable.

Because online abuse is real and often very damaging, it can be used to allow those who are actually perpetrating violence to claim the mantle of victimhood. In this upended moral cosmology, calling someone names online is a significantly greater sin than starting a war, and only slightly less egregious than holding your wine glass by the bowl. We saw something very similar last year, during the debate over British military intervention in Syria. As the British state whipped itself into another destructive war, the pro-Corbyn campaign group Momentum was met with widespread censure for “bullying” MPs who supported the bombing, employing such insidious tactics as encouraging voters to make use of their right to petition their representatives, or correctly identifying people who were pushing for war as being warmongers. To kill people with airborne explosives is fine, as long as you do so politely; trying to prevent this with undefined uncouthness is unacceptable. The morality of war is no longer an issue, not while there are bullies or Bernie Bros in our midst.

The Raven @82: Unfortunately, for some people, the Sanders campaign is an excuse to shout their misogyny, like drunk frat boys. They are uninvited bad publicity for Sanders. I’m sure Sanders and his campaign do not support them and wish they would go away, but, regardless, they reflect on Sanders.

Glenn Greenwald, from the post cited @69: Have pro-Clinton journalists and pundits been subjected to some vile, abusive, and misogynistic rhetoric from random, anonymous internet supporters of Sanders who are angry over their Clinton support? Of course they have. Does that reflect in any way on the Sanders campaign or which candidate should win the Democratic primary? Of course it does not. The reason pro-Clinton journalists are targeted with vile abuse online has nothing specifically to do with the Sanders campaign or its supporters. It has everything to do with the internet. There are literally no polarizing views one can advocate online — including criticizing Democratic Party leaders such as Clinton or Barack Obama — that will not subject one to a torrent of intense anger and vile abuse. It’s not remotely unique to supporting Hillary Clinton.

Women’s. Lives. Matter.

Please, folks — guys — stop making my point for me.

I agree with Bob, I think. For my part,I don’t know why the expectation is to take every claim of online abuse by journalists and talking heads at face value. I’ve seen enough examples of their obfuscation, misframing of debates, unverified accusations and bald faced lying , and don’t think the left are any more trustworthy than the right, to err on the side of scepticism without evidence.

Women’s. Lives. Matter.

Does this include Iraqi women and welfare recipients, to name just a few million?

For my part,I don’t know why the expectation is to take every claim of online abuse by journalists and talking heads at face value.

It’s a special case of the general rule that we presume that people are telling the truth unless we have at least some evidence that they may not be. Because the vast majority of statements are true in detail and implication, and by presuming otherwise without good reason we’d be leading ourselves into error.

This is not something that I would have thought an adult of sound mind would need to have pointed out to them.

[if by “special case” you mean, “an example of the case where none of the specific details affect the general rule”. Or, in other words, A not-special case. A case.]

It’s a special case of the general rule that we presume that people are telling the truth unless we have at least some evidence that they may not be. Because the vast majority of statements are true in detail and implication, and by presuming otherwise without good reason we’d be leading ourselves into error. This is not something that I would have thought an adult of sound mind would need to have pointed out to them..

“Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.”
Benjamin Franklin

not something that I would have thought an adult of sound mind would need to have pointed out to them.

You (C. Street) seem to have difficulty writing a comment without implying that someone is or may be cognitively impaired, psychologically v. abnormal, emotionally v. disturbed, or mentally unsound. It gets tiresome. There are such people but I’m pretty sure Ronan — though I disagree with him from time to time and like every commenter here, including me, he can be annoying on occasion — is not one of them.

@ 30 Thanks for referring us to Cassidy. Here’s his latest advice for Clinton:

“Although it might sound a bit counter-intuitive, Clinton needs to return to the strategy that allowed her to eke out a narrow victory in Iowa. It will serve her well as the primary moves on to larger, more-populous states with more nonwhite voters. This strategy, rather than trying to meet Sanders head-on, focuses on acknowledging his good intentions and questioning whether he can deliver on his promises. It involves having Clinton emphasize her own program, which is carefully targeted at middle-class voters, and her experience in foreign policy, as well as her support for civil rights. Above all, it means appealing to Democratic voters—moderates and liberals—who are terrified of the prospect of the Republicans retaking the White House and controlling all three branches of government.”

Fear, fear, and fear – followed by much more fear – without even an iota of hope. I’d love to see Sanders win the nomination and offer Americans a real choice.

It also showed Sanders doing better than Clinton against individual Republicans, which gives the argument from electability a new and interesting cast.

Great, sounds like Sanders has the best chances to become president and some people are getting really desperate to avoid that. Only downside is, there is no chance any American under 25 will manage to use the term socialism correct now.

“Employment rates for 25-54 year-old’s have yet to recover to their pre-recession levels.”

Hmm, the link you give as “support” for that claim doesn’t actually support anything. So let’s look at bls. Technically, you’re right. Unemployment rate in Dec 2007 for this age group was 4%. Today it’s… 4.2%

Ahe age group 25-54 is the largest group of workers out of all the categorizations. Which means that if you have the unemployment rate come down from close to 10% down to 5%, then a pretty significant chunk HAS TO come out of that 24-54, largest, group.

Of course it’s possible you were referring to the employment-population ratio. Then you should’ve been explicit since otherwise it’s a bit misleading.

Hix #116: “…sounds like Sanders has the best chances to become president…”

I don’t think it sounds like that, at all!

I think Sanders has a good chance in the general against Trump or Cruz (for personality reasons) — but NOT against a more “normal” GOP candidate.

Individual Dem vs. Repub matchup polls at this early date are meaningless.

Kasich would SLAUGHTER Sanders for example. Kasich would be the strongest contender against Hillary.

Consider: Kasich is a GOP moderate who more or less SUPPORTS Obamacare. Kasich currently has 70% approval in his 2nd-term as governor of Ohio, a critical swing state. 18 years in the House, chairman of the Budget Committee, strong budget hawk.

It should be easy for Kasich to put somebody in the VP slot who helps take Florida, the other critical swing state.

Kasich’s televised debate performance is still a shaky mess, but it’s been getting better.

Months ago, after Scott Walker tanked, I wrote in DeLong’s comments that I had a gut sense that Kasich would get the GOP nomination. Why? Because usually, all the crap dies down, and the GOP goes with an electable candidate.

Kasich understands US politics better than anyone on the GOP stage. He looks set to come out of New Hampshire in 3rd place. This will start to improve his polls elsewhere.

The mainstream media, or what remains of it, is already speaking favorably of Kasich. Part of this favor is perhaps prompted by the GOP Establishment, which seeks a knight to champion against the Trumpster and the Cruzer.

If Kasich gets the GOP nomination, I looks to me like a very, very difficult November for Clinton and a disaster for Bernie.

Kasich is fervently anti-abortion – no dice.

Engels@122: (corrected link)

I think short summary of that article might be that Hillary Clinton is perceived by young women as a conservative and, in fact, they are correct. They also don’t appreciate her genuine achievements and strengths, which is a shame. I am not comfortable with a Clinton candidacy, but I am not at all certain that she is not the best choice.

@126 It’s good he said that, but I wouldn’t call him a mensch, it was both the right thing to do and the self-interested thing for him to do.

Novakant #123: “Kasich is fervently anti-abortion – no dice.”

No problem for him in the primaries, and voters have tended to overlook it in the general election. Examples: Reagan, Bush.

Lee @121: the other critical swing state

Sixteen years after the 2000 election showed yet again the utter irrationality of the Electoral College system, we’re still talking about swing states. If a fraction of the energy devoted to blaming Nader had been directed instead at democratizing our preposterous electoral arrangements, there might be some chance of changing them by the end of the 21st century. Now it looks like we’re stuck with them at least until the 25th.

So Trump is saying drug addiction and job loss are the result of Mexicans, trade deficits are the consequence of Chinese currency manipulation, and the safety of the country comes from squeamish humanitarian opposition to the enthusiastic use of torture and exclusion acts in immigration policy. Trump thinks he is Captain America. And the polls are predicting a double digit win in NH and a win in SC for Cap’n America.

I am not as confident as Lee is that the General Electorate constitutes an independent variable in relation to the outcome, aka who is elected in November. Elaborate analysis of the day-by-day minutiae of campaigns can serve as an hypnotic trance, so focusing attention that we fail to consider and reflect on the obvious.

In 2008, the nomination fight got Dems het up, but disappointed Clinton supporters reconciled themselves to Obama pretty smoothly. McCain was a placeholder candidate, who self-destructed on schedule. The vote was barely more than a ritual confirmation of what the setup dictated. In 2012, Romney was a gift to Obama — Obama’s campaign had an embarrassment of riches in the Mormon vulture capitalist tax dodger who had been mean to his dog. Obama’s campaign managed a narrow but certain margin of victory and avoided straying into populist policy promises.

As long as Clinton is the Democratic nominee, the Republican establishment does not care much who the Republican candidate is. Clinton is enough of a conservative on policy and a clumsy enough politician that with Republican control of the House, it’s all good from their perspective. Sanders is not worrisome as an individual, because he is an individual — never really been a team player politician and does not have anything like the skills necessary to be an especially effective President, but he has introduced again the idea of a mass-movement politics from the left. That is potentially a problem.

As long as we still mostly do go thru the motions of letting people vote and counting the ballots after, there is some remote chance that people escape the propaganda corral setup by the corporate mass media and the various voter suppression and counting subversion efforts and, instead of choosing from the menu they are handed, actually enable a politician to become a spokesman for the common interest and for honest reason. That’s not Sanders I guess, but the possibility comes in his wake and others may follow, and not just in the Presidential lottery.

One thing Trump has revealed on the Republican side is how ready a large number of base Republican voters are to escape the propaganda corral. These are not politically astute people — they are as ready as ever for crazy demagogic nonsense, but it is remarkable and significant, I think, that Bush cannot fool them, that the 2010 crop of dictatorial daddy governors the Republicans put in (in large part because Obama abandoned and betrayed OFA and Democratic party building generally) are looking so frayed and unappealing. Trump has shown the love-hate they have with their media step-mom, Fox News.

Lee is probably right; Kasich may be the go-to guy if the establishment fears Clinton is not going to be the Democrat — Kasich is the least damaged of those authoritarian governors. (Still pretty evil, all in all; the establishment likes him for reasons that are not good for the rest of us.) And, someone like Kasich will emerge if Clinton ceases to be viable. (Even if she gets the nomination, it is not clear to me that the Democratic Party holds together.)

I would expect Sanders to lose the General election. The process is too corrupted to process thru a candidate of popular support and even if it were not, I am not sure a voting majority can be motivated to come to the polls and vote for decency and sense. But, maybe the loss of innocent hope that his failure entails is a good thing. Our votes stopped mattering altogether in 2000 and the American people became ugly on 9 / 11. It is time people faced up to the truth of American politics in the time of plutocracy and imperial decline and the consequences of lies and corruption. Maybe, that’s just another step, like the phases of grief, thru which we must progress on our way to full acceptance of an authoritarian state run for a narrow slice of globalised oligarchs and their support staff.

Lee, Kasich put a gag order on rape councillors that forbids them to even mention abortion as an option. He also did everything he could to shut down abortion clinics.

We’re Bush or Reagan that extreme? Anyway, I don’t see many women voting for him in these times, so he’s not a serious contender

geo @134

@132: Milanovic is quite right, except for that very odd phrase about America haveing “shown itself capable of solving problems peacefully.” What on earth can he mean by that? As the whole of left-wing historiography shows (see Steve Fraser’s recent The Age of Acquiescence for another brilliant demonstration), for two centuries America has NOT solved its problems, but rather has suppressed them violently or evaded them through the manipulation of consent.

It was fairly clear to me from the context of the quotation that Milanovic was referring to the U.S.’s having fought one extremely bloody civil war but otherwise not having resorted to armed civil conflict on a periodic basis. While Milanovic’s phrase “solving problems” is too strong, would you, geo, deny that, for example, actual progress was made, albeit late in the day, in dismantling Jim Crow (i.e. de jure segregation)? And that that did not require a full-scale civil war, though it did require a (largely non-violent) civil rights movement that was often met by violent opposition?

The Chomskyesque claim that the U.S. for two centuries has either “evaded” its problems or “suppressed them by the manipulation of consent” ignores the gains made by popular movements in the areas of e.g. civil rights, labor, and environment. The gains have been partial and in some cases fragile, and they have not led to the kind of society one wd ideally like, to understate things. Nonetheless, to assert that U.S. history from the founding to the present has been nothing but the ‘manipulation of consent’ is wrong, imho.

Corey @ 133

There’s a term, I understand, that the anti-feminists use (I try not to go to those sites), that indicates the idea that white liberals are being cuckolded by black men. If I were you, I wouldn’t be playing into that idea.

What I got from your post was disgust at the idea of Schwarz admiring a black man dancing, and disgust at Schwarz calling a white elder stiff and boring. She was talking about youth, not race. No one denies, I’d think, that a lot of people found Obama’s relative youth appealing, as with Bill Clinton 14 years earlier. Your idea that dancing is something associated with blackness says more about you than about Schwarz.

I can’t read your mind. If you’re misunderstood, maybe you should write more clearly.

Perhaps “theory” is the wrong word. Let’s say that we’re working towards an egalitarian, low-violence, ecologically sustainable society. Economics, even left economics, really has very little to say about that, and almost nothing that’s widely accepted about the sustainable part. Left politics is very confused about the role of the state. And the left reaches for the old standards every time: everyone has to have a job (no, really most people should be unemployed and it’s going to have to happen eventually), everyone should go to free college (not unless they’re interested: college is now largely a positional social good), everyone has to participate in democratic decision-making (most areas of life really shouldn’t be subject to democratic decision-making), the bad guys are a small class of powerful wealthy people (really those people would be powerless unless they drew on broad social agreement).

Sanders is a socialist and this thread says that 90% of something can be explained by vulgar Marxism. If we were living in the 19th century then those terms would actually mean something vital. I’m glad that Sanders is making his run, but …

Novakant #139: “Kasich put a gag order on rape councillors that forbids them to even mention abortion as an option. He also did everything he could to shut down abortion clinics.”

Good ammo for Hillary, because if the Repub nominee is Kasich, she is going to need all the ammo she can get!

However, the US polls on “pro-choice/pro-life” bounce around something like:
Females 50/45
Males 45/50
“Pro-choice” has gained a little in the last year.

That hides a big gray area, because some people on both sides are willing to live with some restrictions, and Gallup does some breakouts of this, in addition to gender, age, etc.

If the Kasich restrictions were posed for gov’t funded clinics, that might have more support among voters.

And the left reaches for the old standards every time: everyone has to have a job (no, really most people should be unemployed and it’s going to have to happen eventually), everyone should go to free college (not unless they’re interested: college is now largely a positional social good), everyone has to participate in democratic decision-making (most areas of life really shouldn’t be subject to democratic decision-making), the bad guys are a small class of powerful wealthy people (really those people would be powerless unless they drew on broad social agreement).

Those straw men who keep arguing with you just keep on getting dumber and dumber.

the truth of her claim(s) doesn’t depend on her class background

Her credibility as a spokesperson for her generation does though.

Speaking of youth….In JAMA Psychiatry it was estimated that 90 percent of heroin users were white men and women and they are relatively young — their average age was 23. And three-quarters said they first started not with heroin but with prescription opioids like OxyContin. No Republican was asked to reflect on why those “racial” demographics have made heroin abuse a matter of concern.
The Republican discussion was appropriately entirely supply side-oriented: the absurd, implied claim was basically that Obama has told the DEA to allow heroin to flow freely over the border. There was no discussion of the demand side, i.e., how to stop prescription abuse of opioids that leads to addiction –Jeb Bush may have had a thing or two to say here. Ted Cruz shared his family tragedy but said nothing about what kinds of treatment programs could work. Kasich and Christie must know that the problem can’t be solved with tougher supply-side policies alone at this point, but the ground was ceded the ground to those who wanted to blame only drug dealers from Mexico. We’d be better off with someone carrying out the work of Vivek Murthy.

Clinton’s margin of victory in Iowa after the internal audit: 0.25.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/iowa-sanders-clinton-audit-218905

What kind of headlines might we be reading had Sanders edged Iowa by a similar margin and then stomped on HRC in New Hampshire? Indeed, how does the underdog who came within less than a percentile of overcoming the ‘inevitable’ candidate in her first national challenge end up being portrayed as ‘un-electable?’

The entire weight of Goldman Sachs, Big-Pharma-Big Insurance, and Big-Ed is going to the thrown into convincing minority voters in the Carolinas and Nevada that Bernie Sanders represents a victory for the KKK. Would the Clintons and their allies suggest/imply/argue that Sanders doesn’t care about minorities women?

You betcha

notsneaky 118: The employment rate in US has declined steeply during the recession and has only partially recovered. https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LREM25TTUSM156S

The employment rate is not just the complement of the unemployment rate. The Unemployment rate has indeed fallen to pre-recessionlevels but the employment rate is still lower because more people have stopped looking for work (i.e. tha labor force participation rate has declined).

132: ” The recent quasi-dynastic look of American politics, which the country shares with India, Greece, the Philippines, and Pakistan, but which is unknown in other rich democracies, is a symptom of a deeply rooted problem with the American political system.”

That “dynastic” thing is quite overrated.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-kasich-new-hampshire-primary_us_56b7fe1ce4b01d80b246cedb

Next opinion poll on this? Tomorrow night’s vote.

Here’s another reason (that I) voters soured on Clinton. Hasn’t come out yet in anything I’ve read. Many here don’t know about/have forgotten the accusations of racism leveled at traditional Democrat supporters who opposed O. http://www.politico.com/story/2008/01/racial-tensions-roil-democratic-race-007845

Indeed, Jacob Weisberg explicitly accused whites unwilling to sign on for the hope and change boondoggle of racism. In the primary battles exchanges became vicious and personal very quickly. I recall at least one lifelong Dem writing that she and her husband were literally in tears over the ‘you must be racist’ accusations leveled by Weisberg and others. God alone knows how unpleasant the caucuses must have been for those openly accused of being racists for failing to stand publicly in support of Drone Strike. HRC found themselves accused of racism, yet remained loyal to Clinton and took the heat only to witness HRC first play the victim card and then act like nothing at all had happened. For me twas a revelation in realpolitik.

My guess is that many of HRC’s former supporters were sickened by the cynicism of the Clinton cartel, but would have been willing to overlook this and her vote on Iraq had HRC been a force of positive change within the O administration. Instead, we got Syria, Libya, the Ukraine, 153 million raised from corporations for the Clinton foundation, and Cheney level secrecy. As hostile as I was to O, I’m not convinced HRC would have been one bit better. The anointing of HRC and the absence of any competition from anyone but Sanders simply confirms my negative impression of the Democratic party at the national level. And I’m sure I’m not alone.

Dipper #164: “first primary to take place in a state that can be regarded as a good indicator?”

Good question, never the same answer, this year I haven’t the foggiest. Possibles: States have control over when their own primaries can be, and since US elections are generally on Tuesdays, there is a “Super Tuesday” where a lot of states have it on the same day: 12 states this year on March 1 — useful but not crucial… Ohio and Florida, two big “swing states”, are both two weeks later, March 15… But this is an interesting year on both sides, and maybe it will go further. Indeed if Trump starts getting a serious challenge to his dominance so far, he may contest the GOP nomination at the GOP convention July 18-21. US history is full of this stuff; Mencken took especial cackling glee. So, buy plenty of popcorn (or your own national equivalent)… Good calendar format for the whole season here (also smartphone optimized):
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/election_dates/

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/feeling-the-yern-why-one-millennial-woman-would-rather-go-to-hell-than-vote-for-hillary-8253224

Bruce Wilder: ” In many ways, his politics is nostalgia for the New Deal and the 1950s or early 1960s…Actual structural reform…would be de-stabilizing for the whole economy.”

It certainly is not expressed even remotely as nostalgia by his supporters; read the remarkable, hilarious, well-written piece from yesterday in the Village Voice, link at #169.

Bernie Sanders is calling primarily for breaking up the banks, free school and single-payer. These policies do not have to destabilize the economy. More likely there will be increases in innovation, small business formation, incomes, and consumer satisfaction.

Rich Pulchasky #172: “The left as a whole still seems to me to fully buy in to the idea of a full employment society…”

And still going on about the labor unions! I have been trying to point out this problem for years, to almost no response!

Recently Brad DeLong, remarkably not of the Left, has begun to consider some of the psychological ramifications in his discussions of how (I hope I express this properly) zero-marginal cost infotech causes a mismeasurement of productivity because the new greater network connections (and greater consumer utilities) are no longer matched to new consumer income and spending — thus, no longer measured in the monetized GDP.

How to solve it? Theoretically we could do massive taxation of, and redistribution from, the top classes.

But then theoretically (let’s forget the political problems!) we, at the bottom, will be mowing each other’s lawns, with no productivity gains, while the money keeps recycling back to the top, via higher market prices for high-productivity goods and services (infotech, medical tech — things still kept “scarce” by being privately owned & produced), + higher market prices for the only truly scarce items that remain for us, i.e. mostly real estate.

Also, we will have AI robots to mow our lawns — and why not?

Because, it is said, psychology: Most people really WANT work for self-worth; they tie self-worth somewhat to money returns; and they want the monetized system of labor to prevent free-riding by others.

There is the additional case: the anti-technological parts of the environmental movement incorrectly equate all labor-saving technology to entropic degradation of the ecosystem. Therefore, they champion labor not only for self-worth, but to save the environment. But of course it need not be; not all technology needs to hurt the biosphere.

Even without adding this environmentalist error, the psychology of self-worth that is inherent in labor is quite deep. It looks to have begun as a social norm at around the same moment as the monetization of society, in about the 6th Century BC. Slaves could buy their freedom, and so on. 2500 years later, when the commercial market system became concretized in the public mind in the 18th Century AD, a further come-on was added: By your own efforts, you not only maintained your place in the grand scheme of things: You could now ascend in a material hierarchy. Strong psychological reinforcement.

This long history was required and ensured by real physical scarcity: we needed to work for our daily bread, to invent mechanical looms to weave, and so on. The era of scarcity is finally, remarkably, ending. (This shouldn’t be a surprise, by now. Many thinkers particularly since the 19th Century have come to the same conclusion.)

Scarcity is coming to a close, perhaps even in the case of healthcare. We finally have the right tools for the job, after millennia. The new medical technological strategy {biotech + nanotech + genomics + computation + machine learning} is going to make medical care finally as cheap as bubblegum. Give it about 20 years.

@3 – CoreyRobin, this Vox article would seem to suggest that the same generational pattern of Bernie support holds true for black voters, although to a lesser extent.

Bruce Wildwer #174: “Neoliberal policy is adjusting and preparing in fairly brutal ways that the left barely acknowledges.”

Specifically how?

Lee A. Arnold: “Most people really WANT work for self-worth; they tie self-worth somewhat to money returns; and they want the monetized system of labor to prevent free-riding by others.”

I would rephrase the first as people really want a way to look down on other people to boost their self-worth, and an easy way to do this is to tell themselves that they work and others don’t. I have my doubts about whether most people outside of the professional class really think of their jobs as sources of self-worth. Consumption in our society provides self-worth, though, and jobs indirectly lead to consumption so there is that.

For the second, yes. I remember quite well the storm of crap that ensued here when I suggested that maybe it wasn’t a big deal if student lawyers copied each other’s notes, all reinforced by stern instructions from the poster that it was all really about something else. People hate free-riders and they can find any rationalization they want to justify their hate for someone who’s getting something for free or for people who insist on giving out stuff for free.

Perhaps I’m too cynical, but would *any* of the likely Republican nominees seriously oppose torture, killing terrorists’ families, or sexism? If everyone is, like me, assuming not. I also don’t think it’s egregiousness is novel or surprising. So maybe there’s just not much to discuss.

On the “p-word”: my guess is that it’s origin is in the word “pussycat”, meaning cowardly lion, rather than originally referring to anatomy. But I don’t think it matters, since sexists and homophobes so regularly use it that in practice it has clearly sexist connotations.

The only thing moderately shocking is that the media pretends to be shocked and offended when he repeats crass language for views he expresses openly in every other way to that same media’s unconcealed hilarity and delight.

Rich Puchalsky @ #179, Is it your theory that people hate free riders, not because they don’t hate cheaters, but because 1. They didn’t think of how to cheat and get away with it, themselves? and/or, 2. A free-rider’s success deprives them of someone else to look down upon?

Whoa! Bernie is ticking upwards in South Carolina:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/sc/south_carolina_democratic_presidential_primary-4167.html

TM: “What is your point? What is your last sentence supposed to mean?”

It seems to be fairly clearly written to me. “The left as a whole still seems to me to fully buy in to the idea of a full employment society, and has no effective way of dealing with the revolt of the people who it thinks of itself as serving.” You quote Krugman as pointing out that the decline in numbers of coal mining jobs will be more than offset by the rise in the number of solar energy jobs. OK. Will those solar energy jobs be concentrated in West Virginia? Or will the bottom drop out of the local economy, as I originally wrote?

The whole idea that everything is OK for ordinary people because one kind of job will be replaced by another kind of job is a neoliberal idea. It’s the creative destruction of capitalism, buggy whip makers being replaced by automobile makers, etc etc, Neoliberals are not conservatives. Just because conservatives falsely say that Obama is destroying everything does not mean that it is true that everything is OK.

@183 – the free rider thing is a pretty well established finding in the social sciences/psychology literature. I believe there’s been some work looking at primates also which found similar things.

As I understand it it’s about protecting the coherence of the herd/groups. What’s striking about the law students copying notes is that in a less atomized (and weird) culture than the US there would be no problem with that. Problems would only emerge if some students were taking advantage, but not giving back in some fashion.

Can the Steinem/Albright thing also be class based – both of those women, like Hillary, are very successful and, I assume, wealthy; I doubt either of them has had to worry seriously about a bill in a while

My objection wasn’t so much to the “people want to prevent free-riding” part as it was to the “people really want work for self-worth” part.

As for why people hate free-riders, I have no idea whether most of it is from general characteristics of primates: I think it’s mostly cultural. At present, in the U.S., hatred of free riders is a way to bolster self-worth via scorning a class of other people. As an article linked in another thread pointed out, white people have moved easily from open racial hatred of black people to open hatred of white people who don’t work. Similar function, but the second is currently respectable while the first isn’t. Hatred of free riders also works to preserve the idea that meritocratic social status positioning is a fine way to set up social hierarchies: I vaguely remember that the grading curve was mentioned as a reason why it would hurt someone to share notes — the grading curve is the exemplar of academia as job certificate and has nothing to do with academic values of learning, thinking, or passing on knowledge.

So what is at stake in the Democratic primary except the question of who is more electable? Sanders voted for Clinton’s crime bill, has raised Wall Street money through the Democratic Party, and has a modest unworkable plan to reform Wall Street (according to Noah Smith). I just hope that critical critics don’t want the less electable Democrat to win the nomination so that they can have more critical criticism to write.

Kidneystones is on the right track. You need to separate work (conscious productive activity perhaps) from labour (exertion which isn’t rewarding in itself[?]) or jobs (sale of control of one’s activities for a certain time to a wealthy person or legal person for money[?]). Once you do this things get a bit clearer and the shouting match gets a bit quieter.

NB. noone I can think of on the Left (as opposed to liberal centre-left perhaps) in 2016 holds the straw man positions Rich is attacking (comme d’habitude). Google basic income please.

And it looks like Kasich is coming in 2nd in NH. Really not good for the Democrats, whether Bern or Hill. Sometimes I hate being right. There is no glee in Leeville.

@ 198 bad robot. You put your finger right in the wound. The challenge we face isn’t one of depleted resources and apocalypse. It’s depleted opportunities for ‘meaningful’ employment with few incentives/opportunities for mobility/individual growth. Hence, the need to expand virtual worlds and legalize drugs to keep the masses docile.

This is the best: (via the NYT)

“…Even so, there were a few silver linings for Mrs. Clinton. While Mr. Sanders bested her among all age groups younger than 45, the two candidates polled evenly among voters aged 45 to 64. And Mrs. Clinton won the support of voters 65 and older. And, though Mrs. Clinton lost nearly every income group, she did carry voters in families earning over $200,000 per year.” Oops!

Lee A Arnold @ 197

You did call it. I saw his shtick on Morning Joe and then in his thank you NH speech, and it is well-crafted to win the general election. If it looks like Clinton will fail, the Republican establishment will want to put Kasich in. It will be interesting to see how it is engineered.

Lee, Bruce

Just as God is on the side of the big battalions, so the polls are the pol sci person’s friend. In the Republican case, they have been pointing to Trump unwaveringly for months. If the party establishment wants Kasich, they have two weeks to persuade Bush, Cruz and Rubio to drop out (Christie can be shown the pictures and then made an offer he can’t refuse). Simply to ask the question re Cruz is to answer; and if Cruz refuses, will Rubio and Bush cooperate? Bet on Trump, for the monster has escaped the cage and only he has the food it likes.

I don’t know, but it seems pretty likely there’s no chance in hell Kasich has anything beyond ‘one guy in a strip mall handing out bumper stickers in the most populous city’ ground operations in any of the 16 states that cast ballots March 1st-March 5th.

Worrying about Kasich is interest paid on a debt that’ll never come due.

@205. Actually I would not rule out Jeb Bush who seems to have very deep pockets. Christie did what Bush’s negative ads could not do–take out his most feared competitor (and according to Krugman the most electable Republican): Marco Rubio. Cruz now hurts Kasich in SC. Jeb Bush is not worried at all if the race comes down to him and Trump. He has enough money to stick it out. Jeb! thinks he gets most of the 65% that did not vote for Trump tonight.

I am about to desist from commenting until after the US party conventions because I have to get back to my own work. Just trying to respond quickly to everyone who commented on something I was involved in here:

Kidneystones #201, about NH: I think that Sanders also got at least a 10-point spread among Dem females (higher among millennial Dem females).

Geo #202, about work: I think the point here is that a “full employment policy” is an easy way for the capitalists to keep everybody working uselessly for peanuts, while they reap all the dough.

Bruce Wilder #203: “If it looks like Clinton will fail, the Republican establishment will want to put Kasich in.” — The GOP Establishment wanted to put in a standard frontrunner starting about 5 months ago, because they DON’T want Trump or Cruz, for different internal and external reasons which are lengthy.

Rakesh Bhandari #204, about Kasich’s stage presence: Not sure what your point is, but just remember, the country voted for George W. Bush. Er, um, Twice…! Kasich is obviously is a serious politician, waited until NH then did over 100 townhalls before last night’s vote. We are now in line for “Trump v. Kasich” on the debate stage, so Kasich’s got his work cut out for him. And it may look quite low-key.

Peter T #205, about dropouts: Polls are indeed your friend (sometimes), and accordingly, Trump has stuck at a 35% approval rating among GOP voters for 2 months and is now dropping. In other words, 65% of the GOP refuses to comply with his wishes, and they are split among the others. As history is our friend too (sometimes), we will start to see the dropping out, for the “good of the party”, etc.

AH #206, about betting: 40 years ago I lost a quarter in a slot in a Reno diner and that was the end of my gambling days. If Kasich starts upticking in South Carolina, he will look likely. 6 months ago, in a comment under a John Quiggin post here, I predicted that Kasich would be the GOP nominee. Reasoning? I think that he is their strongest choice, to win.

Bruce Wilder #208, about neoliberal brutality: Okay, but you wrote, in “ways that the left barely acknowledges”, and I have read about those things. I mean, insofar as I can find time to access ANYbody, acknowledging ANYthing, what with the 500 channels and the 10 billion web pages.

Rakesh Bhandari #209, about the others: Jeb’s got his brother’s war around his neck like a millstone, and Dubya may be stumping for him in S.C. (which still likes him), so let’s see how that goes, but I think Jeb was crazy to get in the race to begin with. Christie’s own state is not happy with him, but he’s got enough sense (I think) to drop out now, and throw his support to Kasich. Cruz is the Establishment’s bane, and accordingly they will relish the takedown.

Peter T #210, on money: I think you are right.

“set your imaginations to work on practical utopian blueprints”

This is a thread about Sanders and reactions to him. In terms of electoral politics, I take Sanders’ policies to represent “the left” in America, since the number of people further left is too small to have any electoral effect.

Here’s something about what he would do about income and wealth inequality. 1) tax the rich, 2-6) jobs, 7) free college, 8) tax the rich, 9) single payer health care, 10) job benefits, 11) universal childcare, 12) unions, 13) breaking up too big to fail banks. That’s an agenda that’s far better than that of any other candidate. But there’s nothing there that differs from what I’ve described above as a left agenda that fundamentally doesn’t have a clear idea about what its eventual goal is. Its goal is primarily that we all have good jobs, so it’s “socialism” in which we are all firmly embedded in the capitalist system, just like all so-far existing socialisms.

People in general don’t want everyone to have good jobs. They want jobs as social differentiators of status. The left seems to want something that the people don’t really want. Without a forthright attack on the jobs system, I don’t see this changing.

“Even the mean-spirited person who resents the welfare queens and steak-eating-bucks the most still thinks “lazy poor person gets off own ass and welfare” is a good news story.”

That’s a story about someone moving up in social status. People like stories about people winning the lottery too, or stories about poor people marrying rich people. But not everyone can win the lottery. Stories about a lazy person starting to work are safe because they don’t challenge the hierarchy, they reinforce it.

As evidenced by the million of “what’s the matter with Kansas” kinds of analyses, people in fact do not really want good jobs. They want to be higher social status than other people, and if having bad jobs is what it takes for them to get that, then they’ll grit their teeth and take bad jobs.

“People in general don’t want everyone to have ___. They want ___ as social differentiators of status.”

Fun to fill in with alternate differentiators of status: “cars,” “sex,” “clothing,” etc.

The challenge we face isn’t one of depleted resources and apocalypse. It’s depleted opportunities for ‘meaningful’ employment with few incentives/opportunities for mobility/individual growth.

Agreed & it’s a problem for capitalism, not for humanity. Human being need work, they don’t need jobs. Capitalism was never good at providing the former and if becoming increasingly useless at providing latter too.

@213. Did you hear Kasich last year? He literally said he was in the race for the town hall meetings that he was treating as afternoon talk shows to explore personal tragedies. He sounded as if he were the Oprah or Montel of politics. Well maybe it works. It worked for Oprah, maybe it gets him the Vice Presidency so Bush can win Ohio. Or maybe he gets more. We’ll see.
I continue to be confused by the radical intellectual support for Sanders over Clinton. Sanders voted for Bill Clinton’s Crime Bill and the Commodities Modernization Act, though some of his supporters seem confused here. He voted for the strikes on Kosovo. He voted against the Iraq War but then for every round of funding for it. He supported the invasion of Afghanistan. Yes he voted against welfare reform but he lives in a state where aside from there being more cows than people those people are white and need their welfare. It seems that anti-welfare sentiment is positively correlated with the percentage of minorities living in your region. He took no risks in opposing welfare reform which was indeed horrendous.
There is no basis other than electability to choose among the Democrats. These critical critics may harbor a secret wish for a Republican victory because it will give them the opportunity to write so much critical criticism over the next eight years. Beware!

Just quickly. Sanders can’t get single payer through at this point. It’s pie-in-the-sky; and Noah Smith eviscerated his plan for financial reform, though one imagines that SEC would be more active under him. Again it comes down in the Democratic race to electability, a hugely important issue given that Trump or Bush whose favorite thinker is Charles Murray may well be the nominee.

Why is Clinton supposed to be more electable? Because she isn’t a pie-in-the-sky socialist leftist revolutionary like Sanders.

But there is no point in picking Sanders to get left wing socialist policy, because Sanders is just the same as Clinton really, so we only have electability to decide the race, and Clinton is more electable because she is so different. But the same.

I get it now.

engels’ comment #222 is for once coherent and a step above his usual links to old Onion articles, so I’ll answer it. We’re talking about American politics. This is the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world (except perhaps for North Korea), the country with the largest number of people killed by foreign wars of choice, one which routinely has police officers kill unarmed children without legal consequence, etc. As Rakesh notes upthread, one of our most popular Presidential candidates is running on what might be called a pro-torture platform. Yet according to engels none of this counts as evidence! I wonder what possibly could.

Against this the unthinking old left — the received wisdom that engels dutifully dispenses — holds that people are either fooled or ignorant. Thereby they excuse the left’s own failure to attract popular support. If people wanted a more egalitarian society, they could vote for candidates who promise to deliver one. They don’t, and it’s not because they don’t know that the rich screw over the poor and the middle class. They don’t because they value the rewards of non-egalitarian politics for them.

Against this people try Argument 101 tricks, like “You said that people are X. But some people aren’t X!'” Yes, OK, all generalizations have exceptions. The coalition that reliably votes for more egalitarian politics in the U.S. consists of racial minorities, gays, the lowest poor, and others who naturally don’t want to be at the bottom of the pyramid, and middle-class educated people, who are happy with their own intellectual and personal capital and are confident that they’ll still be some rungs up even if the rubes in flyover country can no longer bash people.

Obviously I think that this is a cultural problem, not some kind of innate human nature. Culture can be changed. The first step towards changing it is acknowledging it.

engels @224: Oh, come on.

Ah, Rakesh Bandari! Walking down that very path, you might encounter evidence that the only difference between Clinton and the much dreaded Trump is the colour of their team jerseys.* I’ve a notion you will resist the impulse to investigate that far, though. We do need our safe havens.

It would be interesting to see a serious response to steven johnson at 184 as it isn’t clear to me either why anyone’s horrified by Trump *if* they are comfortable with existing programming. Perhaps Trump’s not very practised at the dark arts of dog-whistling or maybe he’s got the performed zealotry of the new convert, or is over-compensating for not being au fait with the tribal orthodoxy, but what is it about his platform that so greatly offends the governing consensus? Is it that he’s insufficiently embarrassed or remorseful about extending present policy – to its logical conclusions? Is his shamelessness his greatest crime?

I’ve read that the study guide advises a sprint to the basest instincts for the heats, lots of star jumps and bluster before winding down with a jog to the tolerable violence of the centre for the election proper. In previous seasons, all concerned seemed to understand the importance of this custom of the spectacle, like handbags at corners it is mostly overlooked, but this year Trump has the punditry really vexed. Why?

*Plus who gets paid to attend the other’s wedding shindy. And the nose length on the mascots; that’s a big difference.

And we should really not forget how many people would lose their jobs if criminal justice reform and drug liberalization reduced the prison population, heaven forbid. That we really get this level of argument on CT frankly that’s too much for me (that and the nonsense about Kasich being on track to win the presidency, seriously are you guys nuts?).

TM: “You seem to insist that leftists can never advocate for a policy unless they can prove that not a single person is worse off under that policy.”

No. What I’m saying is that it’s rational, in a self-interested sense, for many people who the left thinks of itself as speaking for to reject the left. If someone is a middle-aged prole who has skills within one of the major industries that the left talks about eliminating, they know that the left is promising them nothing solid in exchange for losing their job and that they may very well never get another one. The disaster that that would be for that person far outweighs, for them, any likely societal disaster that would come from following bad policies.

What we’re promising them is the magic of the marketplace. We’re saying that it’s OK if you lose your job, because you’ll on average find a new, different job. That’s neoliberal whether you like it or not.

I mean, let’s be honest about it. What’s the likely result for West Virginia going to be? If they’re a GOP bastion and produce pelicans who work against everything that we believe in, are they rubes who vote against their own interest? We can do without West Virginia. But then the self-conception of the left isn’t really keeping up with what it actually is.

Several commenters: “people hate free-riders”

That is wrong. In America, it’s true to say that right wing people hate the poor and idolize the successful rich. The thing about “free riding” and “government handouts” is ex post rationalization. It is poverty, lack of economic success, that provokes hatred, not taking money from the government.

Evidence: a lot of free riding and government handouts doesn’t have any stigma attached, for example farm subsidies, tax loopholes. David Johnston’s book “Free lunch” details many ways in which the rich manage to free-ride on the general public, without causing any outrage or stigma. Trump himself is a good example, he turned several bankruptcies to his advantage. He isn’t stigmatized like the poor moocher walking away from an underwater mortgage, and the reason why is because he’s rich, not poor. I could also mention Florida governor Scott, who was CEO of a company that committed large scale Medicare fraud: people still elected him, twice. They would never vote for a poor sick guy defrauding Medicare of $100 but a millionaire getting away with the biggest Medicare fraud in history? That’s exactly the kind guy Americans want to lead their government!

There was a link above to a story about right wing people complaining about “free riders”. It is worth reading because what was the example given: Diabetic people getting free dialyses. That is not free riding! These are people who would die without the Dialysis and a lot of right-wing Americans would actually be comfortable with letting them die. Because they are poor and sick, not because they are doing anything morally repugnant.

Let’s not give the right-wingers the satisfaction to ennoble their barbaric world view with the assumption of some moral consistency. There is none, it’s really just barbarianism.

TM: “But leftist policies (infrastructure spending, education, safety net) are still the best bet”

engels has informed me that this is a straw man and that no one is arguing for it.

“But leftist policies (infrastructure spending, education, safety net) are still the best bet”

“If people wanted a more egalitarian society, they could vote for candidates who promise to deliver one.”

Just because someone promises to do something doesn’t meant they are actually going to do it.

TM: “But leftist policies (infrastructure spending, education, safety net) are still the best bet”

engels has informed me that this is a straw man and that no one is arguing for it.

No, I didn’t. (I did say your idea that The Left(TM) wants to force everyone to go to college, to have a full-time job, to attend town hall meetings, and that the capitalist class doesn’t elicit agreement from some of those it rules over were straw men).

Oh, come on.

I’m not sure what you disagree with. People who are forced to work are slaves and people who have no other option but starvation are forced. Whether it’s 14 hours a day felling trees in Siberia or 4 hours a day brewing craft beer in Palo Alto is a detail.

When you are willfully misunderstood by both engels and Rich Puchalsky, the result can be vertigo. But I’ll brave it again.

engels@249: Did you imagine that @204 I was proposing a violent revolution led by a Leninist vanguard party which would subsequently abolish all non-surplus-value-producing industries, take over ownership of all productive industries, and assign everyone work and consumption schedules according to a centrally devised Plan? Set your mind at rest. I was merely pointing out that there is plenty of 1) currently neglected useful work and 2) social surplus; hence a policy of “good [i.e., useful and well-paid] jobs for everyone” — a full employment policy — is perfectly possible in the absence of 1) unregulated private ownership of the means of production and 2) the fantastic waste of resources, in the form of “useless, even toxic” industries, necessary to support such an ownership structure. That you managed to misread this as a prescription for the Gulag is probably a tribute to your ever-vigilant anti-totalitarian imagination, which does you credit.

Rich @240: I think virtually everyone party to this discussion recognizes that “the magic of the market” is why we’re currently f*cked and therefore is not what we propose to rely on to provide those “good jobs for everyone.” Thanks, though, for reminding us that, if we were proposing that, we would be idiots. Rather, we’re suggesting that, at some period undoubtedly more distant than November 2016, a society-wide consensus will form that recognizes the cruelty and wastefulness of the unregulated market and the enormous possibilities of cooperative and transparent socioeconomic relations, and that we might help that consensus along by persuading currently engaged in useless or harmful work that joining and championing our consensus will not leave them idle and resourceless.

Maybe this thread is not the place to discuss long-term visions and strategies. A simple reminder to that effect was certainly in order. But dismissing democratic socialism out of hand, which is what both your objections, in their different ways, amount to, was unnecessary and ill-judged.

Why Sanders is the better candidate. Byron York, one of the brighter sticks on the right, devotes much of this article to putting a thumb in the eye of the RNC. Here’s his report from the Trump NH celebrations:http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-decisive-trump-victory-sends-gop-establishment-reeling/article/2582918

“And what an astonishingly varied group of voters Trump attracted. At his victory celebration in Manchester Tuesday night, I met a young woman, Alexis Chiparo, who four years ago was an Obama-voting member of MoveOn.org. Now she is the Merrimack County chair of the Trump campaign.

“We just delivered Concord!” Chiparo told me excitedly. “We were getting a really excellent response from a very interesting swath of voters — veterans, disabled people, elderly people, women, blue-collar workers.”

They were joined, it appears, by an even wider group of their fellow New Hampshirites. According to exit polls, Trump won among men, and he won among women. He won all age groups. All income groups. Urban, suburban, rural. Every issue group. Gun owners and non-gun owners. Voters who call themselves very conservative and those who call themselves moderates.”

Hillary beat Sanders only among among richer, older, white people. The demographics tilt heavily towards minorities. We’ve already seen HRC trot out the two harpies Albright and Steinheim and Clinton surrogates are certain to be branding all Sanders supporters as closet-racists, deluded, or both. Cause those are the only cards they got left to play.

Against, Trump, who has already proven he can attract young cross-over voters and who scores better than all other Republicans among minorities, Sanders may be the more better choice on issues, integrity, and electability.

Rich: As you say, the left that can deliver, or even envision, a transformed economy and society certainly does not exist at the moment. I was aware of that, but thank you anyway for pointing it out. I meant to suggest, following Lee’s repeated affirmation that the productive capacity for such a society already exists, and responding to his reservations about calling at least the first phase of our strategy for getting there by the name of “full employment,” that the longstanding socialist ideal of a cooperative commonwealth of the producers was still valid in principle.

Sorry for all the misunderstanding this has aroused. Let’s get back to handicapping the primary campaigns.

On basic income and the urgent need to fund lots of non-profit-producing work (eg reforestation, ecological restoration, public transport…). The basic issue is that these are not exchanges, and so do not produce money. In a nearly-completely monetised society this is fatal. If say, 80% of what you need to do as a society to survive is not exchangeable for money, then in a monetised society the only way to do that is to tax the bejeesus out of the remaining 20% that does involve exchange. In practice, somewhere near 50% (France, Sweden) seems to be the sustainable limit.

What we are seeing is that, as the ordinary sources of exchangeable value diminish, previously non-monetised sectors (education, defence support, air traffic control…) are monetised to feed the need for exchangeable value. This exacerbates the problem.

So they’re supposed to live off of visions? I went through Sanders’ short campaign doc on what he’d do, which I think can be taken as the aspirational left edge of what people think might be possible within the current political framework. There’s nothing in there about basic income or about drastically reducing the hours in the work week. This does not mean that Sanders’ proposed policies are bad: I’ve several times written the opposite, that they are far better than those of any other candidate. What it means is that even if the left in America got everything that it says it wants — even if Sanders was elected and then somehow managed to implement his entire agenda — those people are still screwed. They are left with neoliberal solutions that we know and they know will leave a sizable percentage of them without work forevermore.

You might say that if Sanders got elected and somehow managed to implement his entire agenda that then it would be time that the left would roll out basic income. But I don’t think that this is actually true. I think that people assume that left aspirations are pretty much the same for everyone on the left, and they actually aren’t, but no one has any real interest in challenging this because it’s better to let everyone have their little dreams since they aren’t going to happen anyways. This is fine for the short term, but over the long term it means that we don’t even have an aspirational goal that would help the people who’d be harmed by our agenda. People get into defending the Democratic politics as the best of what’s possible and ignore the fact that if that’s the best possible there’s a whole lot of the supposed working class that rationally doesn’t want the left.

TM: “You seem to have appointed me representative of “the left””

No. I’ve said that Sanders’ position paper represents the aspirational edge of the electoral left in the U.S.

“Now what” is what I’ve been saying through the whole thread. The left does not have a theory that tells us or anyone else where we’d like to go or how we plan to get there. Those theories that we do have are mostly hangovers from the 19th century or at best from the New Deal era and are actively harmful, because there is no way to get from them to anywhere that takes contemporary realities into account.

262: The Crooked Timber Party! I’d totally vote for a Rich Puchalsky/Bob McManus ticket.

@ Peter T –

My understanding of Basic Income, which is admittedly not extensive, is that most schemes presume the maintenance, at least initially, of a largely market-based society. Most people still work, but the balance of power is titled decisively towards the workers, since the threat of immiseration is basically taken from the bosses’ toolkit. Thus, there’s no significant shortage of profit-generating economic activity.

As for an extensive, Mega-New Deal type program for ecological rehab and societal well-being, surely there are ways that this is effectively funded without causing some kind of liquidity breakdown.

Here are the major areas of theoretical difficulty / disagreement that I see:

1. Environmental matters / sustainability. There’s a whole lot of the left (however defined) that seems to me to see this as an afterthought or as a club to beat capitalism with (e.g. “Capitalism is going to cause widespread disaster because of global warming”), rather than as a source of actual economics or politics. A left politics or economics should merge egalitarianism with how we’re communally going to exist on the planet in some way that’s more than just the two things glued together. Even people who are good on these issues, like Bruce Wilder above, tend to put in something about the left defending “the commons” when they write about what the left is about. The same for bob mcmanus’ reading list above.

2. The state. I’m an anarchist so I don’t expect agreement with most people, but generally leftists should be coming to some kind of understanding that half of what they do is calling for the state to do more and half of it is calling for the state to do less. The left ideas about what the state is supposed to be and what’s supposed to control it are, in my opinion, confused at best, and people tend to fall back on slogans that worked spectacularly badly when last put into practice.

3. The working class / work generally. Another thread here puzzles over why people have what’s called “laborism” but no unions. Sooner or later people are going to have to come to terms with the idea of the left not naturally being based in the working class and not really about work, much less jobs.

geo, it’s going to be difficult to respond to that without getting into anarchist critique about why you expect the state not to be captured by capitalism (or by Bakunin’s “new class” in the case of state capitalism). But I’ll try to present the problem more generally. How do you expect to have a state that does things that the left wants it to do and not things that the left doesn’t want it to do?

“Democratic accountability” is a lousy answer. Wars are popular and the American public happily oppresses various categories of people with full democratic support.

The working class / work generally. Another thread here puzzles over why people have what’s called “laborism” but no unions. Sooner or later people are going to have to come to terms with the idea of the left not naturally being based in the working class and not really about work, much less jobs.

Agreed. This looks likely to be a major source of upheaval in the 21st century, perhaps rivaling environmental issues. Coal miners are/were the canaries in the coal mine. US coal mining employment peaked in 1923 at 798,000 workers. Coal production peaked in 2008 at 1.117 billion short tons. Between January 1988 and January 2008 miner employment went from 147,000 workers to 77,000 as annual production per worker increased from 6463 tons to 14506 tons. 88,000 US coal jobs were eliminated in the 1980s, before national leaders had proposed to do anything about global warming. Similar technical progress affects manufacturing: even if you could get some powerful populist government to force American consumer goods to be made in domestic factories, there would be a lot fewer of those jobs now than 40 years ago.

What did the leftier parts of the American political spectrum propose for eliminated coal miners in the 1980s, before we could inure ourselves with the ugly climate denialism of the coal industry and its dependents? What did they manage to actually do for cast-off workers? I don’t know; I was still a child then. Did workers mostly get retrained and hired for new jobs just as good as the old ones? I rather doubt it.

“Retrain them as solar installation workers” isn’t quite as ludicrous as the first time I heard it. Most solar installation jobs, like most coal mine jobs, don’t require post-secondary education. The median wage in each sector is nearly the same. And on-the-job injuries are less likely in solar work.

Coal-to-solar retraining is not a long-term solution, because the amortized labor demand of a megawatt-hour of solar power is lower than that of a MWh of coal power. A coal-to-solar switch eliminates most mining work and most plant-running work associated with the old coal based electricity supply. It also eliminates a significant amount of transportation work; I was surprised how badly the recent modest coal production contraction in the US has affected railroads and trucking. Building a solar plant that can produce X number of megawatt hours per year requires somewhat more labor than a coal plant of matching X, but not enough to make up for the labor elimination elsewhere.

The recent surge of solar jobs is a dynamic effect of new electricity infrastructure displacing old infrastructure in an environment of nearly flat electricity demand. The steady-state employment requirements of electricity production and associated industries will actually be lower with the elimination of coal, not higher.

The US labor force participation rate peaked in the late 1990s. Production per worker has been increasing faster than consumption for decades. The production-side improvements envisioned by Keynes in Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren were happening then and continue now. How to translate that into widespread benefits, so the number of jobs and hours worked fall without the wageless likewise falling into poverty, is something that doesn’t seem to have meaningfully advanced in my lifetime. “The government will pay people to do what needs to be done” is a good interim policy. You can find a lot of jobs just fixing failing infrastructure, replacing polluting infrastructure, and remediating the environmental disasters of the past. “Full employment, regardless of usefulness” is not a good policy. And I think that’s a likely result of an open-ended commitment to full employment.

Matt: “How to translate that into widespread benefits, so the number of jobs and hours worked fall without the wageless likewise falling into poverty, is something that doesn’t seem to have meaningfully advanced in my lifetime. ”

Also Hirsch, _Social Limits To Growth_. Can’t send everyone to college and have them all get good jobs, not when a large part of what makes a job good is positional social status.

But the problem of what happens to all the excess productivity is a solved problem under neoliberalism: the .1% convert it into financial instruments that they own. What people don’t seem to recognize is that by doing so they do a service for large segments of the rest of the population whose primary interest is in maintaining a social order that gives them a sense of self-worth. How would working people look down on wageless poor people if the .1% didn’t do that?

Rich: Isn’t this basically Brecht’s thing about dissolving the people and electing another?

No, it’s called persuasion, consciousness-raising, movement building, forging a consensus, constructing a democratic majority, and about a hundred other things that I doubt anyone here except you is inclined to misperceive as bizarre, perverse, or authoritarian. I’m simply talking about large-scale nonviolent social change. Yes, it’s a very gradual process, and no, it will not require 100 percent agreement on every (or any) detail of social organization.

Can we get back to the primaries?

Back in my idealistic youth, I thought that the human race could do anything they wanted within the laws of physics. However, since then, I have come to realize that there is another limitation, human behavior. And I have learned that human nature is the greater limitation.
In Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy, the alien Onkali believe humanity’s downfall is due to our combination of high intelligence and hierarchism. I tend to agree with Butler in this. For the moralists, I consider this the human race’s “original sin”. This makes the long term success of egalitarian movements problematical.