DOOM, or The Official 2016 US Election Thread

Leo

Well-known member
also depends on whether you're content to just enjoy the present, which is perfectly fine when you're young, or if you want/need to save for the future. you can definitely still have fun for awhile on a modest income in nyc but then 10 years suddenly fly by and you haven't managed to save a dime, which sucks if you want to eventually do any of the boring grown-up stuff like get a better place to live, a car, travel, etc.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Or submit to the pre-programmed genetic tyranny of self-replication.

yeah, i'm guessing having kids is the biggest issue: an extra mouth to feed, the eventual need to get a more space (usually in a more expensive neighborhood, cuz they have better schools), college tuition, etc. luckily dodged that bullet.
 

vimothy

yurp
Even as the likes of Ms Le Pen, Mr Grillo and Geert Wilders of the far-right Dutch Freedom party head towards power, the establishment keeps acting this way. A Bourbon regent, in an uncharacteristic moment of reflection, would have backed off. Our liberal capitalist order, with its competing institutions, is constitutionally incapable of doing that. Doubling down is what it is programmed to do.

The correct course of action would be to stop insulting voters and, more importantly, to solve the problems of an out-of-control financial sector, uncontrolled flows of people and capital, and unequal income distribution....

[Italian Prime Minister] Mr Renzi could have used his ample political capital to reform the Italian economy instead of trying to cement his power. And imagine what would have been possible if Chancellor Angela Merkel had spent her even larger political capital on finding a solution to the eurozone’s multiple crises, or on reducing Germany’s excessive current account surpluses. If you want to fight extremism, solve the problem.

But it is not happening for the same reason it did not happen in revolutionary France. The gatekeepers of western capitalism, like the Bourbons before them, have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.

"The elite's Marie Antoinette moment", Wolfgang Munchau:https://www.ft.com/content/05c98c0e-b251-11e6-a37c-f4a01f1b0fa1
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
'And while there were a lot of headlines about how the polls completely misfired during the 2016 election, that 1.7 percentage point margin is in line with the Real Clear Politics average of pre-election national polls, which had Clinton up by exactly 1.7 percentage points. The state-level surveys that tracked battleground states, however, largely missed.'

http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton-trum...ar-vote-tally-has-president-elect-way-2451745

I don't see how anyone can defend the continued existence of the electoral college system, in its current form anyway, after this. It's just unbelievable that a country that likes to bill itself as the acme of democracy could have such an obviously irrational and unfair system.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It's pretty asinine to suggest immigration to any country is uniformly beneficial to everyone who already lives there. Population growth of a million people every 30 months isn't making it any easier to find a house or a school place.

That's not to say that the negative effects of immigration haven't been greatly exaggerated by much of the press and successive governments, or the benefits downplayed or ignored. But come on.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I've been meaning to start a thread on immigration for a while. I have instinctively held pro-immigration views for years without really examining them. Certainly I don't feel any adverse effects from it, but then I wouldn't, would I?

Only really dawned on me (as a dunce) during the EU Referendum/American election that mass immigration/free movement might actually be a neoliberal sort of idea, and therefore not necessarily as 'right on' as I'd always unthinkingly felt it was.

Do many left wingers actively oppose mass immigration/free movement?
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
It's pretty asinine to suggest immigration to any country is uniformly beneficial to everyone who already lives there. Population growth of a million people every 30 months isn't making it any easier to find a house or a school place.

That's not to say that the negative effects of immigration haven't been greatly exaggerated by much of the press and successive governments, or the benefits downplayed or ignored. But come on.

Like most things there are costs and benefits which effect different people differently, I was saying that overall the benefits outweigh the costs.

In terms of schools and housing, I think it's important to remember that these problems are largely the result of government policy. Furthermore, immigrants fill the labour gaps in construction, meaning that a reduction in immigration will reduce house-building.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Only really dawned on me (as a dunce) during the EU Referendum/American election that mass immigration/free movement might actually be a neoliberal sort of idea, and therefore not necessarily as 'right on' as I'd always unthinkingly felt it was.

Do many left wingers actively oppose mass immigration/free movement?

Left wing anti-immigration sentiment stems from the notion that immigration reduces wages, which the current evidence suggests isn't the case.
 

vimothy

yurp
Left wing anti-immigration sentiment stems from the notion that immigration reduces wages, which the current evidence suggests isn't the case.

It surely depends on what mix of skills immigrants have versus what mix of skills the native population has. And it depends on whose wages you're talking about. If you're a taxi driver in the UK, for example, it's pretty obvious that immigration is driving your wages down.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Bernie Sanders. I think Corbyn too.

Definitely Sanders. Not Corbyn, though - he recently ruled out any upper limit on immigration.

"Jeremy Corbyn will say on Wednesday that a Labour government will not “sow division” by promising to cut immigration, despite pressure from key backbenchers to shift the party’s stance after the Brexit vote."

The irony that it's precisely attitudes like these that are causing a huge rift between Labour's middle-class voters in London plus a handful of other relatively prosperous cities in the south of England and their mostly working-class voters (and ex-voters) elsewhere in the country is presumably lost on him.

His spokesman told journalists: “He is not concerned about numbers,” adding that rather than seeking controls on immigration, Labour would seek to mitigate its effects on low-paid workers by reintroducing a “migrant impact fund”.

That would certainly go a long way to making immigration a lot more acceptable to the voting public, I think, especially if it was made clear that it's not 'something for nothing' since most immigrants work and pay taxes just like everyone else. (Elite investor-parasites aside, I mean.)

But even then, suppose a huge amount of cash was suddenly made available for tens of thousands of new council homes. That's great as far as it goes, but those houses and flats have still got to be built somewhere.

Left wing anti-immigration sentiment stems from the notion that immigration reduces wages, which the current evidence suggests isn't the case.

This is a very difficult thing to accurately and objectively measure, and it seems very much to depend on who you ask. In large parts of the country, certain kinds of jobs are done almost exclusively by immigrants, and contrary to a lot of rhetoric, most of these jobs are not specialized or highly skilled and could be done by more or less any able-bodied and mentally competent person. If immigrants are clearly preferable to natives* from an employer's POV, it's hard to imagine how this could fail to have a deflationary effect on wages.

*I mean people born in the UK, of whatever ethnicity
 
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firefinga

Well-known member
Definitely Sanders. Not Corbyn, though - he recently ruled out any upper limit on immigration.

"Jeremy Corbyn will say on Wednesday that a Labour government will not “sow division” by promising to cut immigration, despite pressure from key backbenchers to shift the party’s stance after the Brexit vote."

The irony that it's precisely attitudes like these that are causing a huge rift between Labour's middle-class voters in London and a handful of other relatively prosperous cities in the south of England and their mostly working-class voters (and ex-voters) elsewhere in the country is presumably lost on him.

Pretty much. For those middle class "socialists" immigration means exotic restaurants, the token friends from wherever to display one's cosmopolitism, and the feel-goodism of uncostly "cultural diversity" - it's just another subtle form of colonialism IMO.

For the working class lot, immigration means more competition for their already shrunken resources (jobs, housing, public transport etc)
 
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sadmanbarty

Well-known member
It surely depends on what mix of skills immigrants have versus what mix of skills the native population has. And it depends on whose wages you're talking about. If you're a taxi driver in the UK, for example, it's pretty obvious that immigration is driving your wages down.

I'm assume you're fairly skeptical of this type of study, but this is how the resolution foundation reckons wages are effected by immigration in different types of professions.

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3...public/thumbnails/image/2016/10/05/14/pay.jpg
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Left wing anti-immigration sentiment stems from the notion that immigration reduces wages, which the current evidence suggests isn't the case.

There's the economic argument for/against immigration, and the cultural argument. Liberals must instinctively feel that the best form of culture is cosmopolitanism, whereas I see many right-wingers (and maybe some left-wingers?) arguing that immigration is eroding native culture. Which again, I instinctively recoil from, but then I'd probably feel differently about a mass immigration of white english people into an african city, say. In fact I already do recoil at the idea of McDonalds et al exporting American culture.

EDIT: AND YET I obviously enjoy living in London where all the big chains are as well as the cosmopolitan cuisine...
 
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vimothy

yurp
Pretty much. For those middle class "socialists" immigration means exotic restaurants, the token friends from wherever to display one's cosmopolitism, and the feel-goodism of uncostly "cultural diversity" - it's just another subtle form of colonialism IMO.

It's even worse than that, because the deflationary effect on wages at the lower end of the income distribution reduces the cost of those services which the middle classes tend to use (taxis, dry cleaners, exotic restaurants, etc, etc), whilst making their own skills relatively more scarce. So it's not just about feel-goodism, there are material benefits that accrue to the middle and upper classes as a result of immigration (that is, immigration increases economic inequality).
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
This is a very difficult thing to accurately and objectively measure, and it seems very much to depend on who you ask. In large parts of the country, certain kinds of jobs are done almost exclusively by immigrants, and contrary to a lot of rhetoric, most of these jobs are not specialized or highly skilled and could be done by more or less any able-bodied and mentally competent person. If immigrants are clearly preferable to natives* from an employer's POV, it's hard to imagine how this could fail to have a deflationary effect on wages.

The home office compiled a bunch of studies on the issue and there's a consensus, though of course there are those that disagree.

Immigrants increase demand in the economy and they're crucial in sustaining industries such as agriculture, construction and manufacturing. So you can see how other factors can compensate for them increasing the supply of labour (which taken in isolation would depress wages and 'take jobs').
 
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