This flow seem very convenient for the extremely rich:
1. Milk as much taxpayer money as possible, while providing as little as possible through profit-driven social services etc. that require increasingly larger budgets to not collapse entirely.
2. Tax us? Look at all the money the government isn't getting any value out of!
> The Western states have been embracing social democracy
No, they haven't. Stop peddling this obvious bullshit based on a single figure stretched all the way to the moon. Social spending != social democracy. Social spending != welfare state.
As I've asked for previously, and what you always - unsurprisingly - fail to provide: please present a single reputable, non-free-market think-tank, source that agrees that the "Western states" have been embracing social democracy the last few decades.
High levels of social spending is indeed a hallmark of social democracy.
The creation of major new social welfare programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF, since 1960, corresponds with a massive increase in the share of economic output expropriated by the state for the purpose of expending it on social programs.
Claiming Western states did not experience a transition to a more social democratic economic model, amidst the creation of major social welfare programs, and a massive increase in social welfare spending, is insane gaslighting.
>>a single figure
What an incredibly disingenuous way to characterize the share of GDP spent on government social welfare programs.
This is an all-encompassing figure that encapsulates every major type of social democratic spending.
Claiming that me using this extremely revealing macro-economic statistic, as evidence of the rise of social democracy, as:
"peddling this obvious bullshit based on a single figure stretched all the way to the moon"
is a desperate attempt to gaslight the public to hide reality from it.
>>non-free-market think-tank
Any think tank worth its salt is pro-free-market. Non-free-market think tanks are ideologically-motivated crank organizations, and usually on the payroll of the direct beneficiaries of social democracy - public sector unions.
Whether social democracy ideologues/apologists will admit that Western states experienced a massive transition to a more social democratic economic model over the last 60 years, doesn't change what the evidence, and any remotely sane analysis of it, shows.
Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence. You have provided none.
Where's the reputable source that can back up your claims with more than just an outlandishly superficial and biased interpretation of a single figure?
> extremely revealing macro-economic statistic, as evidence of the rise of social democracy
No, it just isn't. If it was true, you wouldn't have any problem at all providing a reputable source agreeing with your claim. But you clearly do.
> Any think tank worth its salt is pro-free-market. Non-free-market think tanks are ideologically-motivated crank organizations, and usually on the payroll of the direct beneficiaries of social democracy - public sector unions.
>>Extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary evidence. You have provided none.
You have yet to explain what is extraordinary about my claim, besides your baseless claim that the intellectual authorities you defer to haven't concurred with the assertion.
The statistics speak for themselves, and don't need confirmation from the state apparatus' amen corner to be believed.
>>outlandishly superficial and biased interpretation of a single figure?
Again with your absurdly disingenuous characterization of the share of GDP spent on government social welfare programs.
One more time:
This is an all-encompassing figure that is constituted solely by different types of social democratic spending, and encapsulates every major type of social democratic spending.
Claiming that me using this extremely revealing macro-economic statistic, as evidence of the rise of social democracy, as:
"an outlandishly superficial and biased interpretation"
is a desperate attempt to gaslight the public to hide reality from it.
> This is an all-encompassing figure that is constituted solely by different types of social democratic spending, and encapsulates every major type of social democratic spending.
No, it's not. That's a superficial and biased interpretation. There's a minimum threshold to be met if one is to spend energy on a reply, hence the need for something more than just your hot take, especially since your credibility is already very low because of your union conspiracy ramblings.
One more time:
If that is such an obviously correct interpretation as you suggest, please provide reputable sources that agree with your claim, after that we can dive deeper into other possible causes to an increased social spending without that being "an embrace of social democracy".
>>No, it's not. That's a superficial and biased interpretation.
Your characterization is absolute nonsense, and I've already explained exactly why.
>>especially since your credibility is already very low because of your union conspiracy ramblings.
I've addressed this disingenuous criticism before:
Your pithy response to my argument that unionized news staff have an economic interest in promoting left wing political ideas - when I've elaborated at length as to why I believe this is the case - suggests you're approaching this issue very emotionally, and not in a good faith attempt to open-mindedly explore what I'm saying to see if it's true.
You realize that name-calling and sophistry is not debate, right? You can't just bully people into adopting your interpretation of the world.
Asserting that a claim is "a superficial and biased interpretation" or "conspiracy ramblings", is not evidence. It's just a baseless opinion, and in terms of substance, the equivalent of name-calling - an attempt to appeal to people's emotions to manipulate them into believing something, instead of convincing them by presenting a logical argument.
>>we can dive deeper into other possible causes to an increased social spending without that being "an embrace of social democracy".
We can dive deeper in your mental gymnastics, as you try to maintain "neoliberalism" has been ascendant, whilst the economy has become more social democratically structured? It's undeniable that the West has massively moved toward a more social democratic economic model.
That entire reply is totally devoid of any substance whatsoever. I assume you're not planning to provide any reputable source, just keep repeating your own authoritative assertion like your last sentence?
> It's undeniable that the West has massively moved toward a more social democratic economic model.
If it's undeniable, you shouldn't be the only one claiming this. Not even conservatives (in Europe at least) are saying this, even though it would be mana from heaven for them if it was true.
I've already provided the substance. Now I'm just explaining that your grandiose denunciations are without substance.
Once more:
Asserting that a claim is "a superficial and biased interpretation" or "conspiracy ramblings", is not evidence. It's just a baseless opinion, and in terms of substance, the equivalent of name-calling - an attempt to appeal to people's emotions to manipulate them into believing something, instead of convincing them by presenting a logical argument.
Please focus on providing those sources rather than trying to derail with tone policing.
To reiterate:
If it's undeniable, you shouldn't be the only one claiming this. Not even conservatives (in Europe at least) are saying this, even though it would be manna from heaven for them if it was true.
I am not policing your tone. I am policing the content of your comments, which are appeals to emotion that are without substance. They belie disingenuity.
What is the point of me digging up a source when you've completely dismissed clear macroeconomic evidence of a shift to a more social democratic economic structure?
How many examples would I need to dig up of academic authorities concurring on what the statistics clearly show, before you concede I am right?
Still no sources. Just talk and repeating your own interpretation as authoritative.
> which are appeals to emotion that are without substance
No, they are repeated appeals for source to an extraordinary claim which obviously would be more commonplace if it was true since large political camps would have a lot to gain from it. But the lack thereof says a lot, that's why I keep requesting a reputable source to back up your claim that goes deeper than a superficial glance at a social spending figure.
> How many examples would I need to dig up of academic authorities concurring on what the statistics clearly show, before you concede I am right?
You can start with providing a single one?
As much as I dislike linking to this article it's relevant to this because it shows how not even a right-wing pseudo-intellectual media-outfit that certainly can't be dismissed as having a "union-led left-wing bias" agrees with your claim:
"Starting in the 1970s, such things as foreign competition, mass immigration from developing countries, automation, and the growing financialization of economic power undermined this progress. In the United States, data from the Census Bureau show that the share of national income going to the middle 60 percent of households has fallen to a record low since the 1970s. Wealth gains in recent decades have gone overwhelmingly to the top one percent of households, and especially to the top 0.5 percent. Social mobility has declined in over two-thirds of European Union countries, including Sweden. Across the 36 wealthier countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the richest citizens have taken an ever-greater share of national GDP while the middle class has shrunk. Much of the global middle class is heavily in debt—mainly because of high housing costs—and “looks increasingly like a boat in rocky waters,” suggests the OECD."
When will you concede that you're are practicing dogmatism because of your ideological bias?
>>Just talk and repeating your own interpretation as authoritative.
I provided a source to the data.
People are free to draw their own interpretations from the macroeconomic data I presented, which shows, indisputably, a massive shift to a more social democratic economic model.
>>they are repeated appeals for source to an extraordinary claim
I provided a source for the data that verifies my claim.
You have not explained at all what is extraordinary about characterizing the creation of sweeping social welfare programs, and an associated massive rise in the share of GDP expropriated by the state for social welfare spending, as "a dramatic shift to a more social democratic economic model".
>>which obviously would be more commonplace if it was true since large political camps would have a lot to gain from it.
There is no "large political camp" that stands to gain from aggressively advocating a reduction in government power, including so-called right-wing parties, under whom the share of GDP expended on social welfare programs has rapidly increased, as major new expansions of the social welfare system has been implemented (e.g. Medicare D under Bush).
All embarking on any genuine campaign to reduce government spending would do is draw the ire of the very powerful public sector unions, whose agendas you aggressively champion in our discussion, and ensure a massive election defeat.
>>You can start with providing a single one?
What difference would it make if I dig up one source? Would it lead to you agreeing with me? If not, this is just an exercise in deflection from you.
If you tell me how many sources it will take, for you to agree with me, then I might take the time to dig them up.
>>In the United States, data from the Census Bureau show that the share of national income going to the middle 60 percent of households has fallen to a record low since the 1970s
This characterizes an outcome, not a govermment policy. The government policy of expending economic output on social welfare programs was expanded all through the last 60 years.
Your dogmatic and ideologically motivated insistence that social democracy will reduce income inequality is completely unsubstantiated, and therefore a rise in income inequality in no way contradicts the assertion that the economy transitioned to a more social democratic model.
No you haven't. Just a figure and your own interpretation of it.
> which shows, indisputably, a massive shift to a more social democratic economic model.
No, it doesn't. It's exactly this interpretation that need to be backed up, not the figure.
You are making a claim, an interpretation, that no one else makes. So the burden of evidence is on you. This is common sense. Stop delaying and start providing.
> There is no "large political camp" that stands to gain from aggressively advocating a reduction in government power
Of course they are large political camp that would love to blame the recent increases in inequality and more on an "embrace of social democracy". Stop lying to save face.
> What difference would it make if I dig up one source? Would it lead to you agreeing with me? If not, this is just an exercise in deflection from you.
Are you seriously asking why it makes difference to provide sources for unique claims that runs contrary to the established consensus?
> If you tell me how many sources it will take, for you to agree with me, then I might take the time to dig them up.
This has nothing to do with a certain quantity of sources. What an absurdly anti-intellectual thing to say.
> This characterizes an outcome, not a govermment policy.
Stop cherry-picking. That article is very clear that it doesn't agree with your assertion. It asked what happened to social democracy and very clearly implying that it has gotten off its original path in recent times. That doesn't square with your claim that social democracy has instead been embraced during that time.
I can provide even more non-academic and academic sources into the decline of social democracy if you'd like, there's loads of them. But somehow you can't even provide a single one supporting your exact opposite claim? This is what makes it extra-ordinary.
"Recent electoral results reveal a pronounced decline in the fortunes of Social Democratic parties. Much of the decline debate has revolved around their rightward policy shifts, which have turned Social Democrats away from their founding principle of equality in an age of increasing inequality. Thus, this article examines the interconnections of these major changes in the Western political economy. In doing so, it contributes to the identification of income inequality as a key mechanism moderating Social Democratic policy offerings and their support. It does so through aggregate-level election results and individual-level survey responses on a sample of 22 advanced democracies, over 336 elections, from 1965–2019. Results reveal that rightward economic movements of Social Democrats significantly reduce their vote share under higher levels of income inequality or when they are combined with rightward socio-cultural movements. The findings provide an important explanation for the pronounced electoral decline of Social Democratic parties."
Absolutely not. I am not the one making the claim that voting rights should be tied to taxation. I am not necessarily opposed to the NYC law either, I just disagree with the premise that we should evaluate things based on taxation as the comment I replied to suggested. That it was acceptable to give them voting rights because they paid taxes.
For federal elections I think citizenship is the proper test, or local elections I believe establishment of residency for a defined time would be more applicable qualification, tax payer status not withstanding. I do believe that residency should be a number of years greater than 1 and should apply to both citizens and non-citizens (i.e if you move from California to Florida you can not just start voting in the next local elections immediately even if you are a citizen as you have not established residency in the community)
Sit tight and assess! This is like reading a propaganda pamphlet with the inevitable very long term "it may work, we'll have to wait and see in a decade or two, but until then at least our profits are not affected"-solutions.
Then you clearly misunderstood and your response adds no value. Nobody said sit tight. I said change some major things with powerful gatekeepers. Don't let your ideology get in the way of entertaining new ideas.
From your comment history, it appears you have a problem with making HN-quality comments [0]. Reddit's always an option if you don't want to change.
Otherwise, please work on entertaining new ideas and contributing with your own ideas/suggestions/explanations rather than being "that guy" who shits on people with low value comments lacking any reason or explanation (typically because they are wrong but don't want to admit their position for fear of ridicule by people like themselves).
Why wouldn't a capitalist corporation choose to lobby the government to bend the rules in their favor if they think that that would give the best ROI? In what version of Capitalism would this not happen? What would remove this incentive structure?
In almost any version of Democracy, an authoritarian politician can choose to run for office on a platform of establishing a dictatorship; in most of them, they can even succeed. That doesn't make the would-be dictator a democrat, and it doesn't make their platform a democratic platform. Similarly, free-market incentives to lobby for government monopolies don't make monopolies capitalistic, because capitalism requires a free market, and monopolies and monopsonies are the opposite of a free market.
Marx called this sort of thing "the internal contradictions of capitalism"; he argued that capitalism was an inherently unstable structure, just as many writers have argued that democracy was inherently unstable. They might be right. But in either case, the possible fact that one system inevitably gives rise to its opposite doesn't make it the same as its opposite.
If the premise is that being elected dictator in a free and fair election is undemocratic, it's an authoritarian premise. It presumes that elections are only democratic to the extent that the results agree with some "democratic values" that are separate from the process of having elections.
I agree that the outcomes of democracy can be bad. But I don't believe that bad and undemocratic are synonymous.
I don't think that the election is undemocratic, no. I think that when the new dictator bans all opposition parties, dissolves the parliament, replaces judges with his allies, and starts having the police shut down newspapers and torture dissidents, that's undemocratic, even if the dictator was democratically elected in the first place, and even if what the dictator is doing is not bad.
You're missing the forest for the trees. This is what Capitalism has always been and always will be due to its incentive structure. If you accept wealth and thus power concentration, you accept market manipulation. The corps won't skip this due to some overarching ideological free-market reason. That's just naive.
I mean, just look at the jungle of regulations and the vast inefficient bureaucracy of the US healthcare system. Those 15k layers of shite can only happen with just as many corps doing everything to either save their profits or trying to get as large a piece of the cake as possible. Public good be damned.
Say if the US gov planned to add $100 per patient in some grant for whatever reason. How much do you think would actually trickle down to the patient? I'd be like nervously donating $100 to a dodgy charity in a corrupt developing nation in the 1960s.
This is an absolutist fallacy. The fact that no capitalist market has ever been free of market power doesn't mean that they all function just as badly as Brezhnev-era Soviet "markets" or the US healthcare "market". There are actually existing markets that are more capitalist and less capitalist. Markets mostly organized around government-granted monopolies are by definition failing at capitalism.
I think that very little of your hypothetical US$100 would benefit the patient, precisely the opposite of giving US$100 to every consumer in a capitalist market.
Why? You haven't really answered anything with regards to the incentive structure of Capitalism to manipulate the market ASAP. What good "free markets" segments of society even exists today? Restaurants? No, the big chains lobby intensely there as well - less profits if employees earn a living wage.
> I think that very little of your hypothetical US$100 would benefit the patient, precisely the opposite of giving US$100 to every consumer in a capitalist market.
You're missing the point entirely. The comparison if ofc with what would happen if e.g. a Nordic government would do the same thing under a system of universal healthcare.
Almost the entire world economy, by value, consists of more competitive markets than US healthcare. Restaurants, yes, but also the rest of retail, energy, agriculture, transportation, mining, metals, automobiles, clothing, shipbuilding, forestry, fishing, custom manufacturing, industrial food processing, scientific instruments, electronics, electrical equipment, and the financial markets. Some of these sectors don't engage in wage-labor production, or aren't dominated by it, and so aren't capitalist, while others are. Actors in all of these sectors, even the noncapitalist ones, engage in lobbying and other forms of anticompetitive behavior, but they generally aren't successful in obtaining monopoly or monopsony power and thus ending capitalism where it exists.
Sectors that lack competitive markets include the military, healthcare in much of the world, banking, and most of telecommunications.
I agree that business (not just capitalism!) creates incentives to destroy free markets, just as politics creates incentives to destroy democracy. When actors succeed in following those incentives, that ends capitalism by eliminating competitive markets, which prevents the price system from being used to allocate resources. Competitive markets and the price system are central characteristics of capitalism; where they fail to exist, what you have is not capitalism, but something else.
At this point I'm starting to repeat myself, because I've already explained this about as clearly as I know how, and you still apparently don't understand.
That's like saying that a Leninist system stops being Leninist when its vanguard inevitably becomes corrupted, because its vanilla state is - in theory - democratic. But that's ridiculous, each system should be held accountable for the outcome of its incentive system, not just its vanilla state.
If a Leninist system institutes free-market capitalism, as in China, it stops being Leninist, however dictatorial it may still be. As it happens, in this case the incentives usually run to the preservation of the system rather than its extinguishment.
The two examples are temporal inverses of one another. In the situation of capitalism collapsing into government-granted monopolies, free-market capitalism is the first stage, and state central planning is the second stage. In the situation in China, the first stage was a vanguard-party-led society governed by a dictatorship of the proletariat that carries out state central planning, and the second stage is mostly free-market capitalism.
I don't think that anyone ever tried to use "Leninist system" to mean "a system where the government is not corrupt", but maybe I just haven't read enough of Lenin?
China and free market mumbling to avoid a simple accountability comparison? Come on. Your just flailing about to keep some neat image of Capitalism intact at this point.
The only thing this had to do with is what incentive structure each set up and what the expected outcomes of those are.
Leninism:
Concentrate the power into professional revolutionaries, a vanguard, to lead the people into making the "correct" choices.
Incentive: Keep this new and unprecedented amount of power indefinitely.
Outcome: Corruption of whatever ideals they might have had.
Capitalism:
Concentrate the wealth and thus power into businessmen/corporations with the purpose of keep accumulating wealth indefinitely.
Incentive: Use the power and influence of wealth to do just that, accumulate more wealth.
Outcome: Manipulation of rules, regulations, and the market.
This is what they are. This is what we've seen for more than a 100 years for both. This is what they are accountable for.
But the standard definition I'm using has evolved a bit and is somewhat richer. Quoting the Wikipedia definition:
> Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.
I think that is a very good and uncontroversial definition of "capitalism", and that is the one I am using. It sounds like you have some non-mainstream definition in mind?
Thgis is roughly my opionion. I expect companies to get right up against the legal line of what is permitted (to make more profit than their competitors, and be motivated to make the best products) while I expect government to regulate them when their actions would harm the public good.
Noticed how rare it is too see libertarians promote some sort of "Great Reset"? That is, to make sure that people in their new "fair & meritocratic" system don't get a head start by wealth accumulated under the flawed previous system. Well...its absence pretty much shows their hand. It's just another power grab by the incumbents. Furthermore it is more accurately referred to as Propertarianism, since upholding private property is the sole purpose of that entire ideology.
You either did not read my comment, or do not understand Georgism or Geo-Libertarianism if you call it "Propertarianism", libertarianism encompasses a large range of economic models, you seem to only be familiar with the Ancap models where by homestead principle is the primary distribution of property.
Georgism / Geo-Libertarianism flows from Lockean philosophy of natural rights, concluding the premise of human equality alone implies that the benefits of natural resources be shared equally.
So you just add a tax on land ownership and do nothing about wealth concentration - and thus power concentration - and think it will magically work out? Those rich powerful folks are now just going to stop attempting to bend the rules in their favour? Those taxes would be gone within a year and all that's left is a Propertarian neo-feudalism.
You also skipped the answering the main part, a "Great Reset" that surely must be a logical first step to avoid undue advantage jumping over from the flawed past?
I actually did not skip over it. An economic reset under a Geo-Libertarian model would be very different than what you are talking about when you refer to the Authoritarian Socialist "Great Reset" proposed by the authoritarians on the US Political left.
So no as a libertarian, I would not be in favor of an Authoritarian "Great Reset", that is with out getting to unfeasible nature of the Authoritarian "Great Reset" for which you claim my libertarian model would be unworkable, but yet believe an Authoritarian "Great Reset" would be... odd
So the idea is to keep the wealth/power concentration of today and hope that they will comply with a land value tax and stop trying to use their power to bend the rules? I'm sorry but that is even more naive than an old-school authoritarian vanguardist.
> Authoritarian Socialist "Great Reset" proposed by the authoritarians on the US Political left.
This sounded interesting though, care to explain what - and who? - this is referring to?
Alright, so let's try a few of points to clarify. Do you support any of the following?
* Universal healthcare.
* 4 or more weeks of paid vacation per year for all full-time employees (and some proportional setup for part-time).
* ~6 months of paid (albeit not 100% of ones salary) parental leave per parent, per child.
* Subsidized child care to make it affordable for everyone.
* Government funded university tuition (student debt is only in the form of upkeep).
* Employer/Government funded sick pay (at least 6 months).
Because these things and more are what you're missing out on in the US. Year by year.
Is it really worth it? What's the point of having a higher salary if it's just consumed by higher rents, healthcare fees etc and no time to actually enjoy the money (vacation)?
> That implies that folks who don't qualify don't get to go
Well, yes, of course? Why wouldn't both the uni and students want a threshold to ensure that no one's time is being wasted? But this doesn't mean that people are barred by tuition or crippled by debt when/if they graduate.
> Or it's mostly a problem for people who find it easy to get press coverage.
Since I'm not from the US I had to google the distinction and from what I can tell a community college main PR is that one may be "transferred" to more prestigious institutions. So it definitely doesn't sound as equivalent as you present it.
> I've nothing against non-STEM education, but I do object to paying a lot for it.
Luckily any decent society consists of more than smug tech folks like this place.
>> That implies that folks who don't qualify don't get to go
> Well, yes, of course? Why wouldn't both the uni and students want a threshold to ensure that no one's time is being wasted?
Like I said, the US doesn't tell people they can't go. Your country does.
We also don't tell them what they can study.
> Since I'm not from the US I had to google the distinction and from what I can tell a community college main PR is that one may be "transferred" to more prestigious institutions.
Not at all.
Moreover, there are less-expensive "big-time" colleges. You only hear the stories wrt certain types of schools. (In most cases, they're the kinds of schools that are extremely rare outside the US. Even the second-tier schools in the US are very good. For example, Apple employs more graduates of a school that few people outside of CA have even heard of than it does graduates of Berkeley even though Berkeley is significantly larger than said unknown school.)
So, should we tell them "no" up front?
> > I've nothing against non-STEM education, but I do object to paying a lot for it.
> Luckily any decent society consists of more than smug tech folks like this place.
You already said that you/your country won't pay much, so why is it wrong for me to express the same sentiment?
What do you mean by can't go? People "can't" go to high-school either if they don't get the minimum grades required in elementary school. How does this even relate to the money angle that I'm criticizing?
> So, should we tell them "no" up front?
What do you mean by telling who no up-front? By requiring that you actually have finished high-school math before being accepted for a 4-year math program in uni? That's just common sense.
> You already said that you/your country won't pay much, so why is it wrong for me to express the same sentiment?
> What do you mean by can't go? People "can't" go to high-school either if they don't get the minimum grades required in elementary school.
The US lets people go to college who haven't graduated from high-school.
Flunk out or quit, and you can go back.
> > You already said that you/your country won't pay much, so why is it wrong for me to express the same sentiment?
> Uhm, no? In what way?
Your country says "we'll let n people into college." or "we'll spend $x on colleges, which is basically the same thing. The tests are then used to pick those n people.
What happens to the other people, the people you won't pay for?
35-40% of US adults have graduated from college. (Different sources have different numbers.) >10% of US adults attended some college and didn't finish. (Some do go back.)
To deny that race is a social construct by word salads full of "left-wing victim-hood" etc is even more deluded than your "the news is a union conspiracy" posts.
>>Americans bought into this idea, too. Why was it so appealing? "Americans of European descent invented race during the era of the American Revolution as a way of resolving the contradiction between a natural right to freedom and the fact of slavery," historian Barbara J. Fields explained in a presentation to the producers of PBS's series Race: The Power of An Illusion (which is worth checking out for more detailed information on all this).
The journalists at Vox are fully unionized by the way.
Any way, this kind of victimhood/injustice framing is extremely common, and was even posited by the other commenter in this very discussion!
>>will you at least concede that race was a social construct? And that it predated our understanding of genetics and was used to, among other things, justify slavery, eugenics and other human misery?
But now you want to gaslight people into believing that this victimhood narrative isn't the main context in which the concept appears?
>>more deluded than your "the news is a union conspiracy" posts.
Your pithy response to my argument that unionized news staff have an economic interest in promoting left wing political ideas - when I've elaborated at length as to why I believe this is the case - suggests you're approaching this issue very emotionally, and not in a good faith attempt to open-mindedly explore what I'm saying to see if it's true.
1. Milk as much taxpayer money as possible, while providing as little as possible through profit-driven social services etc. that require increasingly larger budgets to not collapse entirely.
2. Tax us? Look at all the money the government isn't getting any value out of!
3. Rinse & repeat.