I wish the US had a left wing party.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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It's not an accident.
The Uber wealthy discovered they can donate to both parties to get the same economic policy, and that the two would differentiate on social issues.
Regardless of which party wins, the rich never lose.
Very insightful, do you have any resources on this? Im genuinely curious to learn more
You might be able to find an article somewhere, but billionaires own all the media, so it doesn't get talked about much.
But look at the rise of American neoliberalism.
In the 1990s a wing of the Democratic party started pushing the same economic policy as republicans. To differentiate the republicans started becoming more extreme. And the neoliberals kept going more "conservative" economically to win over republicans. Which didn't really work, but no matter what happened the party leaders would claim it's because they hadn't moved far enough right economically.
The result is what we see today.
The neoliberals wing has changed their labels a couple of times, but are still doing the same shit.
And voters are left voting against their own economic interests every election, because there's simply no other option.
Even abstaining isn't an option, because republicans are slightly worse on economic policy, and absolutely batshit on social policy. Which is why voter turnout is so low.
You might be able to find an article somewhere, but billionaires own all the media, so it doesn't get talked about much.
They also own the search engines that would show the thousands of private blog articles that are talking about it, so you'll be hard pressed to find them.
The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
- Julius Nyerere
Just a quote I remembered and thought was funny... and sad
Lots of people on YouTube talk about this a lot. It's something that you won't really find a direct source for, but is obvious once you start looking into it. Reagan changed everything in the US, after his presidency every president since has pushed neoliberal policies. Low social spending, low taxes, lots of bailouts and subsidies.
It applies to the parties as a whole too. Republicans create a problem, Democrats say they want to fix it but can't because Republicans are blocking them, they wait for everyone to forget about it and then they do it all over again. When Democrats have full power they could go back and fix those problems but they never do. And they never get anything done when they have the power. They just move the goalposts, focusing on problems that require help from whichever part of government is Republican controlled. That way they can pretend they're trying to do something and blame Republicans for blocking it.
Not directly related, but look up how many people are represented by all the republican vs democrat senators in US Congress. I'm pretty sure in the current nearly perfectly split Senate that the Democrats represent around 40 million more people than the Republican senators do. It's fucked, they get elected for culture war nonsense and then can do whatever they want as long as they fight the culture war of the week and coast into reelection.
This is only slightly related, but this video I just watched yesterday explains extremely well what the relation between the media (read the rich) and US politics mostly is, sadly.
My pet theory is that the two parties are a competition between different factions of the wealthy, with finance capital controlling the Democrats and industrial capital controlling the Republicans. That's why it seems like Democrats want everyone to be white collar workers and Republicans want everyone to be blue collar workers.
Same. I think our best bet for now is for the repugnantcons to split, and the corpo dems join the corpo repugs as an official corporate party. Then we can have what’s left of the dems, hopefully without the financial influence of the oligarchs.
How do you propose a candidate would win without the financial support of the oligarchs? Campaigns are won through marketing and marketing is expensive. If you have the most money and a catchy slogan, you win.
I think what you’re describing is the current reality, and so we would need a paradigm shift. It could happen via a mass cultural awakening, where people decide the rich should not be the ones ruling their lives. This is in fact the essence of American democracy. I believe this is already happening, you just don’t hear about it on TV.
We’d have to demand that candidates run on, and elect them on, policy. This is the tricky part…turning a blind eye to America’s greatest export, advertising and marketing (propaganda).
This must before he decided to breakup a rail strike.
Biden prevented the strike but continued to fight for rail workers rights. And they ended up getting what they wanted!
After months of negotiations, the IBEW’s Railroad members at four of the largest U.S. freight carriers finally have what they’ve long sought but that many working people take for granted: paid sick days.
“We’re thankful that the Biden administration played the long game on sick days and stuck with us for months after Congress imposed our updated national agreement,” Russo said. “Without making a big show of it, Joe Biden and members of his administration in the Transportation and Labor departments have been working continuously to get guaranteed paid sick days for all railroad workers.
“Biden deserves a lot of the credit for achieving this goal for us,” Russo said. “He and his team continued to work behind the scenes to get all of rail labor a fair agreement for paid sick leave.”
https://www.ibew.org/media-center/Articles/23Daily/2306/230620_IBEWandPaid
You skipped the part where he says the only reason this happened was Bernie Sanders...
On Feb. 8, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, wrote a letter to the leaders of six Class I railroads, urging them to guarantee at least seven paid sick days for all of their workers.
"Last year, the companies you lead made over $22 billion in profits,” Sanders wrote, noting that they had cut 30% of the workforce over the last six years. “Guaranteeing seven paid sick days to rail workers would cost your industry just $321 million.”
Russo is grateful that Sanders stepped in. “We truly compliment his effort to bring dignity to workers in the rail industry,” he said. “Without it, we very likely would not have gotten what we have gained today.”
Bernie fucking Sanders.
America may have given up on him...
But he hasn't given up on America.
Imagine if he was our president
Wow!
I wish more people knew this! I couldn’t even find a news article with this info. The site I linked is the unions official post.
So…Biden castrated the railroad union and it’s now functionally pointless. Any union that cannot strike or perform its own negotiations is a paper tiger.
It’s not better if your master stops his friend from beating you and throws a scrap from the table. All he did was remind the unions and employees who the master is. Next time they’ll be just as dependent, if not more so, on government intervention.
Railroads now know they never have to negotiate again.
It’s not better if your master stops his friend from beating you and throws a scrap from the table.
It wasn’t a scrap, it was exactly what they were asking for. And it was achieved without a strike that would have cost the economy billions. You are putting words in the unions mouth when their own words are right in front of you. They did not have to thank Biden. If they felt that Biden had “castrated” them they would not have spent so much time praising him for his help.
Railroads now know they never have to negotiate again
Well, except for this time… when they did exactly that. Not sure why you think next time would be different.
Don’t get me wrong, I think everyone should have a right to unionize and I don’t think that Biden should have passed that law. I’m simply calling attention to the fact that Biden still fought hard to give the rail workers what they deserved, while still averting a strike, and was successful. To simply say he “castrated” the union and leave it at that, is ignoring the reality of the situation.
Another one. Don't forget "No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”
Lets add that to the list of Biden's broken promises. Then lets vote for him again because there's no better option.
It’ll be done by the 22nd century
Must be a very advanced technology. Rails, what even are those?
We need a techbro to invent a new type of transport, like an electric car that can fit a few people. Hell, larger ones may even fit like a hundred of them. Said techbro could then sell the idea even further by putting the car on rails, so that the cool, hip driver doesn't have to contend with the other plebs on the road. Then this rail network could potentially, with a lot of investment of course, cover a whole country. Then give it a cool name like T.R.A.I.N (Tesla Railbound Autonomous Infrastructure Neocar" /s
Don't forget to add hyper, otherwise you won't get funding
With which workers, Joe? You can't prevent union strikes and make these people work more. Well technically he can because they are half federal employees because of some bs law.
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