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On November 08 2016 02:12 Probe1 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 01:41 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:38 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:31 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:29 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:25 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
This is getting so hype 36 hrs from now we'll know who won I think its safe to assume that 36 hours from now we'll know who won and there's a good chance someone will be saying some treasonous shit. This is gonna be superspicy No kidding. One of the undermentioned aspects of this election has been pushing just how far you can go with free speech. Trump has said seditious things. It's shocking that we've just accepted it as something that is okay to say. I think you're overreacting Really? - Outright encouraged Russia to hack US government accounts - Refuses to accept the outcome of the election if he loses - Threatens to jail political opponents without evidence of criminal activity - Threatens to deport American citizens because of the country they were born in (while ironically his wife was an illegal immigrant working without a proper work visa) At what point do you draw the line? The kindest thing you could say about it is he got carried away. For years. He has consistently worked to undermine the countries stability if he is not given power.
There really isn't a line but a handful of exceptions (e.g. it's illegal to cause a panic in a crowded theater), otherwise anything goes and that's how it should be.
The problem with drawing lines is that inevitably those lines will be about maintaining the status quo, and the status quo doesn't differentiate between good and bad, right or wrong. The power to shut up Trump today would have been the power to shut up Martin Luther King Jr. or Susan B. Anthony in the past, and could be the power to shut up positive disruptive influences like Bernie Sanders in the future. That's bad, and because that's bad and we don't want that we let a lot of things slide that seem insane.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 08 2016 02:38 Adreme wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:29 LegalLord wrote:On November 08 2016 02:18 Stratos_speAr wrote:
Big round of polls today and 538's forecast shot up around 3% for Clinton since yesterday. Nationally, 538 has her up 3.4%, which is starting to get out of the range of reasonable polling errors. Bunch of states flipped the 50 percent line towards blue today. Unless there is a systematic failure to predict a wave of Trump support then I think Hillary's got this one. Combo that with the fact there was nothing but good news for her over the weekend which is too late to poll and I can finally day this might be over.
It's never over. If Hillary ultimately wins then we're in the Oversightghazi phase of this presidency. Everything Hillary will do will be weighted on whether or not it's sufficient grounds for impeachment.
The next four years are going to be a beauty one way or the other.
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On November 08 2016 02:40 Seuss wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:12 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:41 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:38 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:31 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:29 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:25 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
This is getting so hype 36 hrs from now we'll know who won I think its safe to assume that 36 hours from now we'll know who won and there's a good chance someone will be saying some treasonous shit. This is gonna be superspicy No kidding. One of the undermentioned aspects of this election has been pushing just how far you can go with free speech. Trump has said seditious things. It's shocking that we've just accepted it as something that is okay to say. I think you're overreacting Really? - Outright encouraged Russia to hack US government accounts - Refuses to accept the outcome of the election if he loses - Threatens to jail political opponents without evidence of criminal activity - Threatens to deport American citizens because of the country they were born in (while ironically his wife was an illegal immigrant working without a proper work visa) At what point do you draw the line? The kindest thing you could say about it is he got carried away. For years. He has consistently worked to undermine the countries stability if he is not given power. There really isn't a line but a handful of exceptions (e.g. it's illegal to cause a panic in a crowded theater), otherwise anything goes and that's how it should be. The problem with drawing lines is that inevitably those lines will be about maintaining the status quo, and the status quo doesn't differentiate between good and bad, right or wrong. The power to shut up Trump today would have been the power to shut up Martin Luther King Jr. or Susan B. Anthony in the past, and could be the power to shut up positive disruptive influences like Bernie Sanders in the future. That's bad, and because that's bad and we don't want that we let a lot of things slide that seem insane.
Now I'm a pretty ardent supporter of free speech, but I think it's worth noting that this textbook slippery slope argument doesn't account for the relatively strict free speech laws you find in most of Western Europe that seem to work out OK.
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On November 08 2016 02:34 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:31 Stratos_speAr wrote:On November 08 2016 02:27 KwarK wrote:
America never really had the middle class that it believes it has, it's just propaganda. As a reminder to people, if you sell your labour to someone else, you're probably working class. The vast majority of people are working class. Middle class is denoted by very high incomes and success in a middle class career, such as a lawyer, doctor, politician or business owner. If you're not making 6+ figures you're not middle class. If you're making 7 figures, you're probably still middle class. Upper class is something you're born into, a multigenerational elite like the Kennedy family.
America decided to tell itself that because it was a land of opportunity in opposition to the old world it would not have an upper class or a feudal aristocracy. Each man would make himself. And then, when communism came along and organized labour started fighting with the upper class that wasn't meant to exist, they also decided that America would not have a working class. The working class got called the middle class and everyone collectively agreed to overlook the fact that the middle class seemed to be doing an awful lot of working.
It's lunacy. American politicians keep having to use middle class as a code word to reach out to the working population and talk to them about how they're being overtaxed and that they're unable to afford a middle class lifestyle on their "middle class" income. America boiled down "lower/middle/upper class" to strictly denote income generations ago. While the historical source of these concepts is quite different, the distinction you're making has no practical application in American politics when using these terms. It's like pointing out that we use the spectrum of "liberal/conservative" in a counter-intuitive manner when you take in the global and historical context of these words. Sure, you're technically right, but it has no meaning when talking about American politics. Even if you say it's an income division the working class will still all call themselves the middle class. Nobody with a job hears "make things better for the middle classes" and doesn't think it's them being talked about there. There was an active effort to destroy class consciousness which is a real pity given how hard organized labor fought in the United States for rights we take for granted today. A big part of America's political problem probably comes down to the deliberate dismantling of organized labor as a movement in the wake of the Soviet Union.
Definitively lower class people know they're not middle class, but they and the people in the grey area politically benefit from the idea of a stronger middle class because they want to be moving up the ladder. Not that they see themselves in that group already necessarily, but share the same interests.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 08 2016 02:43 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:40 Seuss wrote:On November 08 2016 02:12 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:41 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:38 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:31 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:29 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:25 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
This is getting so hype 36 hrs from now we'll know who won I think its safe to assume that 36 hours from now we'll know who won and there's a good chance someone will be saying some treasonous shit. This is gonna be superspicy No kidding. One of the undermentioned aspects of this election has been pushing just how far you can go with free speech. Trump has said seditious things. It's shocking that we've just accepted it as something that is okay to say. I think you're overreacting Really? - Outright encouraged Russia to hack US government accounts - Refuses to accept the outcome of the election if he loses - Threatens to jail political opponents without evidence of criminal activity - Threatens to deport American citizens because of the country they were born in (while ironically his wife was an illegal immigrant working without a proper work visa) At what point do you draw the line? The kindest thing you could say about it is he got carried away. For years. He has consistently worked to undermine the countries stability if he is not given power. There really isn't a line but a handful of exceptions (e.g. it's illegal to cause a panic in a crowded theater), otherwise anything goes and that's how it should be. The problem with drawing lines is that inevitably those lines will be about maintaining the status quo, and the status quo doesn't differentiate between good and bad, right or wrong. The power to shut up Trump today would have been the power to shut up Martin Luther King Jr. or Susan B. Anthony in the past, and could be the power to shut up positive disruptive influences like Bernie Sanders in the future. That's bad, and because that's bad and we don't want that we let a lot of things slide that seem insane. Now I'm a pretty ardent supporter of free speech, but I think it's worth noting that this textbook slippery slope argument doesn't account for the relatively strict free speech laws you find in most of Western Europe that seem to work out OK.
The US isn't West Europe. Strict free speech laws would be as unpalatable to the US as our gun control situation would be to Europe. It's just not happening; we have our own balance of these issues.
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On November 08 2016 02:41 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:38 Adreme wrote:On November 08 2016 02:29 LegalLord wrote:On November 08 2016 02:18 Stratos_speAr wrote:
Big round of polls today and 538's forecast shot up around 3% for Clinton since yesterday. Nationally, 538 has her up 3.4%, which is starting to get out of the range of reasonable polling errors. Bunch of states flipped the 50 percent line towards blue today. Unless there is a systematic failure to predict a wave of Trump support then I think Hillary's got this one. Combo that with the fact there was nothing but good news for her over the weekend which is too late to poll and I can finally day this might be over. It's never over. If Hillary ultimately wins then we're in the Oversightghazi phase of this presidency. Everything Hillary will do will be weighted on whether or not it's sufficient grounds for impeachment. The next four years are going to be a beauty one way or the other.
That's all smoke. The people in charge remember what happened when they tried to impeach bill and they likely won't make the same mistake.
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On November 08 2016 02:44 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:43 Stratos_speAr wrote:On November 08 2016 02:40 Seuss wrote:On November 08 2016 02:12 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:41 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:38 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:31 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:29 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:25 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
This is getting so hype 36 hrs from now we'll know who won I think its safe to assume that 36 hours from now we'll know who won and there's a good chance someone will be saying some treasonous shit. This is gonna be superspicy No kidding. One of the undermentioned aspects of this election has been pushing just how far you can go with free speech. Trump has said seditious things. It's shocking that we've just accepted it as something that is okay to say. I think you're overreacting Really? - Outright encouraged Russia to hack US government accounts - Refuses to accept the outcome of the election if he loses - Threatens to jail political opponents without evidence of criminal activity - Threatens to deport American citizens because of the country they were born in (while ironically his wife was an illegal immigrant working without a proper work visa) At what point do you draw the line? The kindest thing you could say about it is he got carried away. For years. He has consistently worked to undermine the countries stability if he is not given power. There really isn't a line but a handful of exceptions (e.g. it's illegal to cause a panic in a crowded theater), otherwise anything goes and that's how it should be. The problem with drawing lines is that inevitably those lines will be about maintaining the status quo, and the status quo doesn't differentiate between good and bad, right or wrong. The power to shut up Trump today would have been the power to shut up Martin Luther King Jr. or Susan B. Anthony in the past, and could be the power to shut up positive disruptive influences like Bernie Sanders in the future. That's bad, and because that's bad and we don't want that we let a lot of things slide that seem insane. Now I'm a pretty ardent supporter of free speech, but I think it's worth noting that this textbook slippery slope argument doesn't account for the relatively strict free speech laws you find in most of Western Europe that seem to work out OK. The US isn't West Europe. Strict free speech laws would be as unpalatable to the US as our gun control situation would be to Europe. It's just not happening; we have our own balance of these issues.
It wouldn't be unpalatable, it would be political suicide. I find it difficult to think of something that would be more universally opposed.
That said, I wasn't talking about political opinion, I was talking about actual effects. Stricter free speech laws haven't turned several western countries into totalitarian dictatorships, and many of them have better quality of living standards and more freedoms than we do.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 08 2016 02:46 Adreme wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:41 LegalLord wrote:On November 08 2016 02:38 Adreme wrote:On November 08 2016 02:29 LegalLord wrote:On November 08 2016 02:18 Stratos_speAr wrote:
Big round of polls today and 538's forecast shot up around 3% for Clinton since yesterday. Nationally, 538 has her up 3.4%, which is starting to get out of the range of reasonable polling errors. Bunch of states flipped the 50 percent line towards blue today. Unless there is a systematic failure to predict a wave of Trump support then I think Hillary's got this one. Combo that with the fact there was nothing but good news for her over the weekend which is too late to poll and I can finally day this might be over. It's never over. If Hillary ultimately wins then we're in the Oversightghazi phase of this presidency. Everything Hillary will do will be weighted on whether or not it's sufficient grounds for impeachment. The next four years are going to be a beauty one way or the other. That's all smoke. The people in charge remember what happened when they tried to impeach bill and they likely won't make the same mistake.
I think you have a wee bit too much faith in the collective judgment of our Congress here. I have no doubt that they would try it if they thought it might work. And they certainly don't know if they will be able to keep the Trump Republicans under control at this rate.
Oversightghazi is coming, I am quite sure. There is no way people are just going to collectively forget how much they don't like Hillary, not for a moment.
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United States41991 Posts
Looks like Gallup polled class identity in the US. In 2008 42% of high school dropouts who lacked a diploma identified as middle class or higher. 30% of people making $30,000 or less a year identified as middle class. Although I overstated the degree to which people don't believe in the working class and since the great recession it has increased steadily.
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Free speech is dependent on accountability. It sort of falls apart when someone can create fake news sites and post them to facebook alongside the New York Times. It falls apart even further than you remove national borders.
This article sort of sums it up.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo
“This is the news of the millennium!” said the story on WorldPoliticus.com. Citing unnamed FBI sources, it claimed Hillary Clinton will be indicted in 2017 for crimes related to her email scandal.
“Your Prayers Have Been Answered,” declared the headline.
For Trump supporters, that certainly seemed to be the case. They helped the baseless story generate over 140,000 shares, reactions, and comments on Facebook.
Meanwhile, roughly 6,000 miles away in a small town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, a young man watched as money began trickling into his Google AdSense account.
Over the past year, the Macedonian town of Veles (population 45,000) has experienced a digital gold rush as locals launched at least 140 US politics websites. These sites have American-sounding domain names such as WorldPoliticus.com, TrumpVision365.com, USConservativeToday.com, DonaldTrumpNews.co, and USADailyPolitics.com. They almost all publish aggressively pro-Trump content aimed at conservatives and Trump supporters in the US.
The young Macedonians who run these sites say they don’t care about Donald Trump. They are responding to straightforward economic incentives: As Facebook regularly reveals in earnings reports, a US Facebook user is worth about four times a user outside the US. The fraction-of-a-penny-per-click of US display advertising — a declining market for American publishers — goes a long way in Veles. Several teens and young men who run these sites told BuzzFeed News that they learned the best way to generate traffic is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook — and the best way to generate shares on Facebook is to publish sensationalist and often false content that caters to Trump supporters.
As a result, this strange hub of pro-Trump sites in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is now playing a significant role in propagating the kind of false and misleading content that was identified in a recent BuzzFeed News analysis of hyperpartisan Facebook pages. These sites open a window into the economic incentives behind producing misinformation specifically for the wealthiest advertising markets and specifically for Facebook, the world’s largest social network, as well as within online advertising networks such as Google AdSense.
“Yes, the info in the blogs is bad, false, and misleading but the rationale is that ‘if it gets the people to click on it and engage, then use it,’” said a university student in Veles who started a US politics site, and who agreed to speak on the condition that BuzzFeed News not use his name.
The law that protect websites from liable lawsuits treats posts in this thread as equal to some international fake news site posting to facebook to make money off Google ads. It treats private tiny websites run by small groups of people the same as Twitter, Facebook, Google or Yahoo. And I think the internet has moved beyond universal equal protection individuals and for billion dollar websites owned by publicly traded companies.
On November 08 2016 02:44 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:43 Stratos_speAr wrote:On November 08 2016 02:40 Seuss wrote:On November 08 2016 02:12 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:41 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:38 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:31 GGTeMpLaR wrote:On November 08 2016 01:29 Probe1 wrote:On November 08 2016 01:25 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
This is getting so hype 36 hrs from now we'll know who won I think its safe to assume that 36 hours from now we'll know who won and there's a good chance someone will be saying some treasonous shit. This is gonna be superspicy No kidding. One of the undermentioned aspects of this election has been pushing just how far you can go with free speech. Trump has said seditious things. It's shocking that we've just accepted it as something that is okay to say. I think you're overreacting Really? - Outright encouraged Russia to hack US government accounts - Refuses to accept the outcome of the election if he loses - Threatens to jail political opponents without evidence of criminal activity - Threatens to deport American citizens because of the country they were born in (while ironically his wife was an illegal immigrant working without a proper work visa) At what point do you draw the line? The kindest thing you could say about it is he got carried away. For years. He has consistently worked to undermine the countries stability if he is not given power. There really isn't a line but a handful of exceptions (e.g. it's illegal to cause a panic in a crowded theater), otherwise anything goes and that's how it should be. The problem with drawing lines is that inevitably those lines will be about maintaining the status quo, and the status quo doesn't differentiate between good and bad, right or wrong. The power to shut up Trump today would have been the power to shut up Martin Luther King Jr. or Susan B. Anthony in the past, and could be the power to shut up positive disruptive influences like Bernie Sanders in the future. That's bad, and because that's bad and we don't want that we let a lot of things slide that seem insane. Now I'm a pretty ardent supporter of free speech, but I think it's worth noting that this textbook slippery slope argument doesn't account for the relatively strict free speech laws you find in most of Western Europe that seem to work out OK. The US isn't West Europe. Strict free speech laws would be as unpalatable to the US as our gun control situation would be to Europe. It's just not happening; we have our own balance of these issues.
Strictly speaking, the internet is not universally covered by free speech.
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I'm not familiar with western Europe's free speech laws, but my brief google research basically puts it at "Europe has restrictions on hate speech and the US doesn't".
Is there anything in Probe1's list that wouldn't be protected as free speech in Europe? There's a reason I jumped straight to "hey, if we ban speech that threatens the stability of the country these reformers become collateral damage", as that was Probe1's rubric.
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Well the nazies can get a permit to march on Washington and hold a rally where mlk did and say everything they want about non white gemanics.
Pretty sure that isn't legal in Germany.
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United States41991 Posts
On November 08 2016 02:53 Seuss wrote:
I'm not familiar with western Europe's free speech laws, but my brief google research basically puts it at "Europe has restrictions on hate speech and the US doesn't".
Is there anything in Probe1's list that wouldn't be protected as free speech in Europe? There's a reason I jumped straight to "hey, if we ban speech that threatens the stability of the country these reformers become collateral damage".
In the UK we have laws against inciting racial/religious/ethnic/sexual orientation/whatever conflict. Basically if you have a hate crime rally and then one of the guys attending it does a hate crime then you get prosecuted too. They've been mainly used against Islamic preachers who promote terrorism where insufficient evidence has been found linking them directly to terrorism. While they could theoretically be used against political groups I suspect that the judiciary would prevent that. But in the UK it's all very vague and hand wavey. We give our institutions unthinkable amounts of power and rely upon everyone involved knowing that they shouldn't abuse them.
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On November 08 2016 02:51 KwarK wrote:
Looks like Gallup polled class identity in the US. In 2008 42% of high school dropouts who lacked a diploma identified as middle class or higher. 30% of people making $30,000 or less a year identified as middle class. Although I overstated the degree to which people don't believe in the working class and since the great recession it has increased steadily.
yeesh. some of those might not count... i took a quick look at wikipedia and it seems that economists haven't really agreed on what constitutes middle class and different definitions would include anywhere between 25% and 66% of the US population.
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On November 08 2016 02:53 Seuss wrote:
I'm not familiar with western Europe's free speech laws, but my brief google research basically puts it at "Europe has restrictions on hate speech and the US doesn't".
Is there anything in Probe1's list that wouldn't be protected as free speech in Europe? There's a reason I jumped straight to "hey, if we ban speech that threatens the stability of the country these reformers become collateral damage", as that was Probe1's rubric.
The deporting could get him in trouble in the Netherlands.
Our own version of Trump (Geert Wilders) is current facing trial under hate speech for threatening to deport Moroccans if elected.
But as Kwark said the law on it is rather vague so its not sure if he will be found guilty or not.
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On November 07 2016 22:46 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2016 22:27 GoTuNk! wrote:On November 07 2016 22:03 Doodsmack wrote:
Virginia's highest court ruled in July that Gov McAuliffe can't pardon felons en masse (to free them up to vote), but must consider them on a case by case basis. He then managed to pardon 60,000 felons by using a mechanical pen that signed letters very quickly. Guess they are Democratic voters lol. Wonder if this could be challenged after the election... Well they are hell bent on creating and open border so more democrats can come in, this would be the next step. The more, the merrier (as long as they vote democrat). They don’t even need open borders. The natural progression of demographics will make whites the minority by 2040. In 2020 there will be more non-white children than white children in the US. All citizens able to vote. NPR reported last week the Texas has the shifted to a non-white majority population, but the voter participation is leans to white voters. Unless the Republicans ditch their current tactics, they will fade into a nothing party by the sheer weight of changing demographics.
Well that's my point exactly,so I guess we agree? They love illegal inmigrants because their children vote democrat (and so will they with the "path to citizenship").
So you are perfectly ok with the replacement of the native population?
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On November 08 2016 02:34 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:31 Stratos_speAr wrote:On November 08 2016 02:27 KwarK wrote:
America never really had the middle class that it believes it has, it's just propaganda. As a reminder to people, if you sell your labour to someone else, you're probably working class. The vast majority of people are working class. Middle class is denoted by very high incomes and success in a middle class career, such as a lawyer, doctor, politician or business owner. If you're not making 6+ figures you're not middle class. If you're making 7 figures, you're probably still middle class. Upper class is something you're born into, a multigenerational elite like the Kennedy family.
America decided to tell itself that because it was a land of opportunity in opposition to the old world it would not have an upper class or a feudal aristocracy. Each man would make himself. And then, when communism came along and organized labour started fighting with the upper class that wasn't meant to exist, they also decided that America would not have a working class. The working class got called the middle class and everyone collectively agreed to overlook the fact that the middle class seemed to be doing an awful lot of working.
It's lunacy. American politicians keep having to use middle class as a code word to reach out to the working population and talk to them about how they're being overtaxed and that they're unable to afford a middle class lifestyle on their "middle class" income. America boiled down "lower/middle/upper class" to strictly denote income generations ago. While the historical source of these concepts is quite different, the distinction you're making has no practical application in American politics when using these terms. It's like pointing out that we use the spectrum of "liberal/conservative" in a counter-intuitive manner when you take in the global and historical context of these words. Sure, you're technically right, but it has no meaning when talking about American politics. Even if you say it's an income division the working class will still all call themselves the middle class. Nobody with a job hears "make things better for the middle classes" and doesn't think it's them being talked about there. There was an active effort to destroy class consciousness which is a real pity given how hard organized labor fought in the United States for rights we take for granted today. A big part of America's political problem probably comes down to the deliberate dismantling of organized labor as a movement in the wake of the Soviet Union.
I'm fairly certain middle class is defined by the "middle". Therefore, if the median income is what you earn as a labourer, then (some of) the working class is, in fact, middle class. Working class is not exclusive of middle class, that would be lower class.
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EDIT: I realized I was arguing with gotunk and have no intention of doing that.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On November 08 2016 02:57 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:53 Seuss wrote:
I'm not familiar with western Europe's free speech laws, but my brief google research basically puts it at "Europe has restrictions on hate speech and the US doesn't".
Is there anything in Probe1's list that wouldn't be protected as free speech in Europe? There's a reason I jumped straight to "hey, if we ban speech that threatens the stability of the country these reformers become collateral damage". In the UK we have laws against inciting racial/religious/ethnic/sexual orientation/whatever conflict. Basically if you have a hate crime rally and then one of the guys attending it does a hate crime then you get prosecuted too. They've been mainly used against Islamic preachers who promote terrorism where insufficient evidence has been found linking them directly to terrorism. While they could theoretically be used against political groups I suspect that the judiciary would prevent that. But in the UK it's all very vague and hand wavey. We give our institutions unthinkable amounts of power and rely upon everyone involved knowing that they shouldn't abuse them.
The US is explicitly designed on the idea that institutions can't be given that kind of power and be expected to use it in good faith, so the rules need to be very explicitly put in place.
In Russia it's more like in Europe. The state has the power and is given a lot of trust to use it in good faith. To what extent that works is a discussion that would take an eternity to address.
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On November 08 2016 03:28 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2016 02:34 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2016 02:31 Stratos_speAr wrote:On November 08 2016 02:27 KwarK wrote:
America never really had the middle class that it believes it has, it's just propaganda. As a reminder to people, if you sell your labour to someone else, you're probably working class. The vast majority of people are working class. Middle class is denoted by very high incomes and success in a middle class career, such as a lawyer, doctor, politician or business owner. If you're not making 6+ figures you're not middle class. If you're making 7 figures, you're probably still middle class. Upper class is something you're born into, a multigenerational elite like the Kennedy family.
America decided to tell itself that because it was a land of opportunity in opposition to the old world it would not have an upper class or a feudal aristocracy. Each man would make himself. And then, when communism came along and organized labour started fighting with the upper class that wasn't meant to exist, they also decided that America would not have a working class. The working class got called the middle class and everyone collectively agreed to overlook the fact that the middle class seemed to be doing an awful lot of working.
It's lunacy. American politicians keep having to use middle class as a code word to reach out to the working population and talk to them about how they're being overtaxed and that they're unable to afford a middle class lifestyle on their "middle class" income. America boiled down "lower/middle/upper class" to strictly denote income generations ago. While the historical source of these concepts is quite different, the distinction you're making has no practical application in American politics when using these terms. It's like pointing out that we use the spectrum of "liberal/conservative" in a counter-intuitive manner when you take in the global and historical context of these words. Sure, you're technically right, but it has no meaning when talking about American politics. Even if you say it's an income division the working class will still all call themselves the middle class. Nobody with a job hears "make things better for the middle classes" and doesn't think it's them being talked about there. There was an active effort to destroy class consciousness which is a real pity given how hard organized labor fought in the United States for rights we take for granted today. A big part of America's political problem probably comes down to the deliberate dismantling of organized labor as a movement in the wake of the Soviet Union. I'm fairly certain middle class is defined by the "middle". Therefore, if the median income is what you earn as a labourer, then (some of) the working class is, in fact, middle class. Working class is not exclusive of middle class, that would be lower class.
The middle class is defined by 'bourgeois' values, people who have a tertiary education, like upper class cultural activities, have a home and two cars, and so on. Middle class is not a technical term referring to the median. Many working class people occupy that range.
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EPT
