US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9636

On January 05 2018 11:10 Nyxisto wrote:


Don't exactly need to decry (neo)liberalism to introduce maternity leave and paid vacation. Just stop voting for the party with the cute elephant logo

On January 05 2018 11:16 Gahlo wrote:

Not really when the Democratic party has its own head up its literal and figurative ass.

On January 03 2018 16:01 mozoku wrote:

Apologies for late reply. Busy work day.

You're making the exact mistake that I thought you would, and mistakenly attributing to the government that which is actually the result of technology-driven economic shifts.

First mistake: the middle class isn't simply deteriorating away into poverty. It's bifurcating into winners and losers, which is the expected outcome of the shift to the knowledge economy and globalization. The driver of inequality, therefore, isn't government policy but economic shifts. Unions are part of this story, as it's a global trend. While globalization has certainly hurt American laborers and benefited higher earners, it's also brought raised the living standards of untold millions, if not billions, in the developing world. You can make a valid argument that the US should be prioritizing its domestic workers ahead of foreigners, but liberals and leftists who believe the US government is out to screw the middle class almost invariably despise the nationalist/protectionist view so that isn't your ticket either.

Next mistake: blaming the US tax code. Granted the tax code just changed, but the previous tax regime had been the most progressive tax code among developed countries. However, the progressive tax revenue hasn't been redistributed to the middle- and lower- classes. I suspect that has to do with the fact that America subsidizes a large share of the world's defense--seeing as most of the developed world spends about a than a third of as much on defense as the US (as a share of GDP, which is already somewhat biased against the US). [1] [2]

There's one reason you listed that I haven't yet touched: social programs. The two that I commonly hear about are education and healthcare. US healthcare is a mess, but there's been highly publicized efforts from both sides to reform the system in the past decade. The system will likely look completely different in another 10 years.

The suggested education policies I've seen that focus on expanding college access are moronic, as I've explained in an earlier post.
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Despite all of the crying about lobbyists, campaign funding, Trump's profiting off the presidency, etc., there isn't much actual evidence that all of this has amounted to policies that have destroyed the middle class to line the pockets of the rich. The reality is that the shift in income in favor the upper and upper-middle class are economy and technology-driven, and that the government can't simply wave a magic wand to fix the problem.

Health care seems like the lowest hanging fruit, and unsurprisingly it's been the biggest political issue of the past two presidencies.

On January 05 2018 12:11 TheFish7 wrote:
As a registered democrat I would like to play devil's advocate against the idea of many paid vacation days. Points against:
- Having many paid vacation days decreases productivity of an organization's workforce. This is because multiple persons will need to be trained to do the same job so that they can fill in when a colleague is out on vacation. This is not a big problem in low-skill work, but for specialized and higher-level workers can be a big drain on an organization's resources.
- Requiring vacation days reduces the individual freedom of a worker that chooses to work more days in an effort at self-advancement or who needs the extra money.
- Organizations that give more vacation days will have to pay higher wages for the same amount of work, thus passing cost on to the consumer and making the organization less competitive in the global environment.

Now of course there are good reasons FOR; not allowing slave labor and basic human decency are some good ones. I think France is an example of having taken it too far. You can't even go to the store on a Sunday because people aren't allowed to work; it becomes a nuisance to all of society makes it impossible to compete with their neighbors (Germany). We saw some of the backlash of that in their last Presidential election. 15 days required, with at least 5 of those consecutive are decent numbers to me.

Maternity leave I'm all on board with, though. Not requiring at least 3-4 months is a national disgrace. Also, raising the minimum wage would alleviate some of the problems of not having these things.

On January 05 2018 13:56 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
This can't actually be happening...

https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/949100087350710272