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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
On June 01 2018 04:10 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 03:54 zlefin wrote:On June 01 2018 03:01 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 02:30 sc-darkness wrote:On June 01 2018 02:14 TheDwf wrote:On June 01 2018 01:24 Gorsameth wrote:On June 01 2018 01:10 RvB wrote:On May 31 2018 18:34 TheDwf wrote:
Verhofstadt trying his hardest to boost the Italian far-right In this case Verhofstadt is almost certainly right. Long term economic growth and income is driven by productivity growth and Italy's has been dismal for more than 2 decades. Since the adoption of the euro Italy has lagged behind its peers in economic growth Italy's growth rate has been trending downwards way before the adoption of the euro and it's unenplyment rate has been trending upwards since way before it as well. Where it largely differs from the other countries is its productivity growth: Within this global trend, Italy stands out: productivity has been the main determinant of the
dismal GDP growth recorded in the last 20 years (Giordano et al., 2017). Italy’s negative productivity growth gap characterized both the pre-crisis (1995-2007) and the
crisis periods (2007-13). In the latter, the collapse of TFP growth in Italy (-0.9 per cent per year on
average) contrasts with the experience of the other European economies that managed to maintain a
constant level of TFP (Germany and Spain) or limit its decline (France) during the crisis. There are a large amount of reasons why Italy's productivity lags behind its peers (and many papers on it too of which I linked 1). I'm not going to delve too much into it but it's clear that Italy has a much larger problem than the euro. bruegel.orgwww.bancaditalia.it Populists dont get votes because they are correct, they are getting it because people want to believe the fairy-tale that the situation can be turned around in 1-2 years by simply doing X. They don't want to be told they have to make sacrifices to fix the mistakes of the past, no matter how true it might be. People who live in fairy tales are those who think that endless austerity and "structural adjustement" can be the only political horizon for another decade. Neoliberal populists like Macron just lie as much when they state that their holy combo of "lifting market rigidities" and "reducing public spending" + Show Spoiler +only for social spending of course; when it comes to military spending or tax cuts/exemptions for m/billionaires and multinationals, oddly enough there is always "magic money" will fix the situation, except they're not seen as such (demagogues) since they're ideologically, economically and politically the dominant power. This "we have to make sacrifices" rhetoric... Why should we pay for the banksters? (~30% of the French public debt is directly linked to the 2008 crisis.) Why should we pay for idiots who deregulated financial markets because the optimal allocation of capital + self-regulating markets blablabla? Why should we pay because billionaires looted us by hiding their money in fiscal heavens? Why should we pay to subsidize companies' profits, isn't the Holy Market supposed to be taking care of that? My generation was barely born when Maastricht was voted, why should we "make sacrifices" for the next X decades to honor a failed contract ("the eurozone will bring prosperity and growth") made by previous generations? I doubt a left wing person would understand, but austerity is a necessary evil when economy is messed up. It's very similar to being overweight and trying to lose weight. You have to cut your food (money) to reach your goal. It's difficult but there's no magical solution. The question is if cuts should be a lot at once or gradual over a long time. Not if there should be any. Behave like a responsible adult not like a spoiled kid. Of course, your better option is to vote for the better candidate who will bring better economy but sometimes people are too dumb and there's nothing you can do. In that case I'd like to see the people who argue for austerity because of its necessity also be in favor of tax increases, especially the progressive kind that will impact the rich more. Typically in the political sphere they will argue at the same time for spending cuts and tax cuts; that tells a different picture from the one you're offering. In your analogy, the guy is cutting his food because he's overweight, so he eats less, but at the same time he's also like "You know, I'm probably doing too much sports. I'm going to do less sports instead." some of us do argue for the tax increases and austerity. but you can't expect politicians to kill their careers for sound policy; when ti's ultimately up to the voters. Voters choose bad fiscal policy, so that's what we get. politicians present the arguments that people want to hear to justify their own wants. if you want people who's job is to come up with sensible, rigorous policy then you'll need something other than democracy that's not yet been developed. Are you saying that they're in favor of doing it, but can't because the plebs is too dumb to see the logic in that and would vote them out of office? I find that to be extremely convenient: all of those things that could impact the rich, we can't do them; the things that impact the poor, we can do them no problem...? That's far from the simplest explanation for this result: maybe they're just working for some rich people who want to pay less taxes and aren't really impacted when there are spending cuts thanks to their wealth, so they logically ask for the latter to obtain the former, under the guise of it being a necessity because there's a crisis. I do appreciate how far we've gotten when compared with darkness' original assertions though, that is something.
that's not what I'm saying.
what i'm saying is: they're politicians, they're wholly amoral. (amoral not immoral). they'll support whatever policies people support/get them elected, regardless of what those policies are. they don't care whether something is bad policy or not. they care whether it will help them get elected/reelected. as long as any blowback from a failed policy is far enough away that it won't hurt them personally, or they can diffuse blame sufficiently that it won't hurt their chances, it's not a problem.
they support those policies bad fiscal policies because that's what the voters, in aggregate, do in fact support (even if they don't consciously realize it).
democracy is based on the collective will of the voters, as expressed by their votes. this includes the aggregate effects of known cognitive biases. like the bias that favors money now over money later to a sizeable degree. human cognition and decisionmaking isn't rational, i'ts heavily based on emotion. and so it is with people's voting behavior. and of course to some extent politicians also use these biases to aim their promises; they make promises in ways that exploit these biases to further their own odds of succeeding at elections, either intentionally, or simply through systems processes leading them to act that way because they learn it works best in practice. indeed one of the goals of some among the rich is to encourage/manipulate the votin gpublic at large to agree with unsound policies that favor the rich.
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How to be a Brexit supporter
1. Campaign for Brexit
2. Vote for Brexit
3. Say you're not worried about life after Brexit
4. Apply for EU residency
Example: www.independent.co.uk
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One hilarious thing about the whole Brexit endeavour seems to be that nobody precisely knows why they decided to leave and what this is supposed to accomplish to begin with. The whole Brexit front seems entirely silent ever since they actually decided to leave.
The UK really had the cake and did eat it as well. They had extra rules, their own currency, were largely in agreement with the policies of the Nordic/central European block anyway and had full access to the European market.
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I guess their desire to say "fuck you" and blame the EU for internal affairs was the selling point. Who knows. Not my problem anymore since I left the UK as a non-UK person. 
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You must have forgotten about all the Pakistanis entering GB...
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On June 01 2018 06:38 Velr wrote:
You must have forgotten about all the Pakistanis entering GB...
It seems like they could have solved this problem without leave the entire EU and losing all the perks associated with it.
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On June 01 2018 06:43 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 06:38 Velr wrote:
You must have forgotten about all the Pakistanis entering GB... It seems like they could have solved this problem without leave the entire EU and losing all the perks associated with it.
It's the EU's fault though. If in doubt, blame the EU. That's the motto of Brexit fans. What's funny about them is they still think the UK is as relevant as the British Empire so they could just leave the EU at no cost.
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On June 01 2018 06:38 Velr wrote:
You must have forgotten about all the Pakistanis entering GB...
A common argument from the Brexit side was that EU membershp biases towards EU immigration which is unfair towards global immigrants. I'm not sure if that was ever supposed to be taken seriously rather than just an argument in bad faith, but without being a member of the EU the UK will most certainly receive more migration from non-EU countries than they otherwise would have.
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Well, according to someone who used to frequent the UK pol thread, he saw brexit as an political opportunity to reduce immigration from all sources, whether EU, European or otherwise.
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How is brexit going anyways? are they going to meet that two year deadline? (iirc it was triggered awhile back with the formal notification)
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On June 01 2018 06:53 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Well, according to someone who used to frequent the UK pol thread, he saw brexit as an political opportunity to reduce immigration from all sources, whether EU, European or otherwise.
An amazing idea when the population of your nation is shrinking if immigration is removed from the equation. It is like the states in the US that cut taxes to simulate growth in their state, even though their prime labor population is fleeing the state. It does amazing things for the economy and government services.
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Italy's populist leaders strike deal to resurrect proposed coalitionMatteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio’s announcement averts prospect of new snap election Italy’s two populist parties have reached a new agreement to form a government, days after a standoff with Italy’s president over their stance on the euro abruptly ended an initial bid to assume power. A joint statement by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right Lega announced that political newcomer Giuseppe Conte, who had been seen as a controversial choice, was still slated to serve as prime minister. The relatively unknown law professor was due to meet Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, on Thursday night. “All the conditions have been fulfilled for a political, Five Star and Lega government,” said Luigi Di Maio, the Five Star chief, and Matteo Salvini, the Lega leader, in a joint statement after several hours of talks in Rome. The deal will bring at least temporary calm to a political crisis that has embroiled Italy for weeks. The tumult raised questions – in Brussels and among investors around the world – about whether the rise in Italian populism and the collapse of traditional parties posed a fundamental threat to the country’s future in the eurozone. A formation of the new government will at least temporarily allay those concerns, because it will remove for now the threat that snap elections will be called later this summer, a prospect which worried investors because it could have bolstered support for anti-EU parties. Italian press reports indicated that the populist leaders had stepped back from their insistence that Paolo Savona, an 81-year-old Eurosceptic, should serve as finance minister. The choice had been vetoed by Mattarella, prompting the M5S and the Lega to call off their deal. Savona is now expected to be nominated to serve as EU minister instead. But there are still many unknowns about how the new government – an uneasy alliance between two former political opponents, both jockeying for power – will govern Italy. Salvini, the bombastic and xenophobic leader of the Lega, who rose in recent years on the back of incendiary and racist statements about migrants and Roma, is expected to take on the role of interior minister. Salvini has campaigned on the promise of mass deportations of migrants and said a new government would build detention centres around the world. He is also a fierce critic of Brussels and has called for closer ties to Russia. Di Maio is expected to lead a powerful new post that will combine labour and industry portfolios in a move that could mark big changes to labour and environmental policies, given the M5S’s stated opposition to big industry. Giovanni Tria, a little known economics professor, is expected to be nominated to the finance ministry. While Tria has been critical of the EU, he is not been seen as an advocate for an exit from the eurozone. The new deal has not yet been blessed by Mattarella, who earlier this week nominated a technocrat, Carlo Cottarelli, to serve as prime minister. Those plans were put on hold after Mattarella opted to give the populists more time to reach a new agreement. The new government is expected to take a far more antagonistic stance against Brussels than the previous government, headed by the centre-left Democratic party. But the alliance between the M5S and the Lega will only have a relatively narrow majority in the Italian senate, easing some concerns among investors and officials in Brussels that the new government could take drastic actions. While both parties are populist in nature, and have railed against Brussels and Italian “elites”, they have long been natural opponents in politics. Wolfango Piccoli, the co-president of Teneo Intelligence in London, said: “They are both led by young and ambitious leaders who share prime-ministerial ambitions. Due to mutual distrust, it has taken both parties over 70 days to reach a deal and choose an unknown third figure as prime minister.” Their shared agenda includes plans to cut taxes, scrap a previously agreed pension plan and institute a “universal basic income”. While many officials in Brussels sought to ease tensions with Rome this week, and backed Mattarella after the president took a political risk by defending Italy’s role in the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, a issued a tough critique of Italy on Thursday. He said Italians needed to work harder, be less corrupt and stop looking to the EU to rescue the country’s poor regions. “Italians have to take care of the poor regions of Italy. That means more work, less corruption, seriousness,” Juncker said. “We will help them as we always did. But don’t play this game of loading with responsibility the EU. A country is a country, a nation is a nation. Countries first, Europe second.” Source
So it seems that Italy has a government in the end. Now we will see if those big mouths have what it takes on the "EU front," or fold at the first blood drop shed. If their coalition survives long enough to see that...
A thought for undocumented foreigners in Italy. With Salvini at the Interior, this will be a slaughter.
"Countries first, Europe second." Fine, Mr. Juncker...
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On June 01 2018 06:13 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 04:10 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 03:54 zlefin wrote:On June 01 2018 03:01 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 02:30 sc-darkness wrote:On June 01 2018 02:14 TheDwf wrote:On June 01 2018 01:24 Gorsameth wrote:On June 01 2018 01:10 RvB wrote:In this case Verhofstadt is almost certainly right. Long term economic growth and income is driven by productivity growth and Italy's has been dismal for more than 2 decades. Since the adoption of the euro Italy has lagged behind its peers in economic growth Italy's growth rate has been trending downwards way before the adoption of the euro and it's unenplyment rate has been trending upwards since way before it as well. Where it largely differs from the other countries is its productivity growth: Within this global trend, Italy stands out: productivity has been the main determinant of the
dismal GDP growth recorded in the last 20 years (Giordano et al., 2017). Italy’s negative productivity growth gap characterized both the pre-crisis (1995-2007) and the
crisis periods (2007-13). In the latter, the collapse of TFP growth in Italy (-0.9 per cent per year on
average) contrasts with the experience of the other European economies that managed to maintain a
constant level of TFP (Germany and Spain) or limit its decline (France) during the crisis. There are a large amount of reasons why Italy's productivity lags behind its peers (and many papers on it too of which I linked 1). I'm not going to delve too much into it but it's clear that Italy has a much larger problem than the euro. bruegel.orgwww.bancaditalia.it Populists dont get votes because they are correct, they are getting it because people want to believe the fairy-tale that the situation can be turned around in 1-2 years by simply doing X. They don't want to be told they have to make sacrifices to fix the mistakes of the past, no matter how true it might be. People who live in fairy tales are those who think that endless austerity and "structural adjustement" can be the only political horizon for another decade. Neoliberal populists like Macron just lie as much when they state that their holy combo of "lifting market rigidities" and "reducing public spending" + Show Spoiler +only for social spending of course; when it comes to military spending or tax cuts/exemptions for m/billionaires and multinationals, oddly enough there is always "magic money" will fix the situation, except they're not seen as such (demagogues) since they're ideologically, economically and politically the dominant power. This "we have to make sacrifices" rhetoric... Why should we pay for the banksters? (~30% of the French public debt is directly linked to the 2008 crisis.) Why should we pay for idiots who deregulated financial markets because the optimal allocation of capital + self-regulating markets blablabla? Why should we pay because billionaires looted us by hiding their money in fiscal heavens? Why should we pay to subsidize companies' profits, isn't the Holy Market supposed to be taking care of that? My generation was barely born when Maastricht was voted, why should we "make sacrifices" for the next X decades to honor a failed contract ("the eurozone will bring prosperity and growth") made by previous generations? I doubt a left wing person would understand, but austerity is a necessary evil when economy is messed up. It's very similar to being overweight and trying to lose weight. You have to cut your food (money) to reach your goal. It's difficult but there's no magical solution. The question is if cuts should be a lot at once or gradual over a long time. Not if there should be any. Behave like a responsible adult not like a spoiled kid. Of course, your better option is to vote for the better candidate who will bring better economy but sometimes people are too dumb and there's nothing you can do. In that case I'd like to see the people who argue for austerity because of its necessity also be in favor of tax increases, especially the progressive kind that will impact the rich more. Typically in the political sphere they will argue at the same time for spending cuts and tax cuts; that tells a different picture from the one you're offering. In your analogy, the guy is cutting his food because he's overweight, so he eats less, but at the same time he's also like "You know, I'm probably doing too much sports. I'm going to do less sports instead." some of us do argue for the tax increases and austerity. but you can't expect politicians to kill their careers for sound policy; when ti's ultimately up to the voters. Voters choose bad fiscal policy, so that's what we get. politicians present the arguments that people want to hear to justify their own wants. if you want people who's job is to come up with sensible, rigorous policy then you'll need something other than democracy that's not yet been developed. Are you saying that they're in favor of doing it, but can't because the plebs is too dumb to see the logic in that and would vote them out of office? I find that to be extremely convenient: all of those things that could impact the rich, we can't do them; the things that impact the poor, we can do them no problem...? That's far from the simplest explanation for this result: maybe they're just working for some rich people who want to pay less taxes and aren't really impacted when there are spending cuts thanks to their wealth, so they logically ask for the latter to obtain the former, under the guise of it being a necessity because there's a crisis. I do appreciate how far we've gotten when compared with darkness' original assertions though, that is something. that's not what I'm saying. what i'm saying is: they're politicians, they're wholly amoral. (amoral not immoral). they'll support whatever policies people support/get them elected, regardless of what those policies are. they don't care whether something is bad policy or not. they care whether it will help them get elected/reelected. as long as any blowback from a failed policy is far enough away that it won't hurt them personally, or they can diffuse blame sufficiently that it won't hurt their chances, it's not a problem. they support those policies bad fiscal policies because that's what the voters, in aggregate, do in fact support (even if they don't consciously realize it). democracy is based on the collective will of the voters, as expressed by their votes. this includes the aggregate effects of known cognitive biases. like the bias that favors money now over money later to a sizeable degree. human cognition and decisionmaking isn't rational, i'ts heavily based on emotion. and so it is with people's voting behavior. and of course to some extent politicians also use these biases to aim their promises; they make promises in ways that exploit these biases to further their own odds of succeeding at elections, either intentionally, or simply through systems processes leading them to act that way because they learn it works best in practice. indeed one of the goals of some among the rich is to encourage/manipulate the votin gpublic at large to agree with unsound policies that favor the rich.
I like this post because it manages to be quite naive in the middle of expressing a rather cynical (but often accurate) view of politicians.
Naive because reelection isn't a goal in itself, what those amoral politicians are after is the benefits that they hope to draw from reelection. Presumably they aren't masochists, they expect to get something positive out of that reelection process. There are plenty of other positive things that they could get though, so there comes a balancing act: maybe this action is slightly bad for my chances of reelection, but maybe I'm benefitting from it massively in some other ways. What would an amoral politician do when faced with this choice? If he is logical in any way, he would take the risk.
That's one way that you could be influenced to go against the will of your electorate while still being an amoral dude, but here's another: ideology. Maybe you have a vision in your head of what your country should be. Now that vision shouldn't be too far from what the people want because they elected you, but perhaps you... lied to get elected. This has been known to happen. For example, you could run in France as a centrist, then get elected and do a bunch of neoliberal stuff while from time to time having some discourses in which you talk about doing leftist things. Ideology is another incentive that you could have to do stuff that isn't based on your electorate, all the while remaining an amoral politician out there for his own profit.
Another puzzling element is that you seem to treat electorate opinion like this massive wall that you run into, and then that's it. Public opinion can be influenced. It's pretty easy to do, actually. It is modified and changed by a process called: conditioning.
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On June 01 2018 07:08 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 06:13 zlefin wrote:On June 01 2018 04:10 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 03:54 zlefin wrote:On June 01 2018 03:01 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 02:30 sc-darkness wrote:On June 01 2018 02:14 TheDwf wrote:On June 01 2018 01:24 Gorsameth wrote:On June 01 2018 01:10 RvB wrote:In this case Verhofstadt is almost certainly right. Long term economic growth and income is driven by productivity growth and Italy's has been dismal for more than 2 decades. Since the adoption of the euro Italy has lagged behind its peers in economic growth Italy's growth rate has been trending downwards way before the adoption of the euro and it's unenplyment rate has been trending upwards since way before it as well. Where it largely differs from the other countries is its productivity growth: Within this global trend, Italy stands out: productivity has been the main determinant of the
dismal GDP growth recorded in the last 20 years (Giordano et al., 2017). Italy’s negative productivity growth gap characterized both the pre-crisis (1995-2007) and the
crisis periods (2007-13). In the latter, the collapse of TFP growth in Italy (-0.9 per cent per year on
average) contrasts with the experience of the other European economies that managed to maintain a
constant level of TFP (Germany and Spain) or limit its decline (France) during the crisis. There are a large amount of reasons why Italy's productivity lags behind its peers (and many papers on it too of which I linked 1). I'm not going to delve too much into it but it's clear that Italy has a much larger problem than the euro. bruegel.orgwww.bancaditalia.it Populists dont get votes because they are correct, they are getting it because people want to believe the fairy-tale that the situation can be turned around in 1-2 years by simply doing X. They don't want to be told they have to make sacrifices to fix the mistakes of the past, no matter how true it might be. People who live in fairy tales are those who think that endless austerity and "structural adjustement" can be the only political horizon for another decade. Neoliberal populists like Macron just lie as much when they state that their holy combo of "lifting market rigidities" and "reducing public spending" + Show Spoiler +only for social spending of course; when it comes to military spending or tax cuts/exemptions for m/billionaires and multinationals, oddly enough there is always "magic money" will fix the situation, except they're not seen as such (demagogues) since they're ideologically, economically and politically the dominant power. This "we have to make sacrifices" rhetoric... Why should we pay for the banksters? (~30% of the French public debt is directly linked to the 2008 crisis.) Why should we pay for idiots who deregulated financial markets because the optimal allocation of capital + self-regulating markets blablabla? Why should we pay because billionaires looted us by hiding their money in fiscal heavens? Why should we pay to subsidize companies' profits, isn't the Holy Market supposed to be taking care of that? My generation was barely born when Maastricht was voted, why should we "make sacrifices" for the next X decades to honor a failed contract ("the eurozone will bring prosperity and growth") made by previous generations? I doubt a left wing person would understand, but austerity is a necessary evil when economy is messed up. It's very similar to being overweight and trying to lose weight. You have to cut your food (money) to reach your goal. It's difficult but there's no magical solution. The question is if cuts should be a lot at once or gradual over a long time. Not if there should be any. Behave like a responsible adult not like a spoiled kid. Of course, your better option is to vote for the better candidate who will bring better economy but sometimes people are too dumb and there's nothing you can do. In that case I'd like to see the people who argue for austerity because of its necessity also be in favor of tax increases, especially the progressive kind that will impact the rich more. Typically in the political sphere they will argue at the same time for spending cuts and tax cuts; that tells a different picture from the one you're offering. In your analogy, the guy is cutting his food because he's overweight, so he eats less, but at the same time he's also like "You know, I'm probably doing too much sports. I'm going to do less sports instead." some of us do argue for the tax increases and austerity. but you can't expect politicians to kill their careers for sound policy; when ti's ultimately up to the voters. Voters choose bad fiscal policy, so that's what we get. politicians present the arguments that people want to hear to justify their own wants. if you want people who's job is to come up with sensible, rigorous policy then you'll need something other than democracy that's not yet been developed. Are you saying that they're in favor of doing it, but can't because the plebs is too dumb to see the logic in that and would vote them out of office? I find that to be extremely convenient: all of those things that could impact the rich, we can't do them; the things that impact the poor, we can do them no problem...? That's far from the simplest explanation for this result: maybe they're just working for some rich people who want to pay less taxes and aren't really impacted when there are spending cuts thanks to their wealth, so they logically ask for the latter to obtain the former, under the guise of it being a necessity because there's a crisis. I do appreciate how far we've gotten when compared with darkness' original assertions though, that is something. that's not what I'm saying. what i'm saying is: they're politicians, they're wholly amoral. (amoral not immoral). they'll support whatever policies people support/get them elected, regardless of what those policies are. they don't care whether something is bad policy or not. they care whether it will help them get elected/reelected. as long as any blowback from a failed policy is far enough away that it won't hurt them personally, or they can diffuse blame sufficiently that it won't hurt their chances, it's not a problem. they support those policies bad fiscal policies because that's what the voters, in aggregate, do in fact support (even if they don't consciously realize it). democracy is based on the collective will of the voters, as expressed by their votes. this includes the aggregate effects of known cognitive biases. like the bias that favors money now over money later to a sizeable degree. human cognition and decisionmaking isn't rational, i'ts heavily based on emotion. and so it is with people's voting behavior. and of course to some extent politicians also use these biases to aim their promises; they make promises in ways that exploit these biases to further their own odds of succeeding at elections, either intentionally, or simply through systems processes leading them to act that way because they learn it works best in practice. indeed one of the goals of some among the rich is to encourage/manipulate the votin gpublic at large to agree with unsound policies that favor the rich. I like this post because it manages to be quite naive in the middle of expressing a rather cynical (but often accurate) view of politicians. Naive because reelection isn't a goal in itself, what those amoral politicians are after is the benefits that they hope to draw from reelection. Presumably they aren't masochists, they expect to get something positive out of that reelection process. There are plenty of other positive things that they could get though, so there comes a balancing act: maybe this action is slightly bad for my chances of reelection, but maybe I'm benefitting from it massively in some other ways. What would an amoral politician do when faced with this choice? If he is logical in any way, he would take the risk. That's one way that you could be influenced to go against the will of your electorate while still being an amoral dude, but here's another: ideology. Maybe you have a vision in your head of what your country should be. Now that vision shouldn't be too far from what the people want because they elected you, but perhaps you... lied to get elected. This has been known to happen. For example, you could run in France as a centrist, then get elected and do a bunch of neoliberal stuff while from time to time having some discourses in which you talk about doing leftist things. Ideology is another incentive that you could have to do stuff that isn't based on your electorate, all the while remaining an amoral politician out there for his own profit. Another puzzling element is that you seem to treat electorate opinion like this massive wall that you run into, and then that's it. Public opinion can be influenced. It's pretty easy to do, actually. It is modified and changed by a process called: conditioning.
wow, how rude of you to call it naive. if you don't want to be civil, don't post; or at least don't reply to me with such rudeness. there was no need to add such a line to your post. I demand an apology.
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Pistols at fifty paces at dawn! And bring a second, preferable someone who knows how to operate a flintlock.
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On June 01 2018 07:04 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +Italy's populist leaders strike deal to resurrect proposed coalitionMatteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio’s announcement averts prospect of new snap election Italy’s two populist parties have reached a new agreement to form a government, days after a standoff with Italy’s president over their stance on the euro abruptly ended an initial bid to assume power. A joint statement by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right Lega announced that political newcomer Giuseppe Conte, who had been seen as a controversial choice, was still slated to serve as prime minister. The relatively unknown law professor was due to meet Italy’s president, Sergio Mattarella, on Thursday night. “All the conditions have been fulfilled for a political, Five Star and Lega government,” said Luigi Di Maio, the Five Star chief, and Matteo Salvini, the Lega leader, in a joint statement after several hours of talks in Rome. The deal will bring at least temporary calm to a political crisis that has embroiled Italy for weeks. The tumult raised questions – in Brussels and among investors around the world – about whether the rise in Italian populism and the collapse of traditional parties posed a fundamental threat to the country’s future in the eurozone. A formation of the new government will at least temporarily allay those concerns, because it will remove for now the threat that snap elections will be called later this summer, a prospect which worried investors because it could have bolstered support for anti-EU parties. Italian press reports indicated that the populist leaders had stepped back from their insistence that Paolo Savona, an 81-year-old Eurosceptic, should serve as finance minister. The choice had been vetoed by Mattarella, prompting the M5S and the Lega to call off their deal. Savona is now expected to be nominated to serve as EU minister instead. But there are still many unknowns about how the new government – an uneasy alliance between two former political opponents, both jockeying for power – will govern Italy. Salvini, the bombastic and xenophobic leader of the Lega, who rose in recent years on the back of incendiary and racist statements about migrants and Roma, is expected to take on the role of interior minister. Salvini has campaigned on the promise of mass deportations of migrants and said a new government would build detention centres around the world. He is also a fierce critic of Brussels and has called for closer ties to Russia. Di Maio is expected to lead a powerful new post that will combine labour and industry portfolios in a move that could mark big changes to labour and environmental policies, given the M5S’s stated opposition to big industry. Giovanni Tria, a little known economics professor, is expected to be nominated to the finance ministry. While Tria has been critical of the EU, he is not been seen as an advocate for an exit from the eurozone. The new deal has not yet been blessed by Mattarella, who earlier this week nominated a technocrat, Carlo Cottarelli, to serve as prime minister. Those plans were put on hold after Mattarella opted to give the populists more time to reach a new agreement. The new government is expected to take a far more antagonistic stance against Brussels than the previous government, headed by the centre-left Democratic party. But the alliance between the M5S and the Lega will only have a relatively narrow majority in the Italian senate, easing some concerns among investors and officials in Brussels that the new government could take drastic actions. While both parties are populist in nature, and have railed against Brussels and Italian “elites”, they have long been natural opponents in politics. Wolfango Piccoli, the co-president of Teneo Intelligence in London, said: “They are both led by young and ambitious leaders who share prime-ministerial ambitions. Due to mutual distrust, it has taken both parties over 70 days to reach a deal and choose an unknown third figure as prime minister.” Their shared agenda includes plans to cut taxes, scrap a previously agreed pension plan and institute a “universal basic income”. While many officials in Brussels sought to ease tensions with Rome this week, and backed Mattarella after the president took a political risk by defending Italy’s role in the EU, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, a issued a tough critique of Italy on Thursday. He said Italians needed to work harder, be less corrupt and stop looking to the EU to rescue the country’s poor regions. “Italians have to take care of the poor regions of Italy. That means more work, less corruption, seriousness,” Juncker said. “We will help them as we always did. But don’t play this game of loading with responsibility the EU. A country is a country, a nation is a nation. Countries first, Europe second.” Source So it seems that Italy has a government in the end. Now we will see if those big mouths have what it takes on the "EU front," or fold at the first blood drop shed. If their coalition survives long enough to see that... A thought for undocumented foreigners in Italy. With Salvini at the Interior, this will be a slaughter. "Countries first, Europe second." Fine, Mr. Juncker...
Probably not. Parties like M5S tend to not even agree internally on what to do after obtaining some power, I'd be very surprised to see this coalition result in anything resembling a clear path for Italy.
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Good faith maybe, but ignorant. Neoliberalism is the apocatastasis of class power, the return of class privilege and the shoring up of technocratic governance. As David Harvey says, the neoliberals are more Leninist than the Leninists, funding think-tanks and dominating traditional media as the intellectual vanguard, leading culture to the overwhelming conclusion that there is no alternative.
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On June 01 2018 07:53 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 07:08 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 06:13 zlefin wrote:On June 01 2018 04:10 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 03:54 zlefin wrote:On June 01 2018 03:01 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 02:30 sc-darkness wrote:On June 01 2018 02:14 TheDwf wrote:On June 01 2018 01:24 Gorsameth wrote:On June 01 2018 01:10 RvB wrote:[quote] In this case Verhofstadt is almost certainly right. Long term economic growth and income is driven by productivity growth and Italy's has been dismal for more than 2 decades. Since the adoption of the euro Italy has lagged behind its peers in economic growth Italy's growth rate has been trending downwards way before the adoption of the euro and it's unenplyment rate has been trending upwards since way before it as well. Where it largely differs from the other countries is its productivity growth: [quote] [quote] There are a large amount of reasons why Italy's productivity lags behind its peers (and many papers on it too of which I linked 1). I'm not going to delve too much into it but it's clear that Italy has a much larger problem than the euro. bruegel.orgwww.bancaditalia.it Populists dont get votes because they are correct, they are getting it because people want to believe the fairy-tale that the situation can be turned around in 1-2 years by simply doing X. They don't want to be told they have to make sacrifices to fix the mistakes of the past, no matter how true it might be. People who live in fairy tales are those who think that endless austerity and "structural adjustement" can be the only political horizon for another decade. Neoliberal populists like Macron just lie as much when they state that their holy combo of "lifting market rigidities" and "reducing public spending" + Show Spoiler +only for social spending of course; when it comes to military spending or tax cuts/exemptions for m/billionaires and multinationals, oddly enough there is always "magic money" will fix the situation, except they're not seen as such (demagogues) since they're ideologically, economically and politically the dominant power. This "we have to make sacrifices" rhetoric... Why should we pay for the banksters? (~30% of the French public debt is directly linked to the 2008 crisis.) Why should we pay for idiots who deregulated financial markets because the optimal allocation of capital + self-regulating markets blablabla? Why should we pay because billionaires looted us by hiding their money in fiscal heavens? Why should we pay to subsidize companies' profits, isn't the Holy Market supposed to be taking care of that? My generation was barely born when Maastricht was voted, why should we "make sacrifices" for the next X decades to honor a failed contract ("the eurozone will bring prosperity and growth") made by previous generations? I doubt a left wing person would understand, but austerity is a necessary evil when economy is messed up. It's very similar to being overweight and trying to lose weight. You have to cut your food (money) to reach your goal. It's difficult but there's no magical solution. The question is if cuts should be a lot at once or gradual over a long time. Not if there should be any. Behave like a responsible adult not like a spoiled kid. Of course, your better option is to vote for the better candidate who will bring better economy but sometimes people are too dumb and there's nothing you can do. In that case I'd like to see the people who argue for austerity because of its necessity also be in favor of tax increases, especially the progressive kind that will impact the rich more. Typically in the political sphere they will argue at the same time for spending cuts and tax cuts; that tells a different picture from the one you're offering. In your analogy, the guy is cutting his food because he's overweight, so he eats less, but at the same time he's also like "You know, I'm probably doing too much sports. I'm going to do less sports instead." some of us do argue for the tax increases and austerity. but you can't expect politicians to kill their careers for sound policy; when ti's ultimately up to the voters. Voters choose bad fiscal policy, so that's what we get. politicians present the arguments that people want to hear to justify their own wants. if you want people who's job is to come up with sensible, rigorous policy then you'll need something other than democracy that's not yet been developed. Are you saying that they're in favor of doing it, but can't because the plebs is too dumb to see the logic in that and would vote them out of office? I find that to be extremely convenient: all of those things that could impact the rich, we can't do them; the things that impact the poor, we can do them no problem...? That's far from the simplest explanation for this result: maybe they're just working for some rich people who want to pay less taxes and aren't really impacted when there are spending cuts thanks to their wealth, so they logically ask for the latter to obtain the former, under the guise of it being a necessity because there's a crisis. I do appreciate how far we've gotten when compared with darkness' original assertions though, that is something. that's not what I'm saying. what i'm saying is: they're politicians, they're wholly amoral. (amoral not immoral). they'll support whatever policies people support/get them elected, regardless of what those policies are. they don't care whether something is bad policy or not. they care whether it will help them get elected/reelected. as long as any blowback from a failed policy is far enough away that it won't hurt them personally, or they can diffuse blame sufficiently that it won't hurt their chances, it's not a problem. they support those policies bad fiscal policies because that's what the voters, in aggregate, do in fact support (even if they don't consciously realize it). democracy is based on the collective will of the voters, as expressed by their votes. this includes the aggregate effects of known cognitive biases. like the bias that favors money now over money later to a sizeable degree. human cognition and decisionmaking isn't rational, i'ts heavily based on emotion. and so it is with people's voting behavior. and of course to some extent politicians also use these biases to aim their promises; they make promises in ways that exploit these biases to further their own odds of succeeding at elections, either intentionally, or simply through systems processes leading them to act that way because they learn it works best in practice. indeed one of the goals of some among the rich is to encourage/manipulate the votin gpublic at large to agree with unsound policies that favor the rich. I like this post because it manages to be quite naive in the middle of expressing a rather cynical (but often accurate) view of politicians. Naive because reelection isn't a goal in itself, what those amoral politicians are after is the benefits that they hope to draw from reelection. Presumably they aren't masochists, they expect to get something positive out of that reelection process. There are plenty of other positive things that they could get though, so there comes a balancing act: maybe this action is slightly bad for my chances of reelection, but maybe I'm benefitting from it massively in some other ways. What would an amoral politician do when faced with this choice? If he is logical in any way, he would take the risk. That's one way that you could be influenced to go against the will of your electorate while still being an amoral dude, but here's another: ideology. Maybe you have a vision in your head of what your country should be. Now that vision shouldn't be too far from what the people want because they elected you, but perhaps you... lied to get elected. This has been known to happen. For example, you could run in France as a centrist, then get elected and do a bunch of neoliberal stuff while from time to time having some discourses in which you talk about doing leftist things. Ideology is another incentive that you could have to do stuff that isn't based on your electorate, all the while remaining an amoral politician out there for his own profit. Another puzzling element is that you seem to treat electorate opinion like this massive wall that you run into, and then that's it. Public opinion can be influenced. It's pretty easy to do, actually. It is modified and changed by a process called: conditioning. wow, how rude of you to call it naive. if you don't want to be civil, don't post; or at least don't reply to me with such rudeness. there was no need to add such a line to your post. I demand an apology.
I don't know what to do here.
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On June 01 2018 15:40 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On June 01 2018 07:53 zlefin wrote:On June 01 2018 07:08 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 06:13 zlefin wrote:On June 01 2018 04:10 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 03:54 zlefin wrote:On June 01 2018 03:01 Nebuchad wrote:On June 01 2018 02:30 sc-darkness wrote:On June 01 2018 02:14 TheDwf wrote:On June 01 2018 01:24 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]Populists dont get votes because they are correct, they are getting it because people want to believe the fairy-tale that the situation can be turned around in 1-2 years by simply doing X.
They don't want to be told they have to make sacrifices to fix the mistakes of the past, no matter how true it might be. People who live in fairy tales are those who think that endless austerity and "structural adjustement" can be the only political horizon for another decade. Neoliberal populists like Macron just lie as much when they state that their holy combo of "lifting market rigidities" and "reducing public spending" + Show Spoiler +only for social spending of course; when it comes to military spending or tax cuts/exemptions for m/billionaires and multinationals, oddly enough there is always "magic money" will fix the situation, except they're not seen as such (demagogues) since they're ideologically, economically and politically the dominant power. This "we have to make sacrifices" rhetoric... Why should we pay for the banksters? (~30% of the French public debt is directly linked to the 2008 crisis.) Why should we pay for idiots who deregulated financial markets because the optimal allocation of capital + self-regulating markets blablabla? Why should we pay because billionaires looted us by hiding their money in fiscal heavens? Why should we pay to subsidize companies' profits, isn't the Holy Market supposed to be taking care of that? My generation was barely born when Maastricht was voted, why should we "make sacrifices" for the next X decades to honor a failed contract ("the eurozone will bring prosperity and growth") made by previous generations? I doubt a left wing person would understand, but austerity is a necessary evil when economy is messed up. It's very similar to being overweight and trying to lose weight. You have to cut your food (money) to reach your goal. It's difficult but there's no magical solution. The question is if cuts should be a lot at once or gradual over a long time. Not if there should be any. Behave like a responsible adult not like a spoiled kid. Of course, your better option is to vote for the better candidate who will bring better economy but sometimes people are too dumb and there's nothing you can do. In that case I'd like to see the people who argue for austerity because of its necessity also be in favor of tax increases, especially the progressive kind that will impact the rich more. Typically in the political sphere they will argue at the same time for spending cuts and tax cuts; that tells a different picture from the one you're offering. In your analogy, the guy is cutting his food because he's overweight, so he eats less, but at the same time he's also like "You know, I'm probably doing too much sports. I'm going to do less sports instead." some of us do argue for the tax increases and austerity. but you can't expect politicians to kill their careers for sound policy; when ti's ultimately up to the voters. Voters choose bad fiscal policy, so that's what we get. politicians present the arguments that people want to hear to justify their own wants. if you want people who's job is to come up with sensible, rigorous policy then you'll need something other than democracy that's not yet been developed. Are you saying that they're in favor of doing it, but can't because the plebs is too dumb to see the logic in that and would vote them out of office? I find that to be extremely convenient: all of those things that could impact the rich, we can't do them; the things that impact the poor, we can do them no problem...? That's far from the simplest explanation for this result: maybe they're just working for some rich people who want to pay less taxes and aren't really impacted when there are spending cuts thanks to their wealth, so they logically ask for the latter to obtain the former, under the guise of it being a necessity because there's a crisis. I do appreciate how far we've gotten when compared with darkness' original assertions though, that is something. that's not what I'm saying. what i'm saying is: they're politicians, they're wholly amoral. (amoral not immoral). they'll support whatever policies people support/get them elected, regardless of what those policies are. they don't care whether something is bad policy or not. they care whether it will help them get elected/reelected. as long as any blowback from a failed policy is far enough away that it won't hurt them personally, or they can diffuse blame sufficiently that it won't hurt their chances, it's not a problem. they support those policies bad fiscal policies because that's what the voters, in aggregate, do in fact support (even if they don't consciously realize it). democracy is based on the collective will of the voters, as expressed by their votes. this includes the aggregate effects of known cognitive biases. like the bias that favors money now over money later to a sizeable degree. human cognition and decisionmaking isn't rational, i'ts heavily based on emotion. and so it is with people's voting behavior. and of course to some extent politicians also use these biases to aim their promises; they make promises in ways that exploit these biases to further their own odds of succeeding at elections, either intentionally, or simply through systems processes leading them to act that way because they learn it works best in practice. indeed one of the goals of some among the rich is to encourage/manipulate the votin gpublic at large to agree with unsound policies that favor the rich. I like this post because it manages to be quite naive in the middle of expressing a rather cynical (but often accurate) view of politicians. Naive because reelection isn't a goal in itself, what those amoral politicians are after is the benefits that they hope to draw from reelection. Presumably they aren't masochists, they expect to get something positive out of that reelection process. There are plenty of other positive things that they could get though, so there comes a balancing act: maybe this action is slightly bad for my chances of reelection, but maybe I'm benefitting from it massively in some other ways. What would an amoral politician do when faced with this choice? If he is logical in any way, he would take the risk. That's one way that you could be influenced to go against the will of your electorate while still being an amoral dude, but here's another: ideology. Maybe you have a vision in your head of what your country should be. Now that vision shouldn't be too far from what the people want because they elected you, but perhaps you... lied to get elected. This has been known to happen. For example, you could run in France as a centrist, then get elected and do a bunch of neoliberal stuff while from time to time having some discourses in which you talk about doing leftist things. Ideology is another incentive that you could have to do stuff that isn't based on your electorate, all the while remaining an amoral politician out there for his own profit. Another puzzling element is that you seem to treat electorate opinion like this massive wall that you run into, and then that's it. Public opinion can be influenced. It's pretty easy to do, actually. It is modified and changed by a process called: conditioning. wow, how rude of you to call it naive. if you don't want to be civil, don't post; or at least don't reply to me with such rudeness. there was no need to add such a line to your post. I demand an apology. I don't know what to do here.
Probably tell him how naive he is for thinking his thin skin is going to get him anywhere, when he keeps cutting into internet discussions. Then maybe refer to the fact that in Europe we don't care about special snowflakes 
On-topic: Rajoy is out, Sanchez is in. I don't think the new government is gonna last more than a month. Either the Catalán independentists or the emboldened left is gonna withdraw support the moment it's opportune, and there will be new elections.
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Apologize of course. You're so rude.
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EPT
