In a Venn-type diagram, I’d say the two would share about 90% of the surface area of their respective circles.
It’s possible I’m imputing to you a position that others have argued and that you have let pass without disavowal, and taken your silence for tacit assent.
I’ll look through the thread this evening.
You do realize, I hope, how ridiculous your caricature is of the general leftist position in this thread? If you’re just doing it for comedic effect, carry on. If you actually think that fairly represents the position of most of those who disagree with you, then that reflects poorly on your reading comprehension.
When did pkbites go all right-wing on us? 
[Maybe I missed all of the other threads where he was foaming at the mouth…]
Until you exhibit something approaching equal effort at castigating the caricatures of my position that litter thus thread, I am not willing to open the Compliant Department door for your feedback. If I listened to you, my opponents would have full rein to say what they pleased, unchallenged, and I would be forced to drive in the right lane at 45 mph with my hazard lights on.
Aww, you poor dear! Need a moment? How about a hanky, got one right here, borrowed it from Hentor. Well, yeah, its a little crusty, but I’m sure that’s nasal. Maybe the frosting off a Krispy Kreme donut. Yeah, probably. No, that’s OK, you can keep it…
Now where was I? Oh, right!
Awww, you poor dear!
Any comments for elucidator, Max?
Oh, no! Not renounce, denounce and condemn! Shit, i take it all back! I meant that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark. Yeah!
In all seriousness, this tactic always makes you look like a giant pussy.
Hentor, when I want your opinion, I’ll ask… actually, I’ll never want your opinion.
[/Giles]
I don’t blame you; other people’s opinions can be scary. You can just keep asking Max to protect you from them, I guess.
That’s not remotely what I’m asking Max to do.
I’m asking Max to demonstrate the motives behind his admonishment of me.
Here are two non-exclusive possibilities:
(1) He genuinely feels that caricature and sarcasm detract from the dialogue
(2) He wants to remove from me the ability to use the useful tactics of caricature and sarcasm while retaining it for my opponents
Couldn’t it be that he wants to curtail your sarcasm and caricature because you suck at it so badly? Might want to consider that possibility. Just sayin’, is all.
Not particularly. Even if I accepted your premise that it is my responsibility to police “my side”, and I in no way accept that premise although I do in fact post my disagreements with people on “my side” with some frequency, elucidator didn’t misrepresent your position, he just made fun of you. You’ve made fun of liberals in this thread plenty without me speaking up.
Or (3) the particular post in question was written in such a fashion that I was uncertain whether you were actually attempting caricature and sarcasm, or whether you were in fact serious.
One danger of caricature and sarcasm is that if you use them enough you can forget the difference between the actual position your opponents hold and your caricature of it.
Well, now that I have a chance to catch up, I have some observations:
Bricker’s definition of “leftist” (as well as “rightist”, apparently):
I noted that these definitions are uniformly economic in nature, and expressed surprise there was no mention of what might be considered left or right in social issues, or indeed anything seemingly relevant to the issue at hand - voter ID laws.
Okay… I could reasonably take this to mean that you consider the above definitions (or at least the one for “leftist”) to be sufficient. The connection to voter-ID laws remains unclear, prompting this addendum:
I don’t recognize the accuracy of the “according to you” part - as far as I’m concerned, that remains pending supporting evidence - but at least it tries to expand your working definition of “leftist” to be of some immediate relevance, as well as support your earlier claims of victory that the upholding of the voter ID laws was a defeat to “leftists” (which I guess prompted me to ask about your definition thereof in the first place).
So a “leftist” is concerned with economic policies plus helping the poor vote. Is this a sufficient definition of the term? I realize it’s not reasonable to demand or an extensive and exhaustive exploration of how you define leftists, but the casual confidence of ‘You asked what I meant by “leftist.” / I answered.’ indicated to me that to you, the primary defining characteristic of a leftist is indeed how he views economics. This followup is notable:
So is a “liberal” 90% defined by how he or she views economics (and Affirmative Action, I guess, as well as helping the poor cast votes), as in lockstep with “leftists”? Does the remaining 10% cover everything else, like abortion, capital punishment, separation of church and state, education, stem-cell research, euthanasia, global warming, gun control, immigration, gay marriage, etc. as issues liberals are concerned with (admittedly, some of these have economic aspects) but leftists are not?
Anyway, this is by and large mere definitional wrangling, of no great import. One minor additional sidenote before getting to the main event: I’ll no longer indulge or even acknowledge comments on why I or anyone else is not policing the comments of those you consider to be “fellow leftists/liberals/whatevers”. It is a childish accusation (and I regret and will seek to avoid a repetition of my own childishness when I once tried to turn it back on you, asking why you were not policing the clockwork stupidities of adaher, Clothahump and Starving Artist). If you feel hassled or ganged-up-on in this forum, that is your problem and yours alone. I will not even bother to mock you for it. It is a tactic beneath contempt.
Now, getting to the economic issues I was specifically asked about, ostensibly under the umbrella of “government policies that favor the working class”, namely:
Incidentally, the last time you tried that “liberal heart” thing on me, I utterly destroyed you and got an apology, so you might want to retire that from your rhetorical arsenal.
For these economic issues, I’ll put my opinions in spoiler boxes - I suggest you try, just a for lark, to predict how “Bryan the leftist liberal” (the caricature of me I assume you keep in your mental filing cabinet) would respond before opening each one.
Minimum wage
[spoiler]I live in a major urban center. I recognize the economic value of having the people who work in my major urban center being able to afford to live in my major urban center. Otherwise, I’d be concerned about neighborhoods sliding into slums, or being abandoned entirely (for my cautionary example, I picture Detroit) as the people who are at the bottom of the working classes have to move further afield to places they can afford. If they still have to commute into the city for their jobs, this invites more traffic, more pollution, more congestion. The hollowing-out of the neighborhoods invites decays, lowered property values, shrinking tax bases… There are occasional and frequent gentrifications and renewals, of course, and those are good, but there remains a value in having the working poor who have jobs in the city being able to have homes in the city and spend their money in the city and pay their taxes in the city.
To be rather callous, actually, I can almost see them as modern urban serfs in a way - tenuously bound to the urban centers where they work. Raising the minimum wage is not a cure for poverty, certainly, but keeping the working poor from sliding off the edge has a value I can see, in that it keeps my city functional, livable, and reasonably sustainable. I recognize the hassles to small businesses (and indeed large McDonald’s-ish businesses), but I don’t see how the alternative - doing away with minimum wages, or letting inflation erode them into pittances - is an overall improvement.[/spoiler]
Unions
They were critically necessary once, when exploitation we’d now consider criminal was the norm, but I have no sympathy for Haymarket-style violence, communist-inspired rhetoric, or organized-crime infiltration. Further, the unions of government employees in my city have gone on strike so often, it’s considered something of a seasonal occurrence. I can see the value of trade unions, in the sense of individuals who share a particular set of skills, but overall my opinion is largely neutral - a union could be a useful construct (especially if it imposes some ethical standards of behaviour on its members) but the concept has such a checkered history of abuses and corruption that no union, including one to which I might belong, is going to get my unconditional support. I would have to judge situations on a case-by-case, union-by-union basis.
NAFTA
[spoiler]I remember when NAFTA got passed. I was in my mid-twenties, had just reread The Fountainhead, and held the general opinion that free trade was a good idea.
20 years on, and I’ve since read Atlas Shrugged and Anthem (though I couldn’t get through We the Living), and I still think free trade is a good idea, and frankly I’m pretty sure I would believe that regardless of all that Rand I read.
I’m guessing that “free trade is good” is not sufficiently meaty for your purposes, so in regard to two of the controversies with NAFTA, the first relatively minor:
Pollution: for example the controversy around the MMT additive to gasoline. I hope at least the objections are based on an honest attempt to do good science.
Protectionism: I see a larger issue at play than, say, one nation’s industry’s profits or one nation’s jobs. I dislike the idea of the thumb-on-the-scales intervention in capitalism, and prefer it be minimized (you can express further doubt that I honestly believe this but regardless, I do), but for large-scale industry and agriculture, there is a major potential pitfall to be avoided. As an example, consider a simplified agricultural model:
A nation has 75 million hectares of arable farmland. If market forces alone were at play, the number would be a lot smaller, since without subsidies and tax breaks and whatnot, a sizable fraction of this farmland would not be economical to maintain. Say the leaner market-driven agribusiness drops the total down to 50 million hectares and the rest is left fallow or developed into condos or dug up for minerals or whatever. Then picture a major natural disaster of some kind or a blight of some sort and the 50 million (which was already subject to significant swings and instability since it lacked the cushion of subsidized overproduction) is reduced to 40 million. Getting production back up to normal may take months or years, with a great deal of money spent importing food. And it’s not just getting the land back to work, it’s getting the farmers back on the job (since the earlier shrinkage send a third of them into other occupations).
Similarly, there are industries that are subsidized or otherwise protected in violation of the spirit (and often the letter) of free trade agreements, but if factories are torn down because the market (in normal times) has no use for them, getting them back up and running (as well as getting the workers to man them) in the aftermath of a major crisis could prove disastrously expensive.
I will cheerfully admit I’m no expert on protectionist policies (I have a commerce degree, so at least the concepts are not baffling), and I naturally expect there’s a fair amount of inefficiency and flat-out corruption in the process. I tend to view the idea as analogous to paying to maintain backup machinery. The backup machinery isn’t needed in normal operations, and keeping it in working order may actually be pretty expensive, but if something happens to your primary machinery, using the backup will prove a great deal faster, easier and cheaper than trying to rebuild.[/spoiler]
CAFTA
There are several things CAFTA could be in reference to, but I’ll assume you meant the Central America Free Trade Agreement:
I have no opinion, nor do I anticipate forming one. My country is not a signatory to this agreement and my personal and financial interest is effectively zero.
Capital gains taxation
[spoiler]Well, like all taxation, I wish it was unnecessary. That said, the Canadian approach (I have no specific knowledge or real interest in how the U.S. handles it) has gotten pretty tolerant in recent years, probably at least in part from having the Conservative Party in charge since 2006, and I did my part in voting for them as I pretty much have in every Federal Election since… 1988, I guess.
A Canadian can put up to 18% of earned income into a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (which I presume is analogous to a 401-k) up to, currently, a limit of $23,820. Add to this the relatively new Tax Free Savings Account to which one can deposit $5500/year, and right off the bat Canadians can theoretically invest nearly $30k/year in a wide range of conventional instruments - stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc. - and none of the gains are taxable.
Further, the capital gain one might realize from the sale of one’s primary residence (probably the largest single asset most people will ever own) is not taxable, or even necessary to report on one’s return.
Further still, there’s a lifetime capital gain exemption of $750,000 (proposals to bump it to $800k as well as index it to inflation are under debate).
Roughly, if you get a high-five or low-six-figure salary soon after college and invest fully and wisely for 30 years, take care of your house and sell it at the right time… I can see someone investing close to $1 million with no capital-gain concerns at all, and if you can go beyond that, you have report nearly a million in gains before they start taxing, and even then at only 50% of your marginal rate.
I’m having some difficulty feeling sympathy for someone who feels this is insufficient, or who owns more than one house. The numbers appears to me to be encouraging to the middle- and professional-classes, though not especially advantageous to the rich. I’m okay with it.[/spoiler]
Step-up in basis taxation
[spoiler]I had to look this up. If the definition at investopedia is to be trusted, I have no objection. I’ve never been keen on inheritance taxes in general. Canada doesn’t have them as such (though I suppose that’s a matter of definition) - the policy is to tax the estate for capital gains as if all the property was being sold at fair market value… huh, I’m really going to have to read more about this, it looks like it could be a major hassle.
Anyway, on the American version… I have no major opinion. If you inherit an asset and later sell it, I’m okay with the capital gain being calculated on the change in the item’s value only while it was in your possession.[/spoiler]
“Income inequality”
Well, it’s become a buzzword and catch-phrase in recent years, but it doesn’t stir any particular outrage or concern in me. I don’t consider corporate salaries obscene (I eyeroll a bit at inflated salaries for professional athletes, as well as absurd financial-sector bonuses given out even as those employees were running their companies into the ground), but I neither see nor feel the need for forcibly leveled incomes. Progressive tax brackets, sure, but corporate salary caps or fixed salary ratios, such as the Ben & Jerry corporation famously had early on (the highest-paid employee could only make five times as much as an entry-level)… nah.
I hope this has been illuminating, but I doubt it. Perhaps I am a liberal and/or leftist by conventional American definitions of the terms (i.e. something a tad more expansive than Bricker has offered), though possibly not by conventional Canadian definitions. Is that automatically negative? Convince me.
Done. I have answered each one before looking, and have arbitrarily decided ahead of time to give myself a two points if I correctly predict your reaction, one point if I’m halfway there, and no credit if I guess completely wrongly. (By halfway, I mean an issue that I suspect you take a strong position on turns out to be something that you have no opinion on, and a completely wrong guess would be me predicting you favor a side when in reality you favor the opposing side).
My guess: you favor a government-set minimum wage.
After reading your answer: you spent a lot of words trying to add nuance to your position, but your position is: you favor a government-set minimum wage. Two stars for me.
My guess: you favor unions, the work they generally do, and the government strike protection thereof, although you probably disclaim (sincerely, to be clear) any support of extra-legal violence.
After reading: one star, or maybe even half a star, to further refine my standard.
My guess: while you might acknowledge in theory some benefits of free trade, you oppose globalization as embodied in current NAFTA practice.
After reading: zero stars. Maybe a half if I were generous, but no – I’m wrong.
My answer is now influenced by your prior statement, so maybe I should have made all my guesses and THEN read all your spoilers, instead of doing them one at a time. If I had done that, I’d have guessed similar opposition to CAFTA as to NAFTA. Now, I’d guess a more neutral.
After reading: huh. All I can say is that you’re remarkably voluble about American laws, American politicians, and American political issues that ALSO have a very small personal and financial effect on you. I am surpised to learn that for some reason, CAFTA creates such a glorious ennui. Still: zero stars.
My guess: you favor it, although now I wonder if you favor or disfavor a Canadian version and we’ll be talking past each other.
After reading: I’ll give myself 1.5 stars here.
My guess: you disfavor this and want valuation to be calculated on the cost basis when purchased as opposed to when inherited.
After reading: OK, zero stars.
My guess: you favor regulatory schemes to reduce so-called income inequality.
After reading: well, shit.
OK.
Then I’m left puzzled by your support of the political side that seems to run counter to some of these expressed beliefs.
Da fuq? Is this those “union thugs” I’ve been hearing about? Was on a picket line with my grandfather when I was three. Was it me?
Anyway, we got a fix on your political position: to the right of Calvin Coolidge, just to the left of Czar Nicholas II.
I’m disappointed. I thought at least there’d be some commentary on the quality of my reasoning, some evaluation of why I favour, for example, having a government-set minimum wage over the alternative of not having one. Instead, the response seems akin to “You lurrrve the minimum wage! Called it! Lefty-Liberal!”
Perhaps this is indicative of the limitations of political pigeonholing. Perhaps you’ve drawn “sides” too broadly. Perhaps if I seem to be favouring the Democrats (to the extent a Canadian can) despite disagreeing with some of what you perceive as that party’s economic platform, it’s partly for reasons that go beyond economics, and on which I have found the Republicans wanting.
To the specific issue of voter ID, however, my problem with it is party-neutral, for reasons I have explained several times.
I’m prepared to admit that my perceptions of unions are coloured by the historical negatives - riots, violence, intimidation and entanglement with communists and/or organized crime. In recognition of that bias, in addition to not giving an union (including to one to which I might belong) unconditional support, I won’t give a union reflexive condemnation.
I don’t oppose the concept of unions. Bricker can evaluate that lack of opposition as he chooses.
I do wish Dopers not to discourage Bricker from indulging in caricatures of “leftists” or of himself. The amusement he offers is the only real value he adds here.
“So-called” income inequality? Should I speak of your bloated so-called amygdala?
We understand that you delight in inequality, and would be happy for your inferiors to live in as much misery as possible to lower the wages that so-called superior humans need pay, while righteous humans lament that corporate profits have soared as a percentage of GDP while lower-class wages fall in constant-dollar terms, and that rational thinkers understand that the megabillions skimmed off the top of the economy by Wall St. shenanigans do not trickle down to the masses … but what’s with the usage “so-called”? Is it just a symptom of anal-retention complex, or is some deeper disorder involved?
Is the homophobia encouraged by your political idols just “so-called” homophobia? Is the disgust that moral people feel for your ideas just “so-called” disgust? When you read your own so-called opinions here, do you perceive what an asshole you are?