Is there any possibility that the SDP will move toward a more centrist line, now that the Die Linke seems to be drawing off the more committed leftists? I can’t imagine the SPD maintaining an active quasi-Marxist student organization (die Jungsozialisten) from which to gain new, committed party members the way they could in the 1960s and 70s, as it seems that those students would now be more drawn to the Die LInke.
Regarding any possible coalition between the two, as far as I can see there’s not a lot of love lost on either side. I was just listening to a former SPD party chief on Stammtisch, who basically dismissed Die Linke as populist but not realistic.
This. If a newspaper can’t do enough research to get the basic distinctions right, then I don’t need to read the article itself. Or is the newspaper simply a mouthpiece of the conservatives and thus uses the American instead of the normal defintion of socalism?
Also, in the case of Germany, many people didn’t vote for the SPD Social Democrats, because they were disappointed with them not being left enough! Of the 11 % that they lost, a good chunk - beside the 2 mil. non-voters who stayed at home - went to the Left or Green party instead.
It’s just that, similar to the US, the consies will vote for their party, no matter how much they screw up; while the liberals and social democrats will protest vote when they are disappointed with the party line and actions.
No, no, no. Not in America. You must not have watched any election battle or politics discussion about the US? The broad population expects that all good guys are Perfect Saints (personally, I think because of the strong puritan influence and lack of proper education - there are people surprised that the Heroes in the Old Testament do morally reprehensible things because the Bible is the Book of Moral Codes for all times to them).
Therefore, any politican who has a child out of wedlock, cheats on his wife or is gay must be kicked out of office. Not praying and being a christian makes you non-electable in the US.
Now, you are ignoring that European conservatives, no matter how right they are to us, are still center-Democrat on the US scale; and have adopted many parts from the social democrats and greens.
Yes, because the voters were unhappy with what the SPD did in the big coalition. Which the SPD only entered because they lost after voters were unhappy with the Agenda 2010, Hartz IV, and similar that power-hungry, principle-less, “comrade-of-the-bosses” Schröder enacted. And they had no real candidate against Angie. Hopefully, this loss will serve as wake-up call for the SPD to get their act together - for the first time in ages, I heard a party say that they lost after the count was over, instead of the usual “well we really won because” excuses they usually serve up.
The Free Democrats are, for all the faults they have, are not anything right-wing. They are free-market liberals, similar to liberatarians, with a strong emphasis on social rights (but little chance of moving their bigger partner on these issues, as seen in the past), and demolishing employee rights.
But they certainly wouldn’t loose gun rights , for example.
You mean, back from right of the center, through the center, back to slightly left of the center, where they belong? I certainly hope so, because we need a reasonable social democratic party, which sadly the SPD has failed to do for the last decades.
I don’t see the Linke drawing of the lefties - we still have real funny parties like the MLPD - Marxistische-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands - around, after all. I think they these are protest voters unhappy with the SPD. The Linke is simply too unrealistic and crazy in their suggestions to attract large numbers reliably.
I don’t think they need to attract youngsters through the Falken (falcons) as they used to, if they just manage to re-attract the average worker, the poor people who want to have their rights protected.
Well, the SPD is deadly afraid whenever the Consies call them “lefties” - similar to how normal people react to being called liberals in the US - because instead of embracing that label, they think the people perceive lefties as bad communists. That, plus that Oskar LaFontaine is a cowardly traitor, and cooperation is difficult.
And yes, all slogans by the Left I saw on their posters were ludicrously naive, unworkable or otherwise unrealistic and idiotic.
I have felt a trend as described in the OP. In my country the right wing has also taken power, bringing more privatizations, gutting of labor protection, evisceration of personal integrity etc.
Yes, as everyone knows, as goes Greece, so goes Europe.
As I said earlier, you can’t compare Europe’s right with the U.S. right, as they are different animals altogether. I granted that Europe is (and will remain) far to the left of the U.S. on many social issues, on health care, etc. But there are areas where Europe could easily move more towards the ‘right’ than the U.S. For example, taxes. The U.S. already has the highest business taxes of any major economy. The Obama administration wants to raise them even more, while the trend for most other countries is to lower them further. If the U.S. institutes Cap and Trade, it will put greenhouse gas policy to the left of much of Europe.
In terms of Progressivity of income taxes, the U.S. top tax rate is 35%. When the Bush tax cuts expire, and if Obama gets his way and removes the cap on social security deductions, the top tax rate will be over 50%. This would make the top tax bracket higher in the U.S. than in the UK, Germany, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden, The Ukraine, Switzerland, and most other countries in Europe.
Obama also wants to increase business regulations and institute card check and other labor rights, which could easily wind up putting the U.S. to the left of Europe on labor policy.
So let’s just say that the U.S. could wind up to the left of Europe on ‘some’ things.
Perhaps, but as I see it, Europe’s already gone and done all these lefty policies, constructed “welfare states” and has been whittling back from there. The ground rules for “free market” policies are vastly different between the US where, say, access to healthcare is closely tied to employment, and Europe, where it isn’t.
As for the implications for Obama’s relations with Europe, it seems unfathomable that he’s as ideologically different from Europe’s leaders as Bush was, or really even within the same order of magnitude. Sarkozy may be no Mitterand, but we’re still a long way from France making an issue about our high marginal tax rates or generous labor policies.
Please address Dick Dastardly’s comments re this in post #20.
The US top tax rate from 1993-2000 was 39.5%. The top income tax bracket would revert to that rate if the Bush tax cuts expire. Cite
What the hell is this handwaving about SS deductions? I thought payroll taxes didn’t count as income taxes since they get returned to the payroll taxed person eventually? I’d bet I could google up a post from you that says as much.
In any case, you’re basically making up a scenario and trying to prove some point about marginal rates using the top tax rate. Marginal rates are not effective tax rates, and I’m sure you know that.
Which doesn’t change a thing, since the other countries also have tax breaks for their corporations. If you think the total effective tax in the U.S. will remain lower, that’s great. In the meantime, all that activity that companies have to do to avoid paying those taxes makes them less internationally competitive as well.
Yes, and Obama also wants to remove the SS cap. That’s an additional 6.2% added to the marginal rate above the cap. Which will make the marginal rates on the rich the highest they’ve been since 1982.
When you remove the cap on payments, but leave the cap on benefits, you turn the program into social welfare. Instead of everyone paying their own share into the system for their own benefits, you have the rich paying far more than the middle class, for the same amount of benefits.
No, they’re not. But if you want to start trying to determine which deductions apply and where and to whom, it becomes very difficult to compare countries, since they all have their own set of tax breaks.
Perhaps the most effective way to compare countries is to look at the size of government as a percentage of GDP. Again, you’ll find that the U.S. government is slowly poised to slowly pass a number of countries in this measure, including Canada.
The Social democratic movement is dead. All that the current party share with the previous movement is the name. When it was a strong movement there were institutions and organisations that catered to its members from cradle to grave. Literally. There were maternity doctors and funeral parlours. And a lot in between: shopping chains, scout movements, newspapers, housing, spa baths, football teams, etc. None of this is left. Even the labour movement (itself halting) has cut its ties to the party. Removed all the surrounding movements institutions, the current Social democrats have mostly been reduced to a party based on continuously increased welfare consummation. But it used to be much more than that.
A visionary Danish labour union leader (Thomas Nielsen - 1982) once described it as: “We have been victorious as hell”. Which sums up their current predicament quite well.
Also noteworthy is that “traditional workers” – “blue collar” I think you call them - on the whole doesn’t really vote Social Democrat anymore. And parties further to the left were never based on worker votes.
Especially in Europe. I’d like to see some evidence that the center-right, much less the hard right, are seriously poised to diminish the size of government in Europe. All I see from this side of the pond is spend-and-spend Reaganomics and xenophobia.
It does change a thing. The thing it changes is that the US does not have the highest business tax rates in the world. Yes, other countries have similar loopholes but nowhere near the size or extent that exists in the US. And you need to compare apples with apples. If you’re adding on SS taxes to income taxes to claim income tax is higher than elsewhere in the world then you need to add on other countries’ version of SS taxes. In the UK it’s called National Insurance and top earners can pay up to 65% of their income in various taxes now. America will still have the lowest individual taxes (and massive loopholes in the tax code) of any major economy. Let’s put it another way. No foreign business is going to be put off investing in the world’s richest market because of America’s high levels of taxation.
All this nonsense we constantly hear about cutting income/corporate/capital gains taxes and everything will be great is comprehensively disproved by the post-2000 performance of the US economy and government/national debt after the Bush tax cuts. Since Reagan things have got so far out of whack that America will both have to raise taxes and start to redistribute wealth from the wealthy to the rest of the population before it can make any true economic recovery.
I’m with Dick Dastardly – of course it changes something. Your assertion about corporate taxes is misleading and US corporations pay far less than the statutory rate. Which I’m sure you knew.
Fine, let’s look at that. here’s a cite(PDF!) from the Congressional Budget Office. See table 2.1, “Taxes on Corporate Income in OECD Countries in 2002 as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product”, and you’ll see that the US was isn’t even close to the top as a percentage of GDP, and at 1.8 percent of GDP was nearly half of Canada’s rate of 3.4.
I still don’t know what right wing source Sam get5s his stats from. They are always miles off the truth and favor the right wing. I wish he would be more judicious in where he gets his figures. they are embarrassingly wrong.