A stagnant economy, a political class that seems disconnected from the needs of blue collar workers, globalization fears, Islamic terrorism, a resurgent Russia and an aggressive China, and in general the feeling that things are going to hell in a handbasket.
That’s the kind of environment that breeds populism - and huge errors in public policy when the populists get elected, leading to even more trouble.
See: Chavez, Hugo. Or most recent Argentinian politicians, or the disaster in Greece. Or the rise of populists like Corbyn in the UK or Le Pen in France (who just endorsed Donald Trump, btw).
This should worry everyone, not just people on the right. These are the kinds of conditions that lead to wars and massive economic dislocation.
But on Sanders’ side the most it can lead to is social democracy, which, whatever you might have to say against it, is no “huge error in public policy” or anything of the kind, it’s just the normal thing in the industrialized democracies.
And if you’re actually equating Corbyn and Le Pen, it’s no wonder you’re equating Sanders and Trump – or even Sanders and Chavez. :rolleyes:
I am not equating them in terms of their specific policies - I’m fully aware that some are on the left and some on the right. But the nature of their appeal is populist rhetoric and a promise to disrupt the system in a major way.
And yes, just about every time Bernie opens his mouth a huge error in public policy comes out. The man gets his ideas by digging through the ash heap of history.
Actually, he seems to get a lot of them from Scandinavia, as it is now. Scandinavia ain’t no ash heap. If there is a “wave of the future,” it looks more like Scandinavia than anything else.
I’ve never watched The Apprentice or read any of Trump’s books, so I’m talking through my hat, but… I’m going with people following a bully. The bully pursues his own self interest without any depth of thought and doesn’t take slights without striking back.
A lot of people follow bullies, even if they can’t be bullies themselves. There’s often an element of scapegoating (Two former Mexican presidents have compared Trump to Hitler), but the real fun just comes from abusing people.
I think that the first sentence of the second paragaraph in the large Judis quote says it pretty clearly:
That, I think is the real issue here, and the real fuel behind Trump’s rise (and nuts like Ted Cruz as well). There’s a serious feeling that the Republicans are mostly concerned about rich businessowners and the like, as well as a real feeling that the Democrats are mostly concerned about poor minorities.
If you’re white and working class up through about upper-middle class, there’s not really a party that’s speaking for YOU, or at least that’s the perception. And to make it worse, there’s a feeling that you’re being taxed heavily to fund the Democrats’ social programs, while the Republicans are letting the rich off the taxation hook. Meanwhile, it seems like every night, you hear about political gridlock and shenanigans, rampant crime, rioting, people getting shot by cops, Mexicans and other foreigners streaming over the borders to work illegally (and push down US wages in things like construction trades) the US either fighting in foreign countries, or threatening to fight in other foreign countries, and it seems like everything’s gone to shit.
Some political outsider like Trump comes along and says that he wants to make America great again, and then says a bunch of bellicose hot air about various things, and somehow this guy seems more attractive than Hillary Clinton, some weird skinny old Vermont man, the usual run of stooges the Republicans offer up, and some really weird and creepy Texas senator.
That’s my guess- he’s tapped into a rather large segment of the right-leaning population that feels underserved by the traditional party structure.
Blue collar Republicans are tired of being lied to by politicians who say one thing to get elected, then do another when they get to Washington. But they don’t like it when candidates tell them the truth. So this time around, they are attracted to the guy who tells them what they want to hear, confirms their fears, offers easy answers, and punishes the enemies he tells them are responsible for their declining lifestyles. This he does with all the skill of a familiar television personality. Surely he will finally be the one who does what he says; no one could make such outlandish promises, then let them down again. Surely not.
Gah. Yes, you found 3 or 4 countries in the world that manage to be relatively stable and happy despite high levels of government spending. Small countries with homogenous populations.
What you might want to notice, however, is that the large amount of tax revenue they raise comes mostly from higher taxes on LOWER income. The difference between the U.S. and those countries does not come from taxes on the rich: It comes from the fact that their tax systems are less progressive, and that they extract significant amounts of revenue from lower income earners. Norways top tax rate is actually lower than the U.S.'s, and the other nordic countries are only slightly higher. But all of them have higher tax rates on lower incomes. For example, in Sweden anyone who makes between ~2,690 – 62,140 USD gets taxed at 31%.
So, are you telling me that you are advocating a 31% tax bracket for America’s poor and lower middle class, or anything even remotely close to it? Or are you only picking and choosing the things you like about the Scandinavian countries?
Man, it’s a good thing for your side that you have these nordic outliers you can always cling to as a socialist life raft, because if you didn’t you’d have nothing to say when we point out that all the other countries who embraced socialism were made much worse off because of it.
Why does that meme always come up in these discussions? America’s ethnic diversity might present a political obstacle (in the form of mean-minded white resentment of tax dollars spent on “others”) to the implementation of social democracy here, but there is no reason why it should make it any less workable. Nor does America’s vast size – in fact it should work even better here, because of economies of scale.
I don’t entirely disagree. However, just because some of Sanders’ nutty ideas will be (hopefully) checked by congress doesn’t mean they aren’t still nutty.
Really? You can’t tell the difference between raising taxes on the rich and going to more of a European social democracy and forcing Mexico to pay for the wall and forcing China to stop being protectionist by yelling louder at them? I’m in no way saying the Sanders policy will do what he claims it will (though it is no worse than mainstream Republican economic policy) but it is somewhat rational.
We’re not talking about which economic plan is better - Trump doesn’t have one. Forcing Apple to bring manufacturing back to the US is not what I’d call a plan.
The Mussolini quote is more evidence of Trump as a troll. Mark my words - if his poll numbers don’t go down, he’ll be quoting Hitler in a month.
That is dumb, but it is not anti-science. Anti-science would be the claim that fission doesn’t work and there is a natural gas input somewhere. I’m for nuclear power, but as an engineer I have to say the industry has screwed up more than once.