If you generally identify with the liberal or left side of the political spectrum, what is too radical, or quixotic, or nutty, or downright totalitarian for you to support? What’s just too “Brave New World” for your tastes?
Tankie-ism, of the Roger Waters variety.
Not sure if I really count for this thread, since I’m more a centrist than leftist.
But when you support brutal fascist regimes in the name of “opposing Western fascism” - sorry, that ain’t funny. And when it’s sincere support rather than trollery, it’s downright scary.
When some talk about raising the tax rate for the millionaires/billionaires to 90%, that worries me because many of them contribute considerable money to worthy causes, which may stop happening.
And get absolutely nothing in tax return.
Right, because the marginal tax rate of 91% of the 1950s was one of the key causes for the extreme depression and unemployment of that decade.
Mandatory atheism comes to mind.
anything messing with food or how people eat…
I wouldn’t call it “loony,” because it comes from a place of real frustration with real issues, but any plan that requires the literal dismantling of an entire system (capitalism, justice, etc.) purely on a practical level alone. It strikes as so theoretical that I’m skeptical over whether it’s worth discussing. (Especially so for those for whom such dismantling is the only way to get to their goal.)
That 91% was the marginal rate on income over, IIRC, $200,000. Think more like $2,000,000 today. This had several useful effects. First off, it encouraged charitable giving. If you gave $100 to charity, it cost you only $9 and cost the government $91. Second, it discouraged companies from giving exorbitant salaries to their executives, since the excess mainly went to the government. And thirdly, it eventually paid off a large part of the war-time debt. And lo, did the country prosper.
That said, I would like to see a marginal rate of more like 70%, just to pull a number out of the hat.
As far as too loony left for me, well abolishing the police would be that for me. But I would certainly like to see some reforms in policing. Same two comments for prisons.
Universal Basic Income is too looney left for me. At least right now. UBI works for Megacity 1, and if we ever get to the point where unemployment is so high because everything has been automated I’ll certainly rethink my position on the subject.
I’d like to know where all that money is supposed to come from.
The idea that animals should not be domesticated, and human should not make use of any wild animal product either. Nor should humans befriend animals in any way.
I agree. Fire the bad police. Get rid of the police unions whose only purpose seems to be protecting bad cops. Make it the mission of police forces across the country to protect and serve. But getting rid of them altogether? That’s ridiculous.
When I find something, you’ll be the first to know!
I’m not sure that the looniness and the leftiness are meaningfully correlated. That is, I can imagine ways in which almost any extreme left-wing proposal could be given a workable non-loony interpretation/implementation. And ways in which almost any centrist/moderate one could manifest as very stupid and loony.
I guess if I had to identify a fairly straightforward example, it would be absolutely uncompromising opposition to any use of nuclear power for energy generation. There are certainly some serious problems with nuclear power technology from a security and sustainability point of view, natch. But any “leftist” trying to argue that the problems of nuclear are currently more serious than the problems of fossil fuel use, or that nuclear should be barred from consideration under any circumstances whatever, is being Loony, IMHO.
I agree that the high marginal rate was not harmful overall and, like you say, actually beneficial, but I’m not so sure about its positive effect on limiting executive salary, if it started the ball rolling regarding stock options. The salary cap may have had more to do with that, but at any rate replacing the executive compensation package largely with stock options was a negative effect on the economy, as executives focused on short term stock gains to the detriment of both the company and the economy.
Right, some things are loony, and some things are left, and some things might even be loony because they are too left, but using the phrase “loony left” implies that the left tends to be loony.
Similarly with the phrase “illiberal left”. More than other types of so-called “loony” lefties, this is the type of left that I like least, because as a liberal I want everyone treated as individuals rather than just as a shorthand for their ethnic groupings. However, to categorize that as “illiberal left”, rather than individual people from the left who are illiberal, would give fuel to people who think that the left as a whole is not liberal.
I see some folks on the left argue that protest shouldn’t involve property damage or cause widespread disruption, that seems pretty ridiculous to me. What’s the point of protesting if you’re going to make it easy for the rich and powerful to ignore you?
You think not intentionally doing property damage is loony?