Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Liberalism is like the race hustlers. They NEED "victims", more so, perceived "victims". Without them, they are powerless. The only thing that drives them more than money is power.
The immoral doubling of economic inequality in a generation, brought about through the promulgation of self-centered right-wing policies that first gained significant acceptance during the 1980s, is a perfect example of the opposite of what should be happening.
Do you have any idea of what it was like to be truly poor in 1950?
Do you have any idea what the word "generation" means, or have any idea roughly how many years are in a "generation"?
The Democrats would still be around if only to defend the status quo and their social programs. They would run on a platform of defending things like pre K, Social Security, Medicare and minimum wage against the Republicans. So, no, they would not go away as a party. The main problem that the Democrats are going to have in the future is finding a way to pay for these things they hold so dearly. They are going to have to make choices. If they do not want any cuts to Medicare and Social Security, where are they going to cut to pay for them?
.......there were no poor, no one making less than $15 an hour and no racial issues? My guess is that they would cease to exist as a party. On these three issues and only these three issues do the Dems continue to exist.
"no one making less than $15 an hour" They are NEVER satisfied. If they got $15, they would try to get $20. If they got $20, they would try to get $30, and on and on and on.
You're kidding right? Both parties tend to make up what they need to survive. To the Republicans it's smaller government, defense and wars. To the Dems it's racism, poverty, minorities. To progressives it's progress. They all w*ore themselves out to the corporate industrial machine. They are in bed with multinational companies and banking interests. They do not represent us anymore.
There's no such thing as a perfect world, and there never will be as long as these two parties are in control.
We need to abolish both parties and join the European Union
Free market socialism for all.
"no one making less than $15 an hour" They are NEVER satisfied. If they got $15, they would try to get $20. If they got $20, they would try to get $30, and on and on and on.
As much nonsense as you post, you have posted something very valid here. The problem is that you've mistaken the cause and fault. The issue that you're avoiding is why $15 an hour is significant. You've duped yourself into believing that it is simply more than they get now. The reality is that it is closer to what is a reasonable minimal standard of living in our society.
You probably would bombastically support the contention that people you don't care about should be happy to live in relative squalor, and others who support similar perspectives to those you're supporting would probably defend the idea that slavery shouldn't have been abolished - that people should be happy with having rich and powerful people dictate the level of economic injustice in society which is acceptable.
The reality is, of course, quite different, that since the end of feudalism, in a democratic republic, everyone together decides what is an acceptable level of economic injustice in society, and that, in turn, determines what is the reasonable minimum standard of living for everyone in that society.
There are many variables that can be used to fix the current disparity between the standard of living for those at the bottom of our society's socio-economic ladder and that reasonable minimum standard of living for everyone in that society. A combination of more public assistance and higher wages is probably the most American of the approaches. We Democrats like that approach.
One, less American approach, would involve imposing price controls on profitable businesses that extract wealth from the economy through charging more for the elements of that reasonable minimum standard of living for everyone in society. That's called socialism. We Democrats don't like that approach.
So I understand the quandary you and your colleagues are in. You don't want to admit that what you really want is to protect the indefensible and despicable injustice that you personally benefit from (or at least think you do). You don't want your own comfort and luxury degraded in the interest of justice. And you surely don't want to hinder the ability for rich people to double economic inequality for the second time in as many generations. You're really between a rock and a hard place and I feel for you.
Do you have any idea what the word "generation" means, or have any idea roughly how many years are in a "generation"?
The generation that lived in 1950 or was just born but old enough to remember what it was like to grow up or live in the Missouri or Arkansas Ozarks, West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky or or the Tennesee Valley have not been fully consummed and we still remember. So what is your5 point?
I was asking if you understood the comment that you replied to. I asked because your reply made it clear that you didn't. I was being polite. My question wasn't an invitation to post more irrelevant, non-responsive deflection, but rather for you to go back and recognize that I was talking about what I was talking about, the doubling of economic inequality in "the last generation". Start over, reading what I wrote, and then please to reply if you have something to say in response to what I actually wrote. Thanks
It isn't a matter of eliminating the incidence of poor people, but rather of reversing the additional suffering added over the last generation to that was already associated with poverty. The immoral doubling of economic inequality in a generation, brought about through the promulgation of self-centered right-wing policies that first gained significant acceptance during the 1980s, is a perfect example of the opposite of what should be happening. Even simply going back to the substantially lower level of inequality of the previous generation would be a quantum improvement. Getting back on the path our society was on before greed-centric right-wingers came to power, the path toward slow, incremental improvements with regard to relieving the suffering associated with poverty, would be a wonderful second step.
IMHO - Both the Democratic and Republican parties have disappeared into a corporatist mush that only allows discussion of emotional trivia. We are still at war somewhere so the arms and mercenary sellers can have a guaranteed market. We still have a tax system that takes from the almost poor and gives to the ultra rich. We still have a monopolies in energy and pharmaceuticals. We still ban some drugs so the DEA has an excuse for existing and spending money for no good end. Both parties support this nonsense.
Neither party fights monopoly as they should. The Republicans because of their worship of Capitalist principals as described by Saint Smith so long ago. The Democrats should do the same because monopolies cost their constituents more money than they would pay in a Free Market. Don't worry this will never happen as neither party will bite the corporate hand that enslaves them.
An interesting assumption. Let me start by erroneously assuming that you don't pretend that your list is all-encompassing: The matters that Democrats are pursuing include more than just living wage and racial fairness. There are other aspects of our society where right-wingers have promulgated their corruption, adversely affecting those most vulnerable in society in the interest of those with power, generally financial power. Furthermore, there are aspects of our society where the GOP has been the agent for forestalling or reversing religious freedom in the interest of rich or powerful religious reactionaries that the GOP relies on to remain relevant at the ballot box.
But assuming you mean all those things, if they are all resolved, the Democratic Party as we know it today would indeed not exist anymore.
Neither would the Republican Party.
Such changes would only be possible in the context of changing the GOP into a moral, right-thinking group, that unlike today's party actually favors social consciousness. Your premise is sound, but also implies that the Republican Party would become many things that today's most vocal Republicans would call "leftist" (and online right-wingers would probably childishly call "socialist" or "communist" because they don't have the intelligence to defend their perspective with legitimate comments).
As I alluded to above, my comments above were predicated on an erroneous assumption that your perspective with regard to what the Democrats actually are about, today, wasn't as faulty as it is. In the context of your faulty understand of the Democratic Party, no, it wouldn't go away just if those few issues you explicitly listed were resolved.
"If all men were angels, laws would not be necessary." -- T. Jefferson.
I guess, if life on Earth were like heaven, we wouldn't need any government either. This thread is a bit pie-in-the-sky.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.