A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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PAGE 103 of 725
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
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SECOND - do you remember posting this? Isn't it YOUR prescription for reform?
Quote:I take it when the rich need to loose to *everyone* poorer that includes the poorest of the poor, for example, the indigent homeless with no assets, no income, and only the coins they cage on the streets. You're stating that rich people need to lose to them - ie, the rich themselves need to be poorer than those poor.
Originally posted by second:
The zero-sum game that should be played is the one where the wealthy lose to everyone poorer.
How about this?
Quote:Perhaps I should remind you that *I* proposed none of that. It's all you, babe. Your focus, your fears, your anxieties, and most important, your assumptions, which you cloak under the banner of 'the rich'.
Originally posted by second:
1kiki, the rich will fight with all their might the Democrats because the Dem's agenda will be paid by the taxes of the rich. The rich don't want to pay
So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?
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So ... what do I propose?
Closing down a lot of military bases, mothballing our useless fleets of destroyers, and shuttering expensive military projects. Aside from an EMP or cyberattack, there's simply no master-military stroke, ie NCBW, that an enemy can launch that will not ultimately circle the globe and bite them in the ass. Ramping up doomsday weapons lethality and numbers is a race to the edge of a cliff. NOBODY wins, even if one side decimates the other as they both fall all the way down to the bottom.
Now, a lot of young people from flyover country join the military because it's the only steady job around.
I propose we put our military to better use - we teach these men and women a trade or three, like welding, carpentry, heavy machinery operating, machining, nursing, radiology- pulmonary- EKG-technician, electrical installation ... etc. And then we put them to work clearing forest overgrowth and underbrush, planting new forests, building artificial reefs to protect our shores from storm surges, building roads and bridges, creating housing in slum areas, caring for people in underserved areas. And so on. The list is only limited by your grasp of all the things that need to be done.
THIS IS STEP ONE paid for with existing taxes, repurposed
So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?
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I admired Yanis Varoufakis when he was in the news as Greece’s finance minister, negotiating with Central Bankers and creditors. It was typical of how negotiations go when those on the richer side know in great detail what they want and have a well-tested strategy, used for centuries, while the poorer side is divided about goals and strategy and even their willingness to fight. He wrote an admirable introduction to an old book.
Yanis Varoufakis: Marx predicted our present crisis – and points the way out
www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/20/yanis-varoufakis-marx-crisis-comm
unist-manifesto
The Communist Manifesto foresaw the predatory and polarised global capitalism of the 21st century. But Marx and Engels also showed us that we have the power to create a better world.
On the topic of dystopia, the sceptical reader will perk up: what of the manifesto’s own complicity in legitimising authoritarian regimes and steeling the spirit of gulag guards? Instead of responding defensively, pointing out that no one blames Adam Smith for the excesses of Wall Street, or the New Testament for the Spanish Inquisition, we can speculate how the authors of the manifesto might have answered this charge. I believe that, with the benefit of hindsight, Marx and Engels would confess to an important error in their analysis: insufficient reflexivity. This is to say that they failed to give sufficient thought, and kept a judicious silence, over the impact their own analysis would have on the world they were analysing.
The manifesto told a powerful story in uncompromising language, intended to stir readers from their apathy. What Marx and Engels failed to foresee was that powerful, prescriptive texts have a tendency to procure disciples, believers – a priesthood, even – and that this faithful might use the power bestowed upon them by the manifesto to their own advantage. With it, they might abuse other comrades, build their own power base, gain positions of influence, bed impressionable students, take control of the politburo and imprison anyone who resists them.
Similarly, Marx and Engels failed to estimate the impact of their writing on capitalism itself. To the extent that the manifesto helped fashion the Soviet Union, its eastern European satellites, Castro’s Cuba, Tito’s Yugoslavia and several social democratic governments in the west, would these developments not cause a chain reaction that would frustrate the manifesto’s predictions and analysis? After the Russian revolution and then the second world war, the fear of communism forced capitalist regimes to embrace pension schemes, national health services, even the idea of making the rich pay for poor and petit bourgeois students to attend purpose-built liberal universities. Meanwhile, rabid hostility to the Soviet Union stirred up paranoia and created a climate of fear that proved particularly fertile for figures such as Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.
I believe that Marx and Engels would have regretted not anticipating the manifesto’s impact on the communist parties it foreshadowed. They would be kicking themselves that they overlooked the kind of dialectic they loved to analyse: how workers’ states would become increasingly totalitarian in their response to capitalist state aggression, and how, in their response to the fear of communism, these capitalist states would grow increasingly civilised.
More at www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/20/yanis-varoufakis-marx-crisis-comm
unist-manifesto
Key to their analysis is the ever-expanding chasm between those who produce and those who own the instruments of production. The problematic nexus of capital and waged labour stops us from enjoying our work and our artefacts, and turns employers and workers, rich and poor, into mindless, quivering pawns who are being quick-marched towards a pointless existence by forces beyond our control.
But why do we need politics to deal with this? Isn’t politics stultifying, especially socialist politics, which Oscar Wilde once claimed “takes up too many evenings”? Marx and Engels’ answer is: beca
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And yet, I have read neither Marx nor Engels. And not only have I NOT proposed a workers utopia, I haven't called for a redistribution of wealth. All I've proposed so far is a re-purposing of tax dollars already collected.
Since, AS ALWAYS, your post neither accurately portrays mine nor responds to it, I will assume that you're strawmanning (lying) and/ or changing the subject. AS ALWAYS.
Do you think you can learn to discuss anything with anyone with at least a small amount of honesty? Or is that completely beyond you? And I have to ask - are you really the sane one in your family?
So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?
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So, SECOND - here are the questions you need to address to respond to my post: what do you think of re-purposing the military to 1) provide valuable skills to the members, 2) provide jobs, and 3) perform important unaddressed tasks to society and the nation?
So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?
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Quote:I can't imagine that I have ever said that making wealthy poor was in any way connected to making poor richer.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
It's the assumptions you two make I have a problem with. Whether you agree it'll work or not, both you SECOND assume that to make poor people better off, rich people need to be made poor. You claim SECOND sees it as a viable solution while you think it'll fail.
Neither of you seem to understand that there's a different way to get there, that doesn't involve anyone being poor.
So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?
I subscribe to Rising Tides Raising All Boats.
I can see that, technically speaking, the wealthy would have comparatively less buying power if they do not increase wealth while the poor do. Is that what you are saying?
Otherwise you are misattributing concepts to me.
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Quote:We already tried that here, as the Original Colonies. The disastrous consequences of that experiment were the widespread starvation and destitution, requiring the Pilgrims get bailed out by the Indians: the First Thanksgiving. Too bad this excellent example of communism isn't more widely taught, when our children can still learn.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:Well that kind of sounds like communism to me.
Originally posted by JO753:Quote:Good post.
Originally posted by 1kiki:...Instead, they need to be made SUFFICIENT and SECURE, as does everyone else. And their living needs to come from their work - their productive input to society; and not from family, or from control over the levers of power.
I mostly agree. The only differens being that earning money by working iz a consept that's dayz are numbered.
Assuming the current mess eventually gets scrapped, I think the only peepl who will be paid in the future beyond the normal standard credit will be athletes and artists.
I can't imagine we're going to be seeing an America where I'm getting paid to stock product overnight the same amount that a brain surgeon gets paid.
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Quote:This thread has 1,030 posts spanning 7 months. Is your pointing included in one of these posts, or in another thread among the 62,400?
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"And once you point us to this third way, we will certainly believe you."
I already did, more than once. And 6-string found at least one of them, though you're too stupid to.
When you do, perhaps you could respond to what I posted, rather than 6-string's interpretation.
So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?
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Quote:There is so much wrong with how you write, 1kiki. It is a great, if you were running for political office or for a CEO’s job. You are letting the ‘Verse know what you will do with the power. You show that you are touchy, bossy, and obnoxious. So much wrong. Now I will show you what I want to write about. It is not about you, 1kiki:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So ... what do I propose?
. . .
So, SECOND - here are the questions you need to address to respond to my post: what do you think of re-purposing the military to 1) provide valuable skills to the members, 2) provide jobs, and 3) perform important unaddressed tasks to society and the nation?
. . .
And not only have I NOT proposed a workers utopia, I haven't called for a redistribution of wealth. All I've proposed so far is a re-purposing of tax dollars already collected.
Since, AS ALWAYS, your post neither accurately portrays mine nor responds to it, I will assume that you're strawmanning (lying) and/ or changing the subject. AS ALWAYS.
A Nobel laureate explains why we get the bad economic policies we deserve
https://qz.com/1140481
“People who voted for Trump, or Brexit, or Le Pen and Mélenchon in France are by and large very concerned about their future with robots, with rising debts, with inequality and unemployment. We have neglected some people, the losers of globalization, and we have a society that’s more and more unequal. It might get worse, unfortunately, with new technology.
When people are afraid or upset, they also tend to dismiss their current governments and the experts. They want a big change, which is often supplied by populists who offer fairytales and the wrong policies. People are trying to grab something that will give them hope.
We get the economic policies we deserve. And as long as a lack of economic understanding prevails among the general public, making good policy choices will take a lot of political courage.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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