Sorry, armwaving fail. Your priorities are your own, and Bernie’s are Bernie’s.
Stick your head in the sand all you like, Buster, but no one else is obliged to keep you company, most especially with that attitude. Enjoy your sand break!
Hint: Chump’s supporters are tired of hearing about his lies and incompetence, as well; should anyone else care?
That’s not because your city council is awesome. It’s because you don’t own them. Somebody else does, and that person chooses your tax rate.
That’s why I think it’s imperative to bring people with real power back to ideas like the public good. The Walton family actually lobbied Congress to cut off the federal extension of unemployment benefits, and that directly hurt their profits. Hurting poor people is more important than money, at least to the Waltons. That needs to change. Henry Ford wanted his workers to buy the cars they made. The people today with real power are more interested in punching down.
This may appeal to run of the mill rich folks, which ranges from upper middle class to folks with a handful of million in net worth. The billionaires and hundred-millionaires who really run things don’t give a shit about public infrastructure, for the most part, because they have largely segregated themselves from it.
No, as they said in 1984, the change will have to come from the proles, and will require nothing less than a massive expansion of human consciousness in the masses, leading people to vote for folks who actually stand to change things. However, the ultra-richies will not play nicely if they feel threatened, methinks, and so it’s tough not to imagine things coming to blows, in order for us to make a real, lasting change in society.
Still holding out hope for the Dictatorship of the Proletariat? It always seems to be right around the corner.
Nope, not one bit. As a socialist, I am fine with a certain degree of class stratification, if it is accompanied by effective social welfare programs such as universal healthcare, housing, access to nutrition, clean water, education, culture and nature, and being free from the threat of rampant violence. If those things are handled, I’m fine with there being rich people.
Rather, by “massive expansion of consciousness” I was referring to a wide embrace of nondualism as the core philosophy of our civilization. I believe if this were to happen, it would have wide and positive ramifications on how our society is constructed and managed. Might also address rich people seeing advantage in taking better care of other members of society, but I can only see this happening as a “trickle-up” effect.
Interestingly, what Peter Mandelson actually said was “We don’t mind people being filthy rich so long as they pay their taxes.”
Guess which bit never gets quoted by the media.
Yes, it’s not as if the Conservative Party isn’t being forced by pressure from, among others, the sane wing of their own MPs to adopt Labour policies in self-defence.
No, he didn’t win. But the other side lost, as did the right wing media. It was, in fact, a battle of Jutland/Skaggerackschlacht moment. In that famous sea battle, in 1916, the Royal Navy lost more ships and men than the German High Seas Fleet. But the Germans failed to break out and did not have the strength for a second attempt. They never regained the initiative. Strategically, they lost the war at sea.
Those people already understand these ideas you speak of, and they don’t care. You just said it yourself, right there: many of them hate poor people (and women, and black people, and…) more than they like money. Of the ones who hypothetically don’t hate everyone “below” them on the class system in their heads, their lack of hatred is just replaced with pure indifference: so what if poor people die in peonage, so long as I get an extra dollar?
Obviously we all know that there are plenty of decent rich people, but decent people aren’t the ones who buy laws in smokey back rooms. It’s not like society has been lacking of the knowledge that government for the public good helps everyone, or a rising tide floats all boats, or that rich people are unfairly coddled by society. The sort of scumbag rich person who lusts for power already knows all that stuff: they just don’t give a shit.
The solution isn’t to produce a shiny media campaign targeting sociopathic rich people on why they should care about other people: the solution is that those rich people need to not be in charge any more.
…oh, that’s adorable, you think there exists out there some explanation good enough it’ll make rich people not throw a tantrum over taxes.
You REALLY don’t get what large amounts of money do to your mind, do you?
I for one would tend to agree with you.
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
― William Gibson, Count Zero
I really don’t think the rich care; this doesn’t affect them.
When told that you can’'t solve [insert problem here] by throwing money at it, Molly Ivins would reply: “How do you know that? It’s never been tried!” [paraphrasing]
I agree with the rest of your comment, but that part needed fixing.
Naomi’s step #5.
You don’t create change by begging for crumbs from the master’s table. Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Corbyn/Sanders 2020
This headline will be misunderstood by Americans and previous commenters who keep conflating neoliberalism with liberals/Democrats.
Not so much.
Neoliberalism has been the economic policy of both US parties for decades, and it is an ideology that originally arose from liberalism (hence the name). Liberalism is a centre-right position, same as ever. It’s the party of capitalist dominance.
Corbyn is criticising the right, not just the fascists. From Corbyn’s perspective, “the right” includes the corporate Dems and Blairites.
A reminder of the Blairites:
