Quote from: Zoupa on Today at 07:00:13 PMI agree with your post in general, but wanted to submit the following idea in response to this part: we need to figure out ways to get the money to sustain our social models. States need to get that money where it actually is these days, and increasingly it is not (barring the odd trillionaire) with the general population. We need to tax financial transactions and we need to tax corporations more.So I'm not totally sold because I think the level of revenue to sustain a social democratic system is far higher than you can get from soaking the rich, or corporations. And what worries me is that I think there is less buy-in for the broad based, everyone pays sort of system you need to sustain it - in part, I think, because fewer people feel like they benefit. I'd also add that the estimate for that FTT tax is that it'd raise €55-60 billion a year which is not nothing but split between states is not huge - it's also significantly less than the €150+ estimated revenue EU states could generate by ending the internal tax shelters (Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta). I think building new complex taxes may be more work than it's worth, especially compared to reforming and properly enforcing existing ones (but this is my answer to everything: build back state capacity).
Something like this could be a start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_financial_transaction_tax
). In the UK, income inequality has basically plateaued since the 80s. Wealth inequality for longer - so the share of wealth held by the top 1% in the UK is just over 20%, it was at about 20% in 1980. In the US it's gone from below 25% to over 35%. Quote from: Duque de Bragança on Today at 05:01:14 PMQuote from: mongers on Today at 07:55:15 AMMan this place is dying, yours and Norgy's post are the only ones today, in like about 10 hours.
I was busy today, with a movie/blu-ray/DVD fair and a screening of Boorman's Excalibur in one of the last cinemas in the Champs-Élysées.![]()
Quote from: Sheilbh on Today at 04:40:57 PMI don't think there's a way out of that. But I think the "left" is broadly so committed to the social and cultural aspects of a neo-liberal globalised world, they are not able to even imagine alternatives that could meaningfully address the economic effects of that system.
, but that was 20 years ago.Quote from: mongers on Today at 07:55:15 AMMan this place is dying, yours and Norgy's post are the only ones today, in like about 10 hours.
Quote from: Jacob on Today at 01:22:38 PMStill licking my wounds after Miami beat Vancouver in the final
Quote from: Zoupa on December 06, 2025, 10:13:22 PM"The Left" is in shambles everywhere across the West. My 2 cents is that every generation post Boomer feels they are worse off than their parents. Economic indicators lean that way. The left does not propose a clear vision to solve that, apart from a brief interlude with Obama's Dream and Hope, which turned out to be bullshit. The Right promises to turn back the clock and does politics of nostalgia. It resonates a lot more with ppl these days.I really hope you're not right.
My crystal ball tells me a worldwide conflagration is gonna happen in the next 20 years, after which a reset on income inequality is due to emerge.
Quote from: Valmy on December 06, 2025, 08:16:09 PMYou have made this point about the international brotherhood of xenophobes for a long time. The key is these are all populist movements with general complaints for their compatriots in other countries can get with. For technocratic mainstream center left parties like Labour what they have to say doesn't even make sense to Americans, even those who support the center left mainstream technocratic parts of the Democratic Party. Because you really have to understand the British system and their specific issues to understand or care.I think I'm not expressing myself particularly well on this because I don't think it's necessarily a question of popular support or getting voters to care about other countries. Policy is the least important thing in politics and the least important bit of policy is foreign policy - no-one cares. There are three voters deeply invested in it and they all work for think tanks in our national capitals. What I think this Nationalist International is really good at it is observing, learning from and sharing knowledge about technique - about how to do politics. They don't agree on everything - Meloni is very pro-Ukraine, Orban is very pro-Russia; Trump is all about protectionism and state capitalism, Milei is Menemist neo-liberalism on steroids (the Latin American far right is really interesting). They're not united around policy or even necessarily ideology so much as they are around affect and style. But also, as I say, working out what works and applying it and sharing those experiences and that knowledge. They seem far more open to learning from each other's experience.
If they had a bunch of powerful ideological points about social values or whatever then some Democratic voters might feel solidarity and start working closely with British center leftists. But they don't so there is nothing really to attract their attention.
I think there are distinctive and particular angles to what's happening in the US. But also fundamentally everyone in the world has to care about what's happening in American politics - I think too much sometimes and it can suck the oxygen out of our own political systems, particularly in the age of the internet and particularly if you're in an English speaking country. For better or worse, we all live in America's internet. The line about if America sneezes the world catches a cold is I think now really true about cultural and political issues as well as the economy.Quote from: Savonarola on December 05, 2025, 12:49:11 PMDue to her efforts small and perpetually broke Mantua not only survived (in an era when everyone and the Pope was beating on each other) but also managed to become a leading art city.
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