Idea from Sam Freedman, what is a political opinion you've completely changed your mind on over the past decade and why? About an issue not individuals or a party.
Off the top of my head I've moved from pretty dubious on the anti-tuition fee case to thinking it's very strong (this may be a difference between fees for me v late millenials/Gen Z). I think I used to be far more convinced on a liberal/rights-based model, whereas I think I'm now far less convinced they're actually effective protections v politics. Similarly I used to think that with the right incentives and tax structures we could do what was necessary on climate - I now basically disagree and think it requires large state intervention/restrictions. Used to be more keen on targeted welfare, now generally behind universalism and just give people cash.
I'm sure there's more.
I went from wanting a property tax freeze to Property taxes should never be frozen.
Gerrymandering: from all's fair in love in war to subversion of democracy.
Israel: from sure they fight dirty, but they live in a tough neighborhood to they're a bunch of dicks. Except for a couple thousand surfers in Tel Aviv, all dicks.
Christianity, specifically American Protestantism: from, yeah it's all fake but loving your neighbor is a nice thing to it's poison.
I used to think it was a good idea to have the two parties balanced so would vote for a mix of Dems and Republicans at each election.
Last decade. Mmmm...
- Expansion of the EU. I was in the "bring in everybody!" camp, but right now I feel we probably shouldn't accept new members in a generation or two, and consolidate instead. Some of the Eastern members are a bit... challenging (but I still believe it's better to have them in the EU than out there with Russia).
- Then Catalan nationalism has soured me on a lot of Catalan-centric policies than I used to support (like increased devolution). I.e. the Catalan-language public TV channel is the best funded public TV in Spain (in terms of budget per capita), and I used to support that (and watch it), because it was an important tool to promote the language. But it's turned into a shameless propaganda tool and they could shut the whole thing down for all I care. Same with rules making it hard for non-Catalan speakers to become public servants, and many others.
Pretty sure when I was a teenager I was lightly euroskeptic. Then I actually got out and experienced the EU for myself and read stuff other than tabloid headlines.
Though going back over a decade then.
Hmm....
I guess I lost all faith in the idea of social media as a positive thing and how democracy would become so much better thanks to facts being available to everyone. Does it count?
I used to be much more libertarian free market in my political views. I thought markets can be used to organize many areas of societies besides the typically mainstream economy.
I am much more sceptical about this these days and see a string role for democratic institutions to regulate or outright organize stuff like healthcare, education, networks for transport, energy or data, etc. These should not be organized by markets, at least not alone. This necessitates a strong state that is not just beholden to capitalist interests.
I've gone from an optimistic Humanist to a pessimistic humanity is pretty much doomed curmudgeon.
Quote from: Tyr on December 24, 2021, 12:27:18 PM
I guess I lost all faith in the idea of social media as a positive thing and how democracy would become so much better thanks to facts being available to everyone. Does it count?
Oh that's a good one. I used to believe in the web 2.0.
I used to think that a) people are broadly rational and believe in science and that b) our state institutions are reasonably capable to organize complex disaster relief.
The pandemic showed that our societies have many more idiots and our states are much less capable than thought.
Well, I voted for Brexit in the Languish poll. Now, I think it was a mistake.
I've lost what little respect I had for most Republican politicians, and quite a few of their voters. Not ready to man the barricades though.
I used to believe that educated people had better political judgement. Now I believe that pretty much the only real education that occurs is the reinforcement of existing beliefs.
I used to be a right wing conservative believing in the market and open and free borders.
Nowadays I think that letting in the great immigration wave in 2014 and later was a huge mistake and that we should have closed up tight. Everything points to this mistake costing my kids, for their entire lives, and their kids also, for most of theirs, upwards of a 100€ each month in taxes. And that's money that would have been spent on schools and health care probably... This is a viewpoint that has changed for almost everyone I interact with.
And on the free market thingy everything points to the seemingly fact that it's not the absolute wealth of a society that makes it happy, but rather the re-distribution of wealth and relative wealth equality. In our rich western societies at least.
What does that estimate of 100€/month entail, Threviel?
Twenty years back I thought I had a low opinion of my fellow man. Boy was I wrong.
Major milestones on my spiral towards cynicism:
- The general reaction to the Snowden revelations.
- The disastrous handling of the EU debt crisis.
- Working for a major publicly traded company and seeing first hand how it's politics and not the market that drive decisions also in the private sector.
- Brexit and Trump.
- The pandemic.
I lost whatever hope I had for the future. Mine and the world's. I used to hold out some for the world's. Now I'm just disgusted.
Quote from: Zanza on December 25, 2021, 11:07:49 AM
What does that estimate of 100€/month entail, Threviel?
Every refugee costs some number, IIRC 30-70 000 SEK every year for their entire lives, averaged out. We took in hundreds of thousands. There was a famous interview when the calculating scientist was accused of racism over the numbers and he more or less obliterated the journalists credibility in return.
I don't remember the exact calculation and I won't guarantee it, but it came out to about 1000 SEK per person and month. And it will go on for decades and decades and decades.
Edit: The scientist had calculated the economy of refugees and concluded that they cost money, the journalist asked him if it was responsible to publish these numbers in light of all racism. The scientist responded that facts are facts and that economy is not the reason that we are open to refugees.
My memory erred me, its 74 000 SEK per year per refugee.
I see. Can't really comment on it due to lack of detailed knowledge, but have seen other inconclusive studies on the economic effect of refugees before.
By the way, the numbers seem inconsistent. 74000 SEK are about 7150 EUR. 100 EUR/month multiplied with 10 million persons in Sweden is like 12 billion EUR. That would allow for almost 1.7 million times the 7150 EUR costs per year. There are about 900k non-EU foreign born in Sweden, presumably not all refugees.
No idea which of the figures does not fit, but might be worth checking the figures if it determines your political views.
Not all of those 10 million are going to be taxpayers.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 25, 2021, 04:05:51 PM
Not all of those 10 million are going to be taxpayers.
Everybody pays VAT.
Anyway, was not clear to me as he wrote per person per month in the second post.
But maybe that is the inconsistent factor.
Quote from: Zanza on December 25, 2021, 04:12:31 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 25, 2021, 04:05:51 PM
Not all of those 10 million are going to be taxpayers.
Everybody pays VAT.
Anyway, was not clear to me as he wrote per person per month in the second post.
But maybe that is the inconsistent factor.
As I said, I don't actually have the details of the calculation. Perhaps it was per tax payer.
The point in my mind is that I have gone from a "Let them all in, we can help" to a "Let's first and foremost take care of our own, we can barely afford to help anyone else." (And with our own I mean all the ones we've taken in so far, Sweden is a rich place, we can do lots of good, but now its time for other nations to shine for a few generations)
Understandable point and fits to the thread. I also became less ready to welcome refugees, mainly because of disappointment about lack of a cohesive European response (one notable exception being Sweden).
Threviel, any idea what those 74,000 butt sex get spent on.
I know here in the US we don't spend anything on our refugees. We charge them for the evacuation flight and throw them in a packing plant right away.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 25, 2021, 05:58:13 PM
Threviel, any idea what those 74,000 butt sex get spent on.
I know here in the US we don't spend anything on our refugees. We charge them for the evacuation flight and throw them in a packing plant right away.
I rent out a house. Every time I have an ad out there are dozens of immigrant families with lots of kids applying, most of them are on welfare and most of them have more income than we do. A few years ago there was a campaign about the poor people on welfare only affording one vacation each year and how that was unfair.
If one in a family get in and gets to live here they have a right to also take their families here, resulting in lots of old people coming and then getting pensions. Often young men comes here, claims to be under 18 (perhaps a lot of them are) and get treated as children. Once they get residence they bring in the whole family and so on.
They all get a place to live and generous welfare and help with language and applying for jobs. Few of them get any jobs and when they retire they get the same pensions that low income workers get.
There is no pressure for them to actually get a job and there are very few manual labour/low skill jobs to be had so they are all more or less condemned to a purposeless life in the poor suburbs living on generous social care. Criminality is rife and some suburbs in the bigger cities are on their way to banlieus. I saw a number the other day that every gang member costs 13 million SEK.
On a further note the 74000 number was calculated using historic and present data. So the calculation is based mostly on the refugees from South America/Greece/Turkey in the 70's and 80's and the balkanites from the 90's. I imagine that it will grow with harder to integrate africans and arabs.
Wait, wasn't your younger brother a refugee? Fievel? Little guy with a silly hat came to New York. I think he was a classmate of Dguller or something. What about your other brothers Fourviel, Onviel, and Twoviel?
I don't think concerns over integration of large masses of immigrants should be dismissed especially not with ridicule.
Sure most of the complainers are simply racist, but integrationndoes seem to be a complex process easy to mess up. It should be possible to scrutinise, review and improve on it.
They cry you get racist for questioning the refugee system. But I would say quite the opposite. It's a shame you never see good faith examinations of it. Its always so deeply rooted in racism.
I've never seen this study but it sounds very questionable if it's saying the Chilean refugees of the 70s were a net loss.
Technically most people in themselves cost countries money. Nonetheless people are necessary for the more profitable aspects of running a country.
Quote from: Tamas on December 26, 2021, 01:24:14 PM
I don't think concerns over integration of large masses of immigrants should be dismissed especially not with ridicule.
Sure most of the complainers are simply racist, but integrationndoes seem to be a complex process easy to mess up. It should be possible to scrutinise, review and improve on it.
I'm mocking a name. :rolleyes:
And just to be clear, I think Sweden should have a generous policy on refugees. I'm proud of us doing our best to help people in need.
It's just that Swedish society is under a lot of strain right now. Lots of crime, shootings and stuff like that. Lots of people poor and without a chance in life.
I believe we should have had a more conservative and spent more energy on integration and on a good reception for the people coming here. And since about twice as many men as women have come in the latest waves I think we would have been better off with flying women and children directly here rather than let all the young men in.
the dutch did a more recent study and the conclusions were the same iirc: a big net loss, and that wasn't even taking into account -iirc- the general degradation of social cohesion uncontrolled mass migration has caused and is causing.
Quote from: Tamas on December 26, 2021, 01:24:14 PM
Sure most of the complainers are simply racist,
that is, I think, a mantra that the left has been repeating so much the last 30 years or so that they've ended up believing it themselves.
And now they can't back out because the loss of face for sucking up to the most reactionary ideology possible would be massive.
Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on December 26, 2021, 02:17:10 PM
Quote from: Tamas on December 26, 2021, 01:24:14 PM
Sure most of the complainers are simply racist,
that is, I think, a mantra that the left has been repeating so much the last 30 years or so that they've ended up believing it themselves.
And now they can't back out because the loss of face for sucking up to the most reactionary ideology possible would be massive.
see what I mean....
One view I came around to is that citizens of countries should get a lot of say in who gets to apply to join their club, and I even think that for pragmatic reasons they don't have to justify their feelings. Most people want to share their community with those who share their cultural heritage, it's not just the bigots who feel this way. No one wins if citizens feel like the only way for them to have a say in immigration policy is to vote in fascists.
It's great that countries like US exist, and obviously my family personally benefitted from that, but I don't think that open doors is a policy that will work for any country, especially not for countries that are formed along ethnic lines, and where "others" will still be "others" many generations later, even if everyone says the right thing. Many centuries of peaceful coexistence can be canceled out by a couple of years of brutal ethnic conflict fueled by pent up resentment.