Quo Vadis, Democrats?

[crazy canuck]

Jos, "Countless" working class families rent, they do not own.  Your estimate of how many people have a university degree is also inflated.

Congratulations, you just confirmed your out of touch elite credentials.

[Barrister]

I was just listening to a podcast describing the modern educated intellectual class, who always thinks of themselves as being the working poor, and always defines "the elites" as making just a tiny amount more than they are making.  It was US-focused but 100% could have been describing Jos.

I thought that was an excellent conversation, and worth listening to for others:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elite-envy/id1291144720?i=1000680940495

I just read  [color=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.92)]Musa al-Gharb's book.  Very interesting [/color]

I'm outed as a listener to Jonah Goldberg's The Remnant. 

I found it very interesting though.

[Zoupa]

53 % of UK adults own their homes. 51 % of UK adults have higher education.

Y'all are jumping on Jos as an elite based on those criteria is strange.

[Barrister]

If I'm an elite then we are even more fucked than we already seemed to be.
What shitty low qualifications are those? Working abroad? Owning a house? Countless working class people tick those boxes.
As to education... It's 2024. Half of the country went to uni.
  If half of the country are elites the word clearly means something very different to you.

My family and upbringing matter as they made me. They are why I am who I am.
They are why I would willingly take considerably higher tax for myself if it meant an uplift for the country as a whole.
 They are why as a straight cis white guy with a degree, injustice and inequality in all it's forms still boils my piss.

Check back in 25 years and if life has stayed on track then maybe I can hold up my hands and say I'm middle class as I'd have lived the majority of my life under a decent salary.
As things stand right now though the shadow of poverty still looms. The lessons it brought are hard to break.

This was the first link I could find - only 22% of Britons graduate from university.

https://www.futurefit.co.uk/blog/graduation-statistics-and-facts/

Which very much matches what Musa al-Gharb was talking about.  You can blame the "top 1%" all you want - they have 28% of all wealth.  Which is alot - but still nowhere close to the majority.  But once you get to the top 20% - that's where the large majority of wealth is owned.

I looked up my salary once.  I think I'm top 5% of household incomes.  But I still worry quite a lot about money and even poverty.  I think very few people or families are at a point where they don't.

And of course your family and upbringing made you who you are.  You should be proud of your upbringing and heritage, and the lessons it taught you.  But don't make it blind to the position and privilege you have now.  Not because you should forget your upbringing, but to put it in context.

Seriously if you have an hour to kill that podcast Habs posted was really, really good.

[Barrister]

53 % of UK adults own their homes. 51 % of UK adults have higher education.

Y'all are jumping on Jos as an elite based on those criteria is strange.

Look at how many graduate.

[crazy canuck]

I thought BB was referring to Paul Wells' interview with him

It is also worth listening to

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-paul-wells-show/id1643176656?i=1000679197949

[crazy canuck]

53 % of UK adults own their homes. 51 % of UK adults have higher education.

Y'all are jumping on Jos as an elite based on those criteria is strange.

What percentage in his age group own their own home, and where did you get that percentage of people who have university educations?

[Grey Fox]

Josq, has a good European citizen, is applying class war vocabulary to a culture war argument. The former is something Americans refuse to acknowledge exist.

[Sheilbh]

53 % of UK adults own their homes.

That's actually too low. I think the correct stat that's normally used (and takes account of couples etc) is "households" and about 63% of households own their own home. That's a decline from the peak in 2007 when just over 70% of households owned their own home.

What percentage in his age group own their own home, and where did you get that percentage of people who have university educations?

The age at which 50%+ are homeowners is about 36. So I think Jos and I are basically in the same age group (a little older than that) and we're in the majority in owning our home. I think 35-44 year olds in general are about 60% - again in the 90s-00s that number was over 70%.

51 % of UK adults have higher education.
[...]
This was the first link I could find - only 22% of Britons graduate from university.
[...]
Look at how many graduate.

About a third of adults (over 16s) have a higher education qualification according to the last census. This could be a Bachelors or higher professional qualifications, or Higher National Certificates or Degrees. The latter are broadly offered by universities through more vocational training/courses, often effectively as foundation years leading to an undergrad degree. For statistical purposes they are considered the equivalent of an undergrad (both are "Level 4") in part because they're normally quite linked.

I think the 22% figure is possibly the proportion of the population with a degree. Obviously that includes children which feels like unfair expectations. But the other reason the figure is 22% across the population is partly because there has been a big generational shift. So the participation rate in higher education was under 5% in 1950, under 10% in 1970, up to just under 20% in 1990 and 33% in 2000 (New Labour had a goal of 50%). The participation rate now (by age 25 because there's a big chunk who start later but not very late) is about 49% in higher education, in degrees specifically it's about 45%.

It's one of the reasons age and education are such big divides politically in the UK (and that one can often be read for the other). If you're a boomer chances are you're in the 90% that didn't go to university. If you're a millenial it's almost 50/50. It's worth noting this also plays into race, class and geography (inevitably). So the group least likely to go to unversity are white kids, particularly white boys. In part this is geography. There's been a huge improvement in high school education over the last 20 years (caused by New Labour reforms that the Tories then picked up - and the new government is possibly inclined to unpick), but within that schools in cities (and particularly London) have improved more and faster. This intersects with race and class in interesting ways (British Bangladeshis are particularly striking on this) but broadly cities are more ethnically diverse. But the cities are also very unequal and include some of the most deprived areas of the country.

But generally this means the cities are younger, are more educated and becoming more educated. But they are also changing - for example, broadly in the last census the areas with the largest increase in ethnic diversity are basically classic suburban areas around cities which I think reflects those other trends of communities in cities benefiting from the improvement in education, going to university and increasing income and wealth and moving to the suburbs.

Josq, has a good European citizen, is applying class war vocabulary to a culture war argument. Something Americans refuse to acknowledge exist.

But as bad Europeans we don't really have some of those concepts. So we just use working, middle and upper (and mean literally upper) class which are very broad (although we may have upper, middle and lower middle class), while good Europeans can bring in the bourgeois, the intelligentsia, the peasants etc.

I always remember many years ago talking to Marti and he described a Polish political party as a "typical peasant party" and I had no idea what that is because England wiped out the peasant class with the enclosures (and moved to landowning gentry farmers and landless employees or tenant farmers - according to one Canadian academic, incidentally, this is the start of capitalism).

As a total aside I know I've mentioned nihilism and echoes of the 1890s before - can't help but wonder if the US and UK could usefully use and explore the role of the intelligentsia and Russian and Eastern European theory right now.

[Razgovory]

I was just listening to a podcast describing the modern educated intellectual class, who always thinks of themselves as being the working poor, and always defines "the elites" as making just a tiny amount more than they are making.  It was US-focused but 100% could have been describing Jos.

You know I live on welfare right?  You make more money than me.

You said  your dad was a programmer.
And when you were a kid that was an even better job than today. Not to mention the education it needs which was there for you.
You have a solidly middle class upbringing.

He was a programmer.  Unfortunately it was with the state.  They didn't pay well.  We were on food stamps.

[Josquius]

If I'm an elite then we are even more fucked than we already seemed to be.
What shitty low qualifications are those? Working abroad? Owning a house? Countless working class people tick those boxes.
As to education... It's 2024. Half of the country went to uni.
  If half of the country are elites the word clearly means something very different to you.

My family and upbringing matter as they made me. They are why I am who I am.
They are why I would willingly take considerably higher tax for myself if it meant an uplift for the country as a whole.
 They are why as a straight cis white guy with a degree, injustice and inequality in all it's forms still boils my piss.

Check back in 25 years and if life has stayed on track then maybe I can hold up my hands and say I'm middle class as I'd have lived the majority of my life under a decent salary.
As things stand right now though the shadow of poverty still looms. The lessons it brought are hard to break.

This was the first link I could find - only 22% of Britons graduate from university.

https://www.futurefit.co.uk/blog/graduation-statistics-and-facts/

Which very much matches what Musa al-Gharb was talking about.  You can blame the "top 1%" all you want - they have 28% of all wealth.  Which is alot - but still nowhere close to the majority.  But once you get to the top 20% - that's where the large majority of wealth is owned.

I looked up my salary once.  I think I'm top 5% of household incomes.  But I still worry quite a lot about money and even poverty.  I think very few people or families are at a point where they don't.

Others covered the numbers on home ownership and uni.
Quickly checking up I'm apparently around the top 30% or so for income. Which is honestly lower than I thought- I think those kids have dragged me down.

And of course your family and upbringing made you who you are.  You should be proud of your upbringing and heritage, and the lessons it taught you.  But don't make it blind to the position and privilege you have now.  Not because you should forget your upbringing, but to put it in context.

I'm not. I make no secret of the fact I'm not the poorest person in the world, I'm currently saving 4 figures as standard, I don't really have to watch my spending anymore when I go to the supermarket and that sort of thing.
But this doesn't change the fact I'm working class, where I came from and still have deep inner and outer ties to.
I know how hard it is for working class people. I know why "Just work harder!" doesn't work as guidance. And this is why I support policies that help the working class.

Seriously if you have an hour to kill that podcast Habs posted was really, really good.

I'm listening to it. Its meh.
It sounds like it very much gels with all I've been saying- there's not enough focus on the bottom line and raising living standards for working people. Progressive culture warriors though their heart is in the right place aren't helping, they way to get the outcomes they want is by focussing on the basics. A culture war is exactly what the hard right want as they know fine well they have nothing to materially offer working people, so all the better they can offer phantom threats of trans people and immigrants.

Ranting about people dismissing the views of working people...no. Thats the complete opposite of what I say we should do. This is literally my job.
You talk to people, you perform studies, you figure out their concerns and what they say.
But you don't take this completely at face value and flip your views to match.
So you have a large chunk of the working class saying its the muslims that are to blame for the state of the country?
Why do they think that? Why? Why? Why? Why?
You don't just take the surface answer, you keep digging, its not what they say which matters, its why they say it.
Dig into things and the anti-immigration hysteria is usually down to shit conditions for working people which are down to a variety of other reasons that have nothing to do with immigration.

[Barrister]

I'm listening to it. Its meh.
It sounds like it very much gels with all I've been saying- there's not enough focus on the bottom line and raising living standards for working people. Progressive culture warriors though their heart is in the right place aren't helping, they way to get the outcomes they want is by focussing on the basics. A culture war is exactly what the hard right want as they know fine well they have nothing to materially offer working people, so all the better they can offer phantom threats of trans people and immigrants.

Ranting about people dismissing the views of working people...no. Thats the complete opposite of what I say we should do. This is literally my job.
You talk to people, you perform studies, you figure out their concerns and what they say.
But you don't take this completely at face value and flip your views to match.
So you have a large chunk of the working class saying its the muslims that are to blame for the state of the country?
Why do they think that? Why? Why? Why? Why?
You don't just take the surface answer, you keep digging, its not what they say which matters, its why they say it.
Dig into things and the anti-immigration hysteria is usually down to shit conditions for working people which are down to a variety of other reasons that have nothing to do with immigration.

Jos, you irritate me enormously.  But I did not expect you to listen to The Remnant podcast on my recommendation so I have to give you a lot of respect for doing so.   

Despite my recommendation, and the fact he was on a right-ish podcast, al-Gharbi (from the podcast) appears to be fairly leftist (although in the podcast itself he bristles at the term, and refers to himself as a centrist).  I mean - he's a columnist at The Guardian.  So not surprised you do agree with at least some of what he was saying.

Maybe it's the specific word "elite" that triggered you.  al-Gharbi uses the weird term "symbolic capitalists".  But in any event both you and I are highly educated knowledge workers.  We do not work with our hands, and have incomes nicely above the average or median.  But whether you want to use the term "elite", "symbolic capitalist", "Bobo" (also referenced in the podcast), or any other term you want - I think you know the category of people I'm talking about.

And for emphasis - I include myself in that category.

I really think though you missed the primary message - it doesn't matter if someone's heart is in the right place.  People still, almost inevitably, tend to pursue their own self-interests.  You can argue that Lenin's heart was in the right place - he still introduced a murderous dictatorship that enormously enriched the Communist Party elites.

So we have an entire class of people who loudly proclaim how they're for the working people, how they support equality - and who pursue policies that do nothing of the sort.

You do it again in your post.  Working class people are against muslim immigration - but you're utterly convinced there must be some other hidden reason.  Presumably that only you (or others like you) know.

Maybe people just think there's too much immigration?  They're entitled to that belief you know.

[Josquius]

:

Despite my recommendation, and the fact he was on a right-ish podcast, al-Gharbi (from the podcast) appears to be fairly leftist (although in the podcast itself he bristles at the term, and refers to himself as a centrist).  I mean - he's a columnist at The Guardian.  So not surprised you do agree with at least some of what he was saying.

I've never heard of this podcast before. I had no idea it was right wing and just took it at face value.
Writing in the guardian doesn't mean much. They have Simon Jenkins and Owen Jones amongst their numbers. One of the things that is good about the guardian is that it prints a variety of different views, even the stupid ones.

Maybe it's the specific word "elite" that triggered you.  al-Gharbi uses the weird term "symbolic capitalists".  But in any event both you and I are highly educated knowledge workers.  We do not work with our hands, and have incomes nicely above the average or median.  But whether you want to use the term "elite", "symbolic capitalist", "Bobo" (also referenced in the podcast), or any other term you want - I think you know the category of people I'm talking about.

And for emphasis - I include myself in that category.

Using elite just to mean "middle class job and has no trouble paying the bills" is really watering down the meaning of the word elite yes.
Even completely ignoring my background I am far closer to those on minimum wage than those who actually have the power.

I really think though you missed the primary message - it doesn't matter if someone's heart is in the right place.  People still, almost inevitably, tend to pursue their own self-interests.  You can argue that Lenin's heart was in the right place - he still introduced a murderous dictatorship that enormously enriched the Communist Party elites.

So we have an entire class of people who loudly proclaim how they're for the working people, how they support equality - and who pursue policies that do nothing of the sort.

If say having your heart in the right place is a bare minimum starting point...

As to the policies people like me want doing nothing to help working people - yes. But that's because we aren't the elite. We have very little power. The policies we'd like to see absolutely would help working people... But they don't get enacted.

And yes. I remember the podcast blowing that "elite universities so left wing!" whistle. I've never been in an American University,  it could well be different there, but as far as British ones go that's an absolute joke.

I think part of the problem here could also be the typical issue here of parsing left wing views through a right wing lens.
We are not exactly the same only supporting the red team instead of the blue team (or the reverse in the US. Which is silly). Our fundamental outlook on things is different.
As I said - you want to raise my taxes? And this is to fund policies that will help the poorest? Awesome. Have at it.

You do it again in your post.  Working class people are against muslim immigration - but you're utterly convinced there must be some other hidden reason.  Presumably that only you (or others like you) know.

Maybe people just think there's too much immigration?  They're entitled to that belief you know.

They're "entitled" to think the moon is made of cheese if they really want to.

Taking people's first comment and calling it a day is terrible research. There's nothing sinister about this. Often people themselves aren't actively aware of why they have the surface thoughts and feelings the they do.

You've no doubt heard it before but there's a famous and sadly fictional Henry Ford quote "if I'd asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses".
You seem to have the belief that this means people are idiots and we shouldn't listen to them at all. We should just dictate to them what we think is best.
What it actually means is you don't take the surface comment verbatim but you dig into it a bit more and find out what people need - in this case there's the word "faster" clearly standing out as one to follow up on.

Populism at its core is about promising to deliver the surface asks.
This is an area where people today definitely have gotten dumber - there's this huge unearned confidence amongst so many people that they know better than the experts.
That they can safely ignore all those scientists saying to vaccinate our kids because their own research (reading some crap online) says different.

Labour, on paper at least, seems to have actually gotten this message lately. Focusing on actually delivering what people need, the core underlying issues behind brekshit.
Whether they're actually on track to be succesful with this.... Well....
But hopefully the dems can learn from it and follow a similar approach next election.
Rather than trying to out scum maga, playing professional victim and seeking to harm others,
come up with a plan to actually deliver positive change that will benefit working people the most.

On immigration you'll still get that solid 10% or so who are just racist shitheads whose core reasoning is foreigners =bad.
But solve housing problems, the cost of living, job opportunities, etc... Then immigration becomes quite the minor fringe issue with most who previously reported it as a key issue no longer seeing it the same way.
You can join the fight for how to share the pie... Or you can make more pie.

[Razgovory]

Anyway, I think it's settled.  Josq is the reason Democrats lost.  Not people like Josq, just him.  By himself.

[mongers]

Anyway, I think it's settled.  Josq is the reason Democrats lost.  Not people like Josq, just him.  By himself.

Yes and add me to that, I had some quite dark thoughts about US politics this year.