Quo Vadis, Democrats?

[crazy canuck]

The American world order certainly did fall apart.  But I am not willing to concede that was our world order.  From the Canadian perspective we spent that entire time trying to moderate American excesses.  We are still standing, along with (as you say) the Scandinavian countries and most of Europe.

[The Minsky Moment]

My difference with Minsky appears on how we characterize the urban professionals.  I see them as affluent elites.  He does not.

No we differ as to whether people making 50-150K per year in NYC are "urban professionals."  They are not.  That's not a matter of opinion that is fact.

A rookie cop first day on NYPD makes 60K.  Five years later, 120K.  Teacher salaries are similar. FDNY is a little lower - average around 75K but higher for more senior people.

In contrast: a first year rookie lawyer straight out of law school can get 225K (not including bonus), rising to over 400K six years later.   For bankers right out of their MBA programs, salaries are the same, but annual bonuses can double those amounts.  Doctors tend to a bit lower but around lawyer ranges, with high numbers possible for lucrative speciaties.

So no 100K is not an urban professional salary in NYC, unless you are working for the city or a non profit. It is a salary for city workers, police, teachers, etc.

Why doesn't everyone move to New York then to take advantage of the high salaries?  Because you have to be able to afford to live in a place where teachers, police and city workers make 100K, with commensurate tax levels.  Because that 100K just doesn't go very far when 400K buys a small studio apartment, plus you have to pay common charge and tax every month at levels equal to rents for entire larger apartments elsewhere.

Raz you like to get on us coastal types for not being sufficiently sensitive to the realities of life in other parts of the country, but you should consider whether you are engaging in the same kind of stereotyping.

[DGuller]

My difference with Minsky appears on how we characterize the urban professionals.  I see them as affluent elites.  He does not.

No we differ as to whether people making 50-150K per year in NYC are "urban professionals."  They are not.  That's not a matter of opinion that is fact.

A rookie cop first day on NYPD makes 60K.  Five years later, 120K.  Teacher salaries are similar. FDNY is a little lower - average around 75K but higher for more senior people.

In contrast: a first year rookie lawyer straight out of law school can get 225K (not including bonus), rising to over 400K six years later.   For bankers right out of their MBA programs, salaries are the same, but annual bonuses can double those amounts.  Doctors tend to a bit lower but around lawyer ranges, with high numbers possible for lucrative speciaties.

So no 100K is not an urban professional salary in NYC, unless you are working for the city or a non profit. It is a salary for city workers, police, teachers, etc.

Why doesn't everyone move to New York then to take advantage of the high salaries?  Because you have to be able to afford to live in a place where teachers, police and city workers make 100K, with commensurate tax levels.  Because that 100K just doesn't go very far when 400K buys a small studio apartment, plus you have to pay common charge and tax every month at levels equal to rents for entire larger apartments elsewhere.

Raz you like to get on us coastal types for not being sufficiently sensitive to the realities of life in other parts of the country, but you should consider whether you are engaging in the same kind of stereotyping.

Minsky, I think you've gotten to be a little out of touch.  Most urban professionals don't get paid lawyer or IB MBA salaries, you've probably mingled too much with your colleagues.  If we define urban professionals as white collar workers with careers rather than jobs, many don't get paid much more than $100k in NYC, at least not until they get quite a few years of experience.

[crazy canuck]

If we define urban professionals as white collar workers with careers rather than jobs, many don't get paid much more than $100k in NYC, at least not until they get quite a few years of experience.

I think that is very unlikely.  That would not be true of Vancouver, and I doubt it is true of New York. Nurses, firefighters, a lot of public sector jobs get paid that as a starting wage.  If urban professionals are not getting paid more than that, they are doing something wrong, or they have decided to take a lower paying job because they are committed to the work they are doing.

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't actually think that diagnosis really works for Mamdani (or for that matter Sanders or AOC) but think it does for some other strands of the left. And I think I disagree with Raz on parts of it and how it's applied but it's not a very odd analysis.

The Mamdani phenomenon is really not that complicated.  He is a fresh face, and not totally corrupt, which gives him an automatic advantage over his two principal rivals.  You don't have to do a detailed demographic analysis to figure out why people are attracted to the new and honest candidate as opposed to the old corrupt ones. Most people favor honesty over dishonesty.

Educated urban professionals may vote for Mamdani just for that reason, but a lot of them will and did vote Cuomo, because like me, they think rent control is a terrible idea.  That's probably high the UWS and UES neighborhoods that actually have the highest concentration of urban professionals voted Cuomo.

The middle class people in income level below them OTOH are struggling so badly they are more willing to roll the dice on someone like Mamdani.  It may seem bizarre to Raz that a family earning 100K a year on say a firefighter salary and some part time work from a spouse would be struggling.  But in the NYC metro, that income for a family, after taxes come out and the rent is paid, doesn't leave very much left over each month.

[The Minsky Moment]

If we define urban professionals as white collar workers with careers rather than jobs, many don't get paid much more than $100k in NYC, at least not until they get quite a few years of experience.

But they can if they get that experience.  Experienced paralegals for example can easily break that limit.

In any case Raz is specifically about taking about "affluent elites". People with political and cultural clout that at least in his imagination have servants at their beck and call.  He's not talking about the entry level controller working for the MTA. At least I hope not.  My point is that those "affluent elites" are not the core of the Mamdani vote; if they were, he would have swept the UWS.  The controller OTOH is.

[Sheilbh]

The Mamdani phenomenon is really not that complicated.  He is a fresh face, and not totally corrupt, which gives him an automatic advantage over his two principal rivals.  You don't have to do a detailed demographic analysis to figure out why people are attracted to the new and honest candidate as opposed to the old corrupt ones. Most people favor honesty over dishonesty.

Educated urban professionals may vote for Mamdani just for that reason, but a lot of them will and did vote Cuomo, because like me, they think rent control is a terrible idea.  That's probably high the UWS and UES neighborhoods that actually have the highest concentration of urban professionals voted Cuomo.

The middle class people in income level below them OTOH are struggling so badly they are more willing to roll the dice on someone like Mamdani.  It may seem bizarre to Raz that a family earning 100K a year on say a firefighter salary and some part time work from a spouse would be struggling.  But in the NYC metro, that income for a family, after taxes come out and the rent is paid, doesn't leave very much left over each month.

Yes. I've no doubt that's a lot of it. Although I think him becoming the main "opposition" candidate instead of, say, Lander is interesting though - that to me doesn't feel like a given. I think a "clean hands" candidate would have emerged, I don't think it was inevitable it would be Mamdani. I think here is possibly were comms matter - I think Mamdani's campaign, the videos, the style, the social media - those technical bits of politics will be or should be looked at by anyone on the left (or, frankly, the right) because they're fantastic. And he started at a low base.

And I think that's the interesting point/paradox of "authenticity" is that I think there's something to it. I think it's really important and style matters a lot at this point. The medium is the message and how you communicate is an essential part of what you're communicating. But it's not clear to me quite how much of it is actually just ease with/being able to be a person in a new media age and if it's actually just short-hand for that. What we're really saying is no different than the politicians who couldn't make the leap from hall and rally to radio, radio to newsreel, newsreel to TV etc.

[Sheilbh]

The American world order certainly did fall apart.  But I am not willing to concede that was our world order.  From the Canadian perspective we spent that entire time trying to moderate American excesses.  We are still standing, along with (as you say) the Scandinavian countries and most of Europe.

Yeah this is where I fundamentally disagree. The "rules based liberal order" was built on American victory in the second world war and the Cold War, providing a security framework for its allies (and an offensive base for containing the Soviets). Part of that was an economic order legitimised on the basis of "rules" and "liberalism" but underpinned, always, by American power. It was never experienced as "rules-based" or "liberal" if you were a country outside of that security framework: South-East Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa did not experience (and still don't) a rules-based liberal order. And I think, latterly, it has not been felt as such by China either - I don't think they have been (or, perhaps, that it is even possible) to incorporate them into that world order at the level and with the depth their power (economic and military) justifies. No matter how far you rise you will not be able to take a seat at the top table because it's fundamentally in support of American interests which are (were) aligned with its allies.

I think there is something similar on the domestic front. While there was a need to fight and win a world war and a Cold War, and anti-Communism - there was space for more expansive social welfare and enhanced union rights as there was a need for social peace. Having triumphed in those global conflicts, there is no need to maintain social peace; you can go for the win now, red in tooth and claw.

Canada, Scandinavia and some of Europe is not a force capable of building or maintaining a world order. All of Europe is not capable of that - at this point.

In my view that order is dying, at best. What's coming is not yet clear. I saw an article earlier this week and I kind of agree that living in the "West" with a concept of the "West" right now is perhaps what it was like living in the twilight years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: "a grand, if admittedly imperfect, experiment quietly going mouldy." States and groups, like the EU, may continue to have similar goals, agendas and priorities as they did under the old system - but there is no hope in pursuing those through the formalities or institutions of that order. Filing suit in the WTO against Chinese or American trade practices is like relying on the institutions of the Holy Roman Empire to face Napoleon. Instead, I think for smaller states not aspiring to build their own order, the best approach will be about being nimble and opportunistic. I think the models here may be Turkey and the Gulf States.

I'm not sure if liberal democracy is over. I think its legitimating power is still embedded (almost) everywhere. The promises of equality and popular sovereignty remain compelling. I actually think there is a challenge within our democracies around making sure that we do not become so wedded to and defensive of the liberal forms and we may end up with formal democracies that are increasingly alienated in substance from popular will and unable to represent or enact popular sovereignty. In further exciting explorations of wildly anachronistic historical analogies that we don't end up like Venice with all the formal trappings of a system but increasingly none of its virtues - surrounded by states developing new forms of power and ways of bringing it to bear.

FWIW I can't help but think the shift from Fukuyama's point that there was no systemic challenger to liberal market democrc - and where the new order might end up being - is around that state capitalism point and the increasing fusion of corporate, political and state (and possibly personal) power in different constellations (e.g. China with the political power very much primary but not so much in Russia or Turkey). And I again return to my point that everyone should join a union and that perhaps the only way to fight that type of power is to really consolidate - and unshackle - the power of democratically elected and accountable state institutions

(I hadn't intended to but can't help but note almost all of those analogies kind of end up tying into the late 18th century - and underpinning that all was a wave of new modernisation and the industrial revolution. And, perhaps, under the surface of all this political froth similarly transformative forces are already underway?)

[Razgovory]

Sheilbh, what are you reading on this?

[crazy canuck]

I am not sure why the ability to create a world order is necessary for a liberal democracy to exist.  Quite the opposite actually.  One thing we can agree about-we fundamentally disagree on this point.

[Josquius]

Youtube randomly threw this at me yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-hj5uwclmk

A lot of it is typical righist "anti woke" cliches so to be taken with a pinch of salt.

It basically speaks of the Albion's Seed 4 folkways of America and how the problem of the Democrats is they've only got  1 of them, the former East Anglian puritan New-Englanders, who like the Dutch have stepped away from the bible as the be all and end all but keep this puritanical streak about minority rights....

The other pathways who sided with Trump are...
-The 'Cavaliers' and their indentured servants who settled the south.
-The Quakers from the Midlands who are the root of the midwest today.
-The Ulstermen and Bordermen (read: Geordies) who settled Appalachia.

As I say its firmly rightist. Its conclusions of lets throw the minorities under the bus are of course nonsense. But some of its logical reasoning does naturally point in quite a different direction to me.... So you've got Geordies and Quakers backing fascism and the non-fascist side is struggling to appeal to them?
The answer is clear - the Demcorats need to move left.
They need to offer genuine left wing policies to these struggling communities.

The area the Appalachians come from in mainland Britain at least is the socialist heartland. Socially conservative. But not dogmatically so. Very willing to make common cause with urban leftists whose concerns lie in matters that have nothing to do with our lives if in return we get our concerns around more practical immediate matters addressed.
The Quakers too. One of the better christian groups with a long history of actually following the bible and fighting (only not) for progressive causes. Again a group willing to make common cause with actual leftists.

Of course its all very tea leaf reading. A little bit of history has happened in the US separate to these original groups from their origins. But I do find it interesting this aligns with what seems the sensible approach anyway (and was taken as proof of the non-sensible approach). It was something to think about.

[garbon]

A little knowledge...

[mongers]

A little knowledge...

... isn't enough?

[Admiral Yi]

The Quakers don't exist any more.  They thought it ungodly to fuck.

[Sheilbh]

The Quakers don't exist any more.  They thought it ungodly to fuck.

You're thinking of the Shakers. The Quakers still very much a force*. Still very much a moral irritant to all in power.

*(Actually I think like many faiths their numbers are declining but still around and Friends Meeting Houses still out there.)

Edit: Looked it up, there is still one Shaker village in the US: Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine and there are still three remaining members.