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Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

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Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't comment on US, but Germany and some other EU countries have fertility rate below 1.5. Without immigration the system will collapse as pensioners will outnumber working population. EDIT: this is an observation, I am not advocating 'substitution'

Yes, lets bring in loads of uneducated, poor immigrants instead of addressing the issues causing fertility rates below the replacement level. Why let our children have families when we can import them for cheaper?

Because educating immigrants is cheaper? If you support immigrants, surprisingly, they tend to embrace the existentially important parts of your culture and integrate smoothly.

But my guess is that you take issue more with their skin color.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#52
post #22

>After the 2008 recession, President Obama and the Democrats effectively saved capitalism from itself; a more radical leadership would fight to replace it with a better system. This time around there may be far more pressure from below to do just that, especially with a more organized left and more class conscious young people. As a former soviet occupied country citizen, I am amazed that westerners would want to ove…

What you mean by "west"? Latin America (where I live), all the Africa and some poor european countries are "west" and those are not very good examples of prosperity. Even in "western" rich countries there is a lot of growing unequality. The capitalism is falling by itself.

> Latin America (where I live) is "west" and those are not very good examples of prosperity.

Chile is a good example of a "western" latin american country. Brazil/Argentina are bad examples. Brazil for instance, has state-ownership of its entire oil industry - pretty textbook socialism.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#53
post #2

Imagine if the current protests against inequality (and thereabouts) going on all around the world would be reported, scrutinized, and debated as much as when any of the established "enemies" have civil unrest. How quickly would things change?

Imagine if instead of people protesting against income inequality, they protested against value contribution inequality...

What do you say to people who are protesting against income inequality because they benefit from it and know how unfair the whole thing is?

Say I received a million $ from my father (that's income inequality, isn't it?) and now I'm saving all my work income because I can live on my capital gains from "gifts" and watch all my friends work harder and harder to try and earn few extra cents while I'm getting richer doing very little.

My dad did "things", I'm doing "things", and I'm getting paid for it! How would you evaluate my "value contributions" anyway? . My income is growing, I can wait.

PS: for some reasons, my taxes in % of my income keeps decreasing because where I live, capital is less taxed than work. And the politicians who chose that explains they're lowing taxes because other countries are doing the same. So all countries are help the rich because rich are being helped elsewhere. How cool is that?

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#54
post #14

[flagged]

Why is immigration tied to lower wages? Searching for it yields rather the opposite.

Racism is not bound by facts - see our current administration.

We're debating "replacement rates" and immigration because it turns out only people who are currently in power benefit from a party that maintains the status quo. This leads to that party gripping the status quo reigns ever tighter, and in turn to most non-majority people voting against them. Well, turns out a lot of the minority are immigrants, so the status quo faction now yammers about "replacement rates" and wants to keep immigrants out - because they're aware they can't hold onto power under a democratic system that allows immigration.

And so, racism and fascism takes hold, and facts are jettisoned for the benefit of holding on to power.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#55
I can't understand what people actually have against capitalism. Most of the times when I hear about the problems of my generation much of it comes down to personal choice. You don't have to go to an expensive college, you don't have to live in the "it" part of town, and you don't have to use your credit card. I've heard so many people complain about the injustices of the world, but at the same time they pay twice as much for rent as me and have 1/3 the income. I have trouble feeling sympathy when you could just make better choices and improve your life without asking the government to come in and take care of you.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#56

[flagged]

Most young people are paradoxically for unfettered immigration I'm not sure that is true.

They're in favor of 1) path to citizenship for undocumented people living in America and 2) greatly increasing legal immigration caps.

They're in favor of greatly increasing immigration

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#57
post #35

>After the 2008 recession, President Obama and the Democrats effectively saved capitalism from itself; a more radical leadership would fight to replace it with a better system. This time around there may be far more pressure from below to do just that, especially with a more organized left and more class conscious young people. As a former soviet occupied country citizen, I am amazed that westerners would want to ove…

My kingdom for a single thread criticizing Capitalism without a response like this. People looking for social justice do not want Stalinism. Why would they?

You don’t want Stalinism, but you do want to limit the speech of people who disagree with what you want? Or you just wish and fantasize for it?

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#58

In the US, it's less active protest and more things like slacking off heavily at work because it's a treadmill we can't win. We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. We as a nation have basically told people "no, you can't have a comfortable life or save for retirement because your parents' generation still needs to get 10% annual growth to make their retirement mat…

Occupy Wallstreet did happen but it was torpedoed by identity politics, the establishment only permits fervent discussion about gender and skin color.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#59

>After the 2008 recession, President Obama and the Democrats effectively saved capitalism from itself; a more radical leadership would fight to replace it with a better system. This time around there may be far more pressure from below to do just that, especially with a more organized left and more class conscious young people. As a former soviet occupied country citizen, I am amazed that westerners would want to ove…

It is a complex topic and my own views are still being defined, but I think it is safe to say that for most the issue isnt capitalism, it is unchecked capitalism. The idea that we work for the system instead of the system working for us.

My grandparents saw our country mobilize for war and create liberty ships. The country was in the space race - I've seen an article (Popular Mechanics) from 1950 that thought we would not yet have landed people on the moon by 2000, but despite that reasonable expectation, they did it. They developed national healthcare for the elderly and the poor, the built the foundation of modern retirement. They crisscrossed America with interstate highways.

But me? I've seen every notable problem rejected without an attempt at solutions because "how will we pay for it?" I've seen seen infrastructure systems left to rot and crumble because of the national debt, yet somehow each time a tax cut comes up for the rich they sell the idea that THIS time it will improve things for the non-rich. I've seen education budgets gutted, healthcare systems dropped and ignored, and I've seen science regarding the global climate scoffed at because their "gut" doesnt agree. (The location of their gut seems to coincide with the location of their wallet)

I've seen our representational democracy have clear signs of distress, from gerrymandering to foreign influence, for DECADES, not just recent headlines.

I've seen wages be near-flat for almost the entire lives of people now old enough to vote or fight in wars, but that wage issue doesnt seem to apply to those with enough money to start with.

But addressing any of these issues might threaten those with money, and our worship of capitalism has lead us to conclude they should be obeyed.

Capitalism is very effective, but we've stopped using it because it is effective, and are instead being used by it. We've gone from a system that allows the worthy to find financial success to assuming that financial success means you are worthy (as lack of financial success means you are not worthy).

Capitalism isnt the problem, but our relationship with it IS.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#60
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“that westerners would want to overthrow capitalism.” Almost nobody wants to overthrow capitalism. People want to make adjustments to the current form of it to address concerns. That’s very legitimate and necessary in a functioning democracy. The people who scream “socialism “ all the time just want to move the discussion to extremes

> Almost nobody wants to overthrow capitalism. People want to make adjustments to the current form of it to address concerns. You are right, and that is exactly the problem, since it is something history proved impossible to be reformed. EDIT: reforming capitalism is a long term desire from part of the humankind. It is not a new idea and has yield very long discussions [1]. So, the big idea today is indeed how to ove…

We abandoned Bretton Woods and triggered the hugely inflationary seventies - the 73 oil crisis helped a lot here too.

We've had, and still have, the Nordic model.

Capitalism is dramatically different today than it was in the 1960s in most countries. We've had the monetarism/neoliberal experiment for 40 years.

We've had globalisation to completely disconnect capitalism (and capital) from government, country and employee - just join the global race to the bottom.

We have had a huge number of reforms to capitalism. Trouble is for the last 40 years all reforms have been in one direction: In favour of the capitalist.

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