Wait until this soft gentle wave of climate activism fails...
We will see at least one war over climate change this century.
Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
101–110 of 309 posts
Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
#102If you were born in an advanced economy in 2000 you've lived through at least two recessions, weak growth, rising inequality and asset prices, and high cost of schooling. Yes, capitalism isn't really looking great right now.
Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. And you think that would improve under socialism or communism?
Lambasting abstract economic theories is meaningless. The U.S. economy already implements some socialized policies and moving further in that direction for some aspects of our economy isn't necessarily bad. For example, a single-payer healthcare system is obviously superior to our current one, even if it is "socialized", but having socialized healthcare doesn't mean the U.S. is "socialist" any more than the existence…
[deleted]
Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most young people are paradoxically for unfettered immigration I'm not sure that is true.
The woke young programmers of the bay (and elsewhere) consider any form of border control racist. I've seen this queried for exceptions, eg for convicted rapists and the rabid blue hairs torn that suggestion apart as a 'racist straw man'.
> . I've seen this queried for exceptions, eg for convicted rapists and the rabid blue hairs torn that suggestion apart as a 'racist straw man'.
Well if that worked at all in modern society people might be more sympathetic to it. However, we've got almost no evidence that this is how border control works at all. We've got a lot of buffoonery about how other countries full of feral savages come to invade our pure and innocent land, conveniently not talking about our arms shipments and political manipulations in those countries.
Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
#105Can capitalism be fixed with a wealth tax? Like tax 2% of wealth greater than some arbitrary amount - say 1 mill USD - and feed that back into social services?
Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
#106>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…
I come from a similar place and feel the same, and would never ever want those times back. We have seen too much repression, horror and misery that we have developed our own allergy against anything which hints in that direction.
But on the other hand I can understand the appeal of the ideas which promise that there will be no inequality, everyone gets access to free education, healthcare etc. That all sounds nice, but what is suspicious that we have not seen a working implementation yet. Which makes me think underlying model has some issues.
Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
How are you earning capital gains with that million, specifically?
Mostly by buying stocks and it works: the SP500 doubled in the past 10 years, and I did far better than that. You can consider my investment as contributions, because I most certainly bought stocks from other rich persons and the stock markets is growing fast mostly thanks to the bank central policies (note that my free money never directly helped the company of which I bought stocks). I purchased an apartment too, and that did not cost me a dime because my family offers free mortgages and the government does not tax any of that! Plus, real estate prices keeps growing where I live thanks to the continued gentrification of big cities. When will that stop?
Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
#108In 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…
>> We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. Pride? Character? Respect from colleagues?
pride, character, and respect from colleagues are things that don't pay the bills, even though they're nice to have.
i know this is sounds like a snarky and low-effort response, but it is not intentional. it's just the way things are, and there isn't really a diplomatic way of saying it.
Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's a relationship like this: All wealthy countries are capitalist. Some capitalist countries are wealthy.
I am not sure that's accurate. UAE and Saudi are monarchies.
Singapore is very socialist, if you look at their housing policy, it's entirely run by the state. They even allocate apartment to ensure that different ethnic groups mix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cjPgNBNeLU
Also, I would not consider China poor today, and certainly even less so in the future.
Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> pretty textbook socialism
Yes, like that socialist disaster that is Finland.
(Besides, Brazil does not have state ownership of its entire oil industry.)