Live data from Hacker News

Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

cnn.com

11–20 of 43 posts

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#11
We have socialism for the rich, so why not for the poor?

Edit: wanted to make this a little less low-effort so here's how I see us having socialism for the rich:

Taxpayer-funded research being transferred directly to private companies, often with little to no compensation back to the government or taxpayer, and with all profits from this R&D being privatized. The entire Internet is an example of this. SpaceX getting decades of NASA research almost for free (plus contracts) is an example. Pharma companies privatizing taxpayer-funded university research. Endless examples. This one is a huge transfer of wealth, usually to people who don't need it. The old system (until the 1980s) was that those people pay it back through taxes, but they've successfully removed that part, so now we pay for the R&D and they keep the profits.

The whole "too big to fail" phenomenon and bailouts. 2008 really showed this clearly, and it hasn't gone away. Meanwhile ordinary people are not too big to fail and will not be bailed out.

Open regulatory capture, now institutionalized through a system that looks very pay to play.

Direct government subsidies to companies that absolutely do not need it, such as state and local government offering huge "incentives" to get data centers that don't generate much local employment. These are basically handouts to the already rich.

Tax cuts on things like real estate and capital gains and increases in consumption taxes like sales taxes and tariffs. All consumption taxes are regressive, meaning the poor pay a higher percentage of their income to them (because a higher percentage is consumption) than the rich. Tax cuts on property taxes and investments benefit the wealthy more than the poor.

... and so on.

At this point simply flattening the system and making it neither progressive nor regressive would be a net move in the progressive direction. The current system is regressive. It's socialism for the wealthy paid for by everyone with privatized gains and socialized losses.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#12
post #5

This headline indicates we should feel surprise that Republicans are losing faith in capitalism. That's a little odd, given the abrupt reversals of policy preferences we've all seen since 2017. "Law and order", free trade, free markets, low tariffs, personal responsibility, judicial restraint, checks and balances, the importance of character, all at least tacitly abandoned.

People seem stuck in thinking that the Republican party is still conservative. It's not. It's become extremist and radical -- the opposite of conservative.

They still call themselves "conservative". The giant bulk of the people who used to call themselves "conservative" still do so, and are MAGA. An outside observer is forced to note that almost all the doctrines have changed.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#13
post #5

This headline indicates we should feel surprise that Republicans are losing faith in capitalism. That's a little odd, given the abrupt reversals of policy preferences we've all seen since 2017. "Law and order", free trade, free markets, low tariffs, personal responsibility, judicial restraint, checks and balances, the importance of character, all at least tacitly abandoned.

People seem stuck in thinking that the Republican party is still conservative. It's not. It's become extremist and radical -- the opposite of conservative.

Why should we be surprised? The “Conservatives” never actually conserved a thing.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#14
post #5

This headline indicates we should feel surprise that Republicans are losing faith in capitalism. That's a little odd, given the abrupt reversals of policy preferences we've all seen since 2017. "Law and order", free trade, free markets, low tariffs, personal responsibility, judicial restraint, checks and balances, the importance of character, all at least tacitly abandoned.

People seem stuck in thinking that the Republican party is still conservative. It's not. It's become extremist and radical -- the opposite of conservative.

I think MAGA represents mask off conservatism. Largely they support the same things. They have the same "enemies" and targets. I think for too long Americans have bought into the myth that conservatism is just about a slow and measured rate of change. That's what conservatives want you to believe because they know they can't say the real things out loud. So they speak in euphemisms. Trump let's them dispense with the euphemisms and just say what's really in their heart out loud. If MAGA isn't conservative, then conservatives simply do not exist in enough numbers in the US to be relevant. I find that conservatives are showing you who they have always been to be a far better explanation than MAGA isn't conservative.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#15
i lost faith in CNN way before.

Why is politics/ communism being pushed on hacker news?

You have to know, government is incredibly inefficient, so indifferent it can barely do its basic work. When you put it in charge of the details of the economy, everything breaks down, basics disappear, people starve.

And then they start arresting people complaining about it, and they build walls so you can't escape.

It has all the benefits of being in prison.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#16
post #7

Nothing quite dampens your belief in hard work paying off when you see an openly corrupt government self-dealing billions of dollars.

[flagged]

You don't have to whataboutism this, both "sides" can have bad actors it can be deeper than the idiotic team sport dichotomy of US politics. There is a reason leftists/DSA are gaining so much ground. People realize that the dems in power are really just "republican-light" and nothing meaningful is going to change under them.

Are you also in favour of dropping medicaid and other popular programs? The US has popular socialist programs already but everyone just shuts their eyes and closes their ears and pretends that is somehow not a socialist program and is not popular, even among the right. How many services does the govt have to provide before it is deemed too "socialist"?

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#17

Nothing quite dampens your belief in hard work paying off when you see an openly corrupt government self-dealing billions of dollars.

All governments are corrupt even poster children like here in NZ, its all about degrees of corruption. however one system of politics allows you to call this out and potentially vote out the perpetrators, the other will suppress you, lock you up and, once you've fallen down that rabbit hole, never vote again.

Choose your poison.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#18
I think I'm losing my faith in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the general rule of law more than I'm losing faith in capitalism.

Capitalism is working as designed, all the money flows up.

The rule of law is not working as designed. The rich have clearly different rules than everyone else.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#19
post #10

People losing track of history. No system will be perfectly for everyone, ever. One system has helped the most people ever in history. Fix what's broken, don't switch to something already proven worse. I never even experienced the shitty systems, but sometimes I feel some sort of immersion or shock therapy is needed to remind people. We have evidence. People have suffered and died to generate that evidence.

>some sort of immersion or shock therapy is needed

A quarter of the country lives on less than $34k a year. I bet that would shock some people into changing their definition of what is 'shitty'.

Re: Americans – including many Republicans – are losing faith in capitalism

#20

I think I'm losing my faith in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the general rule of law more than I'm losing faith in capitalism. Capitalism is working as designed, all the money flows up. The rule of law is not working as designed. The rich have clearly different rules than everyone else.

And when it doesn't work, we bail them out and socialize the losses because its not actually a pure free market system.
Post reply on HN