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Unnecessariat

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Re: Unnecessariat

#51

Post by zardo »

Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

Get behind the $15 minimum wage. Then the 8 hour day and 40 hour week.

Those policies don't seem well targeted to help the permanently unemployed.

Re: Unnecessariat

#52

Post by smacktoward »

dragonwriter wrote: post #39
smacktoward wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why didn't they all vote for Obamacare and for the public option, subsidized by higher taxes? Because there was nobody to vote for who offered that. McCain's proposal was to deny that the problem existed. Obama's proposal was Obamacare without an individual mandate. Clinton's proposal was Obamacare with an individual mandate. Those were the only entrees on the proverbial menu. No candidate ran on a public option,…

> Obama's proposal was Obamacare without an individual mandate. Clinton's proposal was Obamacare with an individual mandate. Those were the only entrees on the proverbial menu. No candidate ran on a public option Actually, all of Obama, Clinton, and Edwards ran on a public option. They differed on other points (as you note, during the primary Obama opposed and Clinton supported an individual mandate, and there were v…

They sometimes mentioned a public option, but it was never central to either Obama's or Hillary's pitch.

See here for an evaluation of Obama on the issue: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/dec/... It was included in his platform, but as an "also, too" kind of thing. And if you took your evaluation of his position from what he said on the stump, you'd never have known it was in his platform at all.

(I'm omitting Edwards from this discussion because he flamed out so early.)

Re: Unnecessariat

#53

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

clock_tower wrote: post #47
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That largely resembles the contemporary European social contract, where there are elites and commoners and in exchange for the elites not having their boat rocked too hard the commoners are guaranteed health care and general welfare, but not necessarily prosperity.

I honestly hadn't thought about Europe that way, but I always did know that I liked the cut of their jib. Hearing this is both heartening and depressing: heartening because a neo-feudal system already exists; depressing because it's precisely the neo-feudal part of the world that has a neo-fascism problem...

India and China aren't too far behind. The former enables religious extremism and the latter hammers public opinion into a blind acceptance of the solitary ruling party.

Here's what should concern you more: the 20th century was the age of strong states, from the active citizenry of the imperial United States, to the Communist dominance of society in the equally imperial Soviet Union.

The 21st century is the age of the corporation. This forum salivates at a man whose goal in life is to retire on Mars, presumably in a society of his own creation and ownership. Everything in this age is available at a price, even control of society.

Re: Unnecessariat

#54

Post by Animats »

zardo wrote: post #51
Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

Get behind the $15 minimum wage. Then the 8 hour day and 40 hour week. Those policies don't seem well targeted to help the permanently unemployed.

They're not. But they'll get a lot of working people off food stamps and Medicaid, freeing up welfare resources for people who aren't working.

Re: Unnecessariat

#55

Post by mac01021 »

msandford wrote: post #8
aston wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in this particular case, there was no popular vote for any part of Obamacare. But there were a very large number of congressmen elected before the bill passed, during its negotiation and even now well after it's been cemented as law by the Supreme Court who had a major policy platform of reforming or completely rolling back the ACA.

Which is precisely the point. You don't get to TELL your elected officials how to vote. You just get to try and elect people who will HOPEFULLY do what's in your best interests. There are no guarantees in the system, anywhere. That makes the question you asked rather disingenuous.

> You just get to try and elect people who will HOPEFULLY do what's in your best interests.

You get to do a bit more than that, though few ever do.

Making full use of representative democracy means continuously contacting your representative, not leaving them alone until you're convinced they'll act in your interests, and not leaving your friends/family/community alone until you've got as many other people as you can badgering your representative just as much. It's very time consuming and won't work at all if there aren't enough people with the same problem but, in the case of the author of this article, the relevant problem is quite widespread.

Re: Unnecessariat

#56

Post by labster »

Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

You seem to have missed the point of the article. The $15 minimum wage will most likely help the precariat. This is a good thing. But it will do little if anything to help the unnecessariat.

> ... no matter how tenuous, the precariat had jobs. The new dying Americans, the ones killing themselves on purpose or with drugs, don’t. Don’t, won’t, and know it.

Overtime and wage increases are not going to help people who don't have jobs, and can't be trained for high paying jobs. UBI might help them, but might have some other unbeneficial social effects. And maybe if we invent Soma we could give people a safe way to escape a crushing reality.

But the gist here is that for a certain underclass, things are not improving, and no solutions are being offered. No one even cares that these people are dying, no community is organized around helping them. Nothing. It's bad enough to make one want to take heroin.

So vote Trump! If you can't save the world, better to watch it burn. Fire walk with me.

Re: Unnecessariat

#57

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Animats wrote: post #54
zardo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get behind the $15 minimum wage. Then the 8 hour day and 40 hour week. Those policies don't seem well targeted to help the permanently unemployed.

They're not. But they'll get a lot of working people off food stamps and Medicaid, freeing up welfare resources for people who aren't working.

It will also take more people out of the category of "working people".

Re: Unnecessariat

#58

Post by tunesmith »

Animats wrote: post #15

From the article: "We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that. " That's it right there. We just don't need that many people to do all the stuff. Some of that is imports, but not all, or even most, of it. Get behind the $15 minimum wage. The…

This is why his Trump/Sanders/Clinton passage lost me. OP seems pretty smart and well-informed, but also seems to believe some pretty simplistic and fatalistic narratives about what democrats do and don't care about.

Re: Unnecessariat

#59

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

wildmusings wrote: post #46
clock_tower wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism (EDIT: it looks like I said "feudalism" and meant "the current economic model of Europe"...), with elites -- who are more or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the common people and towards the collective defense of the realm. Of course, there'll always be room for…

> Indeed. The world needs to return to feudalism, with elites -- who are more or less permanent and hereditary even in capitalism -- having, and believing and accepting that they do have, clearly-defined obligations towards the common people and towards the collective defense of the realm. This post is a good reminder that capitalists are the radical liberal utopians of an earlier age, and what the realistic alternat…

Then again, the prevailing opinion of the 19th century was that "inalienable rights" are so last century and the only true rights that exist are those that can be won from a free market.

Re: Unnecessariat

#60

Post by jbooth »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #41
jraines wrote: post #24

I'm reminded of Jimmy Carter's "Malaise" speech: The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the fut…

You were right until your last sentence. Reagan made the nation feel that its civic and moral fabric was strong. Nevermind that his policies undermined civil society and his religious backing was hypocritical of anything close to Christ's teachings on compassion, it made people feel strong and so it won him the election.

Trump's got the same thing with the specific brand of disempowered people that the article's talking about.
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