6 ms·

How about addressing the widespread concerns that cause "populism" even if it means setting back your own ulterior agenda? Brexit and immigration is a good exa

• zoner 10y ago
  Exactly the same thinking as mine. And what the liberals are doing? Whining more racism and continuing the same agenda.
  • tdkl 10y ago
    They're also irresponsible and blame others (Russian hackers). Like children who grew up being sheltered, then came to college and saw protesting (blaming others) is the answer.
    • badlucklottery 10y ago
      That's obviously a big slice of caricature, don't you think? Why feed the polarization like that? What do you gain from it?
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • fisherjeff 10y ago
    So your concerns demand a fix while others' deserve this kind of dismissive treatment? I don't see how that's any better.
• de_Selby 10y ago
  I agree completely with your premise but I don't think you've identified the real issue with immigration and brexit - the real underlying issue is unemployment/underemployment, fallout from the financial crisis, near 0% interest rates etc all combining to leave the poor with next to nothing. Then they see immigrants arriving around the same time all this is happening and assign the blame to them.
  • jerrycruncher 10y ago
    I can't speak to your other points, but extremely low interest rates are not any kind of impairment to 'the poor,' as they generally do not have much in the way of savings, and benefit from 'cheaper' loans for things like cars or housing.
  • alva 10y ago
    I agree that there are many reasons behind Brexit aside from immigration. On this point however, this Labour policy to dramatically increase immigration started in 1997.
  • whenwillitstop 10y ago
    "the real underlying issue is unemployment/underemployment" Why is a country that as high unemployment allowing high levels of immigration? Being mad about that seems highly rational to me
    • beat 10y ago
      Why aren't citizens doing the jobs that immigrants do? That's a more rational question. Hiring immigrants isn't necessarily cheaper or easier. It's something employers do because they can't fill those jobs otherwise.
      • choko 10y ago
        "It's something employers do because they can't fill those jobs otherwise." What if they did something crazy, like offer higher wages to attract employees?
• midgetjones 10y ago
  But is migration the direct cause of other people losing out financially? UKIP know that a lot of people are racist and only too happy to have a finger to point at whatever scapegoat sounds believable to them.
  • alva 10y ago
    But what if local communities place more value on preserving their culture as it has been than their finances? Are their wishes just to be ignored?
    • AstralStorm 10y ago
      Then they should look closer to home after those who damage local culture. It is not immigrants, but big multinational business. Businesses do provide jobs of course, buying some of the locals.
    • midgetjones 10y ago
      What is preventing them from preserving their culture?
• pjc50 10y ago
  I refer people to my previous comments on the politics of immigration, where people pretty much admit that it's not about immigration status (which you can't see) but ethnicity (which you can). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13470571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13470571 There are real economic problems, and the press have been quite effective at blaming them on immigration when really they're more due to inequality. > Trump succeeds and does a good job Succeeds for whom? Different people want very different things, that's where politics comes from in the first place. What would "success" look like? How much global warming does it include? For some Americans, the executive order banning entry for a list of nationalities means that their spouses can never leave the country again and are at greatly increased risk of being deported. (There's a similar argument happening in the UK where "success" for some people means unemployment for others, or even being obliged to leave the country)
  • mattmanser 10y ago
    Having joined in that discussion where it became clear that you didn't even know the meaning of the word immigrant, you didn't listen to what we said and now you're projecting your own prejudices on other people. And falling back on calling everyone a racist again. Which is precisely what this article says doesn't work.
    • 1_2__3 10y ago
      Yeah, his whole argument can be boiled down to, "No but seriously they're racist you should ignore them."
      • mattmanser 10y ago
        people pretty much admit that it's not about immigration status ... but ethnicity That's a nice way of saying "everyone admitted they're racists". No-one in that thread did. The most ridiculous thing about all this is that I actually come from a white immigrant community (dutch around a port town), but my generation acculturised with the UK. It really sticks in your craw when I'm generally a left-leaning liberalist but some tit like pjc50 starts accusing you of being a racist because I've been in supermarkets obviously filled with white immigrants as they're all speaking polish. It really has helped me realise how devoid of empathy people who start accusing everyone of racism for merely discussing immigration are. It's incredibly upsetting to be called a racist merely for asking why mass migration to the UK has been allowed. It's a perfectly reasonable question. Also he really doesn't understand the meaning of the word immigrant, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13471112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13471112
• monkmartinez 10y ago
  The problem in the US is that there is no clear majority. Let's be clear, there are more than 2 parties, but the ultimate choice is completely binary: REP||DEM. The one who can dance in the media the best, wins. It is all a load of bullshit.
• rwmj 10y ago
  Gordon Brown (PM after Blair) introduced the Migrant Impact Fund precisely to spread the benefits of migration to those who would normally lose out. The Tory/Lib Dem coalition cancelled the project 4 months after they got into power (in August 2010 to be precise). Then austerity was piled on top, and now we've arrived at where we are today.
  • alva 10y ago
    But if the primary concern of the electorate are cultural changes this is an irrelevant gesture. Now some might say it is racist or xenophobic to want to maintain the culture of your local community. I don't believe it is. It is a good example of how the constituents wishes (preserve culture of local community ) is at complete odds with the governments wishes. They can keep on throwing money at them, but it will never address this issue that many people find very important.
    • ASinclair 10y ago
      > Now some might say it is racist or xenophobic to want to maintain the culture of your local community. I don't believe it is. My question: is it a National Government's job to maintain the culture of local communities? I would hope not.
      • ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
        That makes no sense. If immigration is responsible for changing culture, how could it not be the national government's job? There's more than a few countries that have laws stating that it's essentially treason to modify the demographics of the nation. Seems to have worked quite well for Japan at the national level.
• bryanlarsen 10y ago
  Immigration is a great example to pick of technocrat vs populist. Left technocrats see immigration as a human rights issue. Freedom of movement is a well-recognized fundamental human right; your ability to move from Gloucester to London is enshrined in Britain's unwritten constitution. Left technocrats do not see the movement from Paris to London to be any different than the movement from Gloucester to London. Right technocrats see immigration as a free market issue. One cannot have a truly free market in goods and services unless service providers can freely travel. So compromising on immigration means compromising on principles. Sometimes it's expedient to do so, but I vote for my representatives based on their principles and how closely they appear to adhere to them.
  • rayiner 10y ago
    It's also a human rights issue from the populist side. Self determination--the right of groups of people to choose the structure of their society--is also a human right. Society is a very intimate thing. It's a group of people consenting to share each others' burdens as well as rewards; it's a group of people giving up individual autonomy and consenting to be governed by the will of the group. Immigration without consent is a deep violation of the group's integrity and autonomy. The real issue is individualism versus collectivism. Populists think that groups' freedom of association trumps individuals' freedom of movement, while individualists think the opposite.
    • shuntress 10y ago
      So that makes it OK when we, as a group, decide that brown people don't deserve to live happy healthy lives because they are taking our jobs.
      • rayiner 10y ago
        It's not a judgment on what people deserve, but on what you are willing to give up to help them. School children in Africa don't deserve to go hungry, but tons of people on HN are still going to buy a shiny new MacBook Pro this year instead of using that money to feed dozens of kids in the developing world for a year.[1] The fact that restricting immigration is a group choice while not donating money is an individual choice changes nothing about the morality. Either way, you're choosing to increase your own standard of living instead of helping someone who is already much worse off than yourself. The cynic in me thinks the real difference is who pays. Educated people living on the coasts bear the same costs as less educated people in border areas when it comes to food donations, but bear a small fraction of the costs when it comes to increased immigration. That makes it easier for them to support the latter in comparison to committing to the former. [1] http://www.uniteforsight.org/hunger/module3 http://www.uniteforsight.org/hunger/module3.
• beat 10y ago
  Trump won due to resentment in Rust Belt states, where manufacturing jobs have declined. But immigration isn't the cause of those job losses. Automation has cost far more jobs. A connection is seen between outsourcing and free trade deals, and that's a much better target. Now, it's arguable that free trade deals are economically beneficial, but they look bad. Trump gets that, and Democrats fell down in that regard. But the anti-immigration scapegoating? That's not causality, that's scapegoating. Immigration is not the cause of the woes of the Rust Belt, but it gives them something to blame, and a populist leader can exploit that.
• lemmsjid 10y ago
  The embedded powers will be very happy if Trump succeeds. Fewer regulations will mean freer movement of capital, which has historically been a great boon for the wealthy and powerful. If he manages to double down on coal production, the ensuing government subsidies will benefit those with the resources to capitalize on the undermining of the market (after all, any time you introduce predictability into the market, you are handing money to people who have the influence and resources to exploit it). If he succeeds in building the wall, then he will have successfully shifted blame for existing economic woes onto Mexican migrants, without evidence, which will mean increased popular mandate for governmental power grabs. If he succeeds in undermining climate change, he will have two benefits: first, he will have vanquished scientific and evidence-based opposition in general, and second, he will have undermined barriers between business and exploitation of known public health undermining scenarios. If he succeeds in cowing the media, he will have removed one of the few non-governmental checks and balances on transparency of government. Finally, if he succeeds in general, it will be at the expense of the already tenuous necessity for politicians to tie their agendas to evidence/science-based approaches to policy creation. I say all of this not as an inveterate liberal, but as someone who is continually bewildered by the fact that Trump can make things up, without evidence, and have sufficient support to transform them into public policy. Actually I should cop to the fact that I'm not that bewildered--history is of course littered with leaders who have done the same, and whether or not they actually benefit the people who brought them to power is really an analyst's roulette game.
  • ManFromUranus 10y ago
    The embedded powers will be happy if Trump succeeds? The same "embedded powers" who tried to block him from even running on the GOP ticket? Whom he then had to threaten to run independent to let him into the primaries? The same embedded powers who've been attacking him from both sides of the media (left and right) since he announced he would run? I have no idea how you people come to these conclusions. I mean, if I watched more mainstream media and believed everything I was told, I suppose I can see how you would come to these sorts of conclusions. I can assure you they are wrong. I mean the CIA is against Trump and is trying to de-legitimize his election after the fact. Are those the "embedded powers" who will be happy if he succeeds? Who are you even talking about? The only ones on Trumps side are probably half the GOP, and the people, that's it, everybody else is against him.