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If the summary of the book is, as Wikipedia puts it, that " the American Democratic Party has changed to support elitism in the form of a professional class ins

If the summary of the book is, as Wikipedia puts it, that " the American Democratic Party has changed to support elitism in the form of a professional class instead of the working class," then I don't disagree. And if the suggestion is that all administrations since Clinton are responsible for that, I don't disagree with that either - in fact, I'd go further back, and I would make it bipartisan. But we are making an in-group comparison here: the current administrations versus previous ones on the topics at hand. To imply complete equivalence between the two on the grounds that both suffer from some of the same systemic problems is moving the goalposts. Were previous administrations also corporatist and deeply flawed? Yes. Does that mean that the Obama administration didn't also provide demonstrably better outcomes than the Trump administration on a range of issues? No. Dismissing the clear policy differences between the two actually does a disservice to the cause of making government better, because it ignores the positive things that did happen that we want to encourage and further. For instance, if you support a single-payer healthcare system, you can say both "the ACA has made healthcare in the US better than before, and closer to what I want," and "the ACA doesn't get me all the way to what I want." But it would be dishonest to suggest that the ACA didn't bring us much closer to healthcare-for-all than we were before it passed. Incremental change is still change. (And if you have the opposite stance on healthcare, the same logic applies in reverse.)

indubitable 9y ago
Incremental change is often counter productive. Major change requires major problems because people are inertial. Picture things as a number line. 0 is something 100% beneficial to society at expense of special interests. 100 is something that is 100% beneficial to special interests at expense of society. Major changes, such as single payer healthcare, require major action and major support. It's highly controversial and would require a massive rethinking of an enormous amount of our society - and all at substantial risk to many people. To get this sort of action you need people pretty far along that number line - perhaps at 85 - to drag people out of their naturally inertial state. And indeed it may have been the case that before the ACA people were starting to reach into the 90s. What has the ACA done? It's certainly a very flawed system and that's seen, arguably predictably, skyrocketing premiums (an average 25% increase in premiums in 2017 alone [1] ) and other more systemic issues such as rapidly decreasing competition. But it's better than what we had before, even if just incrementally. But now instead of being in the 90s, our numberline on the 'fairness' of healthcare is now somewhere in the high 70s. Another way of looking at this is that the odds of something like single payer entering the political conversation, which was a very real possibility before, are now effectively zero. And this has been a recurring theme throughout many of Obama's actions. Of course this all begs an obvious question. Was he behaving this way intentionally to maximize the value of special interests, or was he just a well intentioned person trying to make progress in a difficult system? Given one of the first things he did after leaving office was to go give a private talk to a wall street firm on healthcare, for a $400k "speaking fee" - well... [1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-obamacare-premiums-are-rising-and-what-you-can-do/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-obamacare-premiums-are-risi...
folknor 9y ago
I'm not trying to imply complete equivalence between the two. I'm trying to point out that just because you think Trump "is an idiot" or whatever, that doesn't mean his administration is performing objectively worse than its predecessors. The top commenter here says "I don’t think this administration has much interest in what “we the people” really want, though." And if he believes that previous administrations like Clinton/Bush/Obama did, that's demonstrably not true. > ..., because it ignores the positive things that did happen that we want to encourage and further. That's not what it's about, it's about highlighting the flaws of the previous administrations, because all I see is unequivocal love for both Clinton and Obama. Not because that's somehow immediately helpful to the political climate, but because it might be helpful to someone personally to understand at least some of the reasons why their country has gone to shit, and it might stop them rallying to false idols. And it also might humble them towards the other half of their country when they realise their church is just as filthy.

indubitable 9y ago

Incremental change is often counter productive. Major change requires major problems because people are inertial. Picture things as a number line. 0 is something 100% beneficial to society at expense of special interests. 100 is something that is 100% beneficial to special interests at expense of society. Major changes, such as single payer healthcare, require major action and major support. It's highly controversial and would require a massive rethinking of an enormous amount of our society - and all at substantial risk to many people. To get this sort of action you need people pretty far along that number line - perhaps at 85 - to drag people out of their naturally inertial state. And indeed it may have been the case that before the ACA people were starting to reach into the 90s. What has the ACA done? It's certainly a very flawed system and that's seen, arguably predictably, skyrocketing premiums (an average 25% increase in premiums in 2017 alone [1] ) and other more systemic issues such as rapidly decreasing competition. But it's better than what we had before, even if just incrementally. But now instead of being in the 90s, our numberline on the 'fairness' of healthcare is now somewhere in the high 70s. Another way of looking at this is that the odds of something like single payer entering the political conversation, which was a very real possibility before, are now effectively zero. And this has been a recurring theme throughout many of Obama's actions. Of course this all begs an obvious question. Was he behaving this way intentionally to maximize the value of special interests, or was he just a well intentioned person trying to make progress in a difficult system? Given one of the first things he did after leaving office was to go give a private talk to a wall street firm on healthcare, for a $400k "speaking fee" - well... [1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-obamacare-premiums-are-rising-and-what-you-can-do/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-obamacare-premiums-are-risi...

folknor 9y ago

I'm not trying to imply complete equivalence between the two. I'm trying to point out that just because you think Trump "is an idiot" or whatever, that doesn't mean his administration is performing objectively worse than its predecessors. The top commenter here says "I don’t think this administration has much interest in what “we the people” really want, though." And if he believes that previous administrations like Clinton/Bush/Obama did, that's demonstrably not true. > ..., because it ignores the positive things that did happen that we want to encourage and further. That's not what it's about, it's about highlighting the flaws of the previous administrations, because all I see is unequivocal love for both Clinton and Obama. Not because that's somehow immediately helpful to the political climate, but because it might be helpful to someone personally to understand at least some of the reasons why their country has gone to shit, and it might stop them rallying to false idols. And it also might humble them towards the other half of their country when they realise their church is just as filthy.