4 ms·

So, what's the solution to prevent such escalations? As per the discussion, there are at least some hints that some countries are heading in that direction agai

So, what's the solution to prevent such escalations? As per the discussion, there are at least some hints that some countries are heading in that direction again.

allthenews 9y ago
Well, I genuinely wonder, are people drawn to nationalism because of austerity, or are there common causes to both austerity and nationalism? Admittedly, I did not read past the abstract, but the paper seems already to fail to differentiate between causation and correlation.
- thisisit 9y ago
  I just scanned through the paper and here's a quote: With dashed hopes and a loss of faith in the Weimar Republic, fury and despair were channelled into the ranks of populists and demagogues, with the Nazi party campaigning against austerity and offering promises for a new era of prosperity. So, it's not nationalism rather people getting angry against the government which failed them. Any party can then shape the agenda and turn it towards nationalism or a particular community while promising prosperity.
  - Gibbon1 9y ago
    It's not just failure but perceived abandonment. Consider old school New deal socialists or paleoconservatives. If you told those guys that honest married black men were out of work and couldn't support their families, they would be concerned. Seeing it as their duty to do something. Compare that with Ayn Randian Libertarians who generally think that the destitute should just up and die already. And Hayekian neoliberals that think that's simply not their problem. It's the above attitude that leads to fascism and communism. They become dominant when the social leaders abandon any sense of duty. It's very scary because that's the exact situation in the US currently.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  Austerity causes wage repression in the following ways: * Cuts in benefits make people more reliant upon income from their jobs and give them less leverage. * Cuts to the public sector workforce increases the supply of labor. When the supply of available labor goes up, wages come down. * Cuts to public sector wages reduces competition from the public sector, so wages in the private sector come down too. The strongest effect of this can be seen today in Greece where wages fell ~20%. In Weimar, Bruning actually also issued a direct order to suppress wages (which I'm surprised the authors didn't mention). This did not go down well. People who have suffered from wage repression tend to look for somebody to blame. Extreme nationalism provides targets for that blame. And, the Nazis did end austerity and wages went up again, and of course they provided a scapegoat. Weimar also violently crushed the left wing opposition (the KPD), so people were left with "centrists" vs. "the (Nazi) alternative" and of course a lot of the people who wanted "an alternative" supported the alternative that was available to them, just because it was there.
- netsharc 9y ago
  My theory is, people want to survive, and they are selfish in order to make sure they do. They first would want to make sure their well-being. Next they would care about their family's survival. Next, their tribe's survival. How big is the tribe, is it the same village, or the same nation, or is it the same race/culture background? And "survival" can be an abstract term. Most people in Western Europe have a warm place to sleep and enough to eat to survive. But maybe they worry about rising prices and worry if they'll have enough (if their government will have enough for them) to retire in 20-30 years. They see their neighbor who got laid off and is still looking for a job months later. Their government says they need to cut some social safety nets because of austerity, and then they hear about the government saying refugees are welcome, with money from... where? My belief is, Angela Merkel basically became the leader of Europe and her (and her finance minister's) disastrous austerity policies lead to so much unhappiness all over Europe, even in Germany itself. As for refugees, someone who says they have no right to be in Europe should -- in my opinion -- stop calling him- or herself a human being. Germany isn't an economic hero, it's exploiting the effects of the single currency while other countries around it are suffering economically. And this has also lead to the rise of populism all over Europe.
  - titanix2 9y ago
    > As for refugees, someone who says they have no right to be in Europe should -- in my opinion -- stop calling him- or herself a human being. This kind of moralistic stance is part of what people drives towards populist parties: being denied even the right to hold an opinion makes people angry. We totally have the right to chose who can come in our country and under which conditions. And that applies to refugees as well. This is not a problem of begin "human" or not, it is about making decisions that will have impact for decades on the European societies.
    - mamon 9y ago
      Additionally, they are not refugees at all. By international law's definition they stop being refugees when they reach the first safe country, which for most of them is Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, or other Middle East/African country.By the time they decide to go to Europe they are just plain old immigrants, seeking for better life standard, and we should treat them as such. So far the most reasonable approach to the refugee issue was proposed by Hungarian Prime Minister, who wants EU to help them right there, in the Middle East, instead of letting them in.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
superioritycplx 9y ago
Simple: stop the SJW movement.
pdkl95 9y ago
Mark Blyth has been trying to explain this situation ever since his warning about economic policy leading to a rise of populism, "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea"[1]. For a very good overview of the problem - and some suggestions on how to fix it - see this[2] recent talk. Briefly, the political situation can be fixed quickly if-and-only-if the actual needs of the working classes are actually addressed. That means e.g. some type of single payer healthcare and paying off the student loan burden. [1] http://markblyth.com/books/austerity-the-history-of-a-dangerous-idea/ http://markblyth.com/books/austerity-the-history-of-a-danger... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsqGITb0W4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsqGITb0W4A
- tptacek 9y ago
  The rise of populism is tied to student debt, a phenomenon that overwhelmingly impacts the upper middle class?
  - pdkl95 9y ago
    It's limiting who can even enter college. Blyth specifically recommends "Free College Tuition". I (perhaps unwisely) mentioned the milder goal only addressing current student debt with the goal of avoiding being dismissed as "marxism". I strongly recommend listening to Blyth's actual explanation (in this or his other talks & publications), not my poor-quality summary.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      It would cost a lot less to just have companies take a little more risk when hiring. (There's nothing wrong with making higher education cost less for people that want to do it, but plenty of people are just seeking a credential they see as necessary for access to certain jobs, jobs which often don't need much of the higher education they purport to require)
    - tptacek 9y ago
      The idea that the solution to the core problem of toxic populism just happens to be the policy prescriptions of the Bernie Sanders campaign (I say this as a Democrat!) seems like a bit of a just-so story.
jernfrost 9y ago
I think you simply have to borrow money, or pay of debts with inflation. From what I've read the much maligned inflation policy of the weimar republic was actually fairly successful, despite the imagery of people buying bread with buckets of money. Greece could not do this because they were in the Euro area, and had not control over their own money. It seems Iceland which controlled their own currency handled the economic problems much better. Although it is hard to compare as Iceland is a pretty well run country, while Greece struggles with basic stuff like simply collecting taxes. The best is of course to have the discipline to save a lot of money in good years to spend in bad years. For my native Norway this was the situation which is why we basically didn't feel the 2008 downturn at all. We had save a lot of oil money over many years and just spent more of it. The US too weathered the storm not too badly through the expansionary policies of Obama. While the austerity measures in Europe totally screwed up several economies.

So, what's the solution to prevent such escalations? As per the discussion, there are at least some hints that some countries are heading in that direction again.

allthenews 9y ago

Well, I genuinely wonder, are people drawn to nationalism because of austerity, or are there common causes to both austerity and nationalism? Admittedly, I did not read past the abstract, but the paper seems already to fail to differentiate between causation and correlation.

thisisit 9y ago
I just scanned through the paper and here's a quote: With dashed hopes and a loss of faith in the Weimar Republic, fury and despair were channelled into the ranks of populists and demagogues, with the Nazi party campaigning against austerity and offering promises for a new era of prosperity. So, it's not nationalism rather people getting angry against the government which failed them. Any party can then shape the agenda and turn it towards nationalism or a particular community while promising prosperity.
- Gibbon1 9y ago
  It's not just failure but perceived abandonment. Consider old school New deal socialists or paleoconservatives. If you told those guys that honest married black men were out of work and couldn't support their families, they would be concerned. Seeing it as their duty to do something. Compare that with Ayn Randian Libertarians who generally think that the destitute should just up and die already. And Hayekian neoliberals that think that's simply not their problem. It's the above attitude that leads to fascism and communism. They become dominant when the social leaders abandon any sense of duty. It's very scary because that's the exact situation in the US currently.
crdoconnor 9y ago
Austerity causes wage repression in the following ways: * Cuts in benefits make people more reliant upon income from their jobs and give them less leverage. * Cuts to the public sector workforce increases the supply of labor. When the supply of available labor goes up, wages come down. * Cuts to public sector wages reduces competition from the public sector, so wages in the private sector come down too. The strongest effect of this can be seen today in Greece where wages fell ~20%. In Weimar, Bruning actually also issued a direct order to suppress wages (which I'm surprised the authors didn't mention). This did not go down well. People who have suffered from wage repression tend to look for somebody to blame. Extreme nationalism provides targets for that blame. And, the Nazis did end austerity and wages went up again, and of course they provided a scapegoat. Weimar also violently crushed the left wing opposition (the KPD), so people were left with "centrists" vs. "the (Nazi) alternative" and of course a lot of the people who wanted "an alternative" supported the alternative that was available to them, just because it was there.
netsharc 9y ago
My theory is, people want to survive, and they are selfish in order to make sure they do. They first would want to make sure their well-being. Next they would care about their family's survival. Next, their tribe's survival. How big is the tribe, is it the same village, or the same nation, or is it the same race/culture background? And "survival" can be an abstract term. Most people in Western Europe have a warm place to sleep and enough to eat to survive. But maybe they worry about rising prices and worry if they'll have enough (if their government will have enough for them) to retire in 20-30 years. They see their neighbor who got laid off and is still looking for a job months later. Their government says they need to cut some social safety nets because of austerity, and then they hear about the government saying refugees are welcome, with money from... where? My belief is, Angela Merkel basically became the leader of Europe and her (and her finance minister's) disastrous austerity policies lead to so much unhappiness all over Europe, even in Germany itself. As for refugees, someone who says they have no right to be in Europe should -- in my opinion -- stop calling him- or herself a human being. Germany isn't an economic hero, it's exploiting the effects of the single currency while other countries around it are suffering economically. And this has also lead to the rise of populism all over Europe.
- titanix2 9y ago
  > As for refugees, someone who says they have no right to be in Europe should -- in my opinion -- stop calling him- or herself a human being. This kind of moralistic stance is part of what people drives towards populist parties: being denied even the right to hold an opinion makes people angry. We totally have the right to chose who can come in our country and under which conditions. And that applies to refugees as well. This is not a problem of begin "human" or not, it is about making decisions that will have impact for decades on the European societies.
  - mamon 9y ago
    Additionally, they are not refugees at all. By international law's definition they stop being refugees when they reach the first safe country, which for most of them is Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, or other Middle East/African country.By the time they decide to go to Europe they are just plain old immigrants, seeking for better life standard, and we should treat them as such. So far the most reasonable approach to the refugee issue was proposed by Hungarian Prime Minister, who wants EU to help them right there, in the Middle East, instead of letting them in.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

superioritycplx 9y ago

Simple: stop the SJW movement.

pdkl95 9y ago

Mark Blyth has been trying to explain this situation ever since his warning about economic policy leading to a rise of populism, "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea"[1]. For a very good overview of the problem - and some suggestions on how to fix it - see this[2] recent talk. Briefly, the political situation can be fixed quickly if-and-only-if the actual needs of the working classes are actually addressed. That means e.g. some type of single payer healthcare and paying off the student loan burden. [1] http://markblyth.com/books/austerity-the-history-of-a-dangerous-idea/ http://markblyth.com/books/austerity-the-history-of-a-danger... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsqGITb0W4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsqGITb0W4A

tptacek 9y ago
The rise of populism is tied to student debt, a phenomenon that overwhelmingly impacts the upper middle class?
- pdkl95 9y ago
  It's limiting who can even enter college. Blyth specifically recommends "Free College Tuition". I (perhaps unwisely) mentioned the milder goal only addressing current student debt with the goal of avoiding being dismissed as "marxism". I strongly recommend listening to Blyth's actual explanation (in this or his other talks & publications), not my poor-quality summary.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    It would cost a lot less to just have companies take a little more risk when hiring. (There's nothing wrong with making higher education cost less for people that want to do it, but plenty of people are just seeking a credential they see as necessary for access to certain jobs, jobs which often don't need much of the higher education they purport to require)
  - tptacek 9y ago
    The idea that the solution to the core problem of toxic populism just happens to be the policy prescriptions of the Bernie Sanders campaign (I say this as a Democrat!) seems like a bit of a just-so story.

jernfrost 9y ago

I think you simply have to borrow money, or pay of debts with inflation. From what I've read the much maligned inflation policy of the weimar republic was actually fairly successful, despite the imagery of people buying bread with buckets of money. Greece could not do this because they were in the Euro area, and had not control over their own money. It seems Iceland which controlled their own currency handled the economic problems much better. Although it is hard to compare as Iceland is a pretty well run country, while Greece struggles with basic stuff like simply collecting taxes. The best is of course to have the discipline to save a lot of money in good years to spend in bad years. For my native Norway this was the situation which is why we basically didn't feel the 2008 downturn at all. We had save a lot of oil money over many years and just spent more of it. The US too weathered the storm not too badly through the expansionary policies of Obama. While the austerity measures in Europe totally screwed up several economies.