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Reading Yang is an eye-opener, relative to Bernie's proposed solutions. Raising the minimum wage doesn't help if minimum wage jobs are being obliterated. Free c

by beat 8y ago

Reading Yang is an eye-opener, relative to Bernie's proposed solutions. Raising the minimum wage doesn't help if minimum wage jobs are being obliterated. Free college doesn't help someone who is 50 years old and isn't really up to starting their life over again. It's not that Bernie's ideas are bad (obviously, Yang adopted Medicare for All)... but they're incomplete. To my earlier criticism, they're just a particularly strong example of "1960s welfare, but more of it". I don't know if UBI is the solution. But I sure as heck don't know what else might be. That's why I want Andrew Yang in the debates. I very much doubt he'll win the nomination, and I have doubts about his ability to survive the brutality of a major-candidate status, but I want Democrats (and America) talking about both his fears and his solutions, because we really, really need to talk about this stuff.

chillacy 8y ago
His ideas are very much needed in the party, especially the economic focused platform on middle America. Less identity politics, more attention to real issues: low labor participation rates even as GDP soars, rising suicide and opiate usage, a scarcity mentality eroding trust and optimism.
- beat 8y ago
  All politics is identity politics. (And the politics of thinking that "identity" is for those people is privilege politics.) But that said, there's a distressing tendency for the "coastal elites" to sneer at the midwest working class, rather than recognize and sympathize with their struggles. Which is an identity problem in itself. Andrew Yang has his finger directly on the pulse of the malaise that led to Democrats losing PA, MI, OH, and WI. He counts the manufacturing job losses due to technology. But the GOP is offering someone to blame - immigrants, offshoring. It's hard to compete with someone who offers the customer a concrete enemy.
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    >All politics is identity politics. Oh really? All politics is a matter of changing no policies or social structures at all, but instead pushing for "representation" of the voters' demographic groups among the tiny power elite? Or did you mean that all politics is a matter of antidiscrimination laws? Your statement is a deepity: it can either be interpreted as meaningfully narrow, but false, or as true, but so broad as to be meaningless.
  - chillacy 8y ago
    I think our definitions of "identity politics" are not the same. Nonetheless I agree with everything else you said. My only hope is that his ideas enter the conversation of democrats or else we'll have a candidate focusing on costal city issues and ignoring the economic forces that matter in the states that have been neglected.
eli_gottlieb 8y ago
I agree. I am very glad Yang is reaching the debates stage. Bernie comes from an Old Left tradition in which strengthening the working class just will solve our economic problems, because the underlying cause is diagnosed as being an imbalance of power towards the owning class over the working class. Yang prefers to look at technological change, which is itself an important structural factor that requires examination. If you know a bunch about Yang, could you tell me: what's his diagnosis for why the automation revolution doesn't show up in productivity numbers?

by beat 8y ago

chillacy 8y ago

His ideas are very much needed in the party, especially the economic focused platform on middle America. Less identity politics, more attention to real issues: low labor participation rates even as GDP soars, rising suicide and opiate usage, a scarcity mentality eroding trust and optimism.

beat 8y ago
All politics is identity politics. (And the politics of thinking that "identity" is for those people is privilege politics.) But that said, there's a distressing tendency for the "coastal elites" to sneer at the midwest working class, rather than recognize and sympathize with their struggles. Which is an identity problem in itself. Andrew Yang has his finger directly on the pulse of the malaise that led to Democrats losing PA, MI, OH, and WI. He counts the manufacturing job losses due to technology. But the GOP is offering someone to blame - immigrants, offshoring. It's hard to compete with someone who offers the customer a concrete enemy.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  >All politics is identity politics. Oh really? All politics is a matter of changing no policies or social structures at all, but instead pushing for "representation" of the voters' demographic groups among the tiny power elite? Or did you mean that all politics is a matter of antidiscrimination laws? Your statement is a deepity: it can either be interpreted as meaningfully narrow, but false, or as true, but so broad as to be meaningless.
- chillacy 8y ago
  I think our definitions of "identity politics" are not the same. Nonetheless I agree with everything else you said. My only hope is that his ideas enter the conversation of democrats or else we'll have a candidate focusing on costal city issues and ignoring the economic forces that matter in the states that have been neglected.

eli_gottlieb 8y ago

I agree. I am very glad Yang is reaching the debates stage. Bernie comes from an Old Left tradition in which strengthening the working class just will solve our economic problems, because the underlying cause is diagnosed as being an imbalance of power towards the owning class over the working class. Yang prefers to look at technological change, which is itself an important structural factor that requires examination. If you know a bunch about Yang, could you tell me: what's his diagnosis for why the automation revolution doesn't show up in productivity numbers?