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Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

• jahaja 7y ago
  Imagine if the current protests against inequality (and thereabouts) going on all around the world would be reported, scrutinized, and debated as much as when any of the established "enemies" have civil unrest. How quickly would things change?
  • douglaswlance 7y ago
    Imagine if instead of people protesting against income inequality, they protested against value contribution inequality...
    • flmontpetit 7y ago
      > The World's Top 26 Welfare Recipients Now Own as Much as the Poorest 3.8 Billion, Says Oxfam
    • jahaja 7y ago
      Protest against imagined slackers? What kind of a dystopia is that?
      • danharaj 7y ago
        Reaganomics
    • rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
      What do you say to people who are protesting against income inequality because they benefit from it and know how unfair the whole thing is? Say I received a million $ from my father (that's income inequality, isn't it?) and now I'm saving all my work income because I can live on my capital gains from "gifts" and watch all my friends work harder and harder to try and earn few extra cents while I'm getting richer doing very little. My dad did "things", I'm doing "things", and I'm getting paid for it! How would you evaluate my "value contributions" anyway? . My income is growing, I can wait. PS: for some reasons, my taxes in % of my income keeps decreasing because where I live, capital is less taxed than work. And the politicians who chose that explains they're lowing taxes because other countries are doing the same. So all countries are help the rich because rich are being helped elsewhere. How cool is that?
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • douglaswlance 7y ago
        How are you earning capital gains with that million, specifically?
        • rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
          Mostly by buying stocks and it works: the SP500 doubled in the past 10 years, and I did far better than that. You can consider my investment as contributions, because I most certainly bought stocks from other rich persons and the stock markets is growing fast mostly thanks to the bank central policies (note that my free money never directly helped the company of which I bought stocks). I purchased an apartment too, and that did not cost me a dime because my family offers free mortgages and the government does not tax any of that! Plus, real estate prices keeps growing where I live thanks to the continued gentrification of big cities. When will that stop?
          • lotsofpulp 7y ago
            SP500 tripled in the last 10 years.
          • douglaswlance 7y ago
            Any investment can fail. You spent money to bet on the price going up and won. Someone else lost. The markets aren't exclusively available to the rich. Anyone can buy and sell stocks. Successful people get to live better than the poor. That is why we should do more to encourage more poor people to live better by contributing more. The economy is not zero-sum.
            • AstralStorm 7y ago
              Second part is a lie. Tried managing stocks on your own? And having no leverage? It's not even close to competitive with hired specialists dedicated to the task. You cannot compete. It is not contributions not success that makes people live better or longer. It is ownership, diet, mental health (including low stress) access to medical care. Check out how many of successful people actually live shorter or painful lives. Your argument only works for have-nots. Economy is negative sum, unless you discount externalities. It does not break physics. Mined out and used up materials do not suddenly reappear. We just move the goalposts to have the same "positive money" outlook, keep everything from deflation. Until recently inventions (esp. energy and mining, then production efficiencies), made the economies grow. But it is not an infinite resource.
    • KirinDave 7y ago
      To even have such a conversation you'd have to define value, and I think you'll have a tough time doing this. You're also essentially defining an economic aristocracy. Folks with more resources can contribute more value, which in common worldviews associated with what you said suggests they deserve more profit. That's the crassest form of economic attachment, and it's silly to pretend that it's efficient or fair.
      • douglaswlance 7y ago
        Software engineers contribute more value to society than do McDonald's fry cooks. A McDonald's fry cook could be a software engineer, but they choose not to. McDonald's fry cooks protest for $15 minimum wage; instead of spending that time studying programming. If we protested about not fully utilizing our lower contributing members of society, instead of condemning the highest contributing mebers; we'd have a healthier society.
        • raxxorrax 7y ago
          Yeah, protesting against inequality is pretty dumb. He could just solve it by frying the software engineer if he just tried and put in a little effort.
        • deleted 7y ago
          [deleted]
        • KirinDave 7y ago
          You're using Burke's theory of value: rich people make things have value by deciding they want them and being rich. That position is not considered very strong by modern economic standards.
    • ClumsyPilot 7y ago
      I am not sure i understand you here. Does the list include hermits, the Amish and Buddhist monks?
    • dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Imagine if instead of people protesting against income inequality, they protested against value contribution inequality... All protests are against perceived value contribution inequality, and against those perceived as contributing the least (or most negative) value; perhaps more precisely, against those perceived as producing the greatest negative externalized value contribution. Of course, value being subjective, there are often sharp disputes about who is worthy of that treatment.
    • SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      How does this apply to the value contribution of children, the elderly, the chronically ill?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • pvaldes 7y ago
    Protests will not work, only young people deciding massively to vote a third party would make a dent on the current fossilised power inbalance. No matter how many times you ask for gun control or a fair healthcare system. It will not happen. The alternative is what we are seeing in Europe, with students 15 yo playing real world Resident Evil in Barcelona with chainsaws and torches (and finding it more funny and rewarding than they expected)
    • jddj 7y ago
      Just on the chainsaw point, take care: unless it somehow happened in the only corner of the city with police and protestors but without 100 smartphone cameras pointed at them at all times, it's utter bullshit. These police have been totally disproportionate in their use of force and hence have a huge incentive to sensationalise the actions of those 15 year olds.
      • pvaldes 7y ago
        I find chainsaws perfectly plausible in this context You forgot that there is a policeman in critic state at the hospital after being hit with a rock in the head by this merry people (while bearing a security helmet that was perforated by the force of the impact). And also that a police helicopter was videotaped being attacked with fireworks and the responsible faces now charges of attempt of homicide by trying to take down the helicopter And that thousands of policemen were injured with broken hands and arms, and had being attacked with acid and steel balls launched with professional slingshoots But yeah, sure, disproportionate use of force, foam bullets hurt a lot, police is evil, whatever...
        • jddj 7y ago
          I didn't forget that, and thousands of police weren't injured, actually. That's wrong by an order of magnitude. The point is that there is so much video evidence of the entire conflict that we don't really need to deal in hyperbole. There's so much footage and - as you so graciously demonstrated - so much incentive to exaggerate the misdeeds of the other, that we don't need to believe anything which either side says to support their aggressions. The footage might eventually emerge of the hatchas, lavadoras and motosierras, but let's wait until it does before we take it as gospel. The videos we do have show that the police have already demonstrated that they are willing to lie. There's a video of someone using a pickup to plow into a group of mossos. Talk about that, don't casually lap up their unsubstantiated talking points.
• npo9 7y ago
  I’m really surprised this piece was almost entirely about public opinion, only using economics to discuss the likelihood of a recession soon and the effects of inequality. The levers our governments have been pulling to steer the economy are reaching their maximum. The system where we reduce interest rates to spur spending to stimulate the economy (probably) don’t work when interest rates negative.
  • toomuchtodo 7y ago
    The fundamental problem is that you can't use interest rates to set fiscal policy, only monetary policy. Central banks do what they can, but it's like chemo: low or negative interest rates create asset bubbles while attempting to start the economy back up (and if wages disconnect preventing the ability to acquire inflated assets, you aren't going to try to acquire assets; Central Banks can keep those asset values inflated artificially forever though). Who have assets? Older and wealthy people [1]. If your government won't act with policy to fix fiscal (not monetary policy), you encounter the Populism response (which should surprise no one but apparently still does [2]). The Federal Reserve chair Powell has come out and said as much ("we have exhausted our toolkit"). TLDR It's time for the government to tax and spend. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts-about-wealth-in-the-united-states/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/06/25/six-facts... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/30/historian-berates-billionaires-at-davos-over-tax-avoidance https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jan/30/historian-b...
  • adventured 7y ago
    > The system where we reduce interest rates to spur spending to stimulate the economy (probably) don’t work when interest rates negative. Sure it will. We're just in the early stages of the government abusing the Fed & USD for spending expansion, they've yet to begin getting truly outlandish on what could be done. They'll pump up the government spending projects, directly funded (subsidized) by the Fed's policies. It will continue to work at least for a while yet. 30 more years at a minimum, based on what Japan was able to manage (with a weaker currency (ie not the global reserve currency), in a weaker economy, lower incomes, with far less wealth to debase). Negative rates means you get a 'free' national high-speed rail project. You get 'free' $2 trillion in infrastructure spending. You get 'free' expansion of Medicare down the ladder and Medicaid up the ladder (likely lessens the tax hammer short-term anyway). I mention those things because the next President after Trump is guaranteed to be a Democrat and is guaranteed to pursue some variation of those general things (high-speed rail is questionable, unfortunately). We're likely to enter a window in the next decade, where the US can float a trillion dollars for 30 years at 0.5% or lower. We desperately need to violently take advantage of that small window of opportunity to build a national high-speed rail network and pull off a once-in-a-generation repair of our infrastructure. The voters will support it in that time frame.
• corporateslave5 7y ago
  Most young people are paradoxically for unfettered immigration and against capitalism, but one is an economic policy and a result of the other. Simultaneously they are pushing for policies that increase competition and lower their wages (immigration), whilst railing against capitalism. Ideology has gone so far as to confuse young Americans about what is helping them and what is hurting them
  • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Most young people are paradoxically for unfettered immigration I'm not sure that is true.
    • rswskg 7y ago
      The woke young programmers of the bay (and elsewhere) consider any form of border control racist. I've seen this queried for exceptions, eg for convicted rapists and the rabid blue hairs torn that suggestion apart as a 'racist straw man'.
      • KirinDave 7y ago
        > . I've seen this queried for exceptions, eg for convicted rapists and the rabid blue hairs torn that suggestion apart as a 'racist straw man'. Well if that worked at all in modern society people might be more sympathetic to it. However, we've got almost no evidence that this is how border control works at all. We've got a lot of buffoonery about how other countries full of feral savages come to invade our pure and innocent land, conveniently not talking about our arms shipments and political manipulations in those countries.
      • pgeorgi 7y ago
        >>> Most young people > The woke young programmers of the bay (and elsewhere) These are not the same.
      • SolaceQuantum 7y ago
        I'm kind of confused at this rhetoric, as it seems hypocritical on its face. It's denigrating calling an argument a racist straw man, while creating a straw man ('the rabid blue hairs'). I think this is a really poor way to enter a conversation, as even the people against border control only attack the argument while this post only attacks the people.
• wayoutthere 7y ago
  In the US, it's less active protest and more things like slacking off heavily at work because it's a treadmill we can't win. We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. We as a nation have basically told people "no, you can't have a comfortable life or save for retirement because your parents' generation still needs to get 10% annual growth to make their retirement math work". Nevermind that retirement isn't going to be an option for us. That's lead a lot of us to abandon our work ethic, which will have some severe repercussions down the road.
  • xienze 7y ago
    > We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. And you think that would improve under socialism or communism?
    • toomuchtodo 7y ago
      It would likely improve under democratic socialism (which is not the same model as communism or socialism). Especially if we disconnect healthcare from employment allowing workers more freedom to pick employers or entrepreneurship. People want purpose, but they also need their basic needs met. They have to have hope they won't spend their lives on an economic treadmill where one slip will cause their demise. This is not an unreasonable ask in the wealthiest country in the world. It is clear the current economic system is dysfunctional and requires refactoring (50% of bankruptices are from medical debt, and this occurs in no other developed country, for example), I'm unsure how that would even be up for debate. So if we can come to the conclusion (from objective data based on income levels, household wealth, debt, well being) that the current system isn't working, why would anyone advocate for it to continue as is?
      • goldstone26 7y ago
        As a free-market proponent who isn't 100% sold on all of the democratic socialism stuff, I don't understand how anyone can deny that having your literal physical well-being tied to your employment is not an enormous problem for anyone who values the efficient allocation of labor/capital (which should hopefully be everyone?) It's literally just a cash-equivalent (in that nearly every employer is going to provide a plan, and you'll need to pay for health coverage somehow, whether it be in taxes or in premiums) part of your compensation that is also coincidentally an enormous arbitrary sticking point that makes moving jobs that much more of a pain and danger. But only for the employee, of course.
• perceptronas 7y ago
  >After the 2008 recession, President Obama and the Democrats effectively saved capitalism from itself; a more radical leadership would fight to replace it with a better system. This time around there may be far more pressure from below to do just that, especially with a more organized left and more class conscious young people. As a former soviet occupied country citizen, I am amazed that westerners would want to overthrow capitalism. Its what makes the west so prosperous.
  • ebg13 7y ago
    > As a former soviet occupied country citizen, I am amazed that westerners would want to overthrow capitalism. They would probably say that they perceive a difference between "democratic socialism" and "fascist communism".
    • zygimantasdev 7y ago
      Well there is no difference. If majority oppresses minority (democracy) - how is this different from Bolsheviks. You kill/take assets from the rich, make private entities illegal and then it is the same. If you allow freedom for people to open a shop to sell meat in your local area - well its capitalism then.
      • wool_gather 7y ago
        "how is that different" Because in the same way that society is not currently a poor-people-selling-their-organs free market dystopia, we don't have to charge headlong down the slippery slope of any given policy direction. We can make careful choices, establish rules that seek to prevent foreseeable problems, and have the flexibility to adjust course when unforeseeable issues arise.
  • diminoten 7y ago
    They don't, this author does not represent the views of the vast silent majority. Something like medicare for all is what Americans may want, but strong businesses are a backbone of American culture, not even the leftest of leaning elected politicians in Congress are a threat to that.
• adultSwim 7y ago
  Wait until this soft gentle wave of climate activism fails...
  • wayoutthere 7y ago
    We will see at least one war over climate change this century.
    • ianleeclark 7y ago
      There've been arguments made that the Syrian Civil War was sparked over farmers revolting due to ahistorical droughts. I can't speak to their validity, but the first of many may have already happened.
      • wayoutthere 7y ago
        You could also argue the same about Kashmir; it's not so much about ancestral homelands as water rights.
    • sixplusone 7y ago
      Yet the last thing anyone worries about during war is pollution. Resource usage goes way up, tycoons get richer. The poor and young are sacrificed.
  • pizzazzaro 7y ago
    Seriously. The only place where it has a single tooth is London, where theyre apparently banned now. Thus priming the police state to repress at full coal-generated-steam ahead. I havent heard of anything much or meaningful in the US.
  • tremon 7y ago
    Not sure what you mean. Are you worried about next-generation climate activists or next-generation weather catastrophes?
• ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  The illusion that there is one thing called capitalism needs to go. Because of it, the discussion always goes to "oh, you think communism will be better? We will have gulags before the month is over!" Most people are unaware there are like 9 different schools of thought in economics, which complement each other. They might have heard of Keynesian and neo-liberal. Of all places, HN readers should know about Schumpeter's model, as it explains the rise of new industries often comes with disruption to the old ones. Many problems of the last decades come from shoe-horning neoliberal economic model where it does not belong, without understanding it's limitations. (which are numerous). Privatising natural monopolies is the classic example. It also seems the fall of USSR has freed our leaders from any need for self-reflection. The consequences for fuck ups could be dire, now all you get is "occupy wall-street".
  • KirinDave 7y ago
    I'm always amazed how no one has heard of Mutualism. It's also a testament to how effective the USSR (and the US, I guess) were at portraying all legitimacy around non-capitalism concentrated around authoritarian state capitalism.
• jumbopapa 7y ago
  I can't understand what people actually have against capitalism. Most of the times when I hear about the problems of my generation much of it comes down to personal choice. You don't have to go to an expensive college, you don't have to live in the "it" part of town, and you don't have to use your credit card. I've heard so many people complain about the injustices of the world, but at the same time they pay twice as much for rent as me and have 1/3 the income. I have trouble feeling sympathy when you could just make better choices and improve your life without asking the government to come in and take care of you.
  • standardUser 7y ago
    Part of understanding the debate is realizing that virtually no one wants to abandon capitalism. Just like virtually no one wants an actual communist economic system. When people say they are against capitalism, most of the time they are criticizing the particular implementation. All economies (aside from a few tiny exceptions) are "mixed" economies. Outside of genuinely radical circles, most debates focus on changing the mix, sometimes dramatically, but never abandoning it all together.
    • jumbopapa 7y ago
      Yes, but that doesn't change my point. They identify an inefficiency and ask the government to "fix" it, but in reality they were the inefficiency themselves. They didn't use their dollars, time, and/or knowledge to reach optimum productivity.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • poidos 7y ago
    This opinion leaves out many of the parts of living in modern society that go beyond what we can choose. Just as a quick example, in the US, you don't choose to get sick and fall into medical debt -- but capitalism underpins the health system that induces that medical debt (which is a major contributor to poverty [0].) It seems like you may be confusing the situation of the people in your immediate circle with the larger, systemic problems that are directly related to the accumulation/hoarding of wealth. To your last point -- the majority of people are not able to simply "make better choices." No one chooses to be born into poverty. No one chooses to lose their job. No one chooses to be ill. It is exceedingly harder, year after year, for working-class people to even have the ability to improve their lives meaningfully. [0]: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/09/12/medicare-for-all-would-cut-poverty-by-over-20-percent/ https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/09/12/medicare-for...
• 40acres 7y ago
  If you were born in an advanced economy in 2000 you've lived through at least two recessions, weak growth, rising inequality and asset prices, and high cost of schooling. Yes, capitalism isn't really looking great right now.
  • zzzcpan 7y ago
    Capitalism never looked great for most people, it didn't start in 2000, it's a system for the rich to exploit the rest after all. The difference today is that internet is not a top down propaganda machine and people are not as easily persuaded to accept the system. On the internet people have access to plenty of opinions pointing out the problems of capitalism.
  • zip1234 7y ago
    Contrarian opinion--you've lived in two boom times with high growth and have more knowledge that is easier and cheaper to access than any other time in human history.
• throwaway123x2 7y ago
  Can capitalism be fixed with a wealth tax? Like tax 2% of wealth greater than some arbitrary amount - say 1 mill USD - and feed that back into social services?
• aazaa 7y ago
  > ... The last economic crisis contributed directly to the rise of populism over the following decade, but the next crisis will come squarely within the age of populism. ... Although the article doesn't mention it, the next recession will also likely come during a powerful wave of job losses tied to automation. Mixing popular resentment over the last debacle in which had few consequences for those responsible with the bewildering lack of jobs is a recipe for scapegoating other countries.
  • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    I don’t know about anyone else but I’m tired of the “automation” doomsday predictions that don’t understand we don’t lose jobs, they just transfer with new technology. Did the cottongin end slavery? No. It make it more efficient. Did the rail system go away with national highways? No. We have much better last mile access. Have robots replaced union workers? Union membership has decreased since the 80s, but unemployment has also decreased with a lot more population. Despite computers we still have secretaries, and librarians, we have massive drilling equipment but also have miners, there are less mounted police and soldiers but despite cars horses are still around. Sailing, boats, and marine related people have jobs despite most travel being by plane. Inventing planes created more jobs than were lost, etc etc. With every disruptive tech comes opportunity and transition. People aren’t out of jobs despite automation. They’re just in different jobs. This prediction that there will be a billion people standing around with nothing to do because of robots is wildly naive of history.
    • SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      I agree with your thrust but one caveat: "despite cars horses are still around" This is an absolutely terrible argument, because the population and societal use of horses have been greatly reduced once the automobile came into play. If we were to transfer this with people, this means that once automation comes into the play, the vast majority of working humans will be culled and those remaining are only luxury/recreational items...
      • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
• cryoshon 7y ago
  >"The higher savings rate, we believe, has had disinflationary impact, driving the relatively slow growth and low inflation in this recovery," wrote an analyst for Raymond James, observing that younger people are "saving instead of purchasing like last generation, limiting demand growth." this is what the constant specter of economic instability causes people to do. stash money under the bed, defer big purchases, and refuse to buy things that are not necessary for life. then, when the economy worsens, people feel like they are at least a little bit more prepared. the trick, of course, is that the actions taken to respond to their feelings of instability are more likely to cause a recession. overall, the liberal-capitalist response to the outcry of the young public has been "shut up, get a job, consume more, be more competitive" -- and it will be just as tone deaf and infuriating in the coming recession as it has been since before the last recession.
• MildlySerious 7y ago
  This whole "capitalism bad" debate feels incredibly black and white. I think what most people are really against is the one way street that capitalism established. It's a broken system, and it wouldn't matter if we had any other system as long as it would still be broken and abused. On a global level, there are tax loopholes that allow multi billion corporations and individuals to pay essentially no taxes. This money is then used to further enrich the same parties through a financial market that is equally broken. It has nothing to do with capitalism that wealth is created without a flow of goods or other value that is created from it. All it does is devalue all other wealth at a growing pace. Capitalism is not ideal, it won't be. But if we moved towards actual, functional capitalism where governments did their part in keeping the whole thing from turning into a one way street, we would have a long way to go before we needed something else.
  • jakelazaroff 7y ago
    Is it not just as black and white as the whole "socialism/communism is bad" stuff we're fed? People act like Medicare For All would be catastrophically expensive, when even our arguably closest allies in the UK — not exactly a socialist haven! — have the NHS, which seems to work out great. They pretend the Green New Deal would mark the end times for the US, as if the last New Deal's massive investment in infrastructure didn't help revitalize the economy. But yes, I agree — the idea that best thing to do is dogmatically implement one particular economic system is absurd.
    • MildlySerious 7y ago
      My wording clearly wasn't the best, so thanks for picking this up. Your comment reflects what I had in mind. We don't have to go from one to the other in one big swing. Evolving and moving towards a less broken system would go a long way already.
  • mtbcoder 7y ago
    > the one way street that capitalism established. > It has nothing to do with capitalism > But if we moved towards actual, functional capitalism What you are making is the classic "it's the fault of faux-capitalism and not my idealized version of capitalism" argument.
• sek 7y ago
  "The more they feel that the system is rigged against them, the more they will demand the system itself be overthrown" The author talks about it like the only alternative is overthrowing the system. This is another extreme, maybe the word you should use here is the social market economy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy). We use this term here in Germany, even our most deregulation friendly party is committed to it and by definition it's still capitalist.
• gen220 7y ago
  Maybe I’m naïve, but to me the word “capitalism” is not an “economic policy” that can be changed through deliberate action, but rather a framework of analysis that makes predictions on supply, demand, and pricing in markets that are varying levels of free. I’m confused when people in my generational cohort say things like “capitalism is unfair” or “capitalism sucks”, in reference to the system of government and benefits we have currently. Every economy has had forces that were usefully explainable with capitalism, even the soviet economy in the 80s. Markets abound, and capitalism is a powerful explanatory tool, so to me “let’s end capitalism” sounds a bit like “let’s end gravity”. For somebody more in the know, this can’t be what people are meaning, right? Are they just trying to bargain for a “better“ social contract with fewer free markets? Any idea why they associate this with “ending capitalism”?
  • Miner49er 7y ago
    I think in the broadest sense, they mean ending private control of capital. This means that instead of capital being mostly in the hands of a few (the rich, or the state, in the case of something like China) they want it to be in the control of the people. This would mean that basically the people would control capital democratically, in most cases, but there are other systems like Mutualism which isn't necessarily democratic. For many, they may want to end markets as well, for various reasons, but markets aren't the same thing as capitalism, as you seem to think.
  • tangent128 7y ago
    "Capitalism" is used as the label for the policy one might more precisely describe as "regulatory minimalism"; the philosophy that opposes minimum wage laws, that opposes collective bargaining by employees, that opposes safety and environmental regulation, that opposes universal health care, etcetera. This philosophy is associated with the term "capitalism" because its proponents tar any improvement of the social contract, acknowledgement of climate change, or balancing of negotiating power as "socialism/communism"- terms used interchangeably as a boogeyman rather than for any engagable definition, but always pitted as the opposite of "capitalism".
    • 7y ago
• NTDF9 7y ago
  The proponents of current form of capitalism miss a big big aspect of free-market capitalism. That is: taking losses. Every capitalism proponent is so tied up to the stock market that they don't want to see losses. Thus they resort to policies that would somehow socialize losses. If you are really free market, you need to accept losses. - Let the FED not print money which causes inflation which is driving a regular life out of the young's reach - Let students declare bankruptcy on student loans - Let your social security go bankrupt, it is market driven - Let your house prices go underwater. Whoever said it should always go up and that the young should burn their lives to buy it from old geezers at elevated prices. But no, the boomers don't want those losses. This is where cries for socialism is coming from.
  • gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
    > The proponents of current form of capitalism miss a big big aspect of free-market capitalism. That is: taking losses. It might be clearer if you just called "the current form of capitalism" crony capitalism. It's not free market and that's why I laugh whenever people say that capitalism is failing. Progressives won a long time ago (during the Progressive era) and crafted a massive government, instituted heavy centralized planning, and we're seeing the failure of the centralization of government play out today.
    • NTDF9 7y ago
      Are you really kidding me? I'm not sure if you are looking at things objectively when you blame progressives (for something they didn't even do) while the current administration is enriching the oligarchs
      • gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
        Enriching the oligarchs? Compared to under Bush and Obama when their administrations espoused the notion that "everyone dies if we don't inject massive amounts of money into irresponsible corporations." Everyone enriches oligarchs. Blaming it on one administration or the other misses the larger point that strong central planning is the defining feature of anything done by federal govt nowadays (something that, like I said, we got from the early 20th c).
• ptah 7y ago
  >On the other hand, 41 percent of those over 65 supported Biden, compared to 26 percent for Warren and an incredible 2 percent for Sanders. it seems that the ones that grew up in a time when tax policy was closer to bernie sanders' are less likely to support him
  • departure 7y ago
    That does not surprise me. That generation benefited from those tax rates by living some of the best recorded lives in history and don't want to do anything that could change their own status quo now that they are rich and powerfull.
    • Ambele 7y ago
      I agree. Retirees and the elderly vote much more than the youth. Unless that changes, policy will continue to be more favorable towards retirees and the elderly.
• qbaqbaqba 7y ago
  Capitalism or just bankers and other usurers?