3 ms·

I think the law is bad, but if we had a sane center-right party we wouldn't be in this situation. We're missing a liberal center and it's not found in either pa

I think the law is bad, but if we had a sane center-right party we wouldn't be in this situation. We're missing a liberal center and it's not found in either party, many (myself included) think the stuff like denying the election results are higher risk so I'm forced to vote against them on that alone. I mostly agree otherwise re: innovation (though think the southern border is not that relevant).

mindslight 5y ago
What we're actually missing is any party that hasn't been completely pwnt by corporations. If you take a look at this proposed law, it explicitly excepts hedge funds and the like. Yet again the authoritarian ratchet will click for individuals while corporations escape regulation, leaving them even more powerful. The hypocrisy is blinding when you really dig into the mechanics of tax law - individuals have to pay taxes on their expenses of shelter, transportation, food, whereas if the same situation were interpreted as a business those would all be deductible as expenses necessary to earn income. What if instead we flipped the paradigm such that if you want a government granted charter to create a liability limiting entity, that is what gets heavily taxed while individuals would get left alone for the most part. Require bookkeeping only from the entities that live on it, rather than forcing the yoke onto human beings. Applying this to income-distributing trusts as well would go a long way towards fixing dynastic wealth, without even touching the estate tax. And tangentially the right thing to do about the massive paper gains of the stonk market over the past nineteen months months is to call in all those loans made by the Fed by raising interest rates back to a reasonable level. But that would stop the fake riches gravy train and hamper trickle-up wealth redistribution, so corporatist policy will continue to carry the day while individuals get squeezed by the resulting increased financialization.
wolverine876 5y ago
> We're missing a liberal center The White House and most of the Democratic party are centrists.
- gonehome 5y ago
  I think Biden is a pretty moderate Obama style neo-liberal, but that's not really true of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or a lot of representatives in congress. I'm happy Biden won and I voted for him (well I voted for Bloomberg in the primary before it was obvious who would win and then Biden in the general), but it was looking scary there for a while. The democratic party is definitely more moderate compared to republicans (where all but a tiny handful are just trump loyalists), but that's a pretty low bar - they still have a lot of policies I don't like in addition to the woke stuff. Obviously this is a super flame-bait topic probably not good for HN so I'll leave it here. I just wish there could be principled discussion and legislating without tribal craziness. America is healthier with two reasonable parties to balance each other out.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > that's not really true of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or a lot of representatives in congress We can cite a few examples, but the great majority of elected Democrats, including the most powerful one (Biden) are centrists. > The democratic party is definitely more moderate compared to republicans (where all but a tiny handful are just trump loyalists), but that's a pretty low bar - they still have a lot of policies I don't like in addition to the woke stuff. If by 'moderate' you mean, 'between the current partisan positions', then moderate is just a different kind of partisan, one who makes choices by (bizarrely) navigating between what other people say. But if we mean, 'non-partisan', let's evaluate policies based on their consequences, not based on what partisan rhetoric and positioning they've been tagged with. IME, many moderates are the former (to be clear, I have no idea about you) - they are afraid of the conflict imposed mostly by the neo-reactionary right (which now runs the GOP), so they go along on reactionary commentary (attacking 'woke' people) because it's safe - the progressives have little power to threaten them - and then quietly object to some reactionary policies.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      I’d like to think I mean “non-partisan”. One thing that keeps me honest there is that I hold positions across the political spectrum (not all in the center) - usually this makes partisans uncomfortable because they don’t know which “camp” I’m in. I think dismissing the anti-woke stuff in the way you do isn’t an accurate portrayal, sure partisanship is definitely motivating some but not all (not me) - it’s because I think it’s genuinely bad policy. I’m not making a false equivalence either - the trump stuff is awful and a lot worse. Which is why I wish there was a sane center-right party.

mindslight 5y ago

What we're actually missing is any party that hasn't been completely pwnt by corporations. If you take a look at this proposed law, it explicitly excepts hedge funds and the like. Yet again the authoritarian ratchet will click for individuals while corporations escape regulation, leaving them even more powerful. The hypocrisy is blinding when you really dig into the mechanics of tax law - individuals have to pay taxes on their expenses of shelter, transportation, food, whereas if the same situation were interpreted as a business those would all be deductible as expenses necessary to earn income. What if instead we flipped the paradigm such that if you want a government granted charter to create a liability limiting entity, that is what gets heavily taxed while individuals would get left alone for the most part. Require bookkeeping only from the entities that live on it, rather than forcing the yoke onto human beings. Applying this to income-distributing trusts as well would go a long way towards fixing dynastic wealth, without even touching the estate tax. And tangentially the right thing to do about the massive paper gains of the stonk market over the past nineteen months months is to call in all those loans made by the Fed by raising interest rates back to a reasonable level. But that would stop the fake riches gravy train and hamper trickle-up wealth redistribution, so corporatist policy will continue to carry the day while individuals get squeezed by the resulting increased financialization.

wolverine876 5y ago

> We're missing a liberal center The White House and most of the Democratic party are centrists.

gonehome 5y ago
I think Biden is a pretty moderate Obama style neo-liberal, but that's not really true of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or a lot of representatives in congress. I'm happy Biden won and I voted for him (well I voted for Bloomberg in the primary before it was obvious who would win and then Biden in the general), but it was looking scary there for a while. The democratic party is definitely more moderate compared to republicans (where all but a tiny handful are just trump loyalists), but that's a pretty low bar - they still have a lot of policies I don't like in addition to the woke stuff. Obviously this is a super flame-bait topic probably not good for HN so I'll leave it here. I just wish there could be principled discussion and legislating without tribal craziness. America is healthier with two reasonable parties to balance each other out.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > that's not really true of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or a lot of representatives in congress We can cite a few examples, but the great majority of elected Democrats, including the most powerful one (Biden) are centrists. > The democratic party is definitely more moderate compared to republicans (where all but a tiny handful are just trump loyalists), but that's a pretty low bar - they still have a lot of policies I don't like in addition to the woke stuff. If by 'moderate' you mean, 'between the current partisan positions', then moderate is just a different kind of partisan, one who makes choices by (bizarrely) navigating between what other people say. But if we mean, 'non-partisan', let's evaluate policies based on their consequences, not based on what partisan rhetoric and positioning they've been tagged with. IME, many moderates are the former (to be clear, I have no idea about you) - they are afraid of the conflict imposed mostly by the neo-reactionary right (which now runs the GOP), so they go along on reactionary commentary (attacking 'woke' people) because it's safe - the progressives have little power to threaten them - and then quietly object to some reactionary policies.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    I’d like to think I mean “non-partisan”. One thing that keeps me honest there is that I hold positions across the political spectrum (not all in the center) - usually this makes partisans uncomfortable because they don’t know which “camp” I’m in. I think dismissing the anti-woke stuff in the way you do isn’t an accurate portrayal, sure partisanship is definitely motivating some but not all (not me) - it’s because I think it’s genuinely bad policy. I’m not making a false equivalence either - the trump stuff is awful and a lot worse. Which is why I wish there was a sane center-right party.