5 ms·

I am so confused by this use of political labels. I understand your argument, just not the political labels. Not siding with any specific label, I just want to

I am so confused by this use of political labels. I understand your argument, just not the political labels. Not siding with any specific label, I just want to make sense of these labels. I understand that left and right mean very different things in Europe or in the US, for instance. Inequality on access to housing has shifted you away from hard left. And neoliberal leftist economists and media are defending the status quo. What are leftist politicians for you? the Democrat party? What are some examples of neoliberal leftist economists? I cannot think of anything neoliberal that it is not center-right to hard-right. Probably it is because I am not from the US, and would be curious to know. To me, hard left is anarchist/communist and neoliberals are always right/hard-right/center-right depending on how much one likes them :)

boredtofears 5y ago
Leftist politics in the US is completely dominated at the moment by a certain brand of zealous progressive agenda that has done very little practically for wealth inequality and is solely focused on specific social issues. It still appears that neoliberal politics still drive most of the meaningful economic agenda on the left. I agree this is not really what people usually consider to be the "hard left", but when you're essentially left with two choices and one of them is leaning so heavily into a particular brand of politics it distorts your view of what "hard left" means compared to typical political ideologies. I think your understanding is generally correct, it's American politics that is tipped a little bit sideways at the moment.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mercy_dude 5y ago
Yes I was mostly talking about the US. And at local level. Federal govt can do very little if anything to things such as zoning laws and nor they should. The example I provided was to do with California and it is much like the same way in many other parts of the country. Neoliberal economists would be any mainstream economist who are still living in their la la land thinking QE is done for greater good of middle and working class and lower interest rate has nothing to do with investor class using their inflated market value of assets to borrow more and buy more assets that in turn also keeps going up. Meanwhile credit card interest rates are still averaging 10%+.
- mejutoco 5y ago
  Gotcha. Thank you for taking the time to clarify

boredtofears 5y ago

Leftist politics in the US is completely dominated at the moment by a certain brand of zealous progressive agenda that has done very little practically for wealth inequality and is solely focused on specific social issues. It still appears that neoliberal politics still drive most of the meaningful economic agenda on the left. I agree this is not really what people usually consider to be the "hard left", but when you're essentially left with two choices and one of them is leaning so heavily into a particular brand of politics it distorts your view of what "hard left" means compared to typical political ideologies. I think your understanding is generally correct, it's American politics that is tipped a little bit sideways at the moment.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mercy_dude 5y ago

Yes I was mostly talking about the US. And at local level. Federal govt can do very little if anything to things such as zoning laws and nor they should. The example I provided was to do with California and it is much like the same way in many other parts of the country. Neoliberal economists would be any mainstream economist who are still living in their la la land thinking QE is done for greater good of middle and working class and lower interest rate has nothing to do with investor class using their inflated market value of assets to borrow more and buy more assets that in turn also keeps going up. Meanwhile credit card interest rates are still averaging 10%+.

mejutoco 5y ago
Gotcha. Thank you for taking the time to clarify