Where is politics going?

[Gfamily]

In some languages but not all, "envy" has a slightly different meaning to "jealousy". Envy has good overtones - "I envy you your nice new car and I'm going to strive to achieve similar success". Jealousy has the more destructive meaning.

In Ukraine ... and indeed in other Slavic cultures, we have white envy and black envy. White envy means you’re happy for other people and wish you also had what they have. The black variety implies that if you don’t have it, no one should

From yesterday's Guardian online

[shpalman]

In some languages but not all, "envy" has a slightly different meaning to "jealousy". Envy has good overtones - "I envy you your nice new car and I'm going to strive to achieve similar success". Jealousy has the more destructive meaning.

In Ukraine ... and indeed in other Slavic cultures, we have white envy and black envy. White envy means you’re happy for other people and wish you also had what they have. The black variety implies that if you don’t have it, no one should

From yesterday's Guardian online

"jealousy" in Italian applies to something you have which you don't want anyone else to have.

[monkey]

In some languages but not all, "envy" has a slightly different meaning to "jealousy". Envy has good overtones - "I envy you your nice new car and I'm going to strive to achieve similar success". Jealousy has the more destructive meaning.

In Ukraine ... and indeed in other Slavic cultures, we have white envy and black envy. White envy means you’re happy for other people and wish you also had what they have. The black variety implies that if you don’t have it, no one should

From yesterday's Guardian online

"jealousy" in Italian applies to something you have which you don't want anyone else to have.

I'm pretty sure I've seen jealous used in a similar way in English too: a jealous boyfriend would be overprotective or overly suspicious of their partner cheating on them, or a jealous king would be the same with their power.

[noggins]

Someone like a left wing Viktor Orban.

you are sheldrake and i claim my £5

[Herainestold]

Someone like a left wing Viktor Orban.

you are sheldrake and i claim my £5

I think Sheldrake would defend democracy. I am saying that democracy doesn't deliver the goods for the poors and the workers because it is hijacked by the rich and the elites.
We need a type of government that defends the working class and the poor against the interests of the rich. Some kind of hybrid that amplifies the voices and interests of the ordinary people and stymies the interests of the rich. I don't know exactly how it would work but democracy isnt doing it.

[lpm]

Which country or countries are you referring to?

[Herainestold]

I Hate the Capitalist System

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVL_Ex0 ... e=emb_logo

[Millennie Al]

In some languages but not all, "envy" has a slightly different meaning to "jealousy". Envy has good overtones - "I envy you your nice new car and I'm going to strive to achieve similar success". Jealousy has the more destructive meaning.

In English, you can contrast envy - wanting something that someone else has - with jealousy - fear that someone else will take what you have. However, jealousy is often used in both senses, so you need to figure out what is meant from the context.

This is why Thatcherites embraced envy, seeing it as a motivating factor, and why the American Dream is mythologised. There's a fundamental belief that inequality drives economic success through envy rather than social conflict through jealousy.

It's a very popular belief, though completely wrong. That belief would predict that when someone gains enough that they can never spend it all then they shold stop striving for more, but what we actually see is that people in such situations often keep working because it's not the money that motivates them. Bill Gates didn't keep running Microsoft because he wanted even more money - he obviously had a genuine interest in what he was doing. Taylor Swift won't ever stop singing and composing due to having made enough money. It's poor people who are most likely to be motivated by money - that person who sells you a burger and fries would probably quit if they had enough money.

The reality is that economic success causes inequality - not the other way around.

[bmforre]

The reality is that economic success causes inequality - not the other way around.

Try that thesis on the case of Donald Trump:

He started with considerable capaital from his father plus a schooling in tricks for advantaged ones so getting diplomas from respected institutions in spite of even very weak reading ability, and a get-out-of-war-free card when less fortunate contemporaries had to fight and many die in Vietnam.

His projects failed time and again, casinos went bust, others were left with large losses. Donald had money from Father to employ the right kinds of lawyers to see to punishing the less guilty while protecting the top lossmaker.
Then he went on TV to spin the failures as Big Success and win Great Fame and money.
And inherited more when his father died.

This was a case of massive inequality leaving Donald with a nice fortune despite his big lossmaking economic activities.

The political consequences have been - unfortunate.

[Bird on a Fire]

Having a few very rich people - whether they're dipshits like Trump or genuinely smart, hard-working people who've got lucky - while millions of people are homeless or unable to afford basic necessities like food, transport and healthcare is clearly a massively inefficient use of resources.

Nicking a few quid off billionaires and giving it to the poors is obviously better for the economy, because the money circulates rather than being stashed. It also relieves way more suffering than it causes (which is basically none), and allows more people to participate in society, if you care about that sort of thing.

I don't think that anybody who knows what they're talking about would actually defend enormous inequality, nor think it just boils down to envy/jealousy.

[Bird on a Fire]

Hmmm. Brexit was quite drastic, and sort of sold as such, and people voted for it.

If the left could sell their ideas as well as Brexiteers ...

But it's not really a good example because Brexit was decades in the making with a steady newspaper campaign against Barmy Brussels and in the end that wasn't nearly enough. It needed boosters of fear and resentment and frustration to generate a sufficient backlash and by luck it eventually got them in a perfect storm of events. Years of austerity combined with years of very visible (audible) social change with Eastern European immigrants transforming the workplace and any expression of concern about that change batted away as racism while the government wrung their hands and lied that they were forbidden to do anything about it by Brussels rules, and then the Syrian civil war and the rise of ISIS leading to the refugee crisis which meant that, in the year leading up to the referendum, the Daily Mail headlines at least once per week were about swarms of scary brown foreigners at Calais exploiting every chance to invade us, and the French letting them, and it was all somehow the EU's fault.

It was David Cameron's perfect moment to ask the nation if it really wanted to lash out at the thing his party and the press had been blaming for everything bad and stupid for years, somehow expecting people to say "no".

And of course it was a completely negative campaign. You can always get more people willing to help smash the old system than to build a better new one because smashing stuff is more exciting and building stuff is hard and dull. Maybe a better example than Brexit would be the rise of Blairism. There too the driving force wasn't really a great national desire to see Tony Blair's policies enacted, it was a growing resentment of "Tory Sleaze". There was a very strong sense that the Tories had been in power too long, they were corrupt, self-serving and overentitled and they had to be kicked out. All Labour had to do was look electable. Any competent-looking alternative was fine. A few years into Cool Britannia people might have felt "this is what we wanted" but what people wanted in 1997 was a lot more those guys out than these guys in.

That's fair. I think the left needs to get a lot better at narratives, because that's how people understand the world.

On the one hand, it's maybe harder attacking a nebulous concept like "inequality" than something concrete like "the EU". On the other, most people have some experience of inequality or inequity, whereas nobody knows jack sh.t about Europe, so it should be easier to speak to people's legitimate concerns.

It really shouldn't be the case that politicians and journalists have spent decades railing against Europe without there having been equivalent effort against poverty.

[Bird on a Fire]

Seems like the forum's preferred answer to the titular question is "Back to 1997, hopefully."

[dyqik]

Seems like the forum's preferred answer to the titular question is "Back to 1997, hopefully."

I'll take 2008.

[Herainestold]

Seems like the forum's preferred answer to the titular question is "Back to 1997, hopefully."

I'll take 2008.

1945

[nezumi]

A re-do of the 1951 election would be peachy.

[Lew Dolby]

1951 !! Another tory government !! Suppose that'd be all right for you multi-millionaires.

[nezumi]

1951 !! Another tory government !! Suppose that'd be all right for you multi-millionaires.

The winners were the Tories, I'd like it to go the other way.

Edit to add: I mean, Churchill won.

[Millennie Al]

The reality is that economic success causes inequality - not the other way around.

Try that thesis on the case of Donald Trump:

He started with considerable capaital from his father plus a schooling in tricks for advantaged ones so getting diplomas from respected institutions in spite of even very weak reading ability, and a get-out-of-war-free card when less fortunate contemporaries had to fight and many die in Vietnam.

His projects failed time and again, casinos went bust, others were left with large losses. Donald had money from Father to employ the right kinds of lawyers to see to punishing the less guilty while protecting the top lossmaker.
Then he went on TV to spin the failures as Big Success and win Great Fame and money.
And inherited more when his father died.

This was a case of massive inequality leaving Donald with a nice fortune despite his big lossmaking economic activities.

So you're saying that he inherited lots of money and lost it through economic failure. That's entirely consistent with what I said. And then that he made money from playing a character on TV. Stilll consistent. If he lives long enough he'll be poor - and that's assuming he isn't already, as his finances sound rather dubious from what I have read with him owing lenders quite a lot.

The political consequences have been - unfortunate.

Politics obviously causes inequality. For example, there's only one president at a time.

[Millennie Al]

Nicking a few quid off billionaires and giving it to the poors is obviously better for the economy, because the money circulates rather than being stashed. It also relieves way more suffering than it causes (which is basically none), and allows more people to participate in society, if you care about that sort of thing.

I don't remember ever learning of anyone who advocated nicking a few quid off billionaires. However, I have heard numerous proposals which involve taking quite substantial amounts of wealth. While this sort of thing has been tried, it typically doesn't end well.

[Herainestold]

The reality is that economic success causes inequality - not the other way around.

Try that thesis on the case of Donald Trump:

He started with considerable capaital from his father plus a schooling in tricks for advantaged ones so getting diplomas from respected institutions in spite of even very weak reading ability, and a get-out-of-war-free card when less fortunate contemporaries had to fight and many die in Vietnam.

His projects failed time and again, casinos went bust, others were left with large losses. Donald had money from Father to employ the right kinds of lawyers to see to punishing the less guilty while protecting the top lossmaker.
Then he went on TV to spin the failures as Big Success and win Great Fame and money.
And inherited more when his father died.

This was a case of massive inequality leaving Donald with a nice fortune despite his big lossmaking economic activities.

So you're saying that he inherited lots of money and lost it through economic failure. That's entirely consistent with what I said. And then that he made money from playing a character on TV. Stilll consistent. If he lives long enough he'll be poor - and that's assuming he isn't already, as his finances sound rather dubious from what I have read with him owing lenders quite a lot.

The political consequences have been - unfortunate.

Politics obviously causes inequality. For example, there's only one president at a time.

People keep insinuating that Trump isn't worth much, but Forbes , who track these kinds of things, list his net worth at $2.5 billion, down from $4.5 billion when he became president. Maybe not so much by billionaire standards, but that is still a lot of money.

[bmforre]

I saw the remains of Trump casino in Atlantic City being demolished yesterday. During his time as icon of business success this was presented as a success. Not true.

He gained from false presentation. Falsehood may lead to gain without being productive.

Vaccines are now delivering great help to the US against Covid. The first succesful vaccine was initially developed in Germany by a company led by immigrant man and wife who would probably not have been admitted to the US as they came from a Muslim country. Is politics in the US learning from this and going to change direction?

Behind a great vaccine

[Herainestold]

I saw the remains of Trump casino in Atlantic City being demolished yesterday. During his time as icon of business success this was presented as a success. Not true.

He gained from false presentation. Falsehood may lead to gain without being productive.

Vaccines are now delivering great help to the US against Covid. The first succesful vaccine was initially developed in Germany by a company led by immigrant man and wife who would probably not have been admitted to the US as they came from a Muslim country. Is politics in the US learning from this and going to change direction?

Behind a great vaccine

I think there were quite a few Muslim immigrants in America before the Trump era. Certainly at the time that Ugur Sahin's family moved to Germany there were no specific impediments to Muslim immigration. The Trump Ban did not apply to citizens of Turkey.
Although it seems like a bad idea for any muslim to immigrate to a country that was founded on white supremacy.

[bmforre]

In the USA at present there are many initiatives to make it more difficult to vote.
Flurry of voting restrictions proposed

The proposals include measures that would curtail eligibility to vote by mail and prohibit the use of ballot drop boxes. One bill in Georgia would block early voting on Sundays, which critics quickly labeled a flagrant attempt to thwart Souls to the Polls, the Democratic turnout effort that targets Black churchgoers on the final Sunday before an election.

So minorities that have been accustomed to rule over and against majorities see this as their right and claim protection against change. They regard Trump's false claims of elections being rigged and stolen as Holy Twit and expect the Supreme Court of the US to back them now its Conservative-Christian wing has been reinforced during Trump's term.

Will these undemocratic initiatives win success or crash as they deserve?

[discovolante]

I dunno why I keep coming back to this thread but hey ho.

Can I also make the point that inequality, rather than being some daft non issue that is only a problem because poor people are emotionally defective*, is what leads us to dumping all our rubbish and toxic waste where they live, ignoring the many many sh.tty energy inefficient houses, allowing air pollution to increase and so on, because they're only problems that affect poor people 'over there somewhere' until they become everyone's problem. I mean that's a terrible reason for caring about it but hey.

[nezumi]

<SNIP> I mean that's a terrible reason for caring about it but hey.

Any reason for dealing with this stuff, no matter how crap a reason is still a reason and therefore still needs to be included amongst all the other reasons.