[blackjack21]

That the image the USA has about being the land of milk and honey and fairness and success is BULLSHIT.

We know that. That's why we elected Donald Trump. He was the only one actually interested in addressing some key issues among blue collar working class people. The Democrats abandoned what was once their base, and the Republicans mostly couldn't care less either.

If you take some stats about real working conditions in the present of the USA's labor force---the USA's working masses are not getting good and safe and consistently beneficial working conditions. Why? The neoliberal agenda Blackjack.

Right. That's why a lot of people oppose the neoliberal agenda, but I think to many people's frustrations, they are not abandoning capitalism because they do not see capitalism and neoliberalism as one and the same.

Nationalism is not going to work with these vultures Relampaguito.

They aren't going to like it, but so what? At this point, people understand that being called a racist, etc. only means that you aren't willing to give free reign to neoliberals/neoconservatives. All these nasty connotations are just about trying to shut people up.

I am not beholden to nationalistic ideas BJ...especially to a nation that never gave my homeland equal rights.

They were never going to, because they need the legal fiction of a few places over which the United States is sovereign and people who have US citizenship, but not access to the Bill of Rights. That's how empires operate. The welfare state is imperial. You talk about equality, but not when it comes to tax rates. Why? The welfare state is hungry and flat taxes cannot fund it. So you have to implement inequality in your tax code while purporting to be in favor of equality. There are lots of contradictory elements here. That's why I think equality is no longer a very useful abstraction.

[ralfy]

The cost of living in the U.S. is twice that of countries like the Philippines but the min. wage almost eight times higher ($7.25 an hour vs. at most $1.25). That's why many in poor countries want to work in the U.S.

Globally, around 71 pct of people live on less than $10 daily (around $1.25 an hour for eight hours of work).

https://money.cnn.com/2015/07/08/news/e ... ow-income/

[Tainari88]

We know that. That's why we elected Donald Trump. He was the only one actually interested in addressing some key issues among blue collar working class people. The Democrats abandoned what was once their base, and the Republicans mostly couldn't care less either.

He was the only one interested in addressing some blue collar issues? The man was a damn liar and he never respected the working class at all. He is a class conscious grifter. If USA citizens equate some asshole grifter billionaire narcissist with a working class hero they got serious deficits in knowing what a class conscious government is about that responds to the working class. No one in other nations ever would make the mistake of thinking a Trump guy who gives tax cuts to billionaires and etc are the working man's solution to their problems. That is for totally gullible foolish people BJ. Both parties have abandoned their base true. But the socialists do care and do work hard for them. But they are labeled as enemies of the people and liars and wrong and immoral and hated on all the damn time...radical left. When in fact they were the only people who in the past got real concessions from the very wealthy. Eight hour workdays, and everything else. Howard Zinn, and many other historians have very detailed and fact based histories about how child labor, and other forms of labor were fought out in the USA. It wasn't some Donald Trump conman who fought for them EVER. It was the international socialists. Always. These 'rights' don't show up out of the blue BJ. Never. They are fought for. AAnd the right wing silver spoon in their mouths oligarchs NEVER fight the good fight for the working class. It goes to show how effective the lying and fake propaganda there is about what the REAL LEFT is actually composed of.I can't believe how UNINFORMED the public is about HISTORY in this world. It is going to be a long haul getting the brainwashed to understand what is going on in their own society in the USA. The Mexicans are far more consistent identifying who is screwing them over.


Right. That's why a lot of people oppose the neoliberal agenda, but I think to many people's frustrations, they are not abandoning capitalism because they do not see capitalism and neoliberalism as one and the same.

They are not abandoning capitalism? Who is running international capitalist industries? The NEOLIBERALS/NEOCON/PRO WAR folks. They are in charge of the capitalistism practiced today that if not dealt with and stripped of power are going to destroy the entire world. The natural world, the economies of nations, and the workers who will be left behind to fend for themselves as they encroach more deeply into the slimmer and slimmer resources left to the masses. Hedges is right...they will expand the sacrifice zones like Camden, NJ, and Pine Ridge, SD and Coal country West Virginia to increasingly more cities and states and places and they will live in bubbles in protected zones for them--far from the destruction. Unless people start waking up to that reality we are all doomed. Capitalism as practiced in this reality of 2020 is neoliberalism. They won that election BJ. Trump lost that election. Why? Because the neoliberals behind the scenes are the kingmakers and the decisionmakers. If they are not the 'real' capitalists Blackjack then who are? Some capitalists that have not made an appearance yet that the working class can rely on to fight for them? But are not socialists or real leftists but capitalist light people? No, BJ the socialists are making a comeback from obscurity because the capitalist system is actually creating a reaction. And the answer is the real LEFT. Not the liberals who are a bunch of fakers who pay lip service to the working man or working woman. There is going to be an international fight for power and control of humanity's destiny BJ. The majority of the world is not composed of millionaires, billionaires and oligarchs. Nor of neoliberals nor of stock market investors watching their profits. It is composed of ordinary people who trade their labor for survival and who rely on security for their families future. In the end who is going to represent them? The socialists. Not the capitalists. The capitalists betrayed all the people who work for a living in many nations. They betrayed their people in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, South Africa, Mali, Bangladesh, PRC, etc the entire world of regular working people are being betrayed by these corporations loyal to no one and to any nation but their own GREED. And they are going to get their asses kicked by the masses. But it won't be some foolish people thinking Trump is the answer to their troubles. Once they wake up to that fact? We will see who wins the final rounds BJ. I am certain it won't be the capitalist class with the obscene amounts of privileges. Because history is on the side of the ones who are used to struggling and fighting for a better day. If that was not the heart of our species Blackjack? Never would have made it t of the Stone Age. We are meant to understand our own struggles. It is one of the cornerstones of the theory of evolution. Struggle. Variation, Adaptation. And the capitalists think that struggle for thousands of years was in vain? That it doesn't mean any real consequences for their selfish, greedy, sociopathic behavior? They are going to find out how wrong they are. Soon.

They aren't going to like it, but so what? At this point, people understand that being called a racist, etc. only means that you aren't willing to give free reign to neoliberals/neoconservatives. All these nasty connotations are just about trying to shut people up.

No BJ, the capitalist class wants to do divide and conquer. The more working people they can snow and lie and manipulate and scapegoat to disrupt any unity across many nations the better it is for their own stability. They know that by pitting white vs black or native versus foreign or women versus men and so on and of forth they will be able to hold on to the hammers of power for a very long time. And the ones who are racists BJ because they don't love enough and don't care about the Puerto Ricans or the Blacks or the Chinese or the etc people because they are not part of those groups fall into that lie and that manipulation of not recognizing a common thread of human suffering and of human struggle in all of the people across the globe. And if you pay attention to those kinds of dumb differences between so genetically overwhelming and you can't even see them as human because your lily-white ass is special and can never see a human reality in another race, nationality, creed, or group? Those freaks win. And I am not into letting them win BJ. You are. I am not. If you keep believing in superiority bullshit and racist categories like you do? The neoliberals cut your legs off. And they win. So you go and give them the victory BJ. I never will. You don't care. You said it Relampaguito. You don't care. You really don't care and as such, they won. Once people don't care about others because they are not as equal as they are? The neoliberals stay in power. You are effectively giving them the win.



They were never going to, because they need the legal fiction of a few places over which the United States is sovereign and people who have US citizenship, but not access to the Bill of Rights. That's how empires operate. The welfare state is imperial. You talk about equality, but not when it comes to tax rates. Why? The welfare state is hungry and flat taxes cannot fund it. So you have to implement inequality in your tax code while purporting to be in favor of equality. There are lots of contradictory elements here. That's why I think equality is no longer a very useful abstraction.

I know how empires operate. I am against empires. They are not institutions that know how to hold on to power for centuries because they squander everything and lose power consistently because they put all their faith in their own selfish needs and don't understand that if you consistently have overweening ambitions and waste and lack of balance? You forfeit it all in the turmoil that is produced.

Empires fall due to the lack of respect for limits. Do you think the USA is any different? I don't.

[ckaihatsu]

Then Putin moving into Syria and hacking our elections in 2016 and attempted to hack our elections again during the 2020 election.

For the past four-plus years, the Times has been relentlessly promoting the narrative that the greatest threat to American democracy and the “sanctity” of US elections emanates from Russia and Vladimir Putin.

The Times initiated this propaganda campaign during the 2016 election, claiming that Putin was the mastermind behind a campaign of hacking and disinformation aimed at undermining Hillary Clinton and electing Donald Trump. Times columnist Paul Krugman launched this absurd and unsubstantiated conspiracy theory with his July 2016 op-ed piece titled “The Siberian Candidate,” contending that Trump was the witting or unwitting puppet of the diabolical Russian president.

Hailing election security, New York Times drops its “Russian meddling” narrative

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/1 ... s-n26.html

---

It's unconstitutional to use government power to recognize a religion in the US. American workers do have paid vacation and family and medical leave. Why don't you know this?

Splitting 5 to 4, Supreme Court Backs Religious Challenge to Cuomo’s Virus Shutdown Order

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/us/s ... -york.html


---

There are tax loopholes for incredibly wealthy companies like Amazon.com.

Yes, and there are tax loopholes in Europe too. England's corporate tax rate is 20%. In the US, it's 21%. In Ireland, the business tax rate is 12.5%.

Besides the offshore tax havens, there's also corporate-scale *money laundering* -- the shorthand term for this is 'capitalism':

The FinCEN Files are leaked documents from the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), that have been investigated by BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and globally publicised on 20 September 2020.[1][2] The reports describe over 200,000 suspicious financial transactions valued at over US$2 trillion that occurred from 1999 to 2017 across multiple global financial institutions.[1] The documents appear to show that while both the banks and the United States Government had this financial intelligence, they did little to stop activities such as money laundering.[1] The information implicates financial institutions in more than 170 countries who played a role in facilitating money laundering and other fraudulent crimes.[1] Journalists around the world have criticized both the banks and the US government, the BBC stating it shows how the "world's biggest banks have allowed criminals to move dirty money around the world", and BuzzFeed News claiming the files "offer an unprecedented view of global financial corruption, the banks enabling it, and the government agencies that watch as it flourishes."[1][3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinCEN_Files

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And where do those materials come from, those funds? The labor of workers. The Capitalists are an un-necessary part of the equation.

If that were the case, competition would have weeded them out a long time ago.

Sure, society needs *social organization* of its production and materials, which is currently provided by capitalist private property ownership, through capital, but it doesn't *have* to be this way.


Components of Social Production

Spoiler: show

Also:


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show

---

I only watched the beginning of the OP video but I agree with it.

I'm not saying capitalism is some perfect system, nor am i even defending capitalism in this thread. What i've said is that laborers aren't the only important part of job creation, you can't have an economy without somebody putting up investment and risk of money and creating the business model. That can be the workers themselves, but it is a different and necessary component than simply labour.

I'm also arguing there's no such thing as "wage slavery", and workers aren't "slaves". I'll fully acknowledge that many workers are exploited and work under less than humane conditions and this is wrong.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals.

For the sake of simplicity, in the discussion that follows I shall call “workers” all those who do not share in the ownership of the means of production—although this does not quite correspond to the customary use of the term. The owner of the means of production is in a position to purchase the labor power of the worker. By using the means of production, the worker produces new goods which become the property of the capitalist. The essential point about this process is the relation between what the worker produces and what he is paid, both measured in terms of real value. Insofar as the labor contract is “free,” what the worker receives is determined not by the real value of the goods he produces, but by his minimum needs and by the capitalists’ requirements for labor power in relation to the number of workers competing for jobs. It is important to understand that even in theory the payment of the worker is not determined by the value of his product.

Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before.

https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism

Why Socialism? Essay by Albert Einstein May 1949

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=121145

[blackjack21]

The man was a damn liar and he never respected the working class at all.

So you're saying he's not a liar anymore? Trump understands the blue collar working class in ways that the establishment politicians of either party do not.

He is a class conscious grifter.

And this distinguishes him from Biden or other establishment pols in what way? This is where I think your feelings overcome your thoughts. You find Trump repulsive, which is fine. However, you stop looking at the differences between him and his political adversaries, and there are significant differences between Trump and establishment politicians.

If USA citizens equate some asshole grifter billionaire narcissist with a working class hero they got serious deficits in knowing what a class conscious government is about that responds to the working class.

He was the ONLY major party candidate for president other than Bernie Sanders that would seriously address those issues. Even Sanders used to be honest about the effects of illegal immigration on blue collar workers.

No one in other nations ever would make the mistake of thinking a Trump guy who gives tax cuts to billionaires and etc are the working man's solution to their problems.

Nobody who doesn't understand global finance would see that. However, when the US corporate tax rate was 40% and the rest of the world's corporate tax rate was half that, it forced US corporations to keep investment dollars overseas. By cutting corporate tax rates and bringing money back to the US, it increased job opportunities, wages and the stock market--creating lower unemployment for blacks, Hispanics and women, while their real wages increased at the most rapid rate in 30 years. For many working class people, improved employment prospects and improved income are what they want.

But the socialists do care and do work hard for them.

Nobody care how hard you work or how hard you try. They care about results. Socialists can care and work hard all they want, but they have a track record of frequently producing shitty results.

But they are labeled as enemies of the people and liars and wrong and immoral and hated on all the damn time...radical left.

That's typically because socialists are a collection of misfits who do not respect the private property of others. Nobody is fighting for an end to the 8 hour work day in the West with a hope of making people work 12-16 hour days and on weekends. That does happen in other societies--the Arab states come quickly to mind for me.

It wasn't some Donald Trump conman who fought for them EVER. It was the international socialists. Always. These 'rights' don't show up out of the blue BJ. Never.

Donald Trump specifically fought to prevent illegal aliens, outsourcing and dumping from driving down the wages of US blue collar workers. That's a fact. He actually was effective at it too, which has the establishment shitting their pants. Unemployment did go down, wage rates did go up, and the stock market did go up. Those are facts. Running back to the 19th and early 20th centuries doesn't invalidate what Trump did for US blue collar workers in the 21st Century.

The NEOLIBERALS/NEOCON/PRO WAR folks. They are in charge of the capitalistism practiced today that if not dealt with and stripped of power are going to destroy the entire world.

Yes. Donald Trump talked a big game, but he wasn't one of them. Hence, why he's the first president not to put the US into a war situation. Every president since George H.W. Bush has done that.

The natural world, the economies of nations, and the workers who will be left behind to fend for themselves as they encroach more deeply into the slimmer and slimmer resources left to the masses.

Advanced economic growth comes from IQ-based industries. IT, medicine, genetic engineering, etc. It's actually a lot of the "green energy" cabal that wants to strip mine the Earth for lithium that is the latest craze for moving tons of Earth.

they will expand the sacrifice zones like Camden, NJ, and Pine Ridge, SD and Coal country West Virginia to increasingly more cities and states and places and they will live in bubbles in protected zones for them--far from the destruction.

They will? They already do.

They won that election BJ. Trump lost that election. Why? Because the neoliberals behind the scenes are the kingmakers and the decisionmakers.

Nobody believes Joe Biden got 80M votes. Not even Joe Biden. The neoliberals behind the scenes controlled big city political machines and were able to fix their vote deficit. That's why nobody is celebrating what would otherwise be an impressive win if it were in fact true.

Some capitalists that have not made an appearance yet that the working class can rely on to fight for them?

Capitalists are often behind the scenes of your socialist movements too. Slavery was abolished by capitalists, not by socialists. They harnessed Christianity to that end, because there was no significant socialism in the US. You are claiming a lot for socialism that was actually done by Protestant capitalists. The Social Gospel in the United States was not about socialism at all. They were progressives. They also gave us Eugenics. Are you really going to claim that prohibition of alcohol sales came from socialists too?

No, BJ the socialists are making a comeback from obscurity because the capitalist system is actually creating a reaction. And the answer is the real LEFT.

See my post here to understand why it's not going to work. The problem in Western societies is an over-dedication to egalitarianism and a lack of scope on what equality was meant to be. We have MASSIVE inequality today. Can you really blame homelessness on Bill Gates? No. It's not his fault. He can be a dick, but mostly to his software competitors who are fairly well off. Jeff Bezos is an asshole, sure. I'll give you that, but he can't do that to his IT workers. He can only do it to his drivers and warehouse workers. So sure, you have some real dicks out there. However, that does not address homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness, etc. Those people aren't being exploited by capitalists--just the opposite.

The majority of the world is not composed of millionaires, billionaires and oligarchs.

It's composed of people who don't speak a common language, are frequently uneducated or undereducated, and live in social backwaters. You're not going to get the Taliban to join the next socialist international Tainari88. It's not going to happen.

In the end who is going to represent them? The socialists. Not the capitalists.

Who is going to employ them? At best, labor unions have managed to get workers better wages in first world countries. However, when they push too hard and it's cheaper to outsource industries, the industries move off shore--generally to very poor countries whose workers make more at these industries than they ever would on the farm. Why don't you see Chinese workers striking? They've seen nothing but a miraculous improvement in the standard of living as a result of 30 years of free trade with the United States and Europe. It's blue collar working class workers in the US and Europe that are protesting now--and it was Trump who nailed the problem on the head and worked to address it.

The capitalists betrayed all the people who work for a living in many nations. They betrayed their people in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, South Africa, Mali, Bangladesh, PRC, etc the entire world of regular working people are being betrayed by these corporations loyal to no one and to any nation but their own GREED.

You believe that all these people are going to unite. You'll have an easier time herding cats.

I know how empires operate. I am against empires. They are not institutions that know how to hold on to power for centuries because they squander everything and lose power consistently because they put all their faith in their own selfish needs and don't understand that if you consistently have overweening ambitions and waste and lack of balance? You forfeit it all in the turmoil that is produced.

Empires fall due to the lack of respect for limits. Do you think the USA is any different? I don't.

It's different in the sense that what happens overseas is not as important to the average American as it was to other empires. The US establishment is going to fall, but not to socialists. FDR created the "New Deal," which was about bringing capitalists and the working class to the table and effectively cutting a new deal. That pretty much ended with the Clinton administration with the euphoria of the fall of the Soviet Union, the opening of free trade, the end of breaking up monopolies, the end of Glass Steagal, the opening up of the internet, etc.

The progressives don't know what to do anymore. They're exhausted. They've run out of ideas, and this iteration of them will end up on the ash heap of history. Take all the homeless alcoholics and drug addicts out there. Socialism won't help them over the long run. That's not a problem of capitalist exploitation. What works best for them long term is support groups with a religious component. Some of them need medically supervised detox, which maybe the socialists would help with. Look at this coronavirus. I know two people personally who have died because AA meetings were shut down. I know one who committed suicide from the lockdowns. I know of nobody who has died from Covid, and I know three who have had it, which is statistically normal. Socialism has a one track mind focused on labor exploitation, wages and property. It does not address so many other societal problems, because like liberalism, it presumes a marginal equality that is only there for probably 80% of the population. You will always see the 80/20 Pareto rule if we're meant to believe statistical distributions. Socialism lost because it was less dynamic than capitalism.

Something else has to evolve to address society's largest problems today, because globalism has also made much of Marxism obsolete. That is, the people who are the worst off are not exploited at all. They are unemployed and dispossessed, usually due to anti-social personality disorders, mental illness, or drug and alcohol addictions.

[ckaihatsu]

Something else has to evolve to address society's largest problems today, because globalism has also made much of Marxism obsolete. That is, the people who are the worst off are not exploited at all. They are unemployed and dispossessed, usually due to anti-social personality disorders, mental illness, or drug and alcohol addictions.

As usual, your side of things is trying to *psychologize* politics and economics, instead of *addressing* politics and economics.

Exploitation applies to everyone who works for a wage, which is the *majority* of society:

Theory

The problem of explaining the source of surplus value is expressed by Friedrich Engels as follows:

"Whence comes this surplus-value? It cannot come either from the buyer buying the commodities under their value, or from the seller selling them above their value. For in both cases the gains and the losses of each individual cancel each other, as each individual is in turn buyer and seller. Nor can it come from cheating, for though cheating can enrich one person at the expense of another, it cannot increase the total sum possessed by both, and therefore cannot augment the sum of the values in circulation. (...) This problem must be solved, and it must be solved in a purely economic way, excluding all cheating and the intervention of any force — the problem being: how is it possible constantly to sell dearer than one has bought, even on the hypothesis that equal values are always exchanged for equal values?"[7]

Marx's solution was to distinguish between labor-time worked and labor power. A worker who is sufficiently productive can produce an output value greater than what it costs to hire him. Although his wage seems to be based on hours worked, in an economic sense this wage does not reflect the full value of what the worker produces. Effectively it is not labour which the worker sells, but his capacity to work.

Imagine a worker who is hired for an hour and paid $10 per hour. Once in the capitalist's employ, the capitalist can have him operate a boot-making machine with which the worker produces $10 worth of work every 15 minutes. Every hour, the capitalist receives $40 worth of work and only pays the worker $10, capturing the remaining $30 as gross revenue. Once the capitalist has deducted fixed and variable operating costs of (say) $20 (leather, depreciation of the machine, etc.), he is left with $10. Thus, for an outlay of capital of $30, the capitalist obtains a surplus value of $10; his capital has not only been replaced by the operation, but also has increased by $10.

The worker cannot capture this benefit directly because he has no claim to the means of production (e.g. the boot-making machine) or to its products, and his capacity to bargain over wages is restricted by laws and the supply/demand for wage labour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value#Theory

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[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show

[annatar1914]

@blackjack21 , you said towards the end of your discourse something quite interesting to me;

The progressives don't know what to do anymore. They're exhausted. They've run out of ideas, and this iteration of them will end up on the ash heap of history.

A world without ''progressives'' as such will see them become instead what they call ''reactionaries'' now, and with a vengeance too. In my opinion anyway.

[Tainari88]

So you're saying he's not a liar anymore? Trump understands the blue collar working class in ways that the establishment politicians of either party do not.

He doesn't understand a damn thing of importance BJ. He understands how to con people and to beg and to manipulate and ripoff. Most working people in the world know how to work and not to be lying ripoff conman. He is an asshole who LIES. You don't want to accept it? that is not my problem. He is sending these emails to his supporters. Are you going to give him some of your MONEY? Yes or no? Answer the question. Put some faith of yours in that piece of lying shit. Go ahead. Final notice....send me some money. OBEY ME. He is a damn conman BJ. Vete para el carajo con esa MIERDA de Teoria. Panic emails. What the hell!

And this distinguishes him from Biden or other establishment pols in what way? This is where I think your feelings overcome your thoughts. You find Trump repulsive, which is fine. However, you stop looking at the differences between him and his political adversaries, and there are significant differences between Trump and establishment politicians.

How? He obeys banksters. He got a phone call and changed his mind about wiping out PR debt. Why? The Bankers made the call and he obeys them. How is that different than Biden or others? He is a sellout and dependent on the establishment as well the difference is he never learned to temper his psychological problems in any way that makes him a useful figurehead like being the POTUS. I don't see how unique he is. Those establishment politicians are a bunch of conmen who obey their corporate masters and he is what? Mr. Independent? He is not. You are wrong on that one.

Why do you think I support establishment politicians BJ? You are really not telling the truth. Have I voted for them once in my voting life? No. Not once. Do I think they are the solution to the problems? No. So, why do you want to paint me as an establishment politician supporter? Because you are not being honest about what I do. Why? I don't know. You are into distortion might be the answer.

He was the ONLY major party candidate for president other than Bernie Sanders that would seriously address those issues. Even Sanders used to be honest about the effects of illegal immigration on blue collar workers.
Sanders is about stabilizing each nation's working people. Having them playing musical chairs looking for stable work when people can barely survive is not practical. But he doesn't believe they are rapists and criminals and painting the Mexican people as villains to manipulate a bunch of ethnocentric people with little knowledge about who is not paying them living wages is for fools to believe Blackjack. The marketing and selling of human labor and trying to get that on the cheap is a very capitalist thing. Whether you want to admit it or not. Fix the premise of capitalism don't blame the blue-collar types from other nations. That is my socialist stance. What is yours?

No BJ, Sanders knows very well that undermining any country's working-class with scab workers is not a solution over time. All of us know that. I never tell the Mexicans here in pandemic conditions that the solution to their lack of living wages is packing up and crossing the border and working at some low wage shit job with fear of being discovered. That is not a long term solution. But, having a bunch of jerks thinking that Mexicans are the reason why they can't get a decent paying job is for fools Blackjack.


Nobody who doesn't understand global finance would see that. However, when the US corporate tax rate was 40% and the rest of the world's corporate tax rate was half that, it forced US corporations to keep investment dollars overseas. By cutting corporate tax rates and bringing money back to the US, it increased job opportunities, wages and the stock market--creating lower unemployment for blacks, Hispanics and women, while their real wages increased at the most rapid rate in 30 years. For many working class people, improved employment prospects and improved income are what they want.

It forced? No, the capitalists don't want to pay taxes and they don't want to have lower profit margins to stabilize their work force. To hell with what they want BJ. I don't identify with them. Again this battle is about changing paradigms and value systems. Not a competition or race to the bottom in which everyone who works will never have power and only the top elite capitalists have power. That is not going to happen BJ. Because it is just a false reality. The majority of the world is going to be the driving force. Most activities are social activities and the engines of life are about large groups of people. This COVID is a teacher in that way about what we value as a society. Socializing and doing things in groups. It is imperative that people understand that. It is not all just computers and internet work. It is about actual human contact.

Nobody care how hard you work or how hard you try. They care about results. Socialists can care and work hard all they want, but they have a track record of frequently producing shitty results.

That is not true BJ. Everything that humans do in cooperative groups yield beautiful,consistent and great results. Building ships for the sea, manufacturing cars, trucks and building everything from pyramids to skyscrapers to bridges and roads. People enjoy concerts and sports events and shopping and celebrating and going to meetings to cure their AA issues and their problems. Think of activities people do in cooperative units that result in wealth, prosperity, progress, and infrastructure Relampago. It is all of it. All of that produces great results. Taxes invested in public education is a more educated society. Everything done in a socialist context is the very fiber of society. Selfish greed results in crime, results in inequality and in strife, and competing for greed and lack of cooperation and only thinking about being dominant and controlling, and wanting more when you don't need more because you want to DOMINATE and not cooperate and never-ending wars is what capitalism tends to do. Everything it benefits from is about the society cooperating in an endeavor to get to a goal. That is socialist. The best of humanity is socialist and produces good results. The selfish shit that you worship produces shitty results. And that is the truth and nothing but the truth so help you Blackjack.


That's typically because socialists are a collection of misfits who do not respect the private property of others. Nobody is fighting for an end to the 8 hour work day in the West with a hope of making people work 12-16 hour days and on weekends. That does happen in other societies--the Arab states come quickly to mind for me.


Donald Trump specifically fought to prevent illegal aliens, outsourcing and dumping from driving down the wages of US blue collar workers. That's a fact. He actually was effective at it too, which has the establishment shitting their pants. Unemployment did go down, wage rates did go up, and the stock market did go up. Those are facts. Running back to the 19th and early 20th centuries doesn't invalidate what Trump did for US blue collar workers in the 21st Century.


Yes. Donald Trump talked a big game, but he wasn't one of them. Hence, why he's the first president not to put the US into a war situation. Every president since George H.W. Bush has done that.


Advanced economic growth comes from IQ-based industries. IT, medicine, genetic engineering, etc. It's actually a lot of the "green energy" cabal that wants to strip mine the Earth for lithium that is the latest craze for moving tons of Earth.


They will? They already do.


Nobody believes Joe Biden got 80M votes. Not even Joe Biden. The neoliberals behind the scenes controlled big city political machines and were able to fix their vote deficit. That's why nobody is celebrating what would otherwise be an impressive win if it were in fact true.


Capitalists are often behind the scenes of your socialist movements too. Slavery was abolished by capitalists, not by socialists. They harnessed Christianity to that end, because there was no significant socialism in the US. You are claiming a lot for socialism that was actually done by Protestant capitalists. The Social Gospel in the United States was not about socialism at all. They were progressives. They also gave us Eugenics. Are you really going to claim that prohibition of alcohol sales came from socialists too?


See my post here to understand why it's not going to work. The problem in Western societies is an over-dedication to egalitarianism and a lack of scope on what equality was meant to be. We have MASSIVE inequality today. Can you really blame homelessness on Bill Gates? No. It's not his fault. He can be a dick, but mostly to his software competitors who are fairly well off. Jeff Bezos is an asshole, sure. I'll give you that, but he can't do that to his IT workers. He can only do it to his drivers and warehouse workers. So sure, you have some real dicks out there. However, that does not address homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness, etc. Those people aren't being exploited by capitalists--just the opposite.


It's composed of people who don't speak a common language, are frequently uneducated or undereducated, and live in social backwaters. You're not going to get the Taliban to join the next socialist international Tainari88. It's not going to happen.


Who is going to employ them? At best, labor unions have managed to get workers better wages in first world countries. However, when they push too hard and it's cheaper to outsource industries, the industries move off shore--generally to very poor countries whose workers make more at these industries than they ever would on the farm. Why don't you see Chinese workers striking? They've seen nothing but a miraculous improvement in the standard of living as a result of 30 years of free trade with the United States and Europe. It's blue collar working class workers in the US and Europe that are protesting now--and it was Trump who nailed the problem on the head and worked to address it.


You believe that all these people are going to unite. You'll have an easier time herding cats.


It's different in the sense that what happens overseas is not as important to the average American as it was to other empires. The US establishment is going to fall, but not to socialists. FDR created the "New Deal," which was about bringing capitalists and the working class to the table and effectively cutting a new deal. That pretty much ended with the Clinton administration with the euphoria of the fall of the Soviet Union, the opening of free trade, the end of breaking up monopolies, the end of Glass Steagal, the opening up of the internet, etc.

The progressives don't know what to do anymore. They're exhausted. They've run out of ideas, and this iteration of them will end up on the ash heap of history. Take all the homeless alcoholics and drug addicts out there. Socialism won't help them over the long run. That's not a problem of capitalist exploitation. What works best for them long term is support groups with a religious component. Some of them need medically supervised detox, which maybe the socialists would help with. Look at this coronavirus. I know two people personally who have died because AA meetings were shut down. I know one who committed suicide from the lockdowns. I know of nobody who has died from Covid, and I know three who have had it, which is statistically normal. Socialism has a one track mind focused on labor exploitation, wages and property. It does not address so many other societal problems, because like liberalism, it presumes a marginal equality that is only there for probably 80% of the population. You will always see the 80/20 Pareto rule if we're meant to believe statistical distributions. Socialism lost because it was less dynamic than capitalism.

Something else has to evolve to address society's largest problems today, because globalism has also made much of Marxism obsolete. That is, the people who are the worst off are not exploited at all. They are unemployed and dispossessed, usually due to anti-social personality disorders, mental illness, or drug and alcohol addictions.

[Politics_Observer]

@ckaihatsu

You do realize that the World Socialist Web Site is not exactly regarded as a paragon of objective journalism, right?

[Tainari88]

American Empire in Decline:

[blackjack21]

He is an asshole who LIES. You don't want to accept it?

What makes a politician isn't so much what he says, but what he does. Politicians are frequently lying assholes. It's not a distinguishing feature. It doesn't set one apart from another in any significant way from a policy perspective.

Are you going to give him some of your MONEY? Yes or no?

Personally, I will not be donating to any political campaigns. When Trump won, I bought a few bottles of Trump sparkling wine and sent it to some friends of mine--one a Democrat and the other a Republican.

How? He obeys banksters. He got a phone call and changed his mind about wiping out PR debt. Why? The Bankers made the call and he obeys them.

Maybe that's the case. I wasn't at the White House, but generally governments aren't allowed to go bankrupt. Municipal governments can, because they are merely corporations.

So, why do you want to paint me as an establishment politician supporter?

The idea that Biden will be better than Trump strikes me as incredibly naïve. You've seen me cheer on both AOC and Bernie Sanders, even though I don't support a single thing they represent. Getting the neoliberals out of power is object #1 for me.

But he doesn't believe they are rapists and criminals and painting the Mexican people as villains to manipulate a bunch of ethnocentric people with little knowledge about who is not paying them living wages is for fools to believe Blackjack.

Trump was attacking the government of Mexico for dumping some of their prison population in the United States. He did not at any point say that all Mexicans were rapists and criminals. In fact, he got a lot of free press because he took on political correctness and the distortions of the media. That's why the electorate rejected the assertions made by the media. You have not. Again, it seems to me that your feelings inform your thoughts.

It forced? No, the capitalists don't want to pay taxes

Publicly-traded corporations are required by law to maximize shareholder value.

Everything that humans do in cooperative groups yield beautiful,consistent and great results.

You mean like Nazis cooperating with each other to kill of Jews? Armies are cooperative. They kill people. Everything people do in cooperative groups is beautiful, consistent and produces great results? You think the Soviet gulags were wonderful? What about the East German Stasi? What about Soviet collective farms? Wonderful? How about Mao's Great Leap Forward? Beautiful?

Selfish greed results in crime, results in inequality and in strife, and competing for greed and lack of cooperation and only thinking about being dominant and controlling, and wanting more when you don't need more because you want to DOMINATE and not cooperate and never-ending wars is what capitalism tends to do.

So why did the Soviets invade Afghanistan then? They weren't capitalist and neither was Afghanistan. War isn't unique to capitalism. Not even by a longshot.

The selfish shit that you worship produces shitty results.

You mean like cell phone networks? Cloud computing and cloud storage?

[annatar1914]

@blackjack21

So why did the Soviets invade Afghanistan then? They weren't capitalist and neither was Afghanistan. War isn't unique to capitalism. Not even by a longshot.

Given the history of the Soviet experience fighting the Basmachi in Central Asia, who wound up with bases in Afghanistan into the 1930's, the collapsing situation with Afghanistan's central government and CIA involvement (well before Reagan or Rep. Charlie Wilson) to boot, it was a risky but not unintelligent move to occupy Afghanistan, much as the United States is now.

Here's an article with background on the basmachi;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basmachi_movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_ ... stan_(1929)

[Politics_Observer]

@annatar1914

Dude, when I was in Afghanistan, after becoming more familiar with the people, their mentality and the terrain over there, I thought to myself, "Brezhnev must have been smoking some very serious crack to think he could invade this place and turn it into an atheistic communist state. Who on Earth would want this rock anyways." While on patrol you could stare out and see a graveyard of old Soviet tanks and BMPs from what was once there and active during the 80s Soviet occupation. It was surreal.

[annatar1914]

@annatar1914

Dude, when I was in Afghanistan, after becoming more familiar with the people, their mentality and the terrain over there, I thought to myself, "Brezhnev must have been smoking some very serious crack to think he could invade this place and turn it into an atheistic communist state. Who on Earth would want this rock anyways." While on patrol you could stare out and see a graveyard of old Soviet tanks and BMPs from what was once there and active during the 80s Soviet occupation. It was surreal.

@Politics_Observer

They were dealing with Jihadis for a long time, not just during the Soviet Period but well before too. And always, it's been to stop the raiding and other pinprick warfare, for century after century. Russia would beat her tormentors and annex them, then more raids from further lands, lather, rinse, and repeat. And by the 1930's, the Jihadis and bandits always had a hidey hole in Afghanistan. In the 1950's and 1960's it seemed as if Soviet help with the Afghan Monarchy and then the Afghan Republic would pay off; they built schools and dams and set up electricity in rural areas, strengthened the central government and military, all the usual things. But it was never going to last for long.

Sound familiar to our American experience?

[Politics_Observer]

@annatar1914

My small infantry FOB sat on top of an old Soviet base (it has been closed down for several years now since I have been there so this FOB no longer exists or is no longer under our control). We picked a good location to defend ourselves. I can see why the Soviets picked that location too. You could see out in all directions for a long ways out.

It would have been very difficult for somebody to speedily attack us without us spotting them first and being ready for them. As you looked out everywhere, you could see abandoned Soviet tanks and BMPs left over from the Soviet occupation. Frankly speaking, you did feel like you were defending a spot in a graveyard of past invaders and occupiers.

Guys in my unit at the time remarked that history didn't seem to be on our side insofar as "winning" any war in Afghanistan given it's past history of running the British and the Soviets out. Plus, it seems Alexander the Great couldn't ever completely subdue the people in Afghanistan during his time.

There was a book written by a Soviet soldier who immigrated here to the U.S. before he passed away and was flown back to Russia to be buried. In the book, he had pictures of a statue that Alexander the Great left in Afghanistan when he invaded and occupied the country. On the statue, it was inscribed what Alexander the Great said about Afghanistan: "Anybody can occupy Afghanistan but ye shall never vanquish it." We have been there going on what, 18 or 19 years now.

[Politics_Observer]

@annatar1914

Yeah, the TV show Paranormal Witness did an episode on a team of Marines who were in Afghanistan at the same time I was there (2009-2010). During their time there, they had to guard a particular spot where it turned out a whole bunch of Soviet soldiers were buried in a mass grave. They were getting very strange radio traffic during the night and seeing very odd things. The Paranormal Witness episode was called Beneath the Rock which YouTube offers it here for rent:

.

I watched this when it first came out and I believe it was real. I believe those Marines. I have never believed in the paranormal or been superstitious. but Afghanistan turned me into a believer and made me superstitious. I have never believed any of that crap. But after being to Afghanistan myself, I believe every word of those Marines in that particular episode. I have no doubt in my mind all of it is true.

[ckaihatsu]

@ckaihatsu

You do realize that the World Socialist Web Site is not exactly regarded as a paragon of objective journalism, right?

Slanderish disparagement and imputations, huh?

Can't you do better than *character assassination* -- ?

Try addressing actual *points* -- playground politics isn't *real* politics.

[ckaihatsu]

The mujahideen were variously backed primarily by the United States, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, and the United Kingdom; the conflict was a Cold War-era proxy war. Between 562,000[47] and 2,000,000 civilians were killed and millions of Afghans fled the country as refugees,[48][49][51][52] mostly to Pakistan and Iran.

The foundations of the conflict were laid by the Saur Revolution, a 1978 coup wherein Afghanistan's communist party took power, initiating a series of radical modernization and land reforms throughout the country. These reforms were deeply unpopular among the more traditional rural population and established power structures.[53] The repressive nature of the "Democratic Republic",[54] which vigorously suppressed opposition and executed thousands of political prisoners, led to the rise of anti-government armed groups; by April 1979, large parts of the country were in open rebellion.[55] The communist party itself experienced deep internal rivalries between the Khalqists and Parchamites; in September 1979, People's Democratic Party General Secretary Nur Mohammad Taraki was assassinated under orders of the second-in-command, Hafizullah Amin, which soured relations with the Soviet Union. Eventually the Soviet government, under leader Leonid Brezhnev, decided to deploy the 40th Army on December 24, 1979.[56] Arriving in the capital Kabul, they staged a coup (Operation Storm-333),[57] killing General Secretary Amin and installing Soviet loyalist Babrak Karmal from the rival faction Parcham.[55] The deployment had been variously called an "invasion" (by Western media and the rebels) or a legitimate supporting intervention (by the Soviet Union and the Afghan government)[58][59] on the basis of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Afghan_War

[Politics_Observer]

@ckaihatsu

Post your facts from academically accepted authoritative sources or news sources that practice high journalistic standards like the BBC or CNN for example so that we can both discuss REAL facts based on REAL DEAL reality. Not fake facts that come from Fox News for example that is based on fantasy and delusion.

[ckaihatsu]

@ckaihatsu

Post your facts from academically accepted authoritative sources or news sources that practice high journalistic standards like the BBC or CNN for example so that we can both discuss REAL facts based on REAL DEAL reality. Not fake facts that come from Fox News for example that is based on fantasy and delusion.

*Or*, you do your regular *ignoring* of anything you find to be too *inconvenient* to your own ideology and beliefs, but you also *stop bitching* about the *source* of it.

How's *that* sound?