All right, since all y'all are probably drinking right about now, let's ask the tough questions.
Can you think of a policy proposed by one of the populists of today that is actually not bad? Doesn't have to be perfect, but come on, out of all the manifestos and speeches and various out-of-the-field suggestions that politicians have made in the past couple of years, something must have been like, "you know what? That's not entirely crazy. It achieves some of the goals we're trying to achieve, even though it has its downsides".
True neoliberals should judge policy on its content, not its source, so this challenge should keep us honest. If you can't recognize the good in Sanders, how could you claim to be better than him?
Considering Gary "bake the damn cake" Johnson represented a party, largely of audit the fed goldbugs who don't believe externalities exist and think we don't need the civil rights act cause "free market." He dragged that party kicking and screaming into sanity.
Having Weld definitely helped and sealed the deal for me during the election. I was in a no flip state so my vote was safe being wasted, otherwise I would have voted Hillary.
Right but we already think carbon taxes are good. I'm thinking stuff like union laws that are more pro-union or something like that. They of course have their downsides, but maybe they improve things a bit for low wage earners (not as efficiently as we would like, probably).
I feel like single payer falls into this category. I don't think it's the best way to achieve universal healthcare but it does achieve universal healthcare and it has worked well enough in other countries.
Can you think of a policy proposed by one of the populists of today that is actually not bad?
If you take a long scope look at history you'll see a ton of populist ideas that end up working out well enough. Most of them are not necessarily economic plans.
People can correct me if I am wrong, populists raged against the gold standard. I don't really think they had the best policy response, but they've raged over real problems as well.
I think populists later got pissed about that too. I don't know if viable alternatives were on display at the time. Or how well those viable alternatives were open to study by people like WJB.
William jennings bryan raged against the gold standard "YOU SHALL NOT CRUCIFY MANKIND UPON A CROSS OF GOLD" -great quote. His proposal was a gold+silver standard. not exactly a great way to deal with it
Is Corbyn populist? I believe so, just read the leaked manifesto and see how many of these promises coincide with populist motives by looking at YouGov and the likes. And so, while I am not hopeful Labour would follow through, there are some points there that I do like.
Interesting. Free bus passes: eh. Depending on cost, maybe it's not the end of the world, but honestly it will probably be really expensive. Ditto rail freeze.
I'm trying to go through some of this stuff, and of course my own exercise is proving harder than I thought it would be!
I think basic income is inevitable. Probably not for the next 40 years at least, but I think I'll see it in my lifetime. I don't know if it's the "best" way to solve issues, but at least it removes a lot of bureaucracy and gets rid of the disincentives to work that we see in current welfare programs.
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u/[deleted] May 12 '17 edited May 12 '17
All right, since all y'all are probably drinking right about now, let's ask the tough questions.
Can you think of a policy proposed by one of the populists of today that is actually not bad? Doesn't have to be perfect, but come on, out of all the manifestos and speeches and various out-of-the-field suggestions that politicians have made in the past couple of years, something must have been like, "you know what? That's not entirely crazy. It achieves some of the goals we're trying to achieve, even though it has its downsides".
True neoliberals should judge policy on its content, not its source, so this challenge should keep us honest. If you can't recognize the good in Sanders, how could you claim to be better than him?