
Are liberals on the wrong side of history - npalli
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/are-liberals-on-the-wrong-side-of-history
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dankohn1
Gopnik is one of the top intellectuals writing today, and these three books
are a great jumping off point for his views on Trump and other illiberalism:

"Perhaps Tocqueville’s most brilliant insight (and Mishra, to his credit,
cites it) was that revolutions are produced by improved conditions and rising
expectations, not by mass immiseration. As Louis C.K. says, right now
everything is amazing and nobody is happy. Each citizen carries on her person
a computer more powerful than any available to a billionaire two decades ago,
and many are using their devices to express their unbridled rage at the
society that put them in our pockets."

~~~
theparanoid
Real income hasn't risen for the median worker in over a decade. Nobody knows
how to fix this.

Paying rent without stress is better than any smartphone.

~~~
dankohn1
>Real income hasn't risen for the median worker in over a decade. Nobody knows
how to fix this.

The fix is as simple as sufficiently progressive taxation to make the median
worker's income track the productivity growth of the economy. The fact that we
have made the political choices not to follow that path (as opposed to the
Scandinavian countries) is a different matter, but there is no doubt as to the
ability for the government to fix the problem you laid out.

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timbuckley
How does a (more) progressive tax system increase real median wage?

~~~
tunesmith
Envision a distribution where the median is far lower than the mean. (I think
median in US is mid-50's, average is mid-70's.)

Then imagine what it takes to bring the median closer - you have to squash the
curve (make it more progressive). You can either lop of the top end, shore up
the low end, or do some combination of the two.

To get a sense of just how progressive the tax system could be, consider the
rule of thumb that the value of money is roughly logarithmic.

Logarithmic tax systems have been designed - here's a simple one as a thought
experiment. They call it the logarithmic flat tax. First, figure out your
yearly revenue. Then, figure out how many times the poverty rate your income
is. Then take the log of that number, and then multiply it by a certain flat
constant that would be the same for everyone (to get the amount of tax revenue
the united states needs for instance - for the united states, that would be
around 9). The resulting number is the percentage of your gross that you
should pay in taxes.

If you apply that to all individuals and businesses, then you have a
progressive tax system that is basically equal in terms of how much it "hurts"
for every payer (the value of money being roughly logarithmic). Hint, it's
probably much lower than you are currently paying unless you are Apple or
Exxon. Last I checked, Bill Gates roughly pays an appropriate amount.

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rdtsc
> The liberal millennium was upon us as the year 2000 dawned; fifteen years
> later, the autocratic apocalypse is at hand.

Oh please. We lived in a golden age of enlightenment, peace (our past
president, did after all get the Nobel Peace prize), and prosperity and now
the dark ages have come. Probably brought about completely unexpectedly "by
the Russians".

> the failure of liberal élites around the world to address the perpetual
> problem of identity,

Maybe one of the reasons for its failure is precisely because they addressed
identity, but in the wrong way -- creating "Identity Politics". Everyone gets
to get called by the label they pick for themselves and it seems everything is
good. Except it is good only on the surface. Ultimately this is just impotent
outrage. Those who have power still do, those that don't still don't, even if
they get called however they wanted in the public sphere.

It is interesting that this also gets shuffled over to the "left". That is
liberals call themselves "leftists". Except, Marx would have probably laughed
at that, and would have said "Why don't you destroy those who have power,
instead of just forcing them to call you by a different label".

> American atavism has to take into account that the same system that produced
> Trump had immediately before given us the eight forward-looking years of
> Obama, who remains a far more popular figure than his successor.

Right. If the years would have been really forward looking and wonderful, we
would not have ended up with a TV personality as the president. Trump is just
a symptom. People expend tremendous amount of energy trying to get rid of
Trump somehow. Marching, talking of impeaching, veiled and misguided hints at
assassinations and so on without understanding he is a symptom of something
deeper. If he is gone, there would be Trump 2.0 replacing him. And I am sure,
just like I've heard people praising G.W. Bush compared to Trump, they'd be
praising Trump compared to Trump 2.0.

~~~
Toboe
>That is liberals call themselves "leftists"

Liberals call themselves "leftists"? Only ever saw it as a derogatory from the
(US) right.

(Edit: fixed formatting screw up)

~~~
rdtsc
Derogatory to "leftists" or to "liberals"?

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mcguire
One thing you have to say about the criticisms of liberalism and its
structural failures that led to WWI: at least communism, national socialism,
and various totalitarianisms had some meat to them. These attacks on
Enlightenment liberalism are just whining.

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kapauldo
Most of modern history is liberals slowly winning. Gender equality, slavery,
gay marriage, Obama care, EPA, you name it. Progress is unstoppable.

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belovedeagle
Someone needs to let the author in on the minor fact that classical liberalism
and "liberalism" in America today have little to do with each other, and that
the "rise of Trump" really has very little bearing on classical liberalism, as
devastating as it might seen to American "liberals".

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sandworm101
Someone needs to tell all American political pundits that the election of a
single person, even a party, in a single election means little in terms of
history. The US presidential election is no bellwether of world opinion.
Liberalism is alive and well amongst the people.

~~~
Turing_Machine
The Republicans now control the Presidency and both houses of Congress. They
will almost certainly wind up controlling the Supreme Court for at least a
generation, maybe two. They control 33 state governorships compared to 16 Dems
and one Independent. They control 32 state legislatures, 17 with a veto-proof
majority. The Dems control 13, 5 of which are veto-proof.

It's not just Trump, and it's not just a single election.

~~~
sandworm101
But it remains a single country and a single election period ("election"
almost always includes electing multiple people but it is still a single
election process) . The dems had control only a few months ago and could have
it back in a few years. SCOTUS's impact is purely local. It means little to
the rest of the world in the long run. In many places (canada) US politics
seems to have an opposite effect. America has shown liberals of the world how
not to do things.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"But it remains a single country and a single election period ...The dems had
control only a few months ago"

No, they've been losing ground pretty steadily for 20 years. The media didn't
pay much attention until recently because most of the losses were occurring in
"flyover" areas.

They're paying attention now.

Even at the Federal level, the Republicans have had control of the House of
Representatives since 2010, and the Senate since 2014.

And I don't agree that it's just the U.S. In other countries you have Brexit,
the rise of the Le Pen family in France, etc.

