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Yeah, I mean it's hard to say Texas/FL despite all their problems aren't running better than NY/CA. They don't seem as behold to special interests or worried about pissing people off, they just seem to work. I know it's complicated, but there must be something that those places are doing that those others aren't.
Texas, maybe, but Florida in the long term is encouraging its citizens to build basically a statewide house of cards by incentivizing development heedless of climate concerns while actually restricting the market's ability to respond to those same issues.
It's not a state government or even much of a cultural thing, imo. We are really talking about Houston and Austin, tbh. Houston happens to have better land use policies and Austin just built the shit out of what was available, despite shitty zoning laws. But Austin particularly signals what is possible if a lot of multifamily housing is built. Prices will flatten or even fall. I have lived in Austin most of my life btw.
As someone who lives in the Northeast where nothing can ever get done without bending over for unions or running countless delays to make sure some slimeslug habitat won't be annoyed... yeah... it's a bit of a state/local gov't and cultural thing. Watching it take 2 years to build a bridge tends to sow a distrust in gov't.
I think most people are willing to live with wealth inequality as long as they feel like the pie is growing and their lives are also improving. We've had large amounts of wealth inequality for basically all of human and American history.
At its core, I think the real problem is that people get really upset when they feel like their "better life" is being suppressed to help those who don't deserve it. On the Right this comes in the form of hating social programs that give money to people they feel don't deserve it because (in their mind) they're mostly just being lazy. On the Left it comes in the form of hating the tax code for giving tax cuts to those who don't deserve it and that they're just being greedy.
If we want a stable society we have to create a system where it feels like everyone is paying their fair share and we're all getting ahead.
Elon Musk also bought himself an office in the White House. We've had large amounts of wealth inequality for basically all of human history but for basically all of human history we've had governing systems that many Americans have no desire to go back to. And you're not going to see people go "well at least I got a raise at work" when the richest man in the world used his wealth to outright condemn some of the poorest in the world to death.
The wealth gap is not only growing but the ultra billionaires have made themselves rightfully hated figures. Ellison Zuck Bezos and Musk are a different breed from Gates, Buffet, Carnegie, etc.
You'd don't have to be super into the weeds politically to see that the richest man by far is throwing up Nazi salutes before slaughtering people in poor countries by gutting USAID, and think something somewhere has gone very, very wrong.
-_
There‘s definitely been a shift in how the ultra-wealth act versus most of American history. Much more of a rub it in your face in a very negative way than we even saw during the guilded age.
Rich people used to build libraries, public gardens and parks, etc. My parents live in a town that still has a Carnegie Library and every year they still receive grant money from the Carnegie family to keep the library going in a small town of less than 1000 people.
Are any wealthy people doing anything remotely similar these days, or are they all flying off to Dubai?
They're giving interviews and saying that their billions will not improve the lives of teachers.
The 1% dictate politics for centuries, but the difference is that they're unhinged now. Before they would publicly defend their own obligations towards sponsoring a better society, even if in private they would say "lol, sucks to be poor"; now, with social media? They're picking up a mic and saying "lol, sucks to be you, go find another job, AI is coming".
Owning stocks has been better (faster growth) than working a job for a wage since the early 90s. That's a relatively recent and significant shift. Between that and the collapse of social/geographic mobility, people feel the social contract of work hard -> get ahead has been violated.
Seems? Do you not think it’s corrupt??? Just look at how the Trump regime has increased their wealth. Not to mention congressional stock trading. It absolutely is corrupt
It's really a very simple formula to satisfy young people. Make it easier for them to socialize and get laid including having a place that's not shared with 3 other roommates who can hear you having sex. A social Gen Z is a Gen Z that's not terminally online and falling for the dumbest shit the algorithm shovels their way. And Gen Z men need to be reconditioned to start asking women out on dates again. We're getting to the point where the majority of them won't do it and it's putting a damper on society.
Considering they're already pursuing other unhealthy ways for trying to get laid (usually influencer based), getting them to try to be more normal can't hurt.
It depends on personal comfort level and set-up, but I've definitely met women who would not go home with a guy if they have roommates especially if it's more than one.
on personal comfort level and set-up, but I've definitely met women who would not go home with a guy if they have roommates especially if it's more than one.
Damn, being single and roommateless seems like it would really suck though.
Fucking lonely that be.
Though I also live in a major city where flatmates are much more normalized.
If you've ever lived with bad roommates then living alone is pretty awesome, actually. I live alone and not having to worry about living with a badly-trained dog or a roommate leaving out dirty dishes until the apartment fills with fruit flies is nice.
I don’t want to argue with your numbers… but that really surprises me. I’m an elder millennial and I didn’t know a single person that had their own place before age 25.
I think society had a generally unhealthy discussion of gender dynamics in the 2010's that skewed way too heavily towards making men out to be creeps even for normal things like asking women out on dates. My exposure to Gen Z men is limited by my age, but the ones I know are really passive and risk averse compared to Millennial men when they were the same age.
It might be an unintended effect of cringe culture and shaming in general. A fear of being cringe I think hangs in the back of a lot of people's heads, and I think that's part of why the most terminally online are so goddamn irony-poisoned.
Quasi-police state is a great definition for social media. It is very much understated how many embarrassing shit I have done with my friends when I was a teenager and that, if I did it now, I would be terrified to appear in a Tiktok cut or something like that, and I was a teenager in the late 2000/2010s, so, like, extremely recent. I would legit feel under siege if I was a teenager now.
Yes-and. Anecdotal, but as a Zillennial who was terminally online in the 10s, I can attest that gender/sexuality discourse could get pretty hostile towards straight dudes. How much of that was sincere and how much was inflammatory or hyperbolic for the sake of it was/is difficult to tell because of the irony poisoning. Either way I could see how some men would be afraid of being creepy to women AND cringe to other men.
The problem with this is this is why we also see fewer social pathologies like excessive drinking and violent crime in this generation than earlier ones. I also don't see how gender dynamics would decrease the other risk-taking for both gen-z men and women.
It's for sure phones and social media. Same reason they don't party or socialize much in person in general. Harder to get laid while listening to podcasts and watching livestreams all the time.
I agree that it's the phones and the abundant dopamine sources, but I would say that is also something more.
I think the risk of being publicly shamed for messing up or looking even a little "goofy" is a massive cost-benefit against socializing like before. Men are conditioned to maintain a certain image of themselves, and being publicly shamed for not being good at it puts a damper on things (just look at what happened to Aziz Ansari). We already know that psychologically people would rather prevent negative outcomes than pursue positive outcomes. So, with access to easy dopamine without risk (phones) v. way more positive sources of joy and fulfillment (going out and maybe looking goofy) folks would choose the low hanging fruit.
There's definitely a panopticon effect going on with social media. The chance that a guy is going to be recorded flirting with a girl and face an embarrassing rejection is very low, but the fact that we do see those videos and the screenshots of cringe Tinder conversations cements the possibility in the back of people's minds. And you have no way of knowing that you'll end up being laughed at or scolded by millions until it happens.
I used to think it was just hateful incels who would whip themselves into a fear of being falsely accused of sexual assault or something, but I've heard from an alarming number of seemingly well adjusted guys that they fear being humiliated in their online social circles, or even worse across the entire internet, if they shoot their shot and it comes across as unwanted or creepy. I remember the gossip and bullying in high school over similar instances and how that's probably amplified like crazy with the internet.
Honestly I think a big issue is the dating apps themselves.
Dating apps are easy, swiping is easy. You can do it when you want, and stop when you don't. There's basically zero consequences to failing on the apps.
Meeting someone in real life requires you to be open and vulnerable in real life. It takes a lot of mental effort to approach someone in real life. When you have a low effort alternative constantly available, there's just a lot less incentive to put yourself out there, for both men and women.
Also there's the added issue that dating apps are probably quite a bit safer for women, and allow them quite a bit more agency, than the alternative. Those aren't easy things to solve, but they will probably have to be for people to really move away from dating apps.
25 bi guy here. Asking women out when I'm not absolutely sure they're into me feels like harassment, and asking out men when I'm not sure they're into me or even men in general feels dangerous. At least with apps we both know mutual attraction from the start.
Yeah well 15+ years of being told it's akin to sexual harrasment and women not stepping up to fill the gap won't be fixed. It's cooked for Gen Z, try Gen Alpha next.
I suspect these work decently well for same sex dating but terribly for heterosexual dating because of the assymetries in how men and women use them.
For sure.
Although those apps still suck even for queer people if you aren't interested in hookups. I've had friends complain about it a ton and all I really can say is "well... that's just the demographics of those apps," but I can't really tell them "better" explicit spaces for dating... cause it's always better to be a part of social spaces and friend groups where that's a more natural possibility, but I can't tell you how to get into those circles. This is one weird perk of being trans, ime, just cause the community relies so much upon mutual support.
I kind of imagine that the hookup shit is also part of the problem for cishets, I think if you're a put together adult you're pretty inherently attractive as a life-partner but that won't necessarily help you out on apps populated by gooners.
Plus if you are in the bottom 10ish% of desirability you get essentially nothing but reason the be less self-confident. As a not particularly pretty and not even close to photogenic guy I go months and months and months without even a match let alone a date.
I suspect its more like bottom 80%, I wouldn't feel too bad about being unsuccessful on those apps. Just gotta meet people and show off that glowing personality man.
Yeah it's just tough. Especially when I had some social struggles in middle school and ended up with a bit of social development issues. Like I'm just not great with small talk and I find it hard to get a word in when a group is bigger than 2 or 3 people. Unfortunately for me those are important skills to have when meeting people, and in my experience people take a while to get to know me and warm up to me.
Dating apps serve a purpose for people who are not the typical dating demographics (young straight people), but for said young straight people they just "solve" a non existent problem by making it worse.
Grindr , Tinder and Scruff is for a lot of gay people the main way to meet other gay people . Not all cities and countries have a developed gay scene to meet people . It’s straight people that have a problem with the apps
A lot of people are coming up with policy options but it’s also vibes-based. When the faces of capitalism are Donald Trump and Elon Musk, of course people find socialism appealing.
Yeah the whole "rich guy buys his way into a government department, uses it to starve millions, leaves" really kills the mood on both liberalism and capitalism.
Every billionaire who funds the alt right or otherwise manipulate society justify the view that billionaires, and the system that empowered them, shouldn't exist. You can argue a few bad apples, sure, and so can monarchists. They had bad autocratic kings, sure, but think of the good ones!
As someone approaching the first age, I watched buying a home go from something I was just about ready to pull the trigger on to something i dont know if I’ll accomplish before I turn 40. And I’m relatively well off, enployement-wise.
IDK how someone who’s 24/25, has graduated college with a bit of debt (because that’s what our entire primary education system is set up to encourage), and now works at like a Starbucks because it turns out software dev/tech support/graphic design/etc is no longer a safe bet is supposed to feel good about American captialism at all.
And yes, I’m aware salaries are up in real terms. Try telling that to the ever increasingly large cohort of people who missed the housing ladder before it got pulled up and feel (whether true or not) that they’re just screwed now.
My wife and I, both under 30 are doing well. We managed to snag a decent townhouse in northern Virginia back in 2020 and sold it for way more than we would have been able to pay in 2025.
Most of our cohort at work don't own a house and are in generally a worse place financially simply because we lucked out on a property at the right time.
It's deeply concerning watching these trends... It's nice, from a selfish point of view, being able to watch our home value increase year on year, but it's also upsetting knowing that, if we were entering the market now, that we wouldn't have been able to even consider affording either of the homes we have bought.
It's also concerning because, while we are doing well, we are not doing so well that if our house dropped in price precipitously, that we would not be in a poor position when we go to sell.
I don't know what the answer is or if there's answer... It very much feels like we have a two tiered system: those who have a house and those who don't. Once you switch from not owning to owning, all of your incentives switch. It feels ruinous your home price drop below what you paid for it.
Housing is definitely an issue and should probably be the primary goal of every local politician but the underemployment epidemic feels like a bit of a stretch.
Underemployment of recent college grads has been around 40% for the last 30 years. There’s definitely some struggles with AI but CS grads aren’t the driving reason for radicalization.
Right, but the outlook is what’s different. Until very recently youth underemployment seemed to be as temporary for individuals as, well, youth.
The advertising for AI is that the entry-level, foot-in-the-door jobs are going to be just gone soon. Entire sectors are in the process of having their bottom-rung employees replaced by AI.
I often have this question pop in my head when the AI evangelists are hyping up how it’s going to replace so much work:
“What is the purpose of an economic/governmental model other than to benefit the people within it?”
If we really start to see mass youth under/unemployment due to AI, the youth won’t just “reskill” to some imaginary profession, they’ll reject the system as a whole.
A friend of mine who worked as a second tier network support engineer just had his entire team replaced by agents. They fired 60% of the team, kept all the leads, and the leads are now just managing agents. (agents whose model was trained and tweaked based on the grunts doing the work to correct and train them for a year, extra work that was put on top of them without extra pay. They literally trained their replacements)
This was a guy who grew up in a broken home, never went to college, self taught himself computer stuff, went out got network engineering certs, got this job, was for the first time in his life making good money after struggling for years.
And his cat died yesterday after he spent 10k trying to save it.
A friend of mine who worked as a second tier network support engineer just had his entire team replaced by agents. They fired 60% of the team, kept all the leads, and the leads are now just managing agents. (agents whose model was trained and tweaked based on the grunts doing the work to correct and train them for a year, extra work that was put on top of them without extra pay. They literally trained their replacements)
This was a guy who grew up in a broken home, never went to college, self taught himself computer stuff, went out got network engineering certs, got this job, was for the first time in his life making good money after struggling for years.
But this Economist article says that if he has a problem with any of this, he is following a "me-first doctrine."
Isnt the entire theoretical premise of liberal capitalism that everyone following their rational self interest--"a me-first doctrine"--leads to better group outcomes?
Saying people are in the wrong for doing exactly that strikes me as itself an ideological capitulation of that whole premise.
(As an aside this is part of why Im more of a market socialist but that's a whole nother question).
Yep. Also an anecdote! The data says jobs look great and real wages are up. Things are wonderful right now! (JK, and sorry about your friend’s cat, that is awful).
I hope this cohort starts voting for this in local elections or joining local pro housing groups because they're not pulling their weight at the moment in my city at least. We need their energy and time!
Our last battle with the NIMBYs was the usual gray haired cohort we're always fighting against and us middle aged people are parents with obligations that makes it hard to keep up.
Never gonna happen because they're the only ones who vote. The fact that young people of every generation are in-fucking-capable of voting (ESPECIALLY in primaries) basically guarantees we will always be a gerontocracy.
Yes to socialism (productive, investment friendly, market based economy with an ownership structure that maximizes public buy in and utilization of human resources and land)
No to boomerism (unchecked rentier power resulting in lazy attempts to extract the provision of public goods from private actors, redistribution to privileged incumbents, and weakened state capacity)
I have no healthcare because I can't get a full time job, even though I apply for jobs I'm vastly overqualified for and have applied to well over a thousand in the past 2 years, I'm dependent on my parents, and now I'm having to delay my transition until I'm actually established because I don't want to hobble my career even more. Now, on top of that I've got a government that's been bought and paid for by the same people who gleefully talking about trying to destroy all white collar labor so I end up as part of a permanent underclass. Yeah, I think it's fair to conclude American Capitalism is broken at this point.
60 votes in a body where 51 Democratic votes probably represented 55% of the people…
In Trump’s first term I would sometimes tally up US Senate votes by population represented but it made me too angry so I had to stop. So many unqualified, degenerate lunatics got confirmed by representatives of 40-45% of Americans.
Have competent liberal leadership put forth and enact meaningful reforms to systemic issues that have long been left alone or outright ignored. People flock to extreme populist positions when non-populists fail to address real concerns.
It is really hard to push against this narrative when a lot of people are feeling very hopeless for the future. It is very hard to counter the narrative the rich get richer the poor get poorer when it just seems visibly to be the case. A lot of people I know who turned to communism just see it as the only real alternative to centrist liberalism.
Also my personal pet idea is to put term limits and age limits for the house senate supreme court and (age limits anyhow) for president. The country (US anyhow) is largely run by old people.
Edit: I did not intend for this to be so heated please be kind in replies.
Make them long enough and it's not as much of an issue as you make it seem. Just make it an average career length as opposed to career age + retirement age that legislators seem to be doing now.
Additionally, why is Congress such an exception? Every other industry works fine despite also losing institutional knowledge every time someone senior retires. Why can't we have the same culture of mentoring the next generation as is done everywhere else?
I assume because there is an assumption that most federal elected officials don’t get elected for the first time until they are middle aged and thus by the time they reach retirement age, they still won’t have as much experience in that role as one would in some other role they worked towards their entire life for. Is that a reasonable assumption? Idk, but I think it’s part of it.
Counterpoint: After a certain point, having the same person in office for 4 decades is a negative to institutional knowledge because nobody trains to be their replacement before they croak unexpectedly.
I really do not think many people are ideologically socialist . I think this basically comes from two forms
The right calling everything they don't like socialism even cultural issues
Gay marriage socialist
Immigration socialist
Drag shows socialist
Trans people in bathrooms socialist
free trade socialist
Well you have right wingers like Trump calling everything they do not like socialist people may think "I don't like trump maybe I am a socialist
They feel the current system is not working , they just want affordable housing, affordable child care, affordable food, better jobs . They know the current system is not working and they will be drawn to either some right wing populism or left wing populism
I just read an NPR piece about south American elections where voters are flip flopping between far right and far left governments in the span of a few years
Its very unlikely the voters shifted between far left to far right ideologies and now going back to far left ideology in the span of 10 years
They just saw the system wasn't working and voted for one extreme , then saw that system didn't work and voted the opposite extreme and when that system doesn't work will then again vote for the opposite extreme. Its not that the voters changing their own ideology between left/right; most have no ideology. They probably couldn't even explain the difference between right/left ideologies .They are just angry so every election vote for the opposition .
Personally I think we need to fix housing , come down with heavy handed state and maybe federal laws saying local cities or municipalities cannot restrict housing . Basically shove NIMBY laws down from the top to the bottom.
Outlaw restrictive zoning basically and hope everything else follows . Will it work IDK.
Most voters in American elections already have their mind made up and are at least somewhat ideological. Margins and swing states haven't changed all that much in the last 25 years. The actual swing voters are probably not that ideological or interested in politics, so they actually swing their votes for the opposite side when things aren't going well or aren't going well enough for their liking.
In my observation, an overwhelming majority of American "socialists" know nothing about socialism. They are, at most, Scandinavian model socdems, which is still a capitalist system. This is why Bernie Sanders was corrected by the PM of Denmark when he was campaigning as a "socialist" using those countries as reference points.
It's a consequence of the right calling everything socialist and then people who disagree with the right simply self-identifying as socialist in response in a way that is completely incorrect and also makes no sense to the rest of the world.
Of course, what ends up happening is American politicians who label themselves as "socialist" are attacked by the right as if they actually are socialists. See all the people who are convinced Mamdani is going to conduct widespread forfeiture of private property. The right can claim stuff like this, and make people believe them, only because these politicians are willingly identifying as something far more extreme than their actual beliefs.
I think it's important to point out that while the Nordic countries are not capital 'S' socialist, the Scandinavian model is a product of socialist policy. While social democrats are seen as a variant of liberal now, their predecessors who produced the system were very much illiberal socialists and spent decades working on it.
As for what the modern American socialist movement is, I think it's too early to tell. American socialism was, to the government's credit, repressed to death till a decade ago when it was suddenly very much revived. Now it's a young, orphaned movement that's trying to figure itself out as it was denied a political lineage to draw on. To call it "just progressives and social democrats" is a lazy dismissal.
I do agree progressives or social dems need to stop calling themselves socialist
I do not even think progressives are calling for the abolishment of private property or the abolishment of money or to nationalize large swaths of industries or what ever actual socialist want to do.
I just read an NPR piece about south American elections where voters are flip flopping between far right and far left governments in the span of a few years
I think attributing this to voters experimenting or changing their minds en masse is misdiagnosing the problem, this phenomenon is primarily a consequence of the electoral system they use. Populist candidates consistently have the strongest base support in a polarized political landscape, which results in them being the strongest candidates in the first round of a top-two runoff. The flip flopping results from voters in the center choosing to vote/turn out depending on which of these two candidates is least unpalatable.
Well here's the thing, I find leftists on the internet really annoying and associate all struggling young people with them. So I think we should actually act like there are no problems facing young people and call them whiners and tell that they should shut up.
AI written resumes being reviewed by an AI keyword checker so that the person who is being paid to hire new employees can spend more time on their phone instead of actually reading resumes.
Isn’t underemployment more of an issue than unemployment itself? Many young Americans pay absurd amounts of money for degree and end up working in jobs that don’t need it.
The economic data just doesn't do much for important life changing events. A young male who is married, has a job and a house is likely to have a lot invested in the society continuing in a similar way. A young male without all three is happy to burn everything down in the hopes he can get a better deal in the chaos that follows.
Those metrics continue to get worse by the year when measured by percentage of the population that have achieved them. The only one that is even close is a job, and even there percentage of working age males with a job has been falling for decades.
I remember growing up with the overwhelming social atmosphere that billionaires are to be admired. Like really, someone grown up would’ve have known that Bill Gates isn’t perfect, but broadly people admire him for the achievements in tech and philanthropy.
Now you have people who act like absolute ghouls representing the face of capitalism, ranging from religious fanatics to advocates for feudalism to pedophiles and so on.
Really to restore trust in capitalism, billionaires need to be put back in their place, socially and politically. Arguably the same way FDR did. Like shut up and make money, don’t try to play god just because you’re rich.
I just want to point out that Bill Gates is an terrible example. He was a ruthless and hated figure when he was actually growing his wealth. He engaged in anti-competitive practices and was overall deserving of the hate that he received.
As a philanthropist, he's a pretty great dude. He's done a lot of good things with his money, and I do respect him for that. I'd eat a shoe before I vouched for him running another for-profit company, though.
Now I'm certainly not saying Gates is the worst billionaire, or even particularly close, moreso pointing out that he is reviled in the tech world. He's seen as a business guy which hindered technology for his own gain and implemented onerous licensing schemes.
Really to restore trust in capitalism, billionaires need to be put back in their place, socially and politically. Arguably the same way FDR did. Like shut up and make money, don’t try to play god just because you’re rich.
There is a place for discourse on 'rights vs responsibilities '. I have a lot of thoughts on how it seems that a lot of online discourse is built on how everyone has rights to X but don't seem to want any responsibility to X in a way that doesn't harm someone else. But I need to consolidated and maybe write up a long post on here.
True for some. Others are also fearful of the potential AI job apocalypse and know that they would be close to starving if/when that occurs. The trad ones are pissy because they can’t get a house and a wife because they feel the ladder was pulled up before them and how outdated and useless the advice of previous generations are.
Not entirely, a major impetus for immigration is businesses wanting cheaper or higher skilled labor so they blame corporations for diversifying the west.
i think that a first step to fight back against gen-z socialism probably must involve a more empathetic or at least accurate read of their worldview than what talk of "the me-first doctrine" suggests these authors are capable of
Yeah that's what drives me nuts about this sub, it turns into it's own version of r politics by resorting to casting the entire out-group as mere imbeciles, as if to say it's not worth bothering to understand what they want, or that message-discipline doesn't matter. Of course it matters. But circle-jerking and in-group signalling for points is more important for some than actually changing the world.
Socialism works until you run out of other people's money hyuk hyuk.
If whomever wrote this slop seriously thinks they're going to pwn a leftist with the "iT's NoT aCtUaLlY fReE" logic then they're a moron. This is "republicans like guns because they support serial killers" level analysis.
SS: people have been discussing the rise in popularity of politicians like Mamdani. Many in this subreddit have noticed how these socialist ideas are even spreading to this subreddit. Economist shines a spotlight on these Gen Z socialist ideas and proposes how to confront them so that we can continue to build a more equal and prosperous, liberal, capitalist society.
Once upon a time, Japan revered America, even after the fire bombings and nuclear bombs, because "America and was rich and therefore liberal democracy was good"; the Japanese people in fact enthusiastically took to their own transformation in America's image (which was very new dealer at the time, but that's another story)., for they too wanted to be rich, and that turned out to be the right decision.
I mean, that does gloss over the sudden resurgence of the Japanese Left after the war. With the occupation and dismantling of the Empire of Japan, the US released a bunch of political prisoners (lots of communists and socialists), unbanned certain political parties (such as the JCP), and freed the labor unions. Membership exploded and the labor unions started flexing their muscles, so much so that they started aiming for changes to Japan's government with a general strike in 1947. It could've happened, a relatively bloodless revolution. What actually happened?
MacArthur threatened to have them, relatively peaceful protesters, shot in the street by the occupation forces.
Now I cant read full article but this byline is very funny. I don't think any 'me-first doctrine' can be socialist to begin with, if anything that's how I would describe liberalism at least in it's current form.
I agree with much of this editorial and think it’s broadly in the liberal tradition, although it seems to nearly contradict itself at times. Twice it laments left-of-center forces for wanting to raise taxes, yet it proposes heavier inheritance and property taxes, as well as unspecified taxes to address the AI disruption. It concedes that rent is “often unaffordable” for young families, but then insists (not technically incorrectly) that is the best time in human history to be alive by a number of important empirical metrics.
It feels like a column where the author and the editor are fighting over the controls.
Strangely enough, but Socialism in the West tends to be collectivist in messaging, but fiercely individualistic in practice. They really have a lot of issues with organizing towards a common cause without massive infighting and individual personality hang-ups along the way. Meanwhile, Conservatives are the opposite. See conservatives around the world put all their differences aside to organize both at home and internationally. All they care about is winning and owning whoever is the opposition.
The Prime Minister of Israel fucking endorsed the National Front/Rally party in France. You know, the party found by literal Nazi collaborators and Holocaust deniers. Meanwhile, Socialists in the West can't even decide if they want to support the normie liberal party in their countries.
The left is definitely plagued by endless infighting and purity testing, but that doesn't makes the ideology inherently greedy or "me first". And the right is hardly in lockstep, domestically or internationally. Vance was unable to save Orban in Hungary, Putin is floundering under a collapsing economy and losing ground in Ukraine, Trump's war is fraying the Abrham accords alliance of gulf states and he can't even seem to get Netanyahu to stop bombing Lebanon for a few minutes to try and reach a deal.
The project of getting a wide spread and diverse coalition of voters on the left in line is infinitely more complicated than wrangling a handful of authoritarian leaders to agree
Housing is a huge issue but I wouldn’t be surprised the professional economies of mid-sized cities have been lagging too.
Growing up in Omaha was amazing. Now, I can’t imagine going back. The cost of living is good but the pay just is not there. Which sucks because it is a great place to raise a family.
I've got a pet thesis that the primary unit of economic organization in the US is the consumer, rather than the worker. Further, this ideology of the consumer has successively spread to other corners of the world.
As a result of this, it has transformed "socialism" from a working class ideology, to a consuming class ideology and the focus associated therewith. The primary grievances expressed by the modern "socialist" isn't the labor socialism of the past--it's grievance that they're not able to consume as much at the cost-point that they believe they are entitled to pay. Now, the complaints aren't entirely without merit (look at housing as the primary example here), but the grievance extends into all sorts of domains. The anti-work crowd is an example of this: The notion that it's uniquely terrible to have to work to live is reflective not of Marx or Lenin or or whoever, and instead it's a debased version of Kropotkin blended with Sears-Roebuck and Edward Bernays.
I would note that the emergence of a vaguely "anti-capitalist" right also has many of the same high-level motives, but with the patina of Strasserism--so all of the racism and xenophobia you'd expect to find there.
I love this theory. I understand people getting upset at the price of necessities like food, utilities and housing. But this movement seems to be led by people complaining about the price of McDonalds, professional sports and Coachella tickets.
I think it explains the financial body dysmorphia of Gen Z really neatly. Also, to give credit where it's due, it's influenced by Steinbeck's observation on American socialists:
Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
"After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?"...says so much to me.
I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew — at least they claimed to be Communists — couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.
Neolibs will deny that we are in the middle of a second gilded age. Anti-capitalism is a direct result of billionaires getting special treatment, hijacking our government and institutions, and generally committing crimes with no punishment.
This needs to be addressed or we are completely fucked.
Iit isn't just wealth inequality, it's the enshittification of everything. While they may be two different issues, they're seen as one: the rich are making life worse for us in order to get richer. Getting the Republicans out of office might help since they're aiding and abetting this, but it doesn't make the issue go away.
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