American progressives can be just as guilty, if less organized. They tend to view big business with suspicion and incorrectly think that the American government is hopelessly corrupt and in the pocket of "Big Business and/or Wall Street".
In what sense is that view incorrect? The cost of access to the political process in America is astronomically high and keeps increasing, and acquiring the amount of money it now takes to be competitive in an election requires adopting a set of positions that are friendly to whatever industries have the most money to give.
What part of that analysis is wrong? What counterexample can you offer?
While money buys political access, a large part of the responsibility does rest with the voters (who are mostly ordinary people, not big money) who keep voting for reps (or don't vote) who support regressive policies. Also big money doesn't control the govt -- there are lots of times where they don't get their way -- immigration reform being a prime example where nativist sentiment has stalled it for more than a decade even though the business community is largely for it.
>Also big money doesn't control the govt -- there are lots of times where they don't get their way -- immigration reform being a prime example where nativist sentiment has stalled it for more than a decade even though the business community is largely for it.
Immigration reform is more of a fight between the corporations that want more legal immigrants to depress high wages (e.g. Facebook/FWD.us) and the corporations that want to keep employing illegals at sub-minimum wages (e.g. fruit & vegetable pickers).
This actually puts them in direct opposition to one another on a range of legislative issues.
I think you are insufficiently cynical to understand immigration reform.
The current state of immigration reform, where politicians demand (and are getting) increased enforcement without any expansion of a legal right to work in the U.S., works great for companies in labor-intensive industries. On the one hand, you get a workforce willing to get paid less than the legal minimum, and you don't have to pay things like worker's comp, social security, etc. On the other, enforcement has increased so much that those underpaid workers live in constant fear of being deported or having their families split apart, so they don't report their employers breaking the law.
For companies that have access to that pool of precarious labor, the situation is great, and they've invested a lot in not changing anything.
I think you are too cynical to be able to understand it.
What you propose they are doing is the equivalent of inviting the fox into the hen house to give the other roosters a run for their money--it is Russian roulette. I doubt anyone using undocumented labor wants more enforcement, although certainly a low-wage state would welcome enforcement for a "competitive"/"fair" advantage over higher-wage states (like California, with its massive undocumented labor pool).
You only get to vote for a tiny number of people, the groups with early access to pick who runs have far more power than the 'popular' vote. "I voted for Kodos." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_and_Kodos
PS: Obama might have been a better option, but I disagree with over half of what he has done.
You get to vote for a lot of people, but most people simply ignore this. Take Obama - started as a state senator, ran for Congress, then ran for the Senate, then for the presidency. In each of these elections he had to get through both a primary and general election. In each of these elections he also had to rely on a network of supporters and surrogates, the most important of which are other elected officials (many at the local level). He also had to work with the state party (also elected).
The vast majority of people ignore 99% of the elections out there, and then wonder why they don't have an influence on things. I mean, seriously - we often have elections here with turnout in the teens. And I've worked the polls for those elections - even the minority of people who bother showing up have no clue to who's even on the ballot. Many times when I ask people who they voted for, they can't even remember (again, the few who bothered to vote).
It's like staying at home while other people work on a year long project, then showing up 3 days before release and complaining that you have no control over it. Well, yeah.
You're still ignoring the role of money here. Yes, there are a lot of elections, and in every election, the amount of money a candidate is able to spend is a huge influencing factor on whether they can beat their opponents. This is also true in primaries, and in state legislature elections, and governor's races, and everywhere else. If you can't buy advertising to get in front of people, you can't get name recognition, which means you don't poll well, which means the media won't cover you, and nobody will think of you when it comes time for them to vote. It's all very straightforward.
But that's the thing - no matter the amount of money poured in, the vast majority of campaigns still feature candidates ignored by almost everyone. For most campaigns, the money doesn't affect someone's opinion of the candidates, because they aren't even aware of the candidates.
You see this more and more as you move away from the big races - I've seen numerous examples where the loser outspent the victor 20 or 50 to 1. Heck, there was even a situation recently where someone with just about no political or financial backing came in second (doing better than several candidates with much better funding and much more insider connection) simply because his name sounded like another politicians. When I look at things like this, it seems like apathy influences our politics much, much more than money.
There are ~320 million people in the US the first filter that drops 99.99% of them is by far the most important. EX: Pro life democrat or pro choice republican running for president = good luck.
Further, I don't think a great president looks much like a great senator.
Contrast the treatment of bank executives after the S&L crisis, and after the recent financial crisis. They got away with murder (not quite literally) this time.
No, I don't think I ever hear American progressives assert that they want less government.
Less corrupt government? Absolutely, but the idea that government is "too big" seems entirely in province of the contemporary right (and you can partition that up into the industrialists who want to abolish the EPA, the code-worded-racists who want to end welfare, the bootstrappers who want to privatize everything, etc).
As a progressive, I would support a plan of re distributive basic income. The plan I would support would involve shrinking existing government.
As a progressive, I support removing the costs of worker healthcare from labor costs to industry.
As a progressive, I support reducing the over-all social cost to higher education by eliminating the federal grant and loan processes, and simply block allocating per-student rates for state schools.
As a progressive, I would love to see Corporations dehumanized; Speech equal speech; and commercial activity limited to the interaction of autonomous entities.
As a progressive, I would support returning the sovereign responsibilities of application of force to the government, and in doing so reduce the actual per-body cost of warfare and law-enforcement. (Ending cost-plus contracting) (Returning prisoners to the states from private enterprises)
If given free reign, every industry would cloud it's cost externalities, such as the environmental repercussions, or the needs of the dependents that work those convenient company towns. Quarterly balance reports rarely see the value in education, healthcare, or decent food in those locked-in labor units.
Apologies for the political observation, but I'm a history buff and I found your comment interesting.
It used to be that progressives would resoundingly argue for smaller, more efficient government that achieves desired social goals. Somehow over the last 50 years they stopped doing this, and instead got into some kind of pissing match with conservatives over the size of government. It'd be great to get back to a discussion around "what are your goals, what are the trade-offs you are willing to make, and what is the most efficient way to achieve them?"
The side with the real power - the voters. You can blame businesses or activists or interest groups or governments or whatever but America still has a democracy and American people actually do choose the outcomes they get. You personally might not want them, but most of your fellow Americans either do want them or succumb to some personal greed to make them happen.
I disagree very much. The fact that concentrated interests win out over dispersed interests is not some failure of the population to educate itself and vote hard enough. It's an extremely basic game theoretical inevitability.
No. The electorate chooses from a set of outcomes that are chosen long before they get a chance to vote on any of them. The political process starts a very long time before a typical citizen gets to vote.
Thinking that the political process begins and ends with voting is one of the key components of despair and cynicism in a democracy.
