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i don’t think any of these options really build power for much of anything. i think the model of politics required to think it works that way is pretty whiggish for me, and relies on the hidden premise that there’s always some choice on the table for us that advances our ends even if marginally

but at the end of the day none of this is really my bag because i am a communist and my issue is with moral desert, property relations, nations, etc, all of which involve bigger guns probably

do i think you should or shouldn’t do this? i mean i think it’d be nice. it’s hard to really get exercised because i think most americans are ridiculously rich, consume an insane amount, have ennui for largely unrelated reasons. if i wanted to help the worst off of them its hard to beat cash grants

does this matter? maybe a little bit? but nostalgic socdem stuff is not obviously the best policy tool if that’s your game. just raise marginal income tax in the top bracket, change how you tax unrealised gains if you want, make it harder to move to trusts or philanthropy

sure, you can squeeze capital rents a little more than we do. of course the impact is less narrowly targeted than we want because everyone with a pension or 401k benefits from rent seeking, ie most workers, and the only guys really getting screwed are not-even-prole

right now it is fairly obvious in the medium run our interest rates are going to go low for demographic reasons when/if ai stuff cools and that it will be *because * our growth is sluggish

whether or not they are great for the economy is a bad question and i shouldn’t have accepted the framing, because they’re mostly endogenous. it’s both true rn that the slowest growing economies have had very low interest rates, viz japan, and also that easy money can increase capex

it is simultaneously true that low interest rates increase investment demand, at the same time as they make capitalists more likely to hoard. look at the size of zirp cash piles among big american firms, or the immense growth of buybacks

yes the AMA is a cartel, yes our admin costs are high, yes you could get a little more labour discipline if you tried (though certainly not NHS level). nevertheless it’s two thirds labour costs. higher if you do also embedded labour in drug r&d, most of which we pay for

interest costs *were* near zero for a long time. in general the issue with their being so low is absolutely stupid investment behaviour, including a lot of hoarding; because why bother. if we want to get richer, we do not want our interest rates to be zero, because getting richer requires investment

a rural cardiologist as their first post residency/fellowship job can reasonably expect to make over 500k and still its basically impossible to hire enough cardiologists for rural communities. or look at travel nurse salaries

healthcare costs in america are driven mainly by labour costs. we have very high healthcare labour costs because we are so rich that it is difficult to entice people into healthcare professions even with outrageous salaries, because they are difficult in a way a lot of other white collar work is not

the issue generally starts when you decide to do it & discover that the steering wheel isn’t really hooked up to anything and that managing any state-owned enterprise besides a natural monopoly or a bunch of oil fields is a recipe for either failing or making people mad at you

of course there’s a giant constituency for nostalgic social democracy. it’s been clear for a decade it’s the mid-term future of the democratic party, because it’s deeply popular with voters & party insider ability to discipline candidates has been decreasing

practically speaking i think we are largely constrained by electoral support to do (most) things, that winning more than one consecutive election is optimistic, so if your reform requires something like a national legislating coalition i think you’re already running out of time

i used to care a lot about them & employed the rhetoric to try to get people to support various candidates in-principle. i don’t think as much about them anymore not because they categorically dont exist but because our attention is finite and very little of it rn goes to actually winning

this is a separable question from whether you can hold your nose in engaging in political practices that you find unseemly (‘manoeuvring’, as lenin put it). do you actually get the sense folks on here are naming a small demand & pursuing a big one? they can’t even name a big one

would you generally consider writers and artists non working class? or just the subset who don’t have wage jobs?

board book incoming

of what kind? i think empty bottle probably books on average the best shows, smartbar has the best dance floor, there are another like dozen variably good small independent venues that book a mixture of good and mid acts, new music (in the snooty sense) at constellation + the checkout