Guys, at this rate I don’t think the revolution’s going to happen anytime soon.
I swear you could introduce UBI and someone somewhere would complain about it not being left enough.
Someone somewhere would because UBI is the capitalist techbro idea of a social safety net; it’s a band-aid that doesn’t address the underlying problems in a similar way to how the ACA helps but in reality is a very center-right idea that doesn’t address the underlying hypercapitalist healthcare system.
Well there yah go, we didn’t even need to introduce it and it’s already not left enough.
It was cooked up by Milton Friedman, one of the grandfathers of American free market libertarianism.
The whole impetus of UBI was to eliminate traditional social services because, it is argued, there’s no way that a government institution could be as efficient or effective as a free market.
And make no mistake, even modern proponents of UBI such as Andrew Yang propose funding it by hollowing out existing social services.
Like, yeah, UBI is better than having literally no social support at all, but the fact that its seen as this ultra-leftist idea, to the point that we apparently can’t even conceive of how it could possibly “not be left enough”, is an indication of how far right mainstream politics has shifted.
UBI is only surface-level leftist, it’s distributing some of the wealth while leaving the important parts - property - untouched.
So yes, I and many others would complain about UBI. I’ve long held it’s an untenable bandage slapped on the gaping hemorrhage that is capitalism.
And that is the issue. Ada is bleeding to death, and Bob is giving them a rudimentary bandage to staunch the bleeding. You could:
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Let Bob do their thing, and go get an ambulance.
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Complain to Bob that this will only slow down the bleeding. What Ada needs is to be in a hospital. Keep yelling at Bob for his shitty bandage.
We are all afraid that Jake will convince the doctor to refuse surgery claimimg the problem is fixed now. He goes on to convince Ada and the world that she is healed and asking for surgery makes no sense.
I dont know if Jake will be effective at creating regressions nor if we can fight him off effectively.
If you know anything about first aid you know that slapping a bandage on is the first step to actually helping the patient.
“The real problem with this stab wound is it damaged their liver. Putting a bandage over the wound isn’t going to solve that, what they really need is surgery!”
“We’re twenty miles away from a hospital, we need to stop the bleeding or they’ll die before we get them to a doctor.”
“A bandage isn’t going to save them. Only a surgeon will.”
I mean it depends on the context of how UBI is going to get paid for. If it is funded by a wealth tax then I am on board. But that’s not how the powerful proponents of UBI say it should be funded. Andrew Yang would have us take it out of Social Security to pay for it but you don’t hear him say we should uncap Social Security contributions.
Also, I think rent caps or something need to be introduced as well. I worry about landlords just assuming you have an extra 2,000 on you and then taking it.
But implemented with the right protections, I would love UBI.
UBI gives you “moving expense money”. Greedy landlords gives builders incentive to build more to give you alternatives. If you don’t want to work, then moving to smaller communities is a more affordable choice, and you can move before you have a job lined up. A problem with welfare/UI is not just that any job income get’s clawed back at 50%, but you need to stay close to the same welfare office to keep getting benefits.
Income taxes, especially if investment income is not given preferential treatment, is even with a flat tax on first $100k income, with surtaxes on higher incomes, something that impacts the rich/successful while still making them more rich. You don’t need to cling to “only a wealth tax or burn it all down”. Wealth generates investment income. Taxing that properly is all that is needed.
Sure, I’m on board as long as the fix isn’t to cut other social safety nets.
As a leftist its also important to keep in mind we do differentiate between leftists who hold some opinions we disagree with compared to a Liberal who disagrees with us on nearly everything. Especially when said Liberals demand to be treated like leftists yet support imperalism, genocide, apartheid, capitalism, bigotry, and yet constantly call people “fake leftists” or “tankies”.
It’s not about defending tankies it’s about people who are constantly shifting the focus of conversation to the most mockable section of online lefties.
The ruling class don’t waste their time distancing themselves from qanon, they focus on furthering their class interests and emiserating the poor.
Liberals who are constantly calling people tankies are helping the ruling class.
I’m not taking cues from the far-right in not denouncing our worst aspects when I see them and letting them take up shop in our spaces. I don’t see the need to whataboutism to them either and will call that out, but I don’t want them in spaces I’m in either.
It’s a political slang word. It refers to those who support leftist authoritarian regimes such as communist, China. Regimes where the state can do no wrong and the people do all the wrong so the state must step in to crush the people and “protect them” from dangerous, Western and capitalist ideas. Pretty sure the name derives from the 1989 tiananmen square incident.
And how do we do that?
This is the internet, everyone is as anonymous as they want to be. Lots of people find these posts by browsing by All, so they’re not likely to be aware of (or care about) the rules for a particular instance. If a Liberal and a Leftist wander into the same community, it can be hard to tell them apart unless they’ve made politics their whole identity.
Maybe I’m in a bubble, but I have yet to see anyone who’s not genuinely a tankie being accused of such.
Ive seen people be called tankies for not supporting Kamala and opposing Liberal Democracy
for not supporting Kamala
That’s wild. I’ve never heard that take and have a difficult time believing that it is common.
opposing Liberal Democracy
What alternative were they in favor of?
I’ve seen conservatives lob the word tankie around before like they do with other scary sounding political words. But not here on lemmy. “Tankie” has a very precise meaning on lemmy that everyone here seems to understand, despite a few tankies trying to gaslight people into thinking the term has “lost it’s meaning”.
For those who don’t know what it means, what is “clear definition of tankie”?
It’s a strange state of affairs, there is a right wing recruitment pipeline deticated to making fun of liberals for being “cringe but also wrong”™.
An interesting experament you can do, replace “leftist”, “the left” and “liberal” with “SJW” (swap the insider and outsider language) and ask yourself how much and in what interesting ways does the sentimate of the post change.
yet support imperalism, genocide, apartheid, capitalism, bigotry
Yeah as a liberal I resent this. Im against all of these things except that I believe that the world is capitalist and would probably not be really any different even with a sudden communist takeover. Power corrupts any system just like it always has so you need safegaurds and checks that our system did have until everyone decided to throw out baby with the bath water
There are ideas i like that are communist(social programs, centralized production, not a huge fan of not owning my own stuff, but i dont think businesses should really own land), but i believe there is a lot of resistance to it and a slow burn towards utopia is a more fruitful endeavor.
An idea with merits but again corruptable. Profits still exist but they go back to the cooperativee? The co-op would have to be uncorruptable or it would end up just like a corporation
safegaurds and checks that our system did have
Uh… Assuming you’re from the west. The US was founded on slavery and genocide, and western Europe got to where it is through colonialism. What checks and safeguards did our countries ever have?
Checks and balances, regulation and with a united constituency you would have more accountable politicians. Instead we got the left and right doing the splits so hard we got the rich lefties hopping ship to the right
not a huge fan of not owning my own stuff
Communism is when I own your toothbrush. Hand it over liberal.
The Left: Fractured Butt Hole. 😞
I remember when the election happened I saw so many people on the left complaining that they needed a left wing version of Joe Rogan.
Motherfuckers you HAD Joe Rogan. He just talked to people you didn’t like sometimes so you literally pushed him into the open arms of the right. Good job idiots.
We doing revisionist history now? Joe endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020. He was a self described Democrat for the majority of his life.
But because he invited guests from both sides of the isle onto his podcast the left decided he was a problem. God forbid anyone want to even hear what the other side is thinking once in their lives. The left abandoned Joe and guess who was there to snap him up when they did that? The alt right dumbasses. So now we have Joe endorsing Trump this time around.
The left is not tolerant of any amount of different thinking among their ranks. You gotta agree on everything or you need to leave. You can see it situations like Joe or even smaller situations like myself and many others who spent their entire lives being Democrats only to be shown the door when we disagreed on one or two things.
Whether or not you believe that’s what’s going on I can tell with absolute certainty it is. The 2024 election results fall more on the shoulders of the Democratic party messing everything up than Trump or the Republicans doing anything particularly right.
Y’all need to stop thinking in such black and white terms when it comes to people. Someone can be all for universal healthcare, but also want their own gun to defend themselves. Some of the more moderate left can understand that, but the grand majority will view that kind of person as a full on righty so they push them away. And guess what happens when they do that? You lose elections because you’re so up your own ass about things that you lose people who were on your side.
…be shown the door when we disagreed on one or two things.
Did your girlfriend break up with you over that tiny little issue of believing she deserves bodily autonomy?
Go ahead, tell us the tragic story of how the Democrats forced you to change sides not because of the issues that haven’t changed, but because your feelings got hurt.
Rogan has a huge platform that reaches a lot of people and, in my opinion, along with that platform comes a responsibility to be careful about the voices and ideas he allows to be amplified on his show. There are already plenty of sources out there for people who want to check in on what the right is thinking. Rogan didn’t need to be one of them. He rightly faced criticism. If his political stances weren’t solid enough to survive the criticism, then I wonder how strong his convictions were to begin with.
Joe endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020
Like how he endorsed RFK in 2024? but sure bro he was totally a leftist.
From “leftist” to democrat real quick there mate.
And yes, platforming people who think trans don’t deserve rights is harmful and the left rightfully should criticise it
The differences of opinion are still there in irl leftist spaces but it alters how it feels when you’re actively doing something. Online you only see the differences in opinion but the real leftists aren’t just arguing details online (though they do that too) they’re running food banks and organizing housing cooperatives and coming out en masse when someone is being evicted. They’re putting together food packages and sending books to inmates. They’re hiking out into the desert to leave water for migrants and waiting by the train tracks to toss food up to travelers.
Bickering about details online might seem ridiculous to someone who isn’t involved but for the actually active leftists that part is only a sliver of their leftism and it’s not necessarily a bad thing— it’s very hard to imagine the world organized other than it is and one way we can be prepared to make the right decisions together when gaps appear is to discuss everything from every angle. I’m not going to pretend all the stuff online is in good faith and I suspect a good percentage of keyboard warriors who are not actually involved in leftward movement, but I do think in the context of real activism the bickering makes more sense.
