Americans are so far to the right that minimum wage, affordable housing, free schools and healthcare is considered “far left”. These are given and common sense in the rest of the world 🤣
In developed countries*
I’m not sure if the USA qualifies for that status
Even in developing countries, governments do their best to provide free services for those in dire poverty, especially those considered “poorest of the poor”.
The poorest of the poor cost society money but can never invest back into it. Bringing them to a level where they can pay taxes to invest in the services they are provided while also getting a better quality of life is such a basic concept that it’s just stupid that a modern society would oppose it!
Welfare policies are common even in developing countries. They simply don’t have the kind of capital accumulated by European welfare states because they don’t outsource their industrial manufacturing to poorer countries. Hence, the implementation is difficult and bureaucrats are often corrupt. Reagan won an election calling universal healthcare ‘communism’ and actually opposing something so obviously in favour of people – this would not have happened in most poor countries. At least in mine, people consistently vote in favour of better healthcare, public transport and free food regardless of ideology. Fear mongering about ‘commmunism’ has been tried in urban areas, where people have the luxury to care about something like that, and it backfired spectacularly. The phenomenon of voting against one’s self interests because gommunism and freedom seems to be a uniquely American thing.
Gotta love our “Tipping culture”. The more this country is going down I’m reminded of Mr. Pink’s quote “I don’t tip because society says I have to. All right, if someone deserves a tip, if they really put forth an effort, I’ll give them something a little something extra. But this tipping automatically, it’s for the birds.”
It’s gotten to the point where the US needs a real change and yet the 1% really don’t want that change and would rather die on their hills. Which, imo, maybe they should while others watch?
But alas, who am I to judge the wealthy when I’m just a measly common worker.
The more… favorable right wing points I’ve heard are more along the lines of “I’ve busted my ass for what little I have! How dare you ask me to pay to subsidize the lives of people who aren’t trying to work?”
Completly ignoring the fact that better welfare programs should help them to not have to work so damn hard for so little in the first place. Or the fact that the welfare cliff and other various systemic problems make it that much harder to get out of that pit no matter how hard you’re trying.
It’s not even quite “fuck you, I got mine” because so many of them barely “got theirs” as is, which makes them even more protective. The ones that do have, have latched on to this idea of the entirely self made man, which ignores all the public welfare systems they used on their journey. Like schools, or roads. You can hardly exist in modern America without using multiple tax funded public works/welfare things every day.
Then you add in the hard spun rhetoric that taxes they already don’t want being taken from them might be paying for things they personally disagree with and things get extra firey.
Meanwhile the richest people on earth have spent more money than is comprehendable on convincing people that going after rich peoples’ money will just make everything more expensive for the normal folk.
But that would imply that they were currently leaving potential profits on the table. They’re already charging absolutely as much as they can, and constantly trying to shift it higher. I’m sure they’d still fuck us on the way down, but we’re never going to fix things unless we find some way to adequately tax the rich.
The “barely got mine and defending it” thing really sticks in other ways too.
When I wanted aid for school “sorry, we ran out. Should have gotten here earlier.”
When I wanted to get food stamps “sorry, you don’t meet the qualifications on a technicality.”
When I finally got Medicaid but couldn’t use it “not enough spots for you to be seen, sorry.”
Many times the administrators that gave me this news implied it was because too many people asked for it. Being young and stupid (and let’s face it, indoctrinated), it made me put the blame on the other people asking for aid. If there were less people that asked for aid, I wouldn’t be starving and sick. I thought that I was more worthy of the aid because some people are cheating the system and I deeply resented them.
Fortunately I grew the hell up and pulled my head out of my ass. It’s all a distraction we get fed from the news that other needy people are the reason why we suffer. It’s so hard to fathom how much the rich actually waste when all we see is our fellow working class folk.
To add a voice to the choir, I was raised like this too. We went the other direction of feeling guilty for needing aid though.
Like they weren’t completely wrong, you really should be able to raise a family off a single full time job, the problem is that said jobs don’t pay enough for that. But the broken system is good at defending itself, and politicians are quick to point out all the ways it does work, so you wind up with a ‘well, it works for them, guess I just have to try harder’ mindset. Like, I spent hours each week as a teenager helping mom do the extreme couponing and do stuff like take a cart through another line to get around limits on sale items.
I’ve been shit at math for my whole life, so maybe I’m just hoping I’m not alone in this, but I really think a lot of people are number illiterate. I’ve spent so much time learning to be grateful for my shoe-string budget, I have a hard enough time envisioning double my salary, and that’d just make me middle class. I literally don’t have a way of conceptualizing what 200x my salary would be like.
Getting everyone’s basic needs met is more of a centre-left ideology.
Many centre-right parties believe in things like public healthcare, because it has a net-benefit to the economy.
Centrists don’t sit in the middle of every issue or make an exact 50/50 compromise on everything. That’s a really poor strawman argument from someone who clearly doesn’t understand global politics.
I guess you’re confused with people in the U.S who think having views somewhere in-between those of democrats and republicans makes you a centrist.
That U.S-specific ‘centrism’ is really just right wing politics.
Maybe we should stop with left, right and centrist all together.
It’s a stupid way of defining politics. If you ask a random person what being left means it can vary from anything between hugging a tree or wanting good health care.
By calling yourself “green” or “social” you are immediately putting a label on yourself and a lot of people won’t vote for you because they’re too dumb or lazy to actually read into what a party is about. I saw an article here on lemmy that pointed out some moron that voted for Trump in hopes he would save his farm, if he would have read into politics he would have known that Trump was the worst possible choice but here we are…
I’m from Europe and I see the same shit happening here. Call yourself green or left and people will scoff at you.
If there is anything the current “left” parties absolutely suck at its marketing. Call yourself the freedom party or whatever but stop using idiotic terminology that people can’t relate to. Almosr no one will vote for the “environment party”.
I hate the extremist conservative parties here but i have to give them credit for being able to market their party in such a way that people are literally voting on them AGAINST their own best interests.
The biggest party in the Netherlands is called the freedom party, their mainly anti-immigrant and against the freedom of religion and the freedom of education. Totally agree they’re great at marketing (though it’s more about being loud and talking about social problems than it is about having ideas of how to solve them). They’re considered to be far-right populist, their leader (Geert Wilders) is aligned with Marine Le Pen and Georgia Meloni. The left has lost their working class-base traditional base to them because of them being more relatable (and less high-brow) than the labour party, the socialists and the greens.
If there is anything the current “left” parties absolutely suck at its marketing.
You mean to tell me endless purity tests and screaming “you’re a literal nazi” at everyone who disagrees slightly with your position aren’t effective tactics to change someone’s mind? No waaaaaaay.
Centrists don’t sit in the middle of every issue or make an exact 50/50 compromise on everything.
I seriously don’t understand how fucking difficult this is to understand. It’s why I largely ignore political discussions on Reddit/Lemmy/all social media.
I don’t look at one person saying “Murdering 5 year olds is bad”, look at another person saying “Murdering 5 year olds is good!” and try to find a way where both are right.
I don’t look at one person saying “Murdering 5 year olds is bad”, look at another person saying “Murdering 5 year olds is good!” and try to find a way where both are right.
This is literally what centrists all over the world (well, the parts that show up in English-language news anyway) think about Palestine, though.
And you missed the entire point. Centrism isn’t about trying to find a perfect middle ground to every individual subject.
Of course there will be centrists that support Israel carpet bombing everything. There are other centrists that don’t support them. There are some that will support them with conditions. I know someone who is broadly centrist who thinks Israel should be dissolved entirely.
It’s not a fucking hivemind.
You are right, that centrists don’t actually sit as a 50/50 middle. But that means that “centrists” always actually side with fascists and the far right when forced to take a position. If you aren’t fully willing to confront capitalism, it means that you will side with fascism before even mild socialism.
Am I understanding you right that you are saying that all centrists will side with fascism over socialism? Because I have some news for you in that case.
Fascism is not the same as capitalism. For capitalism to work properly, it is required that market power is minimized and that companies cannot influence politics. The fact that they have been able to do so is not capitalism.
Milton Friedman – In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), he argues that government intervention should be minimal and that businesses should focus on profit rather than lobbying for special advantages. While he doesn’t explicitly state that capitalism requires private companies to stay out of politics, he warns against corporate influence leading to cronyism.
Adam Smith – In The Wealth of Nations (1776), he warns against “the merchants and manufacturers” using their influence to gain monopolies and special privileges, which distort free competition. He emphasizes that capitalism works best when businesses do not manipulate laws in their favor.
James Buchanan (Public Choice Theory) – Buchanan and other public choice theorists (like Gordon Tullock) argue that when businesses influence politics, they engage in rent-seeking, which distorts market efficiency. They emphasize that government should limit corporate lobbying to prevent economic inefficiencies.
Luigi Zingales – A more recent economist, Zingales argues in A Capitalism for the People (2012) that corporate political influence undermines free markets and leads to a system of “crony capitalism,” where economic power translates into political power.
That’s your opinion, not a fact.
And the issue with that is you’re only seeing it as two sides and a fence-sitter.
Centrists form their own views and positions, independent of the parties on either side.
There’s no forcing them to take a position, they already have one.
And when they have to vote for/against legislation changes, they’ll side with whichever option aligns most closely with their views.
US pseudo-centrism is right wing though, which might be what you’re confusing real centrism with.
They are relative to global politics which most Americans know nothing about, it seems.
Republicans have always been pretty hard right and as of the Trump administrations they are pretty much extreme right. Democrats seem to randomly oscillate between centre right and right.
Some issues are not relative or negotiable. Rape, murder, war crimes, pedophilia, etc. If you want to be soft on that stuff then you lose my vote, period. Now and in the future. If that means we collectively burn this place to the ground, well if thats what it takes, thats what it takes-- lets get it over with.
Meeting everyone’s basic needs isn’t even far left. This is how far the Overton window has shifted to the right. Meeting everyone’s basic needs is left-of-centre. Far left would be state owned and controlled everything, redistribution of wealth via any means necessary, all public services fully state funded and free for all at the point of use.
Far left would be state owned and controlled everything, redistribution of wealth via any means necessary, all public services fully state funded and free for all at the point of use.
“Socialism is when the government does stuff, and communism is when the government does all the stuff. What is a mode of production?”
God I fucking hate how the capitalist authoritarian states of the last century managed to gaslight everyone into believing this shit.
I am responding according to the context of the original statement. Yeh, you could go even further left and have anarchy, but that would be utterly impractical in today’s world.
It’s from the USA perspective. People not dying of easily preventable diseases, or children not going hungry, are extreme left for them.
Many of us would disagree with that, but in aggregate we’ve just elected “burn this motherfucker down with us inside” instead of the alternative who was still way too far to the right for most of us here on Lemmy, so you are unfortunately correct.
If you proposed children not going hungry to some of my conservative relatives, even in a room of mixed company they would say out loud something like “why should I have to pay to feed the kids they can’t afford because they can’t close their legs or put down the crack pipe long enough to get a job?” (Racist dog whistle very much intentional)
Noam Chomsky is Far-Left, and he advocated for a stateless society. But yeah the idea of liberty has definitely changed in America The U.S.
Meeting everyone’s basic needs isn’t even far left.
When saying “Please stop bombing Palestinian children” is the most ultra-Tankie Iranian Revolutionary Guard propaganda printed in modern history, it does appear that public amenities are outside even the farthest fringes of left-wing ideology.
Far left would be state owned and controlled everything
I remember Elon Musk calling himself a socialist. And now that I’m looking at how he and Trump are running the country, I guess this does fit the above definition of Far-Left.
No, that’s authoritarian left as pure left is communal ownership. Market left would fit better and would use worker and consumer cooperatives and market syndicates rather than state ownership. I hate how Marxists convinced everyone they were the only form of socialism despite people like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon coming before him.
Centrism doesn’t mean that you can’t choose between democrats and republicans, it means that ideologically, you believe in a balance between capitalist ideas and socialist ideas. For example, you can believe in the Hayekian idea that the many interactions between individuals in the market is better at creating prosperity than a centralized government that distributes all goods and services. But you can also believe that the market can’t do everything on its own due to market failures like monopoly power, externalities, assymmetric information. There exists a compromise between the two that is negotiated through politics. A core necessity for this to happen is that democracy is maintained. Democracy is not maintained when elections are bought by companies.
What is happening in the US now is that politics has been taken over by the private market. No economist would have agreed with this (unless they were paid to). It is against everything that we know. This is not a left vs right stance. It’s a democracy vs autocracy stance. Autocracy can happen from both the right and left, and it doesn’t matter who.
The one thing I dislike about the idea of centrism is the idea that you can’t decide on everything because you remain agnostic about every issue. I think a much better idea to advocate for is pluralism: the idea that your opinion on specific issues is not dependent on your politcal stance. Every issue is unique and doesn’t automatically identify you with left or right. You can have different opinions on different issues.
It’s funny because from my European perspective there’s no (visible) left in the USA. Democrats are centrist. Sanders could be social democrat. Otherwise I fully agree with you.
Lately I’ve caught myself thinking differently. The left is progressive because they want to progress civil rights. The centerists are conservative because they just don’t want things to change. The right is regressive because they want to turn back the clock. Honestly I think we need to stop calling people on the right conservative and give them the new label regressives.
Conservatives want to go back to the days when mediocre white men were greatly rewarded just for being white.
As a mediocre white guy, I can confidently say that is today. Any white guy who is like “I never got any special treatment for being white” has gone though life and society with their eyes closed.
Ugh, market socialism exists.
Not all socialism has planned economies. That’s communism. A specific subset of socialism.
Capitalism doesn’t have a monopoly on market economies. badumtssh
Right, but I see market socialism as an ideological compromise rather than inherent socialism. Im from scandinavia, and my country is a capitalist country with a strong welfare state.
You have “welfare capitalism” as they define it so that they get to still try to keep people tethered to capitalism. Capitalism is not just having money, it’s a system that prioritizes said money. Capitalism seeks to reduce regulation and separate the worker and owner class and basically by definition you don’t get to have a say if you don’t have money. Scandinavian countries are not finding a balance but are resisting capitalism while keeping its name and to make people not be afraid of not having it(for some fuckin’ reason people really want it I don’t get it).
If you have strong regulations, a government focused on taking care of people instead of relying on businesses to do it, and the people have fair power then you don’t have capitalism, just a system where private ownership exists but is not jerked-off at every turn like in the states. It was literally made up so the merchant class could keep all their money as monarchies were falling. It’s a not something you want to even associate with. Even the states hasn’t gone full capitalism because they know(knew) that it’s not a truly viable system.
I also want system with some level of private ownership, but I also don’t think private, for-profit power generation should be a thing and if a company under “capitalism” is too big to fail then at least a large part of it should be sold to the government, and at least have it’s executive board purged, not handed a bunch of money as they hold their employees’ jobs hostage.
You can advocate for wealth taxes, unions, and other welfare measures within a capitalist system. I’m from one of the most egalitarian countries in the world and we are capitalist too.
agnostic are agnostic because there is no foolproof evidence basis.
with politics you can clearly see how some stances have been done and their effects. and other instances you also have a basis even in the most unclear case
just had an issue with the negative connotation implied here talking about agnosistics :D
I think we can all agree that adding religious parallels to anything is a waste of everyones time.
Yeah since people cannot be expected to have full knowledge of the evidence, you have to recognize you can be agnostic about some issues. It’s virtuous to seek evidence and knowledge, and you should make choices based on the best information you have.
I’m not advocating for independents btw. I think you should clearly pick a party to vote for, but the two party system is a horrible system for people who are pluralistic in their views.
I consider myself Centrist because I would rather eat 10 pounds of fried bugs than align myself with either absolute clown show of a party.
I’m a free agent, and the haters can’t stand that they can’t have me.
That doesn’t make you a centrist. Ya’ll seriously have lost your ability to see anything objectively it’s wild. The Democrats aren’t left wing except for a few people I could probably count on one hand but nearly the entire country, and its inability to pay attention even across its northern border, believes that the Democrats must be left wing since the Republicans are right wing.
You may very well not be a centrist, or maybe you are, but basing that on anything that suggests that the Democrats are left, and left to a point where they balance the extremism of the GOP, renders he whole thing worthless.
We’ve been screaming at the US for years to get a fuckin’ clue PLEASE just become moderately politically literate we are begging you.
I spent 4 years going into debt for a degree in political literacy. And then more for a related Master’s. I appreciate the frustration, but I can assure you I know exactly what I’m taking about.
Relative to the 1D spectrum of D to R in the US, I’m certainly in the middle ground, beyond the border of what falls enough into the D realm. From a global perspective, sure, the Dems are already a mess that overlaps the center some, but thats a fuzzy edge and not as fully held by the Dems as most moderately informed Europeans like to imply.
And yes, the lack of appropriate labels makes me more of a “Centrist” than anything else, but its barely an accurate term, as is using a 1D left/right binary to define anything can be. I’m against many types of government spending, which only a decade or two ago used to be such a quaint way to identify oneself politically, then everyone dropped the mask and it’s just a full-on Kleptocracy out there now. On a Nolan Chart, I’m squarely in the Centrist square. On a quadrant evaluation, I fall into the same zone as Thomas Jefferson and…Marianne Williamson, oddly enough.
Plus, Lemmy needs to hear opinions from outside the tankie echo chamber.
This only makes sense if you insist on reducing complex multidimensional concepts to a single scalar value. Even intuitively it doesn’t make sense. You place yourself in the centre between two philosophies you disagree with? What?
It actually makes more sense when you don’t reduce it. Look up a Nolan Chart, or quadrant-based political stance diagram. I fall squarely into the center of the Nolan Chart.
Why do you think voting for a party aligns yourself with that party?
If two people want to attempt to unalive your mother with a 50% probability that they will succeed, and you have the chance to stop only one of them, reducing the chance to 25%. Does it mean that you align with whoever you do not choose?
Voting WITH a party is not the same thing as voting for a candidate that has openly identified as a member one party or the other because that is a barrier to entry or funding avenue for them.
I know it’s hard to accept, but the entire history of both parties hasn’t been “socialist utopia vs. Nazis.” For a century the Democrats didn’t eject all the Southern racists that declared they were Dems simply to be a counterpoint to Lincoln-to-MLK-era Republicans.
Even a cursory understanding of history should make anyone distrust all political parties forever.
But please tell me more about how the party that denied us a president Bernie Sanders (I) is worth my time.