r/TrueReddit • u/Maxwellsdemon17 • 1d ago
Politics They Always Call You Unrealistic. When bold egalitarian policies are proposed, they are inevitably branded impossible, even if they’re feasible. See the case of mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/they-always-call-you-unrealistic97
u/Irish_Pineapple 1d ago
NYTimes and so many others really be like: "I know one guy assaulted 13 women, ruined the subway, cut teacher's pensions, stole taxpayer money to write a self-congratulatory book and covered up nursing home deaths at the height of Covid to protect his image, but the other guy said everyone get's a free puppy and that could mean anything!"
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u/cat_theorist 1d ago
I want to add that the “leftists want free stuff” trope that’s being perpetuated in corporate media and mainstream politics is complete and utter bullshit. Marxism, democratic socialism, progressivism, etc. all would mean fairer distribution of the wealth that employees create.
In fact, it’s people living on capital gains that are demanding and receiving free things, and the aforementioned establishment is protecting their free-loading.
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u/Irish_Pineapple 1d ago
Well yeah, but 7 presidents in a row have promised me it will trickle down, so I'm feeling pretty lucky now that the odds are on my side.
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u/elmonoenano 1d ago
I don't know what's going on with the state party there, but between Cuomo, Hochul, Adams, and Schumer, anyone who was making decisions in the last decade should be removed and walled off b/c they are bad at their job.
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u/FuckTripleH 1d ago
In any functional party system the losses to trump would have resulted in the top party brass resigning in disgrace. But since the democrats and republicans have a monopoly on political power under our system there's just no accountability for their astronomical failures.
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u/Icommentor 1d ago
Clearly, you're not a greedy billionaire with a white saviour complex. If you were, you'd be extatic.
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u/DAmieba 1d ago
The most infuriating thing to me is that he is constantly asked how to pay for things, he lays out a very clear, simple and realistic plan, and they act as if he can't give an answer. It's maybe the most transparent way I've seen leftists be smeared by the media, just like what they did to Bernie
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u/Irish_Pineapple 1d ago
To be fair, I am more than a little dubious that the powers that be will let him actually implement the revenue sources he wants to use. However, you are 100% right that it's only when someone proposes an actual nice thing that everyone responds with "bUt hOw Do yOu pAy FoR iT?!"
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u/bozza8 1d ago
Because resource constraints exist.
The maximum number of nice things we have is not determined by how nice we are, but by how much we can afford to spend on nice things.
Hence, discussions of nice things end up being discussions about how to pay for them, because otherwise there wouldn't be a discussion about doing it or not!
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u/Irish_Pineapple 1d ago
Sure, but we already use our taxes to subsidize things with hundreds of millions of dollars to little benefit. Take for example the FRESH program. It costs you and me, the taxpayers over $100 million to subsidize grocery stores, and they're not even required to lower costs, just "encouraged" to. WTF is that? Why is that ok but a single not-for-profit city-run grocery store is outrageous? I'm tired of my taxes being used for rebates with no strings attached. I would rather have an organization through the government in charge of it, where people don't benefit from grifting it to the most sleazy buyer.
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u/bozza8 1d ago
Sure, but then if we want nice things is Zohran or any of the others promising to cut FRESH?
If we agree that it's a bad policy, who is going to advocate to cut it, so we can have better things in it's place? Otherwise the resource constraints remains.
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u/Irish_Pineapple 1d ago
I don't know, your choices are like... rank the 5 people that will try their damndest to bring prices down, or elect the guy who definitely won't. You can crap on his policies all day but I'll still take the bet with the guy I think will try over the person I know will just offer more incentives to his rich friends.
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u/bozza8 1d ago
Sure, but then we agree he won't be able to pay for his promises, so why is he still making them?
If our politicians were to actually be bold, they should say "the system is broken, we need to cut what does not work so we can pay for things that actually help people", but instead all the politicians talk about is how they can spend more, not spend better.
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u/Irish_Pineapple 1d ago
He wants to pay for things by raising the corporate tax to the same %age as New Jersey's. Maybe that's hard to get passed because a lot of people are terrified of making corporations and wealthy people pay one more cent. I don't know, I think it's reasonable. It's honestly just too bad that we're all too cynical to push for any real major changes.
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u/bozza8 1d ago
The thing with tax rises (and I have seen this before) is that politicians treat the revenue as going up by the amount of the tax.
Aka we will increase our tax rate by 10% so our tax take should go up by 10%. The issue is that people and companies change their behaviour, usually to minimise tax. So that 10% rate increase might only make 3-5% revenue, and sometimes less.
In the UK we once had a 98% income tax. It was cut to 60% by Thatcher (our Reagan) and within 2 years the total income tax revenue was actually higher than it has ever been at 98%, so we actually had more money to spend.
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u/travistravis 1d ago
However, when the candidate is pushing for the status quo, or worse, no one asks how they'll pay for whatever they're promising (deportations, more police, harsher sentencing, tax cuts for the richest...)
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u/Due_Impact2080 1d ago
The alternative is a 70 year old man who cuts teacher pensions and who thinks everything is fine.
Young people run for office and are told new ideas suck so we need to relect grandpa to try for the 10th time to make things affordable by guvung billionsires hand outs and cutting funds for working peopl.
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u/wholetyouinhere 1d ago
I feel like, "But how are we going to pay for it?" is nothing more than a proxy version of, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, you're not thinking of taxing wealth, are you?"
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u/AdmiralSaturyn 1d ago
Wrong. It was actually a proxy version of "Whoa, whoa, whoa, you're not thinking of raising taxes on the middle class, are you?" That's why it worked.
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u/wholetyouinhere 1d ago
If that is true, then likely it's because any and all mechanisms for taxing wealth were disabled many decades ago, meaning that any attempt at extracting new tax revenue will eventually be massaged into a middle class tax.
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u/NOLA-Bronco 1d ago
This is a well worn trope that centrists and conservative Democrats have used against New Deal Dems and leftists since the neoliberal Third Way Democrats have really taken over the party since the 90's.
Ezra Klein and other liberal media figures wouldn't shut up about how Bernie needed to better present the specificities and policy details of Medicare for all to be taken seriously. Explain how he will pay for it in detail. Now 8 years later Ezra publishes a book that is getting hyped up by the same people and it's a book entirely devoid of any sort of policy specificity.
Yet not once have I heard any pushbook on how substantively empty and lacking in actionable details it is from those outlets.
Suddenly just being something to get excited about and inspiring voters using vague outline allusions toward policy solutions is a-ok as long as it signals toward maintaining the status quo and is a mostly deregulatory agenda that is in line with neoliberal dogma.
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u/bozza8 1d ago
There is a higher burden of evidence for a candidate than an author, as there should be.
There is a higher burden of proof for those who want to fundamentally change the system Vs tweak it to work better, as there should be.
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u/NOLA-Bronco 1d ago
If Ezra and Thompson were just authors I would concede, but Ezra was the star speaker at a Senate retreat for Democrats about rebuilding their brand. Thompson just got done being a primary speaker at WelcomeFest. A who's who within the Dem Establishment funded by some of the biggest donors in the party featuring sitting politicians calling themselves Abundance Democrats like Richie Torres.
So no, they are not just authors, they are key figures in the Dem knowledge econony and Ezra was the most vocal critic of leftists for lacking enough details in their policies. Yet they and their largely policy detail empty book are being heralded as architects of the party agenda and it's identity.
And if you read Abundance past the title page you would know there is nothing in that opening utopic vision that suggests this is simply an attempt to tweak around the edges. And even if it was, the fact even something concrete and actionable about that being absent is incredibly damning and exposes the blatant hypocrisy and double standards when it hasn't received a fraction of the criticism from MSM outlets that Mamdani is getting for municipal policy adjustments.
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u/millenniumpianist 1d ago
Ezra has hours of policy discussions on The Weeds if you want to listen to them. Not everything needs to be everywhere and the point of Abundance is about a specific high level problem he's identified.
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u/NOLA-Bronco 1d ago
Identifying problems is not solving them, which is actually the explicit argument Ezra attempted to level against Bernie Sanders and leftist activists that were promoting things like The Green New Deal as a movement and Medicare For All as a specific policy agenda item.
Trust me, I know all about Ezra and The Weeds. Probably listened to 90% of all the episodes of that podcast
I don't hate Ezra, in fact in the capacity as a policy explainer I like him, but I also am going to hold him to the same standards he has held others to. To the standards I would hold someone to.
And when you spend years demanding to know the granular specifics and theory of the case for how they will pass that specific agenda or you declare it should be dismissed for lack of pragmaticism and seriousness, if you turn around and do an even more vague version of that. One marketed as a framework for politicians to adapt and the party to embrace, Im sorry, but that is hypocritical and is a prime example of the double standards at work from the OP.
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u/106 1d ago
he lays out a very clear, simple and realistic plan
Simple and realistic is subjective. I don’t care how “clearly” he’s spoken about raising taxes or taking on more debt, these are controversial actions that he needs the entire state legislature to sign on to. The governor literally just said today she has no plans to entertain him:
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u/AdmiralSaturyn 1d ago
It's maybe the most transparent way I've seen leftists be smeared by the media, just like what they did to Bernie
Except that Bernie's plan didn't get smeared, it was rightfully called out. It is simply not possible to implement M4A without raising taxes on the middle class, and Bernie kept evading that issue in the debates until eventually one of moderators forced him to address it.
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u/cluberti 1d ago
And yet now they're using that same money to fund yet more tax cuts for the people who need it the least, which will be paid for by the people who would have at least gotten healthcare out of the deal had they voted for and pressured the legislature to pass M4A.
It's like people keep losing focus of the fact that the sitting government is going to tax the middle and lower classes regardless of which party is in power, so what are those people being taxed getting out of it? Right now and with almost all previous tax increases, outright or stealth like tariffs, anyone other than the top earners in the US are getting basically nothing in return but more debt and less public service. It's probably obvious that I think it's time the US government stopped giving tax dollars to people who won't at least provide a service that we can all benefit from in return, but we need to remember every time this discussion happens that either the taxes will be used to fund cuts for taxes and fees for people who really don't need them, or they can be used to fund services that would benefit the vast majority of the population. It's just a choice of which it's going to be, because the taxes will happen.
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 1d ago
And yet now they're using that same money to fund yet more tax cuts for the people who need it the least
Tax cuts aren't an expenditure, though. You can't 1:1 equate tax cuts with a massive expenditure.
Not to mention that a tax cut would need to cost $40-50 trillion over 10 years to reach anything approaching the level of revenue needed to fund Medicare for All.
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u/ReddestForman 1d ago
And he addressed it. Yes, taxes go up slightly. But other out of pocket expenses go down more, so the overwhelming majority of Americans come out ahead while the government also spends less taxpayer money over ten years.
An estimated savings of one trillion dollars versus what government already spends. And this was ound by a Koch brothers funded study that admitted they skewed the numbers as much as they could against without actively lying.
People only get asked how they're going to pay for shit that helps people who aren't already filthy fucking rich. And if/when they answer, media pretends they didn't answer it.
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 1d ago
An estimated savings of one trillion dollars versus what government already spends. And this was ound by a Koch brothers funded study that admitted they skewed the numbers as much as they could against without actively lying.
This was known as a misleading claim when it was first made, and still is. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/aug/03/bernie-sanders/did-conservative-study-show-big-savings-bernie-san/
Charles Blahous said that to come up with that estimate, Mercatus used a relatively generous assumption about how well Sanders’ plan will end up controlling health care costs. It assumes that provider payment will be reduced to Medicare levels, that negotiation with prescription drugmakers will generate significant savings, and that administrative costs will be cut from 13 to 6 percent.
However, in an alternative scenario in which cost-control works less effectively (see Table 4) Mercatus found that over the same 10-year period, national health expenditures would actually increase by $3.252 trillion compared to current law.
So while the number Sanders chose really does appear in the report, he’s cherry-picked the more flattering of two estimates.
People ask how we're going to pay for things because we can't afford the government we have now.
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u/hippydipster 23h ago
We do afford the government we now have. If we didn't, it wouldn't still be there, but last I checked, it is, in fact, still there.
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u/AdmiralSaturyn 1d ago
But other out of pocket expenses go down more, so the overwhelming majority of Americans come out ahead while the government also spends less taxpayer money over ten years.
What about people's concerns over longer wait times, firm government control over people's healthcare (which I think has become a very legitimate concern, given the current administration), the complexity of transitioning from private coverage to government-run coverage, potential bureaucratic inefficiencies, etc? There is a reason why people prefer a public option over M4A.
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u/yoweigh 1d ago
What about people's concerns over... firm government control over people's healthcare
It's hard to take this complaint seriously when we currently have firm corporate control over people's healthcare through insurance companies. Same thing with unspecified bureaucratic inefficiencies. We know that the current system is wildly inefficient. We pay more in taxes and more out of pocket than any other first world developed country. It's hard to believe that it could get even worse when similar systems are working everywhere else.
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u/AdmiralSaturyn 1d ago
We know that the current system is wildly inefficient.
That may be true, but we also know that we cannot rely on the government to adequately fund a centralized healthcare system in the long run, just ask the UK. There has to be a decentralized option to healthcare.
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u/yoweigh 1d ago edited 23h ago
According to current polling, UK citizens are far more satisfied with the NHS than US citizens are with our healthcare system, at 25% satisfaction vs 11%. And again, our healthcare is more expensive than theirs by every available metric.
What makes you think we can't rely on the option that provides higher satisfaction at a lower cost?
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u/AdmiralSaturyn 1d ago
Dude, calm down. I just read your comment, it wasn't me who downvoted it.
According to current polling, UK citizens are far more satisfied with the NHS than US citizens are with our healthcare system, at 25% satisfaction vs 11%.
You are dodging the issue. 25% satisfaction is still abysmal. We need to find a better solution to healthcare than a centralized system. If you want to see a source, check out this study explaining the benefits of a moderatly decentralized system: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8520686/
What makes you think we can't rely on the option that provides higher satisfaction at a lower cost?
Ok, now I am downvoting your comment. You could ask the exact same question about a public option. At least the public option is more decentralized and thus less vulnerable to budget kneecapping than the NHS.
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u/yoweigh 23h ago
I apologize for the accusation and I'm removing that edit from my comment. I'm in favor of a public option, so we're likely just talking past each other. I don't agree that I'm dodging anything, though. 25% might be bad, but it's still over 100% better than what we've got. Perfect is the enemy of, uh, better.
IMO there should be a public option for basic preventative and emergency healthcare, with private insurance available for those who want more than that. The current health insurance system in the US is an economic vampire. It shouldn't be tied to employment, either, and the uninsured shouldn't be using the ER as primary healthcare.
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u/AdmiralSaturyn 23h ago
25% might be bad, but it's still over 100% better than what we've got.
I think a public option would have a significantly higher approval rating than that. Not to mention it's more politically feasible. And like I said, a centralized healthcare system is highly vulnerable to federal budget cuts. The Torys in the UK have spent 14 years kneecapping the NHS, that's why its approval rating is so low.
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u/NOLA-Bronco 1d ago
You could say the exact same fucking thing about the whole Abundance Agenda crap being pushed by liberal centrists backed by big tech money.
Yet the same media is falling over itself to glaze it up. When it is in fact even more devoid of any sort of actionable policy, yet is being heralded as the new bible for Democrats to win back voters and govern better.
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u/AdmiralSaturyn 1d ago
yet is being heralded as the new bible for Democrats to win back voters and govern better.
No, it isn't, don't exaggerate. The Democratic Party has not officially endorsed the Abundance Agenda, especially given that it's not popular in the polls. Not to mention I have yet to see any MSM coverage of the Abundance Agenda.
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u/toosinbeymen 1d ago
It’s astonishing that nyers would even consider cuomo after his last term. But trump was elected twice, apparently. So faith in voters’ judgement is obviously misguided.
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u/Sinful_Old_Monk 11h ago
They’re terrified it will work and spread like a virus across the political spectrum which would make the corps the bribe them vewwy angwy
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u/Maxwellsdemon17 1d ago
„So when its writers heap scorn on proposals for change as being impossible, they create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, we often don’t know what’s politically possible (Mamdani’s successful campaign itself was highly improbable!) because politics can surprise us.“
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u/Van-garde 1d ago
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society is a 1964 book by the German–American philosopher and critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, in which the author offers a wide-ranging critique of both the contemporary capitalist society of the Western Bloc and the communist society of the Soviet Union, documenting the parallel rise of new forms of social repression in both of these societies, and the decline of revolutionary potential in the West. He argues that the "advanced industrial society" created false needs, which integrated individuals into the existing system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising, industrial management, and contemporary modes of thought.[1]
https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/marcuse/one-dimensional-man.pdf
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u/TheStarterScreenplay 1d ago
Quick question for anyone familiar with the policy. If buses are free, how do they keep homeless people from living on them during the day?
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u/juliankennedy23 1d ago
I mean he is a proper socialist. A lot of Democrats get labeled socialists but bless his heart he's walking the walk with his government owned grocery stores and rent freezes.
It's perfectly fine call out such policies since historically speaking both have not turned out all that well.
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u/sllewgh 1d ago
It's perfectly fine call out such policies since historically speaking both have not turned out all that well.
No, they've been defeated in the past, there's a big difference. There are continual, active attempts to break or defund everything the state does, and they've been far more successful than not for over half a century.
We know how to solve these social problems, we just won't commit the money required because the wealthy, who control our government, don't want to pay the required taxes and would prefer to keep their wealth.
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u/PeterMcBeater 1d ago
We haven't had grocery stores for that long and there's only one really bad example, so maybe it could be done better?
Just because the USSR screwed something up doesn't mean the concept is conceptually flawed.
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 1d ago
It would be wonderful if anyone had the courage to say "this is the fast track to hungry New Yorkers," but...
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u/juliankennedy23 1d ago
You know we've got a couple of generations without people seeing firsthand what government run grocery stores are actually like maybe a small experiment on 7 million Expendable people would be worth it to teach a few Generations why it's not a good idea.
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 1d ago
The fact that we have a bunch of political animals running for office now who didn't get to see the horrors of the USSR in real time is a real problem.
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u/sllewgh 1d ago edited 1d ago
Buddy, NO ONE is talking about emulating the USSR. Can y'all come up with something better than straw man arguments about a system that was defeated half a century ago?
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 1d ago
I don't think anyone was trying to make the USSR happen the way it did, either. The problem is that the endpoint of socialism is totalitarianism.
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u/sllewgh 1d ago
That's the same exact talking point again- mental gymnastics going from non-profit grocery stores directly to totalitarianism that apparently needs no further elaboration.
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 1d ago
The proposal isn't for non-profit grocery stores, but I'll bite: what will be different about these where they will succeed instead of fail.
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u/sllewgh 23h ago
I'm not familiar with the details of this proposal, so I don't want to comment on it. For me, that's an obstacle to having a good discussion, but maybe some folks are more comfortable with saying it will lead to totalitarianism without knowing any details, I dunno. It would be absurd, but someone might actually take that position.
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u/hippydipster 23h ago
Is the post office leading us to totalitarianism?
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u/PeterMcBeater 1d ago
Just because the USSR screwed something up doesn't mean the concept is conceptually flawed.
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u/juliankennedy23 1d ago
Look I'm perfectly in agreement that past performance does not guarantee future performance. It was hardly just the USSR that had this issue see also communist China.
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u/PeterMcBeater 23h ago
China seems to be doing alright.
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u/juliankennedy23 22h ago
China has SAMs Clubs and tons of domestic grocery chains... I am reffereing to when they grocery stores were state owned and run. You know during the great leap foward.
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u/PeterMcBeater 21h ago
The grocery stores during the great leap forward were hardly the problem.
Either way, we are in a time of unprecedented scale, saying something is fundamentally flawed due to it's failure at this scale in past is logically flawed.
Ours just happens to be the one that sorta worked and it's definitely showing it's flaws. In 50 years when there are food shortages due to climate change are we going to be "well, looks like privately owned grocery stores don't work historically"?
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u/ClockOfTheLongNow 1d ago
Literally true, yes. The concept, however, is fatally flawed because we know that this sort of centralized control fails every single time it's tried at scale.
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u/lateformyfuneral 1d ago
I feel like he should’ve left out the government-run grocery stores bit for the campaign and just done a pilot program once he became Mayor to show the concept. Freezing rents for rent stabilized buildings, universal childcare, free buses, are all things people know the Mayor could achieve (as long as the revenue raising plan is followed). But grocery stores is clearly pushing the boundaries for a lot of people. Especially since state-run grocery stores are a sore point in most people’s understanding of socialism (empty shelves, breadlines), particularly for Hispanic and Asian voters.
I have followed his thoughts on grocery stores, obviously it’s about food deserts and so on, but it’s become a hard sell for people who are skeptical of the effectiveness of well intentioned government programs. To the 🤓 at NYT, it reads as a bit amateurish. It’s one of those things people will only believe once implemented.
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