politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Yeah, even as a solid dem from my perspective this reads as “report how I want it to sound”. It falls flat.
That said; the economy is doing better (but unfortunately the kind of economic improvement that helps shareholders more than regular people), inflation slowed down, unionization is on the rise, fuel prices (temporarily, as always) are down…so that’s good.
But housing or every kind is still out of control. Record profits without commensurately rising wages. New cars are still fucking ridiculous money. We’re being subscribed to death.
So from an everyday perspective we are still getting fucked.
There's not much Biden can do about late stage capitalism. We're reaching the end game. Where companies take us for just nearly everything we have to where we "survive" enough to keep working and paying them but just barely.
Even just talking about it truthfully would be something. Sticking his head in the ground is just going to get us a dictator.
How is this good, exactly? What problems need fixing in the US that unions are well poised to fix?
Low wages, poor or high cost benefits, termination for any reason the employer sees fit… unions can also fill in gaps with additional insurance, legal benefits, addiction programs, and more.
Are you not from the US?
E: quick trip thru your comment history shows possibly Finnish? With libertarian and possibly anarchist leanings. Pro-free market to a fault while completely ignoring the damage free markets do, and the fact that they’re never really free.
You are quite close to the truth of the matter. Free markets aren't the problem, the fact that they're often not really free is.
Yep. We have a pretty catastrophic situation here in Finland because of unions that have been made too powerful by legislation. I'll happily grant that they've done a lot of good work in Finland in the past, but really nothing positive in the last 4 decades at least. It has grown stale like most powerful things do when they're let to linger without any accountability for too long.
I suppose you have a choice then. Let corporations run amok and sacrifice your well-being for profit as they do in the US, or in your case let unions take over and give people better lives at the expense of bureaucracy.
I prefer something in the middle after spending time in Europe and the US. EU quality of life is higher, as is upward mobility, longevity, and a bunch of other factors. FBFW that comes at the price of strong unions that make a lot of things difficult to do thanks to the bureaucracy.
I don’t think you really want truly free market. The first thing to be sacrificed is you for more profits.
This is a classic example of a false dichotomy. These are not the actual real-life options on offer.
It's possible that quality of life thing derives from politics, but it's also possible that it's happening for some other reasons. Also, you might not have the correct view of quality of life when it comes to EU vs USA. The problem is that USA is often depicted as a single entity which is compared to individual European countries. But really, it would make more sense to compare the entirety of EU to USA, or individual EU states vs individual US states.
But if you do compare it like that, it doesn't look great for EU:
We have Scandinavia (where I live) and Switzerland. Scandinavia is grounded in capitalist free market economy, with varying levels of freedom and government intervention. Switzerland, of course, is one of the most free market/capitalist countries in the world -- also often one of the happiest ones.
That doesn't seem to happen in a free market, at least when competition is healthy. Companies are competing against each other in terms of employees and their product, which practically guarantees optimal outcomes for both.