I agree. There's a narrative at the moment that the left should have listened to the right more. That's the wrong lesson.
The US GDP in real dollars is 2.3 times larger than it was in the mid-70s. In the same time period the median household income went up 1.12 times.
Considering the size of the US GDP, that's a staggering amount of money that's just disappeared into the 1%'s bank accounts. It's a multi-trillion dollar heist. People are so loss-adverse that they've been fine with not getting paid literally twice as much, so long as someone told them they'd have less chance of losing their job if they went along with it.
Regular Americans did their part - the economy grew, but they didn't benefit from it. The left should be making that crystal clear, that clarity should make people furious, and the left should ride a tide of justified anger to power.
What the they shouldn't to is ponder whether the right is on to something and it really is the Mexicans that are to blame for their job insecurity, or that taxes and regulations maybe actually are the reason that the median American household doesn't have the 6-figure income that they would have had, had their wages been commiserate with America's success over the last 40 years.
The left should act like the left, and address the economic problems of the poor and middle class people of America directly -attacking the deliberate fiscal and taxation policies that caused them. And if that doesn't focus group well, they should have some actual principles and do it anyway.
That's exactly what the left needs to do, but I don't see it happening when a large portion of the typical politician's work schedule is calling the people responsible for that heist and asking for money. That conflict of interest is fundamental problem[1].
People want a platform that actually is liberal, but liberal politicians moved further to the right in an attempt to work with people that were never going to compromise. Instead of seeing even an acknowledgement of the real economic problems that many people struggle to deal with, the left instead showed the were more interested in taking corporate money.
> attacking the deliberate fiscal and taxation policies that caused them
That's hard to do in an environment of regulatory capture and large donations from the people that would be regulated.
Bernie Sanders sent this message clearly, and he had enough financial support from the middle and working class to outspend Clinton in the primary. So it's possible.
> that the left should have listened to the right more. That's the wrong lesson.
Reminds me of the following: "listen to your users, but ignore what they say". Which is actually an entire chapter of Programming as if People Mattered, a great book.[1]
So I don't think the left should have done what the right says, but it definitely should have listened more. Sort of like the whole seriously vs. literally thing with Trump.[2][3]
> ... taxes and regulations maybe actually are the reason that the median American household doesn't have the 6-figure income that they would have had, had their wages been commiserate with America's success over the last 40 years.
How can this not be true? The 1% just knew how to play the game, where the game = finding all the loopholes in the mountain of shitty taxes and regulations you talk about.
Adding more taxes, more regulations, and more social programs isn't the answer. Adding the _right_ taxes, regulations, and social programs may actually do something.
The US GDP in real dollars is 2.3 times larger than it was in the mid-70s. In the same time period the median household income went up 1.12 times.
Considering the size of the US GDP, that's a staggering amount of money that's just disappeared into the 1%'s bank accounts. It's a multi-trillion dollar heist. People are so loss-adverse that they've been fine with not getting paid literally twice as much, so long as someone told them they'd have less chance of losing their job if they went along with it.
Regular Americans did their part - the economy grew, but they didn't benefit from it. The left should be making that crystal clear, that clarity should make people furious, and the left should ride a tide of justified anger to power.
What the they shouldn't to is ponder whether the right is on to something and it really is the Mexicans that are to blame for their job insecurity, or that taxes and regulations maybe actually are the reason that the median American household doesn't have the 6-figure income that they would have had, had their wages been commiserate with America's success over the last 40 years.
The left should act like the left, and address the economic problems of the poor and middle class people of America directly -attacking the deliberate fiscal and taxation policies that caused them. And if that doesn't focus group well, they should have some actual principles and do it anyway.