Share this comment
Getting a bit nervous. I thought this platform was going to be balanced and look especially at the sudden political emergence of critical theory and its various manifestations including cancel culture and wokeism. I know it’s early days, but this is beginning to feel like just another left-leaning echo chamber.
Getting a bit nervous. I thought this platform was going to be balanced and look especially at the sudden political emergence of critical theory and its various manifestations including cancel culture and wokeism. I know it’s early days, but this is beginning to feel like just another left-leaning echo chamber.
If it helps, I've heard Jordan Peterson make the same argument on Joe Rogan's podcast; that too much inequality destabilizes society and encourages "nothing-to-lose" revolutionaries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bq3YrYjG-s
(start at about 4:11)
Thanks for that, Mike’s. I think JP does does a great job of trying to strike a balance view on the issue of inequality. Aiming for equality of outcome is obviously nonsense. But he recognizes that excessive inequality is destabilizing and potentially destructive.
We all know that we presently have a serious income inequality issue. This is obviously simplistic, but the mantra on the left seems to be “tax the rich”. That may well be the solution to the problem, but I doubt it.
It would be great to hear about other potential solutions (or mix of solutions) to the problem. Can we learn anything from the 1950s and 1960s when income inequality was at it’s lowest?
Well, tax rates WERE much higher post-WWII; they only started getting cut way back down in the Reagan era, and never went back up to those levels.
Tax the rich is a big part of it, but also, college has been sold as a false panacea to poverty. Young people take out massive loans to get degrees that don't really improve their job prospects, so they're stuck trying to pay them off while working at Starbucks.
Trades have been stigmatized as "low-class" jobs, even though a journeyman certificate is a far better career booster than a gender studies degree.
"Tax the rich, get the poor into trades" would do a great job of solving inequality. Then layer in repatriating supply chains back away from overseas sweatshops, and we'd be in good shape.
Thomas Piketty explained and documented in his 2014 book, "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," how and why capitalism inexorably produces increasingly extreme inequality of wealth unless it is regulated and taxed or periodically disrupted by destructive wars and/or revolutions. (We now know that pandemics seem to have the opposite effects.) It seems to me that we may soon be testing the upper limit on wealth inequality. It may be that limiting factor will turn out to be resulting war or revolution. We'd be wiser if we tried some regulation and taxation before we get to that point, but it seems that the greater the inequality, the less chance we will have to try those methods.
"tax the rich" is not the only mantra on the left for eliminating income inequality. It is not even the #1 mantra.
#1 is use QUOTAS in the work-place in every decision.
#2 is Equal Pay Regardless of Merit.
#3 might be Tax The Rich, but that doesn't actually address INCOME. That addresses wealth, which is a different thing.
#1 driver of income inequality is GLOBALIZATION. You can learn that there was little globalization in the '50s & '60s.
Thanks for your input, Leo.
Do you actually think people don't understand that basic concept? Do you think some get the warm & fuzzies because Peterson said it. Just listen to your specious choice of words "TOO MUCH inequality". Gee, is TOO MUCH of anything a good thing? Let's ask Mae West?
"Do you actually think people don't understand that basic concept?"
Yes, they're called libertarians.
"Do you think some get the warm & fuzzies because Peterson said it."
Yes, they're the people complaining that Tara's substack is a woke echo chamber. If Trump says 2+2=4, they'll believe it, but if Biden says 2+2=4, they'll say it's a liberal hoax.
ps: you don't even understand the #1 focus of "libertarians". Dreadful.
It's a tie between tax cuts and deregulation
Not even close.
So, you'll just pass on the specious use of the modifier "TOO MUCH". Typical of you. Words are a toy. They mean nothing. Slip one here. Slip one there. Yawn.
At this point, I'm not sure you even know what the word "specious" means. You just kind of throw it around like it's a magic spell to own the libs.
but you did say you're "not sure", which is the most honest thing you have said all day, most likely.
I know exactly what it means. You specialize in it. But, good job changing the subject away from your meaningless choice of words and jumping to pretending to have a unique grasp of the language. Laughable.
Lol tax policy doesn't create billionaires. I'm a CPA so this is my wheelhouse; you don't want to get into this discussion.
You said, and I quote, "The wealth divide of the ‘common’ person has a lot to do with the corrupt tax system and that is also by design."
That is just flat out dead-ass wrong.
Identity is the smokescreen that class/wealth is using to obscure itself. One is the dancer, the other the dance. Both have to be discussed......
I don't see this as a left leaning echo chamber. Having opposing views is great. In reading the comments below, I find a very lively conversation with views from all across the spectrum which is great to see. Not very many places where well stated views are being shared.
Hi James. I was thinking more of the content itself: Tara’s guests and their views. I’m hoping that we will see a mix of interviewees with different perspectives and focus more on the complex and dangerous phenomenon of politicization of Critical Theory, which was how this new platform was presented.
there is nothing well-stated in that interview.
I can pretty much guarantee Tara won't be drinking the MAGA Koolaid anytime in the next 30 days, so no need to check back. Maybe you could check in on what the term "cognitive dissonance" means instead; you tend to just throw buzzwords around in a context that makes it clear you don't actually understand what they mean.
That doesn't matter because these right wingers have been propagandized to for years that the left is basically a bunch of communists who want to destroy America and woke, critical theory, socialist, etc. are all the same thing. They're all commies who want to turn boys into girls and want to take all their money and throw them in prison.
Propaganda about propaganda, neat
Thanks Russel, I just used your "Propaganda about propaganda" line above. It is so common these days.
This is not far off from what a huge voting block of old men sitting in la z boys watching Fox News believe. That is not to say it's worse than the hysterical liberals who watch MSNBC religiously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ27GKeUSlA&ab_channel=JT
meh, they can keep the money. Buy ciggies in prison.