At no point have I been ranting. The reason you interpret it that way is because you want to, because you like to argue, or because you spend so much time in that bubble. I was perfectly happy to have an open conversation supported by lots of good research you've read. I have no interest in pretending I have read everything, know everything or see everything clearly. You learn by speaking to others with different views. You didn't have any interest in that. No need to spin it any other way - you are who you are, own it.
Peterson, Harris, etc....
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
At no point have I been ranting. The reason you interpret it that way is because you want to, because you like to argue, or because you spend so much time in that bubble. I was perfectly happy to have an open conversation supported by lots of good research you've read. I have no interest in pretending I have read everything, know everything or see everything clearly. You learn by speaking to others with different views. You didn't have any interest in that. No need to spin it any other way - you are who you are, own it.
you say that like it's a bad thing
and this isn't really true in the slightest, just because Tony Benn was born to aristocrats doesn't mean his work helping people gets voided
Your focus on the people worst off is admirable. It's also necessary for some people to do that. It just means you're not able to listen to any other part of the conversation, and attack people when you misunderstand their position. I wasn't saying the people you are talking about are not suffering. I was talking about a huge number of others, who are very real and very significant, that I think harm the people you're so keen to defend.
Ultimately, I don't see why being so aggressive to a bunch of strangers on the internet benefits anyone. If you spend all your free time thinking and talking about this, you're doing no one any favours putting it on here. Volunteer with some of these people and you'll be much more satisfied, and people here will suffer less. Choosing not to just means that what you really want is to get angry at people. Which is fine, but don't pretend it's something else.
Again that wasn't the subject in the video he was talking about. He was talking about a middle ground that can be discussed in political spheres that both sides could talk about without raising their bipartisan drawbridge, It had nothing to do with any Christian sexual morality. I'm not saying he doesn't advocate that ( I have no idea as I don't know enough about him ) but it wasn't in that video.
that is his MO
"let's have a rational discussion about responsible sexual practices"
if topic is abortion it then follows like this:
"well abortion is immoral, but you can't make it illegal, and that's not the point anyway, you have to see why it happens"
list couple of points why abortion happens, land on promiscuity
"well, people don't talk about sex when they have it, since women and men have the same sexual agency as men thanks to the revolutionary technology in the pill" completely ignoring decades of people talking about sexual practices
end with some classic christian morality about getting married and having children as in the videos I also posted in the last page
Again you're reading what you want to read, not what I'm saying. If you want substantive conversations this isn't the way to achieve it.
I don't talk to people like Tony Benn. I talk to people like you or me. People with enough free time and energy to talk about these things in a football forum. Or, put another way, people who do not suffer from true economic hardship. I have honestly spoken to more of these people than I can count, and analysed all kinds of data on the issues. You can dismiss my views but you can't dismiss my right to a view on them. I do also speak to people with the kind of economic hardship you speak of, but naturally there's less money invested in hearing their voices.
what, you know we've got posters here who were/are homeless yeah? posters who are primary carers for loves ones and struggle financially, etc. etc. it's a free website not a 5 star hotel on a private island
no one ever does this, this is another vacuous thing that doesn't mean anything
It doesn't surprise me that we have people who have been homeless. I would be shocked if we have people who spend as much time as you discussing the issues you do in the way you do that are also homeless. But like I say, I don't claim to know or see everything.
What economic position are you in? Maybe I have misjudged entirely. If we are literally living in different economic worlds then I understand your position much better. I would guess you are not in a different position to many of my friends who take the same stance you do.
Alternatively, you can continue sniping. But then don't complain about the lack of substantive conversation. You have a role in that.
There's a fine line between that comment and the point you're dismissing as ridiculous. My opinion isn't allowed, is how I read it.
I'm self employed and only had a few years where i made enough to pay income tax, proper broke
but it doesn't have anything to do with it, you don't have to be poor to want to change the economic system and it's a little insulting that you'd think that
I assumed you'd know Dickens. He portrayed capitalists who would subjugate the lower classes and that's what I was referring to.
No, I want to change the economic system. Just not in the way you do, to the extent you do. And you are in the same situation as some of my friends and family. I was there not long ago. I know what desperation and frustration is.
For you to need to go on verbal assaults at any opportunity, would suggest you're struggling to survive and desperate for someone, anyone, to hear. Even strangers on the internet with no power snd often no interest. If that's how you feel, fair enough. I hope that changes. I don't feel that way about myself, or about you. But I'm ignorant to your life.
I'll leave it here because no-one likes to read any of this. I would personally prefer if you were to be less quick to attack others. But if you need to, you need to. Here's to a better new year.
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The HYPOCRISY of Ben Shapiro
https://thinkprogress.org/ben-shapi...re-trump-conservative-hypocrisy-99ecd0a7940d/
https://thinkprogress.org/ben-shapi...re-trump-conservative-hypocrisy-99ecd0a7940d/
The problem is though that this isn't down to some freak disaster or accident, there are very noticeable and obvious reasons as to why our generation may end up being worse off than our parents, and most reasonable attempts at pointing this out are often shouted down or dismissed. Similarly, youngsters today often face being called snowflakes or are perceived as being 'weak' by the very same generation whose greed has left us in a worse off position economically. I'd understand annoyance at the anger of many young people if older generations were realising their mistakes and rectifying them to help us - the problem is that they're doing the exact opposite, presuming you're not keen on Trump or Brexit. Youngsters who aren't well-off or who are struggling are often just told they're not doing enough to get a job when the reality is that a lot of jobs aren't available now, and we live in an economic system where you're inevitably going to get some people who fail and need the help of the state - the very same system plenty of people have/or want to dismantle in many first-world countries.
The idea that things are just a little bit worse off as well largely depends on how the next few decades go as well. At the moment it may only be a slight reduction in material status we face, but if the climate continues to worsen things could get dramatically worse. And I'd say there's not really any room to sit around and hope such an issue goes away: it's got to be addressed, and (again) it's mainly older generations who caused the climate crisis who are hindering progress on that regard, or who deny the issue altogether. Again, the anger here is very understandable.
I do get what you're saying. Some of the leftists on here don't particularly offer anything substantive other than snide remarks at times and don't particularly contribute to the discussion. Similarly they often seem so angry and dismissive of anyone who doesn't share their own views that you're often not sure as to who they're trying to help. By the same token though, they're coming from a perspective where 'niceness' hasn't particularly helped the left in recent years, and has often just been a code word for centrists implementing fairly right-wing policy. Similarly the rise of Trump has shown that plenty of people are ultimately willing to vote for a politician who's uninterested in compromise and is brazen in promoting his own agenda, something the left arguably believe they need to do as well. I get the need for civil discussion but at the same point civil discussion is only often possible where people have views that come from a reasonably similar spectrum, where disagreements are minor, instead of being cases where people's entire political philosophies are at odds with one another. So, yeah, I get what you're saying. But at the same time I understand why a lot of youngsters are ultimately sick and tired of being told to engage in respectful discussion.
Good post but not sure what you mean by the bit in bold?
In what way is "greed" from Gen X the reason for the economic woes the younger generations are now facing? I'm not even sure you could justify that same accusation against Baby Boomers.
I think the way young people need someone to blame for their woes is part of the reason we have so much hostility from politicially active youngsters on t'internet (left and right wingers alike) If you're a lefty you need to be seen to despise the rich (and people from older generations). If you're a right winger, then direct your hatred at immigrants, snowflakes and the thought police.
Nobody seems to be willing/able to accept that maybe, just maybe, the ups and downs of the global economy are beyond the control of any specific individual, or group of inviduals. Which has always seemed the most likely scenario to me.
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Yeah, that's probably worded poorly - Gen X'ers aren't really as culpable as the Boomers for a lot of the problems we're seeing now. I do agree that there's a bit of danger in blaming a collective group as a whole - ultimately people are moulded and shaped by the world around them, and so if you were to place youngsters now in the situation of the Boomers you'd still likely see plenty of economic greed.
But I still do think a lot of the anger is generally understandable. The policies of politicians like Thatcher and Reagan in the 80s were a deliberate attempt to shift the economic paradigm firmly to the right, and since then it's remained that way. We've been seeing inequality widen in many first-world countries for a while and there haven't been any substantive attempts to rectify or address this, with many major countries if anything trying to cut taxes for the richest under some vague notion of it being good for business when it's fairly clear said inequalities aren't going to be addressed through approaches like austerity. And again - blaming collective groups or casting them as evil isn't necessarily a particularly good approach, but similarly issues like climate change have been caused by generations who came before this one, and it'll be our lot who mostly find ourselves left to address it. And a lot of older people aren't personally to blame for that - most of them are just trying to go about their lot and do what they can to get by. But I do think some of the anger is understandable when our generations find itself cast off as having it easy or being lazy, or being too easily offended etc.
Agree with most of this, with the one big caveat in a similar vein to Pogue's. The angst that is directed at a particular generation or portion of the population with a certain worldview seems misplaced, to me. I disagree with Pogue that it isn't any group's fault. I think the people in power are at fault, and in a lot of cases they're doing it for explicitly selfish reasons.
I just disagree with the idea that their supporters are at fault too. I think their supporters are mostly irrelevant. The people in power are making major decisions that no political group / supporters want. I understand some anger at the supporters, but blame? Personally I think that's misplaced and a pointless waste of emotional, mental and physical energy on both sides. At the very least, it's a waste of time to direct that energy at the passive supporters, who ultimately are the majority. It's a kind of active ignorance that shouldn't be legitimised, because it's only going to make things worse.
It's not that I think they shouldn't do it for the sake of civil conversation. I just think they're not furthering their own goals that way. It makes total sense as a response to the decades of being overly nice. I just think the new approach isn't very useful either. Partly that's because any approach doesn't achieve all that much because they have very little influence, because the power structures have been fortified and designed to make it so. But it's also just not an effective tactic in general.
There's no doubt young people's issues are dismissed, patronised and twisted in all kinds of ways to fit people's agendas, and sometimes for selfish reasons. Donald Trump doesn't care about the environment because he doesn't care about people. It's not that he thinks there will be an environmental disaster and he doesn't care, nor does he think pushing coal will save the world. He just doesn't care enough to consider the implications for everyone else, decades after his death.
That active ignorance from the person responsible for making these decisions is infuriating and makes you want to scream and force them to listen. The reality is, that doesn't work. Screaming at people on The street that voted for this guy has more instant gratification but it doesn't achieve the goals you're screaming about in the first place either. So if you're screaming just because you need to let it out, that's cool, there's all sorts of things to get angry about. But don't dress it up as anything more than that.
It's interesting that people blame Thatcher and Reagan for the current shit show when their time in power was followed by the most affluent couple of decades in modern history. And that affluence was felt throughout society, top to bottom. It's only when the economy faltered that we saw austerity politics come into play and genuine economic hardship start to increase.
Which partly explains why I'm a bit nihilist when it comes to politics. Even when you have obvious right wing shit gibbons like Reagan and Thatcher in power, you can end up with a massively improved standard of living for everyone, whether they were rich or poor to begin with. Similarly, ousting them for the far left flavour of the month carries absolutely no guarantee that this will improve life for the majority of people. In fact, we've feck all evidence from anywhere in the world, anywhere in history, that Corbyn's ideology has a realistic chance of making the world a better place. Certainly not for longer than the 20+ years of affluence that followed on from the era when Thatcher/Reagan were in power.
To me it just seems like politicians fiddle round the edges, while a relentlessly increasing human population and technological advances cycles us through booms and busts, with different generations either lucking out or being fecked over by the timing of the up and down turns in the global economy. I'm deeply suspicious of anyone who tries to tell me that their ideology is the "correct" one and we'd all be grand if it wasn't for the other guy, who ruined it for everyone.' But maybe that's just me. I do quite envy the certainty of youth. Life feels much more straightforward when you can so easily identify the enemy. I just think reality is far too complicated to try to apportion blame like that.
Which decades were people overly nice in? Segregation was law in living memory. Marital rape was legal over the world until the 90s. Homosexuality was illegal and gay people castrated in living memory. We've invaded several countries and bombed their people. Theresa May installed a hostile environment for foreign people and Labour responded by trying to be tough on immigrants as well. ICE is currently keeping children in cages. The war on drugs has been going for decades and targeting minorities. When the feck were were too nice?
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That's true but then the economics they espoused was largely predicated on a bubble which eventually burst in the last crash. And there's no reason as to why the societal advances achieved in the years after they were in power couldn't have been achieved with someone in power who was less to the right and wasn't intent on fecking over the poorest out there in the meantime.
I do think it's fair to be suspicious of alternative options though, for a variety of reasons. People are ultimately imperfect and plenty of those on the left will happily lose their convictions or use them for ill if they get the chance to do so, as is the case with people from all political persuasions.
But I do think that major issues like climate change are only ultimately going to be solved by certain rethinks of how we approaches things economically from perspectives that firmly don't come from the right. And while absolutism isn't necessarily the best approach, I similarly don't think it's always the case that solid left-wing government can't lead to substantial improvements for people. The introduction of the welfare state in Britain came from solidly left-wing thinking and had roots in socialism and was probably the most substantial transformation we've seen in Britain in regards to improving quality-of-life and lifting people out of poverty in the long-term. Similarly FDR's New Deal policies were beneficial for a great many people and were often opposed by the richest in society who felt those same policies would harm them from a business perspective. Figures like Attlee and FDR were often prone to compromise and were certainly far from perfect in many respects, but I'd similarly say they're examples of people who were able to lead governments that transformed their respective nations with policies that came from left-wing perspectives. Of course, you can't necessarily approach things exactly like they did - society changes, and in that regard you need to change how you want to implement policy with the aim of helping people.
Really? Reagan = 1980-88. Even if you don't want to consider the inequality and class aspect of it, that grey median line didn't seem to be doing anything dramatic in the 80s.
Yes, really. I'm going with 90s and 00s as the two decades following Reagan/Thatcher. Probably out by a few years, here and there, but was addressing the point that they shifted the paradigm to the right and everyone has been screwed since then. The data you've shown there shows that everyone (including 20th percentile income) had a pretty good time in that era.Really? Reagan = 1980-88. Even if you don't want to consider the inequality and class aspect of it, that grey median line didn't seem to be doing anything dramatic in the 80s.
EDIT: Although tbf it also shows that inequality got a lot worse from the 80s onwards. Which is presumably the point @Cheesy was making.
EDIT Part Deux: Although it also confirms that everyone is a lot better off right now, in 2018, than their parents or grandparents generations. Make of that what you will!
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ah yes, the teens where *checks notes* life expectancy is decreasing and we've been given a dozen year deadline to fix the environment
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...and-other-high-income-countries-idUSKCN1L723R
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...and-other-high-income-countries-idUSKCN1L723R
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report
I'm not sure that attributing the boom of the 90s entirely to them is correct- after all one judges politicians primarily by what happens under their watch- I think the emergence of computers might have a more important role, as well as the collapse of the USSR and worldwide lowering of trade barriers which gave western capital more places to go and more profits to collect. Of course, the availability of cheap credit, at least partly an effect of Reagan and Thatcher's deregulation, further fueled this boom.
The growth of the 2000s was stopped by a recession from which there has been little recovery (basically a reversion to 2008 numbers in the US, not even that in the UK); this recession might well be tied to the nature of the increase itself, especially the deregulation/financialisation.
The end result of this era, has been that the bottom 20% are literally stuck where they were before Reagan and the median has struggled to a 20% increase, while the top 5% have almost doubled their wealth.
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Er... ok. Nothing to do with what was being discussed but you keep doing you.
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how can everyone be doing better when suicide rates are increasing?first article said:
that has also happened in the uk, most pronounced for disabled people
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...t-i-daniel-blake-job-centre-dwp-a8119286.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...t-i-daniel-blake-job-centre-dwp-a8119286.html
Just leaving this here.
Isn’t it interesting how people picking and choosing data to match their own agendas make discussions like this completely fecking pointless?
Isn’t it interesting how people picking and choosing data to match their own agendas make discussions like this completely fecking pointless?
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Breaking the unions and making home ownership an aspiration for all helped to create the boom that led to the bust with the banks and landlords protected from it and the poorest suffering most. Selling off the council house stock and privatising essential nationalised industries like power, rail, mail, telephone service etc again allowed the rich to get richer and left everyone else stagnating with higher bills and worse services and those graphs clearly show that the trend is getting worse.
From WWII onwards there's been a pretty steady growth of 10-20% per decade but the policies instigated by Thatcher and Reagan ensured that the growth was concentrated in the pockets of the wealthiest only and the differential between the 95th percentile and 99th percentile is even more telling. On salary alone I'm theoretically on the cusp of the 95th percentile but had I not set foot on the housing ladder in the mid 90s I would not be able to get a mortgage on the far from grandiose 3 bed semi former council house we own given how its value has increased, I'm alright as a result but it's my daughters generation that did not benefit from the free education I received and are facing a future where they start out saddled with 30k in debt and have almost zero chance of getting onto the housing ladder who have been truly fecked over by the growing finaincial divide in our society.
yes suicide rates for the most disadvantaged when talking about quality life where thatcher and reagan ruled is less relevant than total worldwide suicide rates
i guess the IMF saying there's poverty globally means that the increase in poverty in the UK in the 10s doesn't count
i guess the IMF saying there's poverty globally means that the increase in poverty in the UK in the 10s doesn't count
Spot on. I think all of this hit the nail on the head.
Those “total worldwide suicide” rates conveniently provide a breakdown by country. You really need to pay more attention to detail.
this page is a perfect test case for why charlatans like peterson make it so big, you get people like @berbatrick posting stats that show that the policies of reagan and thatcher only led to increased inequality and that their economic boom was confined to a small minority of the population which gets completely ignored for self congratulatory wankery with zero backing from people who think the height to politics is having a civility fetish
total rate has increased in the us and remained even in the uk, with disabled people attempting at 200% what they were before the recession, as posted above
Those “total worldwide suicide” rates conveniently provide a breakdown by country. You really need to pay more attention to detail.
You're arguing against a point that wasn't being made. At no point has the population at large been too nice. There are a number of "old" people that think "young" people are now too nice, and that word nice has been corrupted as a result, but even then, they don't think that of the population overall. Nice is obviously a subjective thing but I'd be surprised if anyone would pick out a point in time when the entire human race was too nice.
The "too nice" comment was about "leftists" and their meek responses to many of the things you've listed. Probably the only time people on the left weren't too nice in the Western world was for that brief period when they fought against segregation aggressively and often violently. So after years of being "too nice" - a prevalent perception of the left on both sides of the aisle - the left, and particularly the young left, is taking a different approach. Your approach to political conversations being an example of that.
That was the point Cheesy raised that I was discussing with him. If you're not arsed enough to read the context of our conversations, that's cool, no offence taken. But you probably shouldn't bother picking out sentences from the conversation at all in that case, because it's easy to misunderstand things without context.
Everyone's entitled to their own perceptions and all, but your understanding of the discussion and the points made within it is objectively wrong...or your only interest is to point score on the internet by deliberately misrepresenting what people said. So in a roundabout way I agree with you, part of this discussion illustrates why his messages resonate with people. But it's because the way you try to discuss these things make people disillusioned with people like you, who represent your views, which ultimately makes people less inclined to hear those views, and instead go into their own bubble. He's been pretty good at operating within that bubble, but all you're doing is reinforcing it. So either your motives or your tactics aren't well aligned with the intended results of your actions.
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Feck me. You’re either spectacularly stupid, having a bit of a brain fart or flat out lying (I’m going with one of the latter two options because I know you’re not stupid).
Whatever, you’re blatantly misrepresenting the data on the previous page because you’re so intent on winning the argument that facts no longer matter to you. Which neatly proves the point @Brwned is making and the feedback you’ve got from a whole load of different people on assorted threads in this forum.
You’re turning into the Glastonspaz of Current Events. Making people go against their natural inclinations by being so annoying in the way you argue your point.
Carter reneged on his liberal drug policy. Clinton made the criminal system harsher on African Americans and refused to implement universal healthcare. Obama ramped up deportations and started the family separation policy that Trump ramped up recently. Obama also increased the powers that were passed after 9/11 and widened the drone program.
Even perception wise, the "snowflake" shit is recent history. The left was seen as degenerate heathens in recent decades. In Europe blasphemy laws were used almost exclusively against the left. Police departments have targeted left-leaning campaigners more than right-leaning campaigners, with the Metropolitan police having files on the likes of Caroline Lucas. People who have campaigned against oil companies have been painted as eco terrorists.
Abolitionists were treated like terrorists. Anti-segregation campaigners were arrested and painted as terrorist. LGBT campaigners were treated like utter shit and accused of trying to destroy society as late as the 90s. And called immoral in parliament as recently as a few years ago in the Gay Marriage debates.
Workers rights campaigners and people who went on strike weren't called soft or snowflakes, they were called communists and accused of trying to kill people like Stalin did.
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it's literally a ben shapiro meme "so much for the tolerant left" whenever someone points out that he's tiny little racist
I'm not 100% sure what point you're arguing against, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't contradict the initial point being made.
Right wing folks used whatever tactics they could to smear people on the left, either out of genuine fear or because of more self-serving reasons. So on the one hand they would mock the left for being too nice, but on the other hand they would attack them for being terrorists, communists, etc. Naturally people on the left do the same thing to those on the right. Hypocrisy is everywhere. Various branches of the state did the same for the same reasons when people on the left were judged to be a threat. They also did the same with people on the right when it suited them.
The over simplification that has existed for a long time is that the right are too mean and the left are too nice. When you look at the policies supported by the majority of both groups, it's not hard to see why. There have been dozens of democratic senators that have said that they need to "get tough" because the people on the opposite aisle were using tactics that exploited a weakness on their side, and when the time came to do the same, the democratic senators let them away with it. It's been caricatured in pop culture, discussed in the news media, talked about by the political establishment...it's not a controversial thought. The most obvious example is the double standards applied for supreme court nominees and the tactics employed by both parties.
One of the trends now is how young people on the left are speaking up about the fact they're fed up with their elected representatives being too nice, and they're taking a different approach. It's pretty obvious that you don't have any interest in being nice, and your approach to discussing these things aligns with these talking points and from what I've seen, it's a fairly good representation of how the young left approach discussions in general.