Why are Americans so angry?
bbc.com
bbc.com
Plus, would the responses to the surveys be different if the word 'disappointed' was used instead of angry? And would the perception of the responses be different?
Secondarily, and this is far more anecdotal, but I am friends with a fairly wide swath of people via social media, from conservatives to libertarians to liberals to progressives. The key takeaway that I have from watching all of their posting and all of their interactions is that people are angry at others. And people have always been easily angered by others, it's just that the modern American landscape allows for a) easier access to others and b) easier access to well-written, rational condemnation of others than can be easily shared. But reading through my feed,
Maybe Americans aren't actually angry, but since it's easier to construct understandable stories using language like anger, Americans feel like they should be angry?
[1]http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/29/politics/cnn-orc-poll-full...
But my greater skepticism comes from basing policy or expectations of a country on simplifications. Again, I wonder if they asked the same number of people if the same questions and subbed out disappointed for angry if they would get a significantly different response?
Questions were asked, but there were no answers beyond "We asked the wrong people."
It's a problem if they're badly sampled, but the sample size you need is doesn't really change as you increase your population, as long as your population is a lot bigger than your sample size. If 1000 people would be OK for a population of 1M, then it should be just as good for a population of 100M.
I don't think this really invalidates your point, it's just a misconception I see a lot.
"You're depending on the answers from 1018 people to be statistically relevant, and they may not be because by the end of the survery people just hurriedly say whatever to get the survey over with, and I'd bet that 50% of the answers should probably be discounted, so you're depending on what may not be a statistically relevant survery, since America is a big, big country, to drive your thinking on that country."
For instance, maybe your sampling ignored a particular region of the country or socioeconomic strata etc.
It's not the population size that matters; it's the variance in the underlying population.
Mathematically, the sample size needed to construct an n% confidence interval for a normal distribution is independent of the population size (the first derivative is zero).
Assuming an normal (or similar) distribution. It seems plausible to me that we're in some sort of multi-modal period in our history. It may not be sophisticated enough to just take a mean or group opinions into five buckets on a one-dimensional graph.
I think the solution goes back to an old civic ideal that's central to a successful democracy. Duty. If Americans dutifully studied the issues, civilly discussed the alternative policies (knowing there must be tradeoffs and delays as different solutions are tested and refined), and participated constructively in the process as if their children's future depended on it, we wouldn't have time to bitch and moan. And we'd rightly shame those who do for being childish and useless.
That's not my understanding of 20th century politics at all. You'll need to elaborate on what qualifies as "much difference". Roe V. Wade, for example, happened right in the middle of the 20th century.
Both precepts have merits depending on your general outlook on life, but they are diametrically opposed in terms of how you think people should act in the large and small.
I FORGOT to say minimum wages I just find it crazy that we provide the safety net for low wages for large profitable corporations and that they want to continue supplying workers for them on the backs of tax dollars.
I use to be a librarian and I do a lot of statistical work and analysis but I am not an expert but everything I have looked at that is anti-minimum wage I can usually always trace back the money to corporations or some private entity that feels they benefit from low wages. The Pro-Wealth and down trodden the poor has been going on for centuries and we are doing a better job BUT we can do so much better.
I fail to see the proper small government view of low wages. These people HAVE TO HAVE MONEY so instead of their job paying them tax payers are making up the slack. WIC,Health Care, Food Stamps would go away with higher wages but instead we continue to give the money to corporations.
> I see it all the time though that is anecdotal evidence.
He's saying that he "sees it all the time," but he recognizes that this is only "anecdotal evidence."
All the nation-wide issues that could easily be state issues.
Consider that the Democrats want no restrictions on ultra-late-term abortions. I think there's plenty of blame to go around here.
You don't want it? Don't do it.
I actually understand the argument. For all the rest of you know, I actually wrote the above response myself (I didn't, but I could have).
The counterargument is that there are absolutely two people involved if a woman decides to abort on her due date. Even in liberal Western Europe abortions must be performed before certain gestation dates.
Now, this sort of absolutism makes a kind of logical sense. The kind that also makes legalization of heroin a defensible position. And there are smart, compassionate people who want to legalize heroin. Just not the President and every candidate in the Democratic primary.
Point being, there's no room for compromise on the abortion issue from the left. We could be talking about eight months versus seven months, what counts as a "medical exception", what forms of enforcement are fair, etc. But we're not. There's absolutely no room for compromise.
Did you mean left? There's lots of discussion on the left about what time limits should be set; or how many doctors you need to persuade; or what conditions could extend the time limits; etc. But from the right there's a blanket "no abortion, ever, for any reason", with fucking stupid comments like "First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."
The fact that you brought up a foam-at-the-mouth comment from a disgraced former politician seems like a point for the there's-too-much-partisanship-on-the-left-too column.
There is actually common ground on the abortion issue, perhaps counter-intuitively. There is overwhelming support for reducing abortion rates, for example. The American people would absolutely be OK with a compromise that includes education, increased access to birth control, and bans on abortions after, say, 8 months of gestation.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129580-200-the-worl...
Listening to anti-abortionists you'd think the woman just found the pregnancy inconvenient, when the reality is that the woman is going through an intensely traumatic time and having to cope with the loss of a much wanted child.
Abortion is not a Democrat or Republican issue Don't fall into that lie. The Republicans had the White House and both Houses and did ZERO over the years they had this. The Connecticut Republican Platform is Officially Pro-Choice if a party wants to say they are lying for your vote. With Obama and a divided house the number of abortions are at a all time low since Roe v Wade as well as Teenage pregnancy.
There are 3 Republican US Senators who and 4 Republican Representatives who get 100% funding from the Republican Party. Where I live Charlie Dent is (R) and is Pro Chose and got everyone's backing when he ran against a Pro-Life Democrat. Think that will happen here is we will have a Pro-Life Democrat running for US Senate and he will have zero support from "Pro-Lifers" even though his record is much better then his opponent.
I am a Pro-Life Democrat and we have a Pro-life Democrat Senator and a Pro-Choice Republican. My "Pro-Life" friends supported the Pro-Choice candidate due to the Myth that Republicans are Pro-Life.
They're doing stuff in Texas and liberal groups are suing to overturn the rules. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions.
If abortion was an issue in the Democratic party, it would have come up in the debates. Not a single question in the Democratic debates had to do with abortion.
> MYTH = Republicans are Pro-Life
This kind of proves my point, actually. There are many more than two political positions here. You can be mostly pro-choice but think abortion at 8.5 months is a travesty.
Note: I say this as the grandchild of someone who attempted to abort my mother after being raped by my grandfather. My grandmother's life was basically ruined when she was forced to marry her rapist after the then-illegal abortion failed. My mother, and transitively, me, would not exist had safe, legal abortions been available in 1940. Even with this intensely personal connection to the abortion issue, the issue has zero influence on how I vote. It boggles my mind that those with almost no personal connection to it let it influence their votes to the degree that they do.
1. Few people are killed by cops. Does that mean the issue isn't important?
2. Abortion rates are higher than you probably realize. For example, in NYC over 1/3 of pregnancies are terminated [1]. And that's after it's been getting better. There are on the order of a million abortions every year, depending on how you count. You know a lot of people that have had terminated pregnancies. They just haven't told you about it.
3. Is it fair to be a single issue voter? If your perfect candidate in every other respect also planned to take away the right to vote from Native Americans, could you vote for her? Of course not.
The reason it's a controversial issue is because both sides see it as a human rights issue (like universal suffrage).
pro-choice:
* Women deserve autonomy
* They don't deserved to be punished and have their lives ruined due to mistakes and oversights in birth control
* Women are intelligent and deserve the benefit of the doubt about when abortion is a good choice or not
* Government should support women and their goals in their healthcare, not dictate their lives
pro-life:
* Unborn humans are humans, too, and deserve to be recognized as people with rights
* This is literally a civil rights issue on the order of importance of slavery, suffrage for women, or black civil rights
* Erring on the side of not killing is the right way to balance 'choice' with 'life'
* Bodily autonomy has limits in extreme circumstances (having sex in public, taking illicit drugs, wearing seatbelts)
* The sexism argument is a red herring. Half of children are women, and the most vocal pro-life proponents tend to be women as well.
Additionally, the pro-life side has procedural objections since there was never a democratic process for expanding the right to abortions. I agree with this point, which means I blame the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade for all this animosity.
[1] http://nypost.com/2014/02/17/abortion-rate-plummets-in-new-y...
If there's no reasonable way they could push that pet issue of theirs through (because the rest of Congress would just call them an idiot) then sure, why not?
It's sort of like the think/say distinction ("you can't get in trouble for thinking"), but taken another few notches further: politicans shouldn't really be judged for what they say they'll do, or even what they appear to attempt to do knowing they'll fail—only what they're likely to actually use power granted to them to accomplish.
Most candidates, once in power, are effectively centrists. With presidential candidates, there's the moderating influence of Congress and the Judicial system; but even with individual Congressmen or Senators, once they attain their positions, they're sitting atop a hierarchy of (technocratic) policy advisors that tend to—when all advising in the same direction—override the boss's personal preferences. If all your employees, all your lobbyists, and all the think-tanks say to do X, you're going to do X, even if you (and your "base") would rather do Y. (Which is why we call the thing the President heads the Executive branch: the President isn't much setting policy, they're effectively just executing policy decisions arising from the entirety of the D.C. strategic intelligence community.)
Thus, most candidate positions are postures: things said to signal allegiance to certain voting bases, in full knowledge of the fact that those promises will never (be allowed to) come to pass. Posturing is PR: a big machine which gets set aside when the election is over. And thus, posturing should be ignored—given no weight—when trying to predict the value of electing any given candidate. The candidate's posturing—their PR—has no predictive value on what they'll really accomplish when handed power.
If, on the other hand, you can look below the posturing, and figure out what each candidate will really do with power (which is much harder; it involves a lot of looking at who they have ties with and what promises or deals they've made to get power), then you can actually pick a candidate based on how you want the world to look in the future.
I find your selection of topic really interesting. I'm not a US citizen, but I'm on good terms with a lot of smart and reasonable people in US from all the political spectrum, from Bernie to Trump, and I've noticed a curious thing: the issues these people are talking about are different. Even if they are sometimes related (like taxes and government spending), red/blue teams don't make the connection.
When a friend of mine (highly intelligent developer at Facebook, btw) explains why he would vote for Trump, he doesn't mention any of these. He and others like him talk about gun laws, about foreign policy, macro-economics and capital flight.
If both parties weren't as polarized, I think they would be able to come to some compromise about these issues, allowing the adversary to get his way on some stuff that is just not as important for them. But the rhetoric I see is always polarized and absolute. People aren't ready even to ask the question about why would the other side think otherwise and assume good will even for a second. Instead, they immediately conjure racist/anti-american/anti-poor/communist strawmen.
(it presents a very compelling theory as to why people separate into political left and right)
I've taken lately to becoming a Trump contrarian in social settings full of ideological group think which are students I hang out with for an Advanced Calculus by Sternberg and Loomis study group where afterwards the conversations always devolve into politics. Not that I would support any current politician let alone Trump but he was the easiest candidate to find blatant media misrepresentation, and I do find it an interesting social experiment to witness normally friendly people go into witch trial mode for daring to challenge their ideology.
I think the primary source of Americans' anger is the disrespect for other peoples' opinions that's spoon fed into us 24x7 by the mass media, who cares much less for civil discourse than a good fistfight that attracts more viewers.
The rise in America's anti-populism starts with the rise of broadcast hate speech, IMHO.
Governments have never been as powerful, influential, or pervasive as they are now. Even at the height of the Roman Empire, the machinations of the Senate and the Caesar had less impact on the average citizen's life than today.
It's fairly natural to assume that as the scope and influence of government grows, the more personal politics will become, as it affects our lives to increasing degrees.
This schism will only get worse as governments become larger and more intrusive.
There was never an American consensus. There is just a dominant culture that tries to erase a history of conflict and astroturf it with a false narrative of unity.
[1] http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...
Because that's politics. I wouldn't let someone like that near my children at Christmas because of potential memetic contagion, much less enjoy having a conversation with them.
Lesser degrees of disagreement are lesser degrees of disagreement, but political positions are personal beliefs about the philosophy of how we cooperate with each other and what we should be doing, not simply different teams to root for at the big game every four years.
When we think that either A or B are not super important beliefs, or we are observing from such a distance that the differences between A and B seem small, then we feel the people are narrow minded and prejudiced if they strongly hold on to their belief and are openly discriminatory against the other.
However, when we personally and strongly think that one of the beliefs is completely evil or unacceptable, then we feel that the distinction is justified and that it's okay to not just oppose it, but also feel confident enough to do so openly and with pride.
TLDR; It's much easier to be non-discriminatory if we (or our belief system) don't (doesn't) have any skin in the game.
I would probably be unhappy about that. But - as you say, lesser degrees of disagreement are lesser degrees of disagreement.
I don't think that it's always making politics too personal, to be upset about the political opinions of your child's spouse. I do think that if those political opinions are held by ~50% of the country, then that does seem to be making politics too personal.
I find this comment interesting. I think that most people, or perhaps most people just a few years ago, tolerated such ideas because they knew they didn't stand a chance in the battleground of ideas; you didn't have to worry about your children picking it up because it was so obviously wrong.
This, on the other hand, implies that ideas can be so dangerous people (especially children? only children?) must avoid exposure to them lest they be swayed.
Clearly too many of us have become fond of identifying ourselves through membership in Party X. Shaping my world view around a political agenda by wholeheartedly embracing their entire platform is unnatural and illogical. But to take the next step and label nonparty folk as unbelievers and infidels creates a problem that's impossible to fix through rational discussion, much less leading to the design of workable policy. At best it's bad policy.
But party-based exclusion really isn't politics. It's just gangsterism.
I's not a political problem , it's a societal one. Even in Israel , where there's has been no consensus and there has been quite a bit of political polarization ,most people don't take it that personal.
Anecdata and all that, but I still get along well with my parents, and my wife, hers. We avoid religion and politics (though if it comes up we kinda stay quiet while the other rants, no arguing).
I consider myself Moderate and really don't like the "foam at the mouth" extremes on either side, to be honest, I don't understand the need to go to that extreme, and to fight and argue so passionately about it.
My longterm girlfriend is Canadian and I am American. I'm a mechanical engineer with work experience. I have yet to find a realistic way for me to just "move to Canada".
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/apply-factors...
Canada isn't Utopia - it can be hard to find engineering jobs, housing is expensive in big cities and cost of living is higher than the US. There's a reason why so many Canadian engineers end up moving to the US.
As a Michigander I think I have a fair sense of what it'd be like to live in the climate of the Great White North, but not as much feel for the economy or the culture. It'd be fascinating to hear from folks who have made that move, especially with a view to assimilation: Canadian citizenship.
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" - America
"Peace, Order and Good Government" - Canada
Basically get a job offer, have the correct qualifications and be on the NAFTA approved professions list, apply at your point of entry.
Language:24 (English CLB:9) Education:21 (B.Sc. M.Eng) Experience:1 year full-time (MAYBE stretch to 2 years..) Age:12 Arranged Employment:0 Adaptability:0 (if she was my spouse or common law this wouldn't be needed..)
It's possible I could get the points for the French language with a few months of study and if I "extend" my work experience based on past part time/freelance type employment to two years.
Does having a score of 67 "guarantee" my immigration or does it just qualify me for the pool of candidates?
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/work/special-business.asp#nafta http://www.nafsa.org/_/file/_/amresource/8cfr2146.htm
I'd love to move to other Countries as an alternative though; New Zealand and parts of Sweden or Norway sound pretty good (the milder climate areas). I have that digital nomad itch, but married with a kid so that keeps me more tied down, and don't actually like the heat, so the typical places don't interest me much.
[1]http://www.gallup.com/poll/1669/general-mood-country.aspx
There's a lot of angry people in this world. I remember quite a bit rioting in France, revolting in Syria, revolting in the Ukraine, etc.
> When asked if they trust the government, 89% of Republicans and 72% of Democrats say "only sometimes" or "never" . . .
I'm in the never group and for obvious reasons. Governments abuse the power we give them. And that doesn't make me angry, but smart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
1. I'm 31 years old and not even halfway through paying off my student loans.
2. I can have anything taken away from me at any time with little to no legal recourse.
3. My constitutional right to privacy and to refuse unreasonable searches no longer exists.
4. If I am ever charged with a crime, I will face a justice system that is entirely stacked against me, and regardless of the crime or my guilt I will be coerced into agreeing to a plea bargain.
5. A cop could shoot me in the back in broad daylight, on film, with witnesses, and most likely only wind up with a paid vacation as punishment.
6. If I ever become suspect in a crime of national security I will likely be tortured, physically and psychologically, for years at a time.
7. My government is torturing people right now, and the most I can ever hope to do about it is to eventually elect someone that will put a stop to it.
8. My government is supporting the monopolization of internet services and suppressing initiatives to make internet service fair and reasonably priced.
9. Every new copyright law is designed to further suppress fair use.
10. Institutionalized bribery and corruption at every level of government means that without money, my voice will likely never be heard.
It is clearly someone expressing their opinion/reasons why they are angry.
Whether or not you agree with all the listed items is another matter?
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Global_surveill...
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plea_bargaining_in_the_United_...
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner
6. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning...
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#...
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband#Legal_issu...
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership#Inte...
1) No warfare destroying their homes
2) Low corruption in day-to-day needs
3) Plenty of food and clean water
4) Children able to grow up without disease
5) Warm shelter
etc
And our ancestors would be impressed too.
Why did you take them?
Disclaimer: I'm not an american, and this is an honest question. I always see that about US and don't understand why people get angry at someone else for their own decision.
Kids were told over and over that a college degree would ensure their future success, that they'd be practically guaranteed to get a career that made paying their student loans trivial, on top of a nice house and a car because that's the American Dream, isn't it?
It's easy as an adult to look back on it and say "wow, that was a big mistake", now that I know how jobs and the economy actually work, but first we had to unlearn everything our parents, teachers, career counselors, and college financial advisers told us in the first place.
Not all fears are justified and proportional, but it's easy to turn them to anger.
The US is rather more "right wing" than places like the UK so perhaps that leads to more fear?
And as the wee green beastie said:
"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate.. to suffering ..."
Edit: I think this is it:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/biology-ideology...
"political conservatives have a "negativity bias," meaning that they are physiologically more attuned to negative (threatening, disgusting) stimuli in their environments."
How cognitive biases affect our interpretation of political messages [2] "There is considerable evidence that people presented with balanced arguments place weight on those they already agree with, exhibiting what is termed confirmation bias."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat...
[2] http://users.ox.ac.uk/~chri3110/Details/P460%20Cognitive%20b...
http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/either_conservatives_...
If you believe that human nature is malleable, perfectible and essentially good, then you tend to assume that the span of human potential is very large, i.e. the gap between the best of us and the worst of us is large. Sowell shows how this leads through basic logical deduction to left wing views.
On the other hand if you believe that human nature is essentially fixed, unchanging over time and flawed, then you assume that the span of human nature is not very large, and the gap between the best and the worst is not that big. This leads by logical deduction to right wing views.
So it's perhaps not so much that right wing people are more "afraid" per se, but rather, that they tend to be quicker to assume that as there's no way to fix 'enemies' by raising their human nature to a higher level, you may as well put in place systems that protect society from them. Whereas people with more left wing views may tend to assume that you can in fact negotiate and debate people away from being your 'enemies' and thus, they appear to be less fearful.
The above description makes left wing views sound superior to right wing views, which was not my intention. In fact Sowell's book lays down an extremely fair and balanced description of both right and left wing beliefs and assumptions, with IMHO no discernable bias between them.
It certainly wouldn't be Sowell's intention (you don't get to be a Hoover Institute fellow with that kind of attitude.)
> In fact Sowell's book lays down an extremely fair and balanced description of both right and left wing beliefs and assumptions, with IMHO no discernable bias between them.
As I understand it, A Conflict of Visions is the first part of a trilogy whose overall thrust, as I understand, is an attack on the "unconstrained" vision (the one you ascribe to the left wing -- not sure how accurate that reflects Sowell); though the first volume is mostly stage setting and the serious attacks are in the other two volumes.
From your description, it may be fair and balanced (though, given everything else I've seen from Sowell, I wouldn't expect that except in the Fox News sense of "fair and balanced"), but it doesn't seem at all accurate of the difference between the left and the right (it might better explain some of the difference between the libertarian and the authoritarian -- though I would not describe it, even there, as the dominant or sole basis for either view -- and certainly its not unheard of for right-libertarians, especially American right-libertarians, which Sowell certainly is, to conflate the left-right and libertarian-authoritarian axes.)
I found the theory to be accurate in the sense that it appears to have great predictive power, and provides reasonable and internally consistent explanations for a variety of observable political dynamics. Additionally, the book was recommended to me by someone who thought it explained the Bitcoin block size civil war, and I found it to be remarkably predictive of people's attitudes, philosophies and chosen tactics, despite that it was written in the 1980's. So to me it seems like the best explanation yet.
Also the news, especially local channels, is so over the top. They had a report on a car that drove off a bridge (it didn't hit any pedestrians), and they then had a "passer by" saying she was now too scared to walk outside.
I had the experience of ... "commuting" between Montreal and Texas in the early '00s ( home was in Texas ) and at that time, TV was enough different that I finally saw it. I knew it was there, but coming home, the television was beyond annoying.
And, of course, I set about finding television that wasn't that way. This means CSPAN, a handful of series in the mold of "The Sopranos" and a few documentaries now and again. Which is nice. But I have a feeling that if everybody does that, it'll collapse.
The "how" is like what Scott Adams talks about with Trump's use of Master Persuader technology. Throw in "The Hidden Persuaders" and the collected work of Marhsall Macluhan too.
Oh, and with vanishingly few exceptions, the popular Internet media are the same or in cases, worse. This site to the exception of course.
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Steinbeck
That worked for decades because people truly believed it, but they're seeing behind the curtain now that it's not getting better -- it's getting worse. That future, that they assumed would reach them too, somehow, someway, is gone. The reaction, for some, is anger.
The reason "socialism" never took root in America is because of the way our Constitution separates political powers. Socialism is 100% incompatible with the 10th amendment because you cannot have socialism if wealth is not distributed in an apportioned manner. If States get the authority to legislate on all matters not explicitly defined in the Constitution, then there is no way for socialism to take hold in the US.
Also the expansion of the commerce clause "the switch in time that saved 9" also contributed when used in concert with the 16th amendment see
Even _if_ the courts upheld that point of view, you must keep in mind the incredibly contentious situation that surrounds the ratification and the enforcement of the 16th amendment and its various precedents set. Using such a weak and explosive justification for the implementation of socialism in the US will lead to the most intense political battle ever witnessed by citizens of our declining nation.
Also see how Bernie Sanders plans to use the income tax in his plan to raise max rates to 73% to accomplish wealth redistribution.
> because you cannot have socialism if wealth is not distributed in an apportioned manner
States are fully capable of re-distributing wealth.
Socialism never took root exactly because of what Steinbeck alludes to. Cultural incompatibility.
Socialism: means of production as property of the people.
I don't see a contradiction.
There is absolutely zero compatibility between Socialism and the US Constitution. Say what you will about either - they do not work together. Come back to this completely unrealistic idea in 100 years where there's a chance that social calamity has caused enough destruction that we finally let go of our founding documents. I think the likelihood of such an outcome is extremely unrealistic, though.
Yet you say that "there is absolutely zero compatibility between Socialism and the US Constitution", so perhaps you're thinking of one of the other amendments or some such? Perhaps something involving the protections on property.
Socialism doesn't require that the decisive nexus of power be the national government. Socialism as a model could still take root with the main nexus of public action being at the State level.
Isn't it a good thing that people see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires? How is that any different than seeing yourself as a temporarily embarrassed rock star, or astronaut, or breakthrough scientist, or famous artist, or successful entrepreneur? Is it such a bad thing that we're a nation of dreamers? Go ahead and tell a child that they shouldn't have big dreams because it's silly to believe they might come true, because that's essentially what Steinbeck is doing to the poor in this quote. See how smug you feel then.
Or should we do like the Europeans do and set low expectations rather than suffer the pain of not meeting higher ones? They say that the Danes are the happiest people in the world because they nave notoriously low expectations. I'll take naive optimism over pragmatic pessimism any day of the week.
According to my alarm clock app, they also get the most sleep of any nation on Earth.
No, it's not. Because that's what helps the current millionaires to single them out and make them act in a way that's contrary to their interest.
Not everyone will become a cosmonaut... Or a rock star. That's just a fact. The problem isn't the dreaming - the problem is acting against your own best interests, and spending your political power on chasing lottery tickets.
See: The 2008 election's obsession with Joe the Plumber, and his concern for taxes on people making over $250,000/year. He didn't make anywhere close to $250,000...
And never will.
The great thing about big dreams and lofty goals is that even if you don't reach them you often end up in a better situation. So sure, Joe the Plumber may not have made anywhere close to $250,000, but he made a hell of a lot more than someone not working at all, right? And yeah, little Sally may not become a cosmonaut, but she may land a gig working at SpaceX as an engineer and be on the team that eventually successfully executes a manned mission to Mars.
I'm sorry, but this is what's so great about America. When I hear people, especially foreigners, make fun of the American Dream I can't help but think it's just sour grapes.
You realize most foreigners come here for the American dream, right? I don't know about you but look around. Many Americans, including myself, don't believe in that made up non-sense.
It was a period in world history where everything lined up. In the 50s to 70s, there was enough population but not too much, great economic expansion, and opportunity to be found.
As a generation that grew up with 9/11, two wars, an economic crash unseen in decades, unemployment, and now college debt, don't tell me that I'm not optimistic because that's the only thing I'm running on these days. The dream is dead (never probably existed), but doesn't mean we need to flush all our hopes into the toilet either.
I should have been more specific, but I'm obviously not talking about foreigners who come to America for the American Dream. I'm talking about foreigners who criticize the American Dream despite having never came here to try to pursue it themselves.
And I happen to know a lot of foreigners who came here for the American Dream and actually attained it. They are its staunchest defenders, in fact.
But this is counting your chickens before they hatch. Make $250,000 first... Then advocate for tax cuts to that bracket.
Doing otherwise just makes the advocate a Useful Idiot. [1] You're expending your money and energy to make someone far better off then the majority of the electorate even better off - at theirs, and your expense. I would understand if this is done for selfish reasons - but when you're a pauper, Rockefeller doesn't need your charity.
So by that logic nobody living above the poverty line should ever advocate for policies that benefit those living below it.
Nobody is telling children "don't have dreams". They are saying "Hey you middle-aged Americans who have lost their retirement savings to Enron, WorldCom, 2008, etc, maybe you are getting the short of end of the stick here."
Whether you agree with it or not, the quote is saying that poor people aren't recognizing what is in their own interests and aren't sympathizing with poverty because they do not recognize their poverty as something real.
It is not making fun of the American Dream to point out that many people in the US are poor and will remain poor despite their hopes, dreams and efforts. Limitations on class mobility are real.
You've entirely missed the point of the Joe the Plumber exchange. He was, yes, concerned about taxes, but he was also concerned that the most powerful man in the country would fundamentally see him as an enemy. Look at Obama's response: "It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance at success, too..." [1]
At some point between then and now, the Democratic Party abandoned even the pretense of fair-handedness and made establishment of an other (the 1%, corporations, etc.) a core part of their party culture.
What concerns me is that this is happening on both sides of the aisle. Trump is a demagogue. Full stop. He probably doesn't have much more than 30% support of the Republican Party, but he's definitely affecting the tone and topics of the debate.
And we're not talking about vilifying individuals ("Nixon is a sonovabitch!"), we're talking about the rise of all sorts of bigotry against entire demographics on all sides of the political spectrum. Civility is eroding quickly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_the_Plumber#Encounter_with...
Would see which version of him? The barely-middle-class $40,000/year reality of himself, or the make-believe millionaire dream of himself? (Which, in my excuse, is the narrative that the media spun for the next two weeks.)
I have a hard time placing this, but that maybe because I fundamentally disagree with respect to progressive taxation being a declaration of hostilities against the wealthy.
The whole exercise of figuring out which class this guy is in is part of the point I was trying to make, really. Do I have to know his income to figure out how I feel about the guy?
He discussed the idea of buying the company once. Given the state of his finances, the likely situation is that either he was betting on winning the Powerball, or he was just dreaming about buying the company.
He is the poster child for this phenomena!
You're missing my point, which is pointing out the need to find an 'other'.
I'm not sure it's important if Joe the Plumber has identity issues. It is absolutely important if it's normal to treat others like they're crazy, evil, alien, stupid, or nefarious.
I think there's a implicit understanding with this quote that Americans not only have that "American dream", but we also don't expect to work for it. If it was merely a matter of Americans dreaming big and working towards it, then great! But it's not, imo. It's Americans dreaming big, and working their low end 9 to 5, expecting the dream to come true. It's more Dream than Reality. It's a daydream.
Part of dreaming big is understanding that you have to work towards it, or it won't happen. I don't feel like this is happening in America. (As an American)
No, letting your dreams die is not a "part of growing up", good lord, how depressing. Think about what life savings are for a minute. It's literally a bunch of money you save over many years that you only get to spend once you're too old to work anymore. If we all just settled for this very pragmatic dream we wouldn't start companies, create art, or take any significant risks.
> I think there's a implicit understanding with this quote that Americans not only have that "American dream", but we also don't expect to work for it.
That's funny, because that's exactly how I would characterize Socialism; as the ability for anybody to attain the "American Dream" without having to work for it. If the Government could simply hand out American Dreams at the Bureau of American Dreams then why would anyone ever aim any higher? Why would anyone take a risk on anything or try to exceed expectations?
> Part of dreaming big is understanding that you have to work towards it, or it won't happen. I don't feel like this is happening in America. (As an American)
I agree completely, and that's precisely what the American Dream is. If people are misconstruing it as some handout that you don't have to work for then that's a problem and they need a big wakeup call. But I think the American Dream is still alive and well here, otherwise we might not be here on Hacker News keeping up to date with the latest happenings in the startup world and we might not be thinking of or attempting to start our own startups. But we clearly are, and we're doing it at a higher rate than any other country on the planet.
The day the American Dream dies is the day we stop innovating as a country.
It's not impossible to get ahead in a socialist economy, it's just that the bar is raised for the lower classes.
I think you're hitting on a bigger problem with American culture, which is the "hard working" bias. Is the employee who comes in at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better person?
No, just a more easily exploited one.
I know the question was rhetorical. But I felt like answering it because you're absolutely right. Only in the US do you see people hold up themselves as better than others because they let their employer take advantage of them more.
I wonder if working longer than colleagues actually does improve your chance at promotion like so many claim? Or simply means they leave you in that role longer because you're cheaper/more productive?
Socialism is hinged upon making it harder for people to get ahead. If you get too far ahead, your gains are redistributed to those who you have left behind. By that definition, a pure Socialist system will ensure that nobody can ever get ahead of anybody else.
> I think you're hitting on a bigger problem with American culture, which is the "hard working" bias. Is the employee who comes in at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better person?
Ask this a different way: is the athlete who comes to the gym at 7am and leaves at 7pm really a better athlete? The answer is, of course, yes. Sports are 100% meritocracies. You either perform, or you do not. The color of your skin, the disabilities you have, the socioeconomic status you grew up with; none of those things factor in. You can either perform better than the opposition, or you cannot. Full stop.
There are very few people that would dispute that, yet for everything outside of sports there's a subsection of the population that has convinced themselves that hard work somehow doesn't equal success. Maybe it's because it's harder for people to relate to entrepreneurial success than it is to relate to success in a sport because the metrics for sports are very well defined.
So if that's the case, to answer your question directly, we need to define the metric for success. In business, that's called profit. The hard working employee is a "better person" (your words) if their work results in greater profit for the company than the person coming in the bare minimum amount of time. If not, then yes, they're wasting their time just like the Athlete would be if their hard work didn't result in better performance in their sport.
As for "where you come from": Can you supply some evidence for that assertion? I'll give you argument (not evidence, I admit) that your claim is false. If it were true, then someone could create a high-performing team simply by selecting people who came from the places that other teams ignore. (Or are you claiming that, for example, there aren't many hockey players coming from Hawaii, even though one would expect that the population would include some with the genetics and talent to be excellent? Well, raw talent means little. Merit means talent and preparation and discipline and coaching and genetics and drive and mental toughness and probably a few things I've forgotten. If you're not going to chase that sport because it's not culturally a thing where you are, then you aren't going to be very good at that sport.)
And I would say that raw talent means a lot, the majority of atheles work hard, but the deciding factor is talent.
Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about.
>Socialism is hinged upon making it harder for people to get ahead.
Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above.
May be in the gym. But on the game as a whole? A lot more. Gym work isn't all there is to sports. Just like just writing code isn't all there is to programming. You need to learn new things, read other peoples code, review code, learn a new algorithms etc etc.
Similarly sports people have their stuff to do when they are not actually practicing.
>>Your crafted hypothetical and false analogy that American workers are athletes, all to support the argument that working harder is meritous, proves the "hard working" bias that I'm talking about.
People who do more work get ahead. This shouldn't even be surprising to you. Because this is common sense. Students who study hard score more marks than students who while away their time with friends.
We could keep handing out free marks to non performing students, subtracting equivalent from performing students to make non performers feel good. But that doesn't change anything about those students. Good students are going to do well in the coming year, with more advanced subjects. And the bad ones will do worse. When they are done with their education, merely marks being same will mean nothing at all.
Check back after a few years, what kind of jobs performing and non performing students are doing. It will be clear to you why that tiny equality exercise can never actually work.
>>Socialism is hinged upon making everyone get ahead. Meritous people still have opportunities to rise above.
Socialism gives incentives for people to stay in the back, because its assumed those getting ahead are supposed to make up for them.
I have worked for Kroger for a little over a year now. I make 7.55 an hour handling dangerous chemicals; before that, I bagged people's groceries for 7.45. As a bagger, I not only worked hard, I constantly told my supervisor that I was willing to work 40 hours, that I wanted to work a register. They didn't promote me until I gave two weeks notice; my parents convinced me to stay.
Now I get paid ten cents extra to clean floors and cover for absentee cashiers (and, mind you, I'm not actually trained; I had to learn it all myself). Oh, and one of the other janitors cannot figure out basic chemical safety. She is paid just as much as I am, and continues to work as a janitor.
It's not that hard work never pays off. It's that I have a concrete example of hard work not paying off that I see every day.
If min wage is increased to $15 she will be paid exactly as much as you.
My point is, the message that keeping this lady sends is "I don't care if you do your job right". And if that's the message you wanna send, whh should I do my job right? I end up split between doing my job right on principle and knowing it'll get me nowhere.
You have seen hard work paying off. For the level of work that you do. Of course there is no ideal world where a hair cut could be charged the same as surgery. Or someone who write database code, an OS or a search engine algorithm could be charged equally as some one troubleshooting a faulty CD drive in a call center.
What are your contributions? What value are you creating? A clean floor, a good grocery bag may not be that much value. But the guy inventing the floor cleaning chemical, and people selling that for an affordable price are definitely creating a lot of value.
However, basic chemical safety should be valuable--but at Kroger, it apparently isn't, and this drives me insane.
By some definition yes. Some body with that sort of work ethic, definitely would convey a message of discipline, commitment and a degree of attachment to one's job.
I would rate that person far higher than a person who always shows up late and isn't half serious about their job.
Work place isn't adult day care.
some customers would rather be told the wrong information, at the right time of day, than the right information 2 hours later.
i wouldn't have believed it until i saw it myself.
people in general are insane, half of "work" is just catering to insanity.
You hate some odd quote, yet I hate this constantly perpetuated myth regarding socialism.
Firstly, the most "driven" people aren't the wealthiest (though, it can occasionally be a side effect). The research scientist who forgoes money in some fortune 500 firm (or a more lucrative field of study) to instead focus on some obscure species of fauna? Probably way more driven than some sociopath focused on the bottom line.
Second, socialism isn't about handouts. It's about moving the ownership of production from the hands of one central figure to the hands of those actually managing the production. Usually, this would mean shifting ownership to the employee collective, not state ownership (a la communism).
It sounds like you might be making the mistake of equating "social democracy" (universal healthcare, social security, etc) with "socialism". Even if that's the case, I don't see the issue with helping my fellow man with basic health and well-being. It's pretty much the entire reason societies and nations were formed. We're advanced enough to offer it at this point.
Lastly, automation is happening. At remarkable speeds. As we automate more, there's less labor to do. Period. In 50, 100, maybe 150 years; there's not going to be an option. There's a very good chance there will only be work left for the innovators and dreamers (the "Star Trek" model, ascribed to by techno-utopianists), some day. Even if that's not the case, unemployment levels are going to grow, and it's not due to people being "lazy" or "non-driven".
They are means to buy the financial independence to free up your time, which you would have other wise spent on that job. Now you have time and resources to chase your dreams.
To be able to romance with a dream, you need to be pragmatic first.
Any dream of any magnitude requires ingredients most of which people neither have the drive to work for, nor the resources and most give up not long after they start when the realize the magnitude of the struggle the lies ahead in getting to it.
Which is totally fine, because the American Dream has been dead for a long time.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/7-facts-show-american-dream-...
>>Is it such a bad thing that we're a nation of dreamers?
Insofar as those dreams actually help you achieve your goals, no. The problem with the American Dream is the narrative: that anything is achievable if you work hard for it. This could not be further from the truth, and continuing to believe it is actively harmful.
That is a completely ridiculous statement with absolutely no basis in reality.
In Freaknomics they have a chapter titled "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?"[1] - the issue isn't that people are aspirational, it's that they treat success as a gladiatorial contest where there's only one winner and everyone else has to die for you to win. As opposed to "socialism" where everyone can succeed somewhat.
[1]http://freakonomics.com/books/freakonomics/chapter-excerpts/...
What kind of person worries about raising taxes on the rich that cannot pay back taxes and is underemployed? A temporarily embarrassed millionaire. I've lost track of how many people I've met who can barely make ends meet or are deeply in debt and yet hold onto this philosophy.
Isn't it a good thing that people have hope? Yes. But is it a good thing to live in a fantasy world and make decisions based on that fantasy while failing to live up to your obligations in your every day life? No, I think it is a terrible thing. A significant portion of Americans seem to live in a state of delusion. It's stupid for people who are un or under-employed and have no capital to vote for and advocate for those making millions because they themselves think they will get there eventually. This seems to happen quite a bit in America and nowhere else.
A Straw Man
The majority of our income taxes are paid by very high income people. They may also feel that if we tax them too punitively they'll leave or cheat or have less money to start/maintain businesses, etc.
The top marginal tax rate is about %40 right? It used to be 90% in 1960 and 70% in 1980 although these kicked in at much higher amount of wealth than in the modern day. What do people think is 'fair' considering most do not even understand progressive taxes. 100 years ago there was no income tax.
I personally think we spend too much and the main reason I support higher taxes on the rich (especially cap gains over a certain amount) is so it is not as easy to subvert the political system in their favor. I don't know what number is 'fair' though.
Its not a criticism of the American Dream.
> Isn't it a good thing that people see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires?
No; it might be good if people saw themselves as aspiring millionaires, and acted sensible to achieve that aspiration.
The whole thrust of the "temporarily embarrassed" quote is that the subjects see their condition as an inherently temporary condition that will resolve itself, and therefore act as if there interest were the interest of what their fantasized "normal" condition would be once that "temporary embarrassment" resolved itself.
This, however, actively inhibits the realization of that condition -- which is not a "normal" condition to which things will resolve on their own.
That's what the quote is about.
No, because it implies that the only way to better your situation is not just to do well, but to get on top, and make a killing. That is, literally: to have access to wealth and security that is (greatly) disproportionate to what most other have.
Which (by definition) is unobtainable, for the vast majority. And which contributes to what we might call the "hollowing out of the middle." All structural factors (which others have cited as exacerbating factors to income equality in recent decades) aside -- the bottom line is that the middle class life not has not only come under pressure -- it just isn't valued as a goal, or a position to have in society.
How is that any different than seeing yourself as a temporarily embarrassed rock star, or astronaut, or breakthrough scientist, or famous artist, or successful entrepreneur?
Nothing wrong with wanting to achieve something great. If what interests you is the achievement in itself.
But if the only way out of poverty (or middle class stagnation) is to become a "rock star" of some form or another -- that suggests that something is very, very wrong with the incentive and reward structure in a society -- like ours -- that implicitly holds that value structure.
'temporarily embarrassed ___' != 'dream of being ___'
Why would it be embarrassing to dream of being an astronaut? its only embarrassing if you feel you are ENTITLED to being an astronaut.
So yeah, i mean if you feel like entitlement is a positive and cornerstone piece of our society then you should continue disagreeing with the quote...
But regardless, I can't understand how anyone would understand that quote to meant that Americans feel like they are entitled to be Millionaires. Someone being embarrassed about not being something doesn't directly imply that they feel entitled to be that thing. More likely it means that they are working toward something they feel they ought to be able to achieve. Meaning they've always dreamt of themselves being millionaires but have yet to achieve it.
There was a time when the labor movement was strong, Eugene V. Debs was a serious presidential candidate (even being pardoned by the then-POTUS Warren G. Harding over his sedition charge) and radical syndicalists like the IWW were influential.
These proclivities were largely staved off through sleights of hand like Wilson's New Freedom and later the New Deal, which appeared to achieve socialistic ends, but largely through statist and corporatist means that didn't pose much of a threat to the establishment. An interesting example is that the National Recovery Administration part of the First New Deal was originally proposed by the then-president of General Electric, Gerard Swope.
Steinbeck and people of his era had the gentle and naif conceit that something can be done about this. We DID many of those things, and this is the result.
The behavior of our Corporate Overlords is one millionth of the behavior of each of us.
I suspect we do this to ourselves.
The culture is to make people feel constantly needy, so that solutions can be easily sold... there's also very few mental health resources in the US, so the neediness easily festers into a pathology.
The parent is clearly in Oregon, so it's not exactly super duper weird that they mentioned a recent, relevant action in their own back yard.
I think I was mostly vindicated. We tend to assign more importance to events that are both recent and geographically close to ourselves. The events in Ferguson or the shooting at the clinic in Colorado probably had more of an affect on the collective American psyche.
I was trying to point out that we are the problem because we have our usual stalking horses and have no real way to track what the biggest problems actually are.
The Oregon thing is certainly newsworthy. I'm not sure it frames America's thoughts as much as the shooting in San Bernadino, say.
If you feel unfairly singled out, I apologize. That's wasn't my intent.
The dysfunction of current capital accumulation is driving roiling discontent: witness the 'unlikely' (not) success of Trump and Sanders.
Prediction: it's going to get worse before it gets better.
The drama IMHO this go around is that last time we had a populist backlash (100 yeas ago), it was not actively monitored and suppressed by a comprehensive suite of behavior analysis and sentiment management professionals.
I predict the existence of those things now is going to keep the lid on the pot a lot longer than previously. When it does blow off, it might be a lot more destructive. Where we once had a boiling pot, now we have a pressure cooker.
As with other systemic ills (e.g. climate change), the individual players are trapped in the necessity of maximizing for their perceived local best outcome... unable, even when very aware of it, to accept short term or proactive losses in the service of avoiding a catastrophic systemic failure...
Interesting times, etc. :(
In fact, I'd say that we have a major cultural battle going on in the US. The media has seen fit to assign cultures to races, but that's just for convenience at great cost to the rest of us.
Even worse, I fear that many of the cultures at war want the exact same thing, but don't agree how to achieve it. In any event, the media is doing a fine job of radicalizing people based on race and income, neither of which represent cultural beliefs.
For example, I think we need to teach everyone how to speak English properly and you may think that's aimed at Hispanics. But it's not. It's aimed at people who speak gangster, girls and boys who can stop saying "like" every other word, and yes, all manner of other people who can't speak proper English.
Just like the Internet has common communication protocols, so must citizens for our nation to succeed. We all want our nation to be healthy, which is our common cause, and this is one thing I think would help.
When framed in this way, it's not about "those Mexican immigrants speaking Spanish" it's about everyone who can't participate in our economy because they're communication skills are lacking.
They key point they are missing out on though is that because the corruption and cronyism is more blatant, more Americans are starting to realize how pervasive it has become and that justice isn't being served on behalf of the people.
08 crash and libor scandals are a perfect example. People should have been in jail, companies nationalized, assets frozen and investigated for frauds, the SEC pumped up, and a AG and various DA's should have gone into frenzy attack mode... but they didn't, because they were part of the insider group!
By undermining justice, and hence, our Constitution, the public will increasingly become agitated because without justice there can be no peace.
Here is the danger though (warning, put your tinfoil on), I think that what is being done is a systematic corruption of our countries constitution in order to pave the way for the global governance model. When things get worse, and puppets for the elite will start talking about how America is a young country and had it's chance and it's model is failing and therefor it should just join a EU model supranational government structure, thats when you will know that the state of our country is only half due to incompetence, hubris, or apathy, and that the it is a deliberate strategy being employed by the AngloSaxon dominance group who honestly I don't think ever forgave America for the revolution.
Britain isn't the ally we think she is, mark my words.
Lost is the fact that both American parties are fairly far to the right. Also lost among the message of anger is the point that they glossed past. The 'Washington' (DC) insiders /are/ the political parties.
Bottom line is change hasn't helped the middle class wallet. It's no wonder people are backing Trump and Sanders. The establishment just doesn't get it.
One, we are terrible at handling relationships, and emotions in general. A lot of psychological research is basically ignored, and we're talking basic stuff--things like how depression happens, how to handle anger, what a bad relationship looks like.
Second, we're in the unusual position of believing that we're economically and socially mobile--that the poor can become rich--and also being constantly given examples of how hard it still is. We chase an American Dream of being the self-made, self-sustaining free human being, but are constantly reminded that failure sits just behind us and that even the best of friends can trip you up.
On that note, we're also terrible at coping with failure.
I don't know that dissatisfaction and mistrust is genetic but I'm guessing it probably gets passed on culturally, at least to some extent.
I don't know that dissatisfaction and mistrust is genetic but I'm guessing it probably gets passed on culturally, at least to some extent.
Puppet masters know this all to well.
For some reason, I can't quite shake the mental image of a cornered rat - its survival instinct response might be classified as 'anger' but the context and conditions are relevant in the grand scheme of things.
1. The technology industry and EFF is very upset because of the ongoing patent-trolls issue. Only recently, a technoloy company was extracted of $625 million by the East Texas jury. Similarly, Oracle is trolling over its Java patent on a matter as trivial as the Java API. These two incidents are enough for the technology community to lose faith in POTUS/SCOTUS.
2. The second group which is not happy is the entire populace who like an open market and free competition. Power users who understand it know that Net-neutrality is harming it a lot. Again, POTUS/SCOTUS is not listening to this problem, but has turned a blind eye to it.
As an outsider, my assessment could very well be observed, but I do think that these issues have enough potential to cause a feeling of anger and distrust in a lot of Americans (if not all). Ignorance or inactivity on part of POTUS/SCOTUS is only going to aggravate it.
What? Since when did US blue collar workers liked open markets and free competition with their 3rd world counterparts?