The Cold War? Child’s play compared to what lies ahead, according to U.S. historian Robert Kagan. Trump, he says, is leading the world into the most dangerous era since 1945.
The Cold War? Child’s play compared to what lies ahead, according to U.S. historian Robert Kagan. Trump, he says, is leading the world into the most dangerous era since 1945.
In your analysis, do you bother looking at the working and living conditions of the western countries versus the global south, or are you just looking at the wars themselves and only from the perspective of taxes? How do you think the inequity of those conditions are maintained?
You’re denying the thing by only looking at part of the thing. Obviously the capitalists aren’t doing any of this for the public good. Capitalism needs a consumer class. That class resides within the imperial core. But for instance, the idea that making the #1 and #2 largest OPEC countries US vassal states has nothing to do with energy prices is just goofy.
I would add that the high standard of living being taken away for the last half century had nothing to do with imperialism, it triumphed despite imperialism, that standard of living was from Organized Labor, and from the New Deal and the Great War that allowed the government to put the bosses on their back foot, to make them pay progressively more taxes after obscene amounts, for taxes to be paid by corporations more than personal taxes. The top rate for income was 90% after they got a large amount at lower rates.
And the new deal put checks on business, it prevented the banks from systematically cheating everyone. Preventing them operating in more than 3 states, keeping them small, seperated commerical and investment banking, and made a writer of a security hold a percent of that until maturity, making sure they wrote good loans and didn’t write bad ones, fob them on investors.
Preventing the rich from being super rich and becoming too powerful is one big deciding factor in standard of living. Labor, and the New Deal, is what led to high wages, in spite of the cold war, not because of it. And that cold war hurt us, it didn’t help us, in every way you look at it.
I wish I didn’t just read all of that to get to the end and you just brush off the argument completely.
Was that line a troll? After literally not looking at it at all, you say that? And I guess we’re talking about the cold war, and not imperialism now?
Here’s my question in response to all of that: Why did the US get the New Deal and not the Jakarta Method?
What do you mean, I looked at it and rejected the contention that the imperial Adventures of our ruling class has had any benefit for taxpayers and citizens. That in fact it has given Force and license to the ones that have taken away our prosperity and rights. I really do not see any counter argument you are making here for how Imperial Adventures help the working class.
Not at all, looking at the totality of these things it’s even worse for working people, as it gives power to illiberal forces in society, it creates killers that can be used to assassinate civil society leaders, most of all it enriches and makes powerful the oligarchs that are subverting our governments, using corrupt influence to exloit us, moreso than already, and to crush dissent and organized labor and the like.
The more you step back, the more the accounting shows a deficit for working people on all scores.
You are again shifting the argument from the existence of a labor aristocracy. If you want to defend the concept of the imperial boomerang, go find someone who is disputing it.
I don’t really know what you’re on about here, I’m just expounding the factors for our high standard of living that has been taken away from us as we speak for 50 years, and the fact that that high standard of living was achieved in spite of the Imperial Adventures of the country not because of it. Labor, regulation, and good leadership, relatively good, are what put capital on a leash and created a prosperous middle class that in turn bought consumer goods which in turn created more jobs and wealth in a virtuous cycle, one that has since reversed in globalization.