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from the no-one's-leaving-until-we-have-unanimous-agreement dept.
The rise of populism has rattled the global political establishment. Brexit came as a shock, as did the victory of Donald Trump. Much head-scratching has resulted as leaders seek to work out why large chunks of their electorates are so cross.
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The answer seems pretty simple. Populism is the result of economic failure. The 10 years since the financial crisis have shown that the system of economic governance which has held sway for the past four decades is broken. Some call this approach neoliberalism. Perhaps a better description would be unpopulism.Unpopulism meant tilting the balance of power in the workplace in favour of management and treating people like wage slaves. Unpopulism was rigged to ensure that the fruits of growth went to the few not to the many. Unpopulism decreed that those responsible for the global financial crisis got away with it while those who were innocent bore the brunt of austerity.
2017 Davos says: The 99% should just try harder.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:53PM (2 children)
For future reference, some of the things Americans got from populism:
This is an interesting list. I'm going to address how populism affects it today.
- Social Security
- Medicare
The party that the populists have chosen wants to eliminate these, but they're still popular enough that they probably won't be able to.
- Medicaid
The populist party is cutting this way back.
- anti-trust laws, including the breakups of Standard Oil, US Steel, and Bell Telephone.
The populist party doesn't believe in enforcing anti-trust laws.
- direct election of senators
We have this, but is it helping?
- referendum and recall in many states
Referenda in many states have led to recreational marijuana legalization. However, the party of the populists intends to re-assert Federal law and enforcement over this, leading to direct conflict with those states.
- the EPA
The EPA has been completely neutered by the populist party.
- the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts
The populist party disagrees with these and is working against them.
- abolition of slavery in the northern states
The populists who elected the current populist party seem like they'd like to bring back slavery.
- the legal right to form labor unions
The populist party is adamantly opposed to labor unions.
They haven't gotten it through their heads that if said mob can't get what it wants via democracy and votes, they'll seek out other ways to get it.
Well the mob has gotten exactly what it wanted with democracy and voting, including rolling back all the things on your list. The mob wants greater inequality between the rich and the poor, it wants more religion-based policies, it wants greater power for corporations, and it wants policies which harm minorities. It's getting that now.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:05PM (1 child)
Populism isn't a right or left thing. This time around, the Ds did a better job squashing the populists on the left than the Rs did on the right. Had the Ds not been as good at internal dirty tricks or simply realized their attempted coronation would cost them the presidency, we might have seen Sanders as president and could just as justifiably called him the populist president.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:22PM
You're exactly right, I'm just pointing out that populism is a very mixed bag. You can get some great things with it, or you can get some really horrible stuff (which isn't that hard to do when the populace is stupid and uneducated and easily convinced to vote against their own interests by demonizing some minority group).