“Eat the Rich” memes spread, but is it a political movement?

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lawtig02 said:
Ok, then back to the question you didn't answer. You suggested left-wing populists might prefer something different than the CHIPS Act. So what is it? What did they propose? What will they propose? And how will it bring chips manufacturing back to the US?
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Left-wing populists aren’t currently in a position to propose legislation, as you well know. I don’t see any point in getting into the weeds of microchip policy when the discussion is about a political movement based on the economic system as a whole.

If your answer to why you’re scared of left-wing populism is that they don’t currently have a well-thought out microchip policy, then I guess that’s your right.

My personal opinion is that the government should control manufacturing of microchips since they’re such a capital intensive industry that is vital to modern life and American national security. It doesn’t need to be left up to the private sphere. Does that make me Vladimir Lenin?

Again, left-wing populism has a definition. It’s not just hayseeds making industrial policy decisions. It is a broad ideological commitment towards democratic decision making at all levels, especially the economy. Economic decisions need to be made with the health of the people in mind rather than the health of a banker’s pocketbook.
 
Callatoroy said:
You are leaving out a couple of important variables when trying to compare the US to european countries that I think makes those comparables moot, both in 1934 and today. 1) european countries didn't, and don't have our level of racial diversity. That can't be overlooked in your discussion and is one of the things that makes it almost impossible to compare the US to europe today. It has a tremendous impact on our society. And 2) the existing governmental structures in europe (germany) in 1934 vs the US structure is also relevant to your discussion as it makes any comparison tenuous.
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This might be the first time I’ve seen you admit the US is a racist country. Welcome to Woke Town. Enjoy your stay.
 
Paine said:
Left-wing populists aren’t currently in a position to propose legislation, as you well know. I don’t see any point in getting into the weeds of microchip policy when the discussion is about a political movement based on the economic system as a whole.
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And that's why you don't have a seat at the table.
 
I think it will become an ineffective political movement. We'll see decentralized leadership structure combined with intentionally vague goals. The noise to accomplishment ratio will remain high until everyone moves on to the next thing.
 
wmheel1287 said:
You kind of take the same approach with "neoliberals" that you disparage them for with populists. Routinely, you've devolved into acting as if the majority of the board is simply too arrogant or dumb to understand the world and what got us here.

If you think that particular approach has been so damaging as to result in the revolt of the working class against their mor natural allies, do you expect it to be successful here?

Do you not think that your particular level of frustration with us isn't precisely what we've experienced with the American Right for at least 2 decades now?

As to my own personal perspective, I lived through NAFTA as a young teen with an entire family of working class people who worked in manufacturing. You are correct that they all hated NAFTA and what it would mean. What you leave out is that none of them....absolutely zero were willing to admit that American workers might be part of the issue. American workers are also American consumers. None of them think they are the problem when they buy cheap shit from Walmart or Temu. They didn't think that back in 1993 and they don't think it now. They think everyone else should buy American and pay them wages not justified anywhere else in the world for a lesser work ethic and inferior products.

That, my friend, is the American worker. Those are our people. It's unfortunate, but it is true. We simply as a society do not want to work but expect others to compensate us at unreasonable levels while we spend our own money frugally on cheap imports.

When you can figure out a way to square that circle, i know that I will be a lot more open to populism writ large.
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Ted Koppel did a great series on America's growing trade relationship with China about twelve years ago, it was called "The People's Republic of Capitalism." And he focused as much on the effects of trade with China on the USA as he did of its effects on China. The documentary started in the town of Rolla, Missouri, where the local Briggs & Stratton engine factory had closed and moved to China, and he showed some middle-aged workers at a job fair in town trying to find other jobs.

He focused on one middle-aged lady who said that she thought that she would spend her whole career at the Briggs & Stratton plant, and that when some Chinese businessmen were escorted through the plant and asked what task she performed she refused to show them because "I just knew that I was going to be losing my job", and she was right. And she complains that unless "somebody does something there won't be any [factory] jobs left in America." And then Koppel showed this same woman shopping at her local Walmart, and buying lots of cheap products made in China. And when she said that products at Walmart were so much cheaper than other places, and Koppel pointed out to her that they were cheap because they were made in China and asked her how she could explain the problem of wanting cheap products but losing her job to outsourcing, she had no answer and just shrugged. It pretty much symbolized perfectly what you're talking about.
 
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finesse said:
Your reading comprehension is off or something. The European countries are not nearly so homogenous as you're suggesting because of how wars have shifted people and/or borderlines. No one in the US has an ancestral homeland in a geographic area of the country other than the native Americans still left in place equal to the connections to place and lands that the Europeans have or the equivalent resentments over conquests and centuries of warfare.

The only real equivalent is between us , Syria and Iraq is that a lot of people are tired of rich white Christians' BS.
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My comprehension isn't off. I just disagree that europe even remotely resembles the US socially, demographically, or in how our g'ments function. Multiple nationalities, even tied through monetary policy, are still much different than one continent operating under a set of common laws. The US is unique from all other countries by our form of g'ment, amount of diversity, and in our history that shapes our current situation. Those differences, when combined, don't allow for much comparison.
 
Paine said:
My personal opinion is that the government should control manufacturing of microchips since they’re such a capital intensive industry that is vital to modern life and American national security. It doesn’t need to be left up to the private sphere. Does that make me Vladimir Lenin?
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it would probably be better to learn something about microchip manufacturing before forming that personal opinion. there are few industries in the entire world less conducive to being run by the government.

one main problem with populism and the left in general is the lack of appreciation for what management does. this goes all the way back to marx, and its nurtured by generations of leftists with little to no experience in corporate settings. do you know why google destroyed yahoo? way better management. i had a friend who had a job at yahoo in business school. he told me that there was no way yahoo would thrive because nobody knew what they were doing. he was right.

governments are really bad at innovation. thats why smart governments leave innovation to the private sphere, or to the mixed private/public system that is university research. thats what governments can be good at. thats how china built its semi conductor industry, and taiwan too. llots of money allocated to building capacity. but the left decries that stuff as corporate welfare. that's a big problem. the left needs to decide whether it wants industrial policy (aka corporate welfare) or not.

also, it really helped china that it could amass capital by depriving its citizens of decent pay. that was one reason why japan, once the leader in semiconductors, has fallen behind. there was no way for it to cause its citizens to skimp on present consumption for future investment.
 
lawtig02 said:
1. Natural resources
2. Economic incentives (which are largely legislative/authoritarian policy)
3. Relatively free trade among international trade partners

How would any of that be different with a more populist approach? Explain to me how we get more chip manufacturing in the US without incentivizing legislation like the CHIPS Act. I want to help working class Americans. I just can't figure out how your positions will make that happen.
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those arent the reasons. number 2 is, sort of, i guess. the primary reason is geographical clustering, in my view. everything i've ever read about semiconductor mfg points to the ecosystem. if you're in china and you want to build a prototype of something, you don't have to ship it across the world. you just drive to the next plant over, give them the specs and they do it. if you need more skilled workers, you dont need to recruit them from everywhere. they are there. if you want lam or applied materials to design their next gen fab machines to work with your existing stuff, you can just invite their engineers over to huddle with your engineers and look at the system you already have set up.

the chip industry is in china for the same reason the software industry is in silicon valley. except for china it's more tangible.
 
Paine said:
It wasn’t too long ago that a large percentage of chip manufacturing took place in the United States. That number has declined from about 37% of chips sold globally in 1990 to 12% in 2019. The original offshoring of these jobs took place under neoliberalism, which I think you’re a proponent of if I remember your past posts correctly.

Your second bullet point is the most important. Direct economic incentive is what drives this industry. Obviously, legislation must be passed in order for these changes to take place. This is a modern country with a fairly modern economy.

The most famous examples of left wing populists in the U.S. are AOC and Bernie Sanders. Do you think people of this ilk would not support legislation that reshores certain domestic industries? That’s kind of their whole brand, so that would be weird if they didn’t.

I’m not a policy expert, but I know that there are a plethora of ways to spur domestic chip manufacturing that don’t involve no-strings-attached giveaways to companies that were already massively profitable and still spending large portions of their money on stock buybacks and executive salary packages.

A populist movement would force these industries to invest in America and Americans. If you think it’s Lenin on one side and Hitler on the other with no daylight in between when it comes to populism, I really don’t know what to tell you.
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I don't think populism and American manufacturing will be intersecting any time soon. Thanks in large part to unions, Americans have largely accepted the loss of certain manufacturing jobs. They understand the differences in the cost of labor and how that is tied to their 401k's and IRA's.
 
wmheel1287 said:
It gets you in the neighborhood.
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no, it really doesn't. as jules winfield might say, "it ain't the same fucking ballpark. it ain't the same league. it ain't the same fucking sport."

maybe you could say that paine and lenin are in the same sport, but thats it.
 
superrific said:
unnecessary. my read of paine is that he tries, he listens, he reads, he thinks. he's not a doofus. he's just young and idealistic. he will probably see that as a slight -- i did when i was young -- but its not intended that way at all.
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That's all fine. I have no problem with young idealism. But when you can't answer a question about what your preferred policy would be, it might be worth taking a little more time to reflect before entering the conversation.
 
superrific said:
those arent the reasons. number 2 is, sort of, i guess. the primary reason is geographical clustering, in my view. everything i've ever read about semiconductor mfg points to the ecosystem. if you're in china and you want to build a prototype of something, you don't have to ship it across the world. you just drive to the next plant over, give them the specs and they do it. if you need more skilled workers, you dont need to recruit them from everywhere. they are there. if you want lam or applied materials to design their next gen fab machines to work with your existing stuff, you can just invite their engineers over to huddle with your engineers and look at the system you already have set up.

the chip industry is in china for the same reason the software industry is in silicon valley. except for china it's more tangible.
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China also didn't give a shit about the dangers of rare earth pollution or pollution in general. They're starting to get the bill for that now.
 
superrific said:
those arent the reasons. number 2 is, sort of, i guess. the primary reason is geographical clustering, in my view. everything i've ever read about semiconductor mfg points to the ecosystem. if you're in china and you want to build a prototype of something, you don't have to ship it across the world. you just drive to the next plant over, give them the specs and they do it. if you need more skilled workers, you dont need to recruit them from everywhere. they are there. if you want lam or applied materials to design their next gen fab machines to work with your existing stuff, you can just invite their engineers over to huddle with your engineers and look at the system you already have set up.

the chip industry is in china for the same reason the software industry is in silicon valley. except for china it's more tangible.
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I'll agree geographic clustering is part of it, but that's not why chip manufacturing is largely in Asia. If it were just clustering, the cluster could be anywhere. There are reasons it's in Asia, and in my view, that's largely because of the location of natural resources, economic incentives, and the ability to access markets like the US with relative freedom.
 
lawtig02 said:
That's all fine. I have no problem with young idealism. But when you can't answer a question about what your preferred policy would be, it might be worth taking a little more time to reflect before entering the conversation.
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i dont disagree with your last sentence but it doesn't justify a trump meme.

that trump meme is a sort of incivility. it's not exactly calling someone a moron, but there is a family resemblance and anyway it is inflammatory. this is what memes do and why they seem pernicious to me. they are mechanisms for gradually racheting incivility.
 
lawtig02 said:
That's all fine. I have no problem with young idealism. But when you can't answer a question about what your preferred policy would be, it might be worth taking a little more time to reflect before entering the conversation.
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I did answer the question, you didn’t like the answer. Plenty of points I made in my posts here that you didn’t respond to as well. It’s a message board.
 
Callatoroy said:
We just don't view it the same way (trump's first term).
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So, the bailout to the farmers made necessary due to his tariffs aren’t something that you would characterize as socialism? Why not?

Also, I would think a person so concerned with socialism would vote for the candidate whose economic policies would result in less government spending than more.
 
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