Richard Florida Tweets How Bernie Sanders Could Save Capitalism

15 thoughts on “Richard Florida Tweets How Bernie Sanders Could Save Capitalism”

1. Possibly but a lot of people don’t see it that way it. People still debate whether FDR save Capitalism from itself during the Great Depression.

   People are still denying it until they are blue in the face that globalization and free trade agreements hurt the American working class.Report

   1. True. Those people are ideologues who only care about upholding The One True Capitalism. Not capitalism in reality that has a pretty frickin wide definition and multiple forms.Report

      1. @greginak

         True. I find it interesting and weird about how Libertarian and GOP type are freaking out about the “socialism” of Sanders. You see right-wingers tweet about Gulags even though Sanders is a New Deal liberal basically.Report

         1. To be fairish, lots of conservatives and libertarians know Sanders kind of socialism isn’t related to gulags or Soviet horrors. They know it is old school US left wing/ FDR and western euro style third way. But there is no advantage to admitting that when you can scare people by shouting about gulags.Report

            1. Nah. Many rightists always perceived anything less than full-throtled no holds bar free market capitalism as communism in all but name. The New Deal was seen as a stepping stone to Stalinism and the Democratic Party as a front from the Communist Party.Report

               1. Certainly some believe that, but plenty of others know it is bushwa. I even got TVD to pretty much admit that.Report

   2. Does illegal immigration hurt the American working class?Report

      1. Yes and no.Report

      2. There could be a case that undocumented aliens hurt the wages of working class. Many of the jobs done by undocumented aliens might be done by Americans if they weren’t undocumented aliens.Report

   3. @saul-degraw

      There’s a difference between hurting certain industries the working class traditionally relies on and hurting the working class.Report

2. Scandinavia’s success (although note that this is somewhat overstated) is despite, not because of, its expensive welfare-state programs. And why is it able to perform reasonably well despite diverting so many resources into these programs? Because of relatively light regulation and light taxation of capital.

   Sanders is, of course, proposing to implement the programs that hold Scandinavia back, while dramatically increasing taxation of capital. All pudding, no meat.Report

   1. @brandon-berg

      Indeed, Scandinavian Neoliberalism would be a left-wing movement I could support, especially given what the Republicans are serving up. But that’s not what Sanders is offering.Report

      1. @james-k Eh…they still spend more than is optimal, which is likely a big part of the reason why they underperform the US economically, despite all they have going for them otherwise. How about Swiss neoliberalism?Report

         1. @brandon-berg

            All I meant was that, as a left-wing movement, Scandinavian neoliberalism is a distinctly better form of left wing ideas than most of what we see. I’m thrilled whenever I encounter a governmental philosophy that shows some glimmers of competence.Report

   2. Give me a 70% unionization rate and I’ll happily get rid of a lot of regulations on labor.Report

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