Gosplan14_the_Third [none/use name] @ Gosplan14_the_Third @hexbear.net

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3 yr. ago

To Sway US Voters in which direction?

To the party that hates China (Blue) or the party that hates China (Red)?

Emilia-Romagna is similar. Probably the best place to live in Italy, ruled by the Communist Party 1970-1991 (and earlier + by the socdem successor parties since), with a strong focus on cooperative businesses. In some areas, the PCI got even more than 65% of the vote, such as in rural Modena province. It's also the origin of stuff like Communist themed wine etc.

The socdems are still in power, just barely, while the overall situation in the country has spreading racism, nationalism, etc. and the government basically stopped every ambitious project of the PCI since it dissolved in 1991.

The youth don't even know that the party ruling the region had a hammer and sickle in the logo as late as 1998 and they've absorbed the Berlusconi-led push to demonize communism and blame every problem in the country on it - facilitated by the global shifts of the blackest reaction era.

Apparently the "2/3 society" was a hotly discussed topic in the late GDR, because liberals went that "if only 2/3 of the society lives well at the expense of getting everything to run well, then it's worth pursuing."

They got what they wanted.

A nationalistic "the state was supposed to take care of me, but I am unhappy. This is the lazy people's fault" was very popular in the 80s - east AND west.

1. The process also happened in Poland. I even have a distant, now deceased relative that made big bucks on landlordism in the 90s. Lots of stuff about old aristocrats coming over and getting "their" land back, the church, etc. Anecdotal evidence and all, but both my parents and grandparents claim that homelessness only started showing up around the time of Balcerowicz's market reforms, roughly at the same time the unemployment offices were created.
2. Public transportation was overcrowded, but it was very well built up even in smaller towns. Besides, the wait for the car is a luxury that imperial citizens of the west take for granted, as well as tropical fruit (a German lib classic). Sure, you had Bananas, and they came from a plantation in Guatemala where pro-American militaries were killing guerrilleros in fights over land in an extremely poor countryside. For the Eastern Bloc, where could they even get those? Cuba and various civil-war ridden republics in Africa. Gee, I wonder why there was so little tropical agrarian produce there - even ignoring the environmental cost.
3. Also the influence of censorship, authoritarianism, etc. is greatly overstated. Yes, the secret police etc. were overzealous (insert Michael Parenti talking about Nicaragua, 1990) but western music was freely available on the radio, contact with the west was allowed - even in stuff like shortwave radio communications etc., western goods were advertised freely (even including a competition to win these computers). Alas, the already wealthier people were dreaming of Paris (also paraphrasing Parenti) - the "we want FREEEEEDOM" was basically a constant in all media of that time (at least in Poland), and it almost always was expressed with "They're telling us what to do, this is 1984", a juvenile yet reactionary and incredibly popular position.

Victor Grossman

I actually saw him IRL once. I didn't talk to him since he was busy talking to someone else and frankly I don't know what about.

Raising the interest rate (i.e. making loans more expensive) is the measure taken if there is a belief that there is too much demand for goods by the population (Keynesian inflation theory) or too much money in circulation (Monetarist inflation theory). It's taken in the hope that reducing the purchasing power of the population will slow the price increase down with falling demand. Which is why you had mainstream economists talking of say the need to increase unemployment (i.e. take people's incomes away) and how wage increases are bad due to the supposed theory of the wage-price spiral.

Cutting taxes is a measure taken with the hope that with reduced costs, private enterprises will scale up production and increase the amount of goods' supply as compared to demand, lowering or at least stopping the increase in prices, as orthodox economists hold the thesis that excessive demand (as supposedly caused by the 2020 Covid Crisis) is responsible for the currently high inflation.

Nowadays, it's commonly accepted in many studies, such as this recent one from New Zealand that a significant cause in the inflation is the desire for even higher profits compared to what they already had in years prior.

Lowering taxes in response to a stagnant economy in this case is, as I understand it, unlikely to affect inflation, but is rewarding a private sector that used the fuel and energy price crisis caused by the war in Ukraine to enrich itself even as those prices fell again, with more riches. Especially considering the currently stagnant economy, it's placing hope on a sector that has already failed to deliver out of an ideological belief that the state is unable to do what the private sector can, as well as the support it gets from and how many politicians have personal relationships with the private sector.

I mean, it is going down. You can see it by the rising numbers for the AfD. While people will likely never outright go "this is a waste of time, let's ditch Ukraine to save ourselves" there's a lot of people going for the party they think will give them just that - and it happens to be the far-right - who have no qualms about supporting Russia over questions of morality and aren't constantly infighting.

The whole War in Ukraine really was the nightmare scenario for the left.

Is it even safe for you to stay there?

Even leaving the whole risk of a war zone, it feels like a total lost cause when it comes to any politics.

The government has more interest in pursuing the global power ambitions of the Standort Deutschland rather than accomplishing environmental goals, even in spite of one of the parties being named Die Grünen (which is basically just good PR for them and nothing of substance) - and the goals that are being pursued anyway are all to the slogan of Cem Özdemir "Zwischen Wirtschaft und Umwelt gehört kein oder". Environmentalism as long as it remains profitable, even at costs of +2, +2,5, +3 or more °C

The next elections are sure to be won by Merz, with or without the AfD, and very likely to have the FDP in influential ministries, so nothing will change - or perhaps even for the worse.

That's what happens when the main goal of production is not the goal of creating socially necessary goods, but to insert money into the labor process and end up with more than you had at the beginning.

Didn’t the live expectancy rise continually during its existence except during the wars and 1991?

Actually, that's the one point that isn't accurate. The life expectancy stagnated since the 1970s, in the USSR and in Warsaw Pact states.

However, countries like Cuba continued rising in life expectancy at a steady pace (except for 1991-1994 for some reason) famously to the point of beating the United States of America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94fFbxx0Rzw

For the same reason many Americans dream of Europe, Southern Europeans of Germany, Europeans that move to the States or Switzerland, or even say Central Asians that move to Russia, people in the countryside move to the city, etc.

There's the promise of living richer and having more or simply having it easier. There's nothing else to it and an improvement from Migration doesn't even necessarily have to come true.

Puerto Rico hurricane disaster relief vs Cuba, anyone?

Also the Iranian Revolution (which wasn't entirely Islamist in nature, but they were the ones who won the power struggle in its immediate aftermath - the liberals were out of the picture by 1980, while the communist opposition got finished off in mass executions in 1988) happened due to the unpopularity of absolute monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was stubbornly supported by the US to his last days.

And this has roots in the western-supported coup against Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, who was a social democratic reformer.

It's a story that unfortunately repeats many times around the region, and globally too.