Why Liberals Have To Be Radicals

[merrily]

Why Liberals Have to Be Radicals

Robert Kuttner

July 21, 2015

The reforms needed to restore the country's shared prosperity are to the left of all the candidates, including Sanders.
ust about nothing being proposed in mainstream politics is radical enough to fix what ails the economy. Consider everything that is destroying the life chances of ordinary people:

Young adults are staggered by $1.3 trillion in student debt. Yet even those with college degrees are losing ground in terms of incomes.
The economy of regular payroll jobs and career paths has given way to a gig economy of short-term employment that will soon hit four workers in 10.
The income distribution has become so extreme, with the one percent capturing such a large share of the pie, that even a $15/hour national minimum wage would not be sufficient to restore anything like the more equal economy of three decades ago. Even the mainstream press acknowledges these gaps.

The New York Times's Noam Scheiber, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, calculated that raising the minimum wage to $15 for the period 2009 to 2014 would have increased the total income for the 44 million Americans who earn less than $15 an hour by a total of $300 billion to $400 billion. But during the same period, Scheiber reported, the top 10 percent increased its income by almost twice that amount.

Scheiber concludes:

So even if we'd raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, the top 10 percent would still have emerged from the 2009-2014 period with a substantially larger share of the increase in the nation's income than the bottom 90 percent. Inequality would still have increased, just not by as much.

much, much more at http://prospect.org/article/why-liberals-have-be-radicals

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Certainly. This is why even with Bernie in the WH, we'd continue to criticize and push him.

Bernie is the START of moving the country far enough to the left, not the END.

[HFRN]

2. I disagree - the neoliberal status quo of trade deals for the 1 percent are what's radical

and reform of economic policies to merely stop having the middle/working classes subsidize a windfall to those better off was actually a very moderate centrist position, in a very recent era that has passed in the early 1990s

[merrily]

3. I see what you mean, but I disagree.

IMO, this country has always been run, if not for the top 1%, then for the upper classes, since white people set foot on this continent.

[LiberalEsto]

4. Some of us older folks are paying our kids' student loans too. nt

[merrily]

5. The sandwich generation. Financially and emotionally responsible for your kids and for your parents

And maybe working several jobs. No wonder people are desperate.

[Eleanors38]

6. Good find. IMO, Bernie Sanders is the last train out for our system.

If he or a reasonable equivalent does not make it in, and gain enough allies in Congress, then our country Will slide toward more economic breakdown and a condition of rolling societal disruptions as more and more younger folks shed their oh-so-cool and hep jargon-jiving about how no one can change things and discover they Have to change. It's no longer a "lifestyle choice" or a happy hour debating point.

[merrily]

7. Glad you feel that way. Sorry it's probably true.

You're saying just about what he said.

He started exploring a run well before he announced. However, my theory is that, like many here, he was waiting to see if Warren would run. When it became clear to him that she would not, he announced informally. That was sometime near the end of May.

He believes the US middle class will be gone in another generation unless something is done to "reverse the curse." (Red Sox fans will understand that term.) I think that's why he felt he had to run, even though he may have preferred not to.

[Fairgo]

8. Radical is a powerful word

Radical's etymological origin is "root". Radical is a return to the essential. In common use, it denotes "extreme", with negative connotations. If radical seems extreme, that is only a reflection of how far we've drifted from our core values. Call me a radical, these days I'll wear that slander proudly.

[merrily]

9. I've never seen "radical" as pejorative, in and of itself.

Before I think of it as bad, I must ask, "Radical what?"

When people say Jesus was a liberal, I've sometimes replied, "For that time and place, he was not a liberal, but a radical."

(Atheists, Jews, Christians and Muslims, please relax. I am speaking of Jesus as the NT portrays him, without expressing any opinion as to whether or not he ever existed, let alone whether he was divine.)