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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

The US parties have never been ideologically consistent. It’s impossible for a 2-party system to construct tents large enough to hold interest groups with aligned philosophies.

Broadly speaking the US left is libertarian on social issues and authoritarian on economic issues, and the right is reversed. However US culture has an ingrained individualist streak where there is general bipartisan agreement on “support for small business”, which encourages lower taxes, lower regulations, etc. that help capital and hurt labor. So the left tries to preach certain things but is stymied by the size of their tent and the contradictions of US culture.

You can see the same story over and over. The right typically dislikes large government yet has knee-jerk support for the military, a giant money sucking boondoggle in so many ways yet is sacrosanct. And on and on.

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The left claims to be for the low class. But is again for:

open borders/immigration

open/free trade

large scale money printing/welfare

these, more so than taxes, are core capitalist ideas. They disenfranchise the american worker.

its just very odd that everyday americans are confused by this.

the money printing during COVID effectively made the low classes even poorer. Relative to financial assets they got way poorer, and they are hurt most by inflation.

I’m in agreement but I would characterize support from the left based on emotional and humanitarian viewpoints rather than cold capitalist calculations. The left wants to help immigrants because they feel bad for them. The fact it helps capital is an unintended side effect that they can’t seem to square.

Right, but I dont think thats what people voting from them think. Coastal elites would agree with you, the guy working at the grocery store just wants someone with his best interest in mind.

We are aligned. FYI I try to think like an investor and remain dispassionate. Thanks for making me think. Cheers

How is welfare a core capitalist idea and how does it disenfranchise workers?

Welfare itself isnt, the implementation of welfare via stimulus checks and QE basically meant that all that money pumped stocks and houses. The end result being the owners of the capital got wealthy, and the lower classes who dont own assets, got poorer in relative terms.

Think about it this way,

lower classes got 600$ checks, but then houses in their area went up 50-100k. Thats a terrible trade off.

You are 100% correct but somehow this truth eludes almost everybody even when explained to them as clearly as you have. I moved past getting annoyed trying to explain things to those who can’t listen, it’s too frustrating.

I don't really know anything about QE, but the stimulus/housing costs is a false dichotomy. Housing went up during the pandemic because wealthy people started moving out of the city and were willing to pay insane prices in cash for houses well above what they were worth, which has nothing to do with stimulus. Either housing was gonna go up or housing was gonna go up plus a tiny stimulus. I definitely need a more in depth explanation of how giving money directly to people who need it is somehow worse for the people who need it. Maybe you're just saying people got screwed because the stimulus was a drop in the bucket compared to the wealth transfer, which I agree with, but I don't think it's fair to say the stimulus was part of the problem.

I live in a major city and the prices went up here too! Your story doesn't align for the whole nation. It could explain suburbs and tier-3 cities but if that were the only reason the cities wouldn't have been flat or lower instead of up by just as much.

> libertarian on social issues

I'm not from the US but looking from far away the left seems quite authoritarian on social issues, it's just a different kind of authoritarianism.

> authoritarian on economic issues

This is quite strange from an Europe prospective. In Europe the Democrats would be classified as economically center right, free market and all that.

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