Politics So I guess when the s**t hits the fan, everyone's a socialist

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Self-explanatory title. Given the massive stimulus measures taken by governments around the world in response to this pandemic and the measures taken during the GFC, can we finally put the nail in the coffin for hard-line neoliberal economic rationalism that some still pretend is in force?

Well done to governments taking steps to protect people and the economy.
 
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John Maynard Keynes
It's worth noting that "support for aggregate demand" was a key component of the GFC stimulus measures that were largely designed by Henry and Stevens - two Howard-era Treasury appointees.

Ken Henry would later join NAB as Chairman - hardly the domain of a leftie socialist.
 

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Apr 23, 2016
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Self-explanatory title. Given the massive stimulus measures taken by governments around the world in response to this pandemic and the measures taken during the GFC, can we finally put the nail in the coffin for hard-line neoliberal economic rationalism that some still pretend is in force?

Well done to governments taking steps to protect people and the economy.

Has capitalism allowed us to develop the facilities to enable socialist style measures?
 
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Has capitalism allowed us to develop the facilities to enable socialist style measures?
Define what type of 'capitalism'? The two aren't mutually exclusive terms.
 
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Trumpists are already calling his big government socialism "Americanism".
I guess all it takes is a rebranding.

In Australia the opposition to government support is more muted - we love our medicare and as a result of the Australian compact and affinity with the 'battler' we 'punch down' a bit less.
 
May 1, 2016
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Was a paedophile.
The fact that you can find a way to reduce an incredible amount of subjects to whether or not the person in question was a pedophile is a) a remarkable feat of memory, given the sheer number of times you assert this stuff, b) bullshit of the highest order, that you insert here and there to shock people, or c) an obsession of yours to discover how many historical figures were pedophiles.

In any case, it's disconcerting, doesn't add much to the discussion, and isn't entirely healthy.
 

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The fact that you can find a way to reduce an incredible amount of subjects to whether or not the person in question was a pedophile is a) a remarkable feat of memory, given the sheer number of times you assert this stuff, b) bullshit of the highest order, that you insert here and there to shock people, or c) an obsession of yours to discover how many historical figures were pedophiles.

In any case, it's disconcerting, doesn't add much to the discussion, and isn't entirely healthy.
He was, quite a nasty sex tourist too.
 
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Carlton
He was, quite a nasty sex tourist too.
I'm not disputing what you're saying - after your post, I had a look online - merely the frequency of how often you know a prominent member of the opposite side of politics to you is/was a pedophile.

It's uncanny, really really strange. I applaud your depth of knowledge, but it does lead one to question how you know these things.
 

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I'm not disputing what you're saying - after your post, I had a look online - merely the frequency of how often you know a prominent member of the opposite side of politics to you is/was a pedophile.

It's uncanny, really really strange. I applaud your depth of knowledge, but it does lead one to question how you know these things.
I get clued in by my mutuals one Twitter. You learn a lot there. Keynes was also a eugenicist. It is strange he is lionised by a group of people who would cancel anyone who did the same, but Keynes advocated a redistributionist expansion of the state, so his horrible personal views get a free pass.
 

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I get clued in by my mutuals one Twitter. You learn a lot there. Keynes was also a eugenicist. It is strange he is lionised by a group of people who would cancel anyone who did the same, but Keynes advocated a redistributionist expansion of the state, so his horrible personal views get a free pass.

It's unfortunate that many reasonably competent policy-makers in history haven't been particularly good people.
 

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It's unfortunate that many reasonably competent policy-makers in history haven't been particularly good people.
Some real geniuses (eg James Watson) have had their reputations destroyed in service of the modern progressive ideology, Keynes escapes precisely because he recommended giving out free money.
 
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I get clued in by my mutuals one Twitter. You learn a lot there. Keynes was also a eugenicist. It is strange he is lionised by a group of people who would cancel anyone who did the same, but Keynes advocated a redistributionist expansion of the state, so his horrible personal views get a free pass.
Ah.

So it's a group of right wing people on twitter looking up and studying with great detail who on the other 'team' is a pedophile. Got it.

And you do this because? To try and make people on the other 'team' defend him on the basis of his ideas? To make them squirm?
 
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Some real geniuses (eg James Watson) have had their reputations destroyed in service of the modern progressive ideology, Keynes escapes precisely because he recommended giving out free money.
Admittedly, so did Milton Friedman:
The idea. The idea of a negative income tax began gaining steam with the 1962 publication of economist Milton Friedman’s book “Capitalism and Freedom.” Friedman thought a negative income tax would alleviate poverty — and he believed it would have many additional benefits, as well.

Friedman argued that a negative income tax improved on traditional welfare — he wanted to give poor people cash rather than an array of welfare benefits. People could then use the money as they saw fit. He contended this would simplify the system — since it would be administered centrally by the IRS, who would cut the checks, instead of many different organizations — and be more valuable to intended beneficiaries, thereby increasing our transfer system’s bang for its buck.

I see Friedman the same way I do Taylor; people took the bits of his ideas they wanted (ie, trickle-down, in the case of Friedman, and the efficiency of scientific management without the higher wages [at 150 to 250% of the standard wage] based on productivity of Taylor) and left the bits which ensured equity in the books.

Makes you wonder what a society would look like if people actually applied some of this s**t properly.

As an aside, it also functions as a contradiction from those trickle-down advocates to avoid the Cashless Debit card's restriction on customer's freedom.
 
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And you do this because? To try and make people on the other 'team' defend him on the basis of his ideas? To make them squirm?
For fun obviously. Why do you spell paedophile like an American?

Anyway, socialism isn’t back. It’s fascism and it‘s good. As Edward Luttwak said in the 90s, it’s the wave of the future.
 
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For fun obviously. Why do you spell paedophile like an American?

Anyway, socialism isn’t back. It’s fascism and its good. As Edward Luttwak said in the 90s, it’s the wave of the future.
Because I'm unused to writing the word. It never came up for me prior to this conversation, oddly enough.
 

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Some real geniuses (eg James Watson) have had their reputations destroyed in service of the modern progressive ideology, Keynes escapes precisely because he recommended giving out free money.

I have always wondered how the likes of Hawke/JFK/LBJ/Nixon/Roosevelts (relatively competent policy-makers but flawed people) would have been received in the MeToo/Trump era.
 
Does it change the OP's point? Large injections of government funds into the economy are the antithesis of what neo libs the world over have been preaching about and doing with the economy and yet at the first sign of trouble they abandon supply side economics. Why is that?
 
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Does it change the OP's point? Large injections of government funds into the economy are the antithesis of what neo libs the world over have been preaching about and doing with the economy and yet at the first sign of trouble they abandon supply side economics. Why is that?
... and we have, in recent memory, real-world examples of applied austerity during periods of financial crisis.
The results weren't pretty.
 

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