The failure of Democrats is way deeper than imagined

[Shiranu]

People laugh when they hear that the white man is feeling neglected.

To be fair, that is a hilarious concept (when it's implied that white people as a group, rather than them PLUS everyone else, is being neglected).

[Hydra009]

Democrats always had one vote that they could count on and this year that vote vanished.

My personal experience has been quite the opposite.  One side of my family is pretty strongly Democrat and the other side leans Republican.  Election day rolls around and almost everyone went Clinton (one went Jill Stein) and no one supported Trump.  Go figure.

[Baruch]

My personal experience has been quite the opposite.  One side of my family is pretty strongly Democrat and the other side leans Republican.  Election day rolls around and almost everyone went Clinton (one went Jill Stein) and no one supported Trump.  Go figure.

Goes to show that over-generalization doesn't work (party affiliation).

[Cavebear]

When I was young, I thought unions had too much power (and they did).  Now I think they are too weak.  The Republicans killed them.  And now they vote Republican.  There is no accounting for stupidity.

[widdershins]

To be fair, that is a hilarious concept (when it's implied that white people as a group, rather than them PLUS everyone else, is being neglected).

Not so much, I don't think.  You know the saying that you can be alone in a crowded room?  That is because company and loneliness are not mutually exclusive.  Likewise, whites can simultaneously have far more opportunity than anyone else as a whole but still feel (and be) neglected, especially if you look at it from the point of view of the working class.  A few decades ago I tried to get a job in Wisconsin through the government agency at the time which helped people find work (I can't remember the name any more.  I think it has changed a few times since then.)  They let me fill out all the paperwork before they told me there was nothing they could do for me because, by state law, they had to find jobs for every minority on their list before they could help me.  Yes, as a white man I am "privileged" and have been my whole life, but that privilege is a generalization, not a fact easy to see in the life of every white man.  I was far less liberal then than I am now and I was pretty ticked off about it.  I did feel "neglected", and rightly so.

So no, I don't think it's a "hilarious concept" that the privileged class can feel neglected.  In fact the very system designed to reduce that privilege, by its nature, causes the privileged class to be neglected.  The feeling is certainly justifiable when the situation is real.  Not that I'm saying we don't need to keep working with programs to reduce white privilege or anything.  It has certainly done much good.  But it has also been the trigger for racist thoughts and ideas, especially by those who don't understand the need for such programs or refuse to accept that there is a need.

[GSOgymrat]

Satisfaction isn't just measured by comparison with others but by perceived gains or losses.

Gymrats know this.

[Baruch]

Gains are much easier to tolerate than losses, that is why since 2008 all the gains have gone to the Elite, and we get all the loses ;-)

[Cavebear]

People feel a 5% loss more than they feel a 5% gain.  We are not rational.

[widdershins]

People feel a 5% loss more than they feel a 5% gain.  We are not rational.

That's actually because most people don't live in excess, so they tend to live on the limit.  A 5% loss means a conscious change of behavior which is painful.  A 5% gain means a little more 'breathing room", which leads to an unconscious change of behavior as living is adjusted to the new limit.

[Cavebear]

That's actually because most people don't live in excess, so they tend to live on the limit.  A 5% loss means a conscious change of behavior which is painful.  A 5% gain means a little more 'breathing room", which leads to an unconscious change of behavior as living is adjusted to the new limit.

Exactically...

[fencerider]

You go gymrat. white rural America keeps voting for the people that are stompin them down. Some kind of strange obsession blocking their view. It's almost like someone falling in love with their kidnapper; not normal at all.

What's all this talk about unions? I think unions are failing because they haven't bothered to explain their benefits to society in a long time. I don't know a single benefit of a union that helps me, cause they never showed it. If however it is true; as has been said; that the leaders of the unions now are all on the take, what's the point of continueing with them?

[Baruch]

You go gymrat. white rural America keeps voting for the people that are stompin them down. Some kind of strange obsession blocking their view. It's almost like someone falling in love with their kidnapper; not normal at all.

What's all this talk about unions? I think unions are failing because they haven't bothered to explain their benefits to society in a long time. I don't know a single benefit of a union that helps me, cause they never showed it. If however it is true; as has been said; that the leaders of the unions now are all on the take, what's the point of continueing with them?

The unions sold out to the company, and the government (unions are communist ... so have to fight yourselves, to fight the Cold War).  There is no reason for them at all.  A prior union, The Grange, tried to organize farmers back when 1/2 of America were farmers.  They were crushed by the other parts of the agri-business.  All of America is one big coal mine, and we are all black-lung miners, shopping at the company store.  It is dystopia.  I will be happy when I die.  The future of America is already seen in Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

[widdershins]

The unions sold out to the company, and the government (unions are communist ... so have to fight yourselves, to fight the Cold War).  There is no reason for them at all.  A prior union, The Grange, tried to organize farmers back when 1/2 of America were farmers.  They were crushed by the other parts of the agri-business.  All of America is one big coal mine, and we are all black-lung miners, shopping at the company store.  It is dystopia.  I will be happy when I die.  The future of America is already seen in Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

The unions didn't all sell out to the company.  Some of them became the company.  Or rather a middle-man-company only there to take their cut.  Still others got a "fuck the company" mentality where they would run a business into bankruptcy rather than make concessions.  It's actually more important to them to take as much as they can for the employees than to have the company survive it.  That happened with Chrysler and Hostess.  They essentially became extremists with a "meet our unreasonable demands or we all burn" mentality.

I don't think the problems with unions are as simple as a single "this is what they did".  Like the people who run them, their flaws are varied.  And like any establishment, their flaws get amplified with time, their greed ever increasing.

[SGOS]

I don't think the problems with unions are as simple as a single "this is what they did".  Like the people who run them, their flaws are varied.  And like any establishment, their flaws get amplified with time, their greed ever increasing.

I was told one time that unions began to flourish after the bubonic plague, when workers were in high demand.  I'm still not convinced that the plague was the cause, but I think supply and demand is one of the varied causes that you refer to.  I watched the lumber union in my home down die, but it was clearly related to the depletion of natural resources.  The mill, which had been established as the primary income of the town early on, could no longer find the resources, and because of it's outdated technology, could not compete with the newer mills that could out bid them on public timber.  Eventually, even the more technologically advanced mills closed when they no longer had public resources available to them.  Unions cannot survive when workers are not needed.  But as you say, there is more to it than that.  Corruption of union officials may or may not be real.  I think it is, but I can't prove it.

I think we will see a decline in quality of life that will have a lot to do with population growth.  The idea that wealth is not a zero sum game must be a myth.  It might be true in the short term.  Everyone can have more pie, until there isn't any pie left.  I don't believe population growth can be sustained as resources run out.  It happens to all species.

[pr126]

Interesting correlation.

https://youtu.be/VvpmmFeMQrI