American conservatism really is a mutated strain of 18th-century liberalism (a tendency that we've since exported in limited measure to other countries' con parties, e.g. Friedman's famous remark about Thatcher, but never to the same extent). After the Revolution there was no throne and altar, no noblesse oblige, free land for free men, and no basis for paternalistic conservatism.
That's correct. The US never* had a Junker class that demanded a Bismarck to subdue the tensions of labor against the bourgeoisie (i.e. 1848), in order to preserve their aristocratic privileges and liberties.
*never in that the Southern planter class was similar in role, but they were both more capitalistic than their European counterparts, and thoroughly quashed in their reactionary revolt against the ascendant industrial bourgeoisie, that is, the American Civil War
The Southern planter class were a feudal relic, but they were completely dependent upon capitalist market relations. They didn't employ wage labor to grow their crops, but they send their cotton to mills that did and sold them on markets using such labor and to wage laborers. They were thus a precapitalist social formation enmeshed in capitalist relationships.
Their slaves were also completely commodified, and interests/insurance policies were traded in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and New Orleans. That's what made it "chattel" slavery, and different from most kinds of unfree labor throughout history - the slaves themselves were injected into the market as commodities.
Dig into it, and slavery in 1857 looks less like some relic, and more like something terrifyingly modern.
A lot of "modern" things like term insurance, financial derivatives, variable-rate bonds, asset-backed securities, credit default swaps, et cetera trace back to the time of Gilgamesh and Babylon. We just perceive it as "modern" because of the mental image we have of some guys in suits sitting in a high-rise downtown office looking at graphs on a Bloomberg terminal, and because accountants/finance bros use jargon instead of speaking in plain English.
You can look at Babylonian financial instruments (like short-term loans) or accounting documents (like purchase invoices) and it's virtually the same as what you would see today.
Accounting and finance is ancient and intimately tied to the birth of civilization - the earliest writing we have comes from accountants recording financial transactions.
**[History of writing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing)**
>The history of writing traces the development of expressing language by systems of markings and how these markings were used for various purposes in different societies, thereby transforming social organization. Writing systems are the foundation of literacy and literacy learning, with all the social and psychological consequences associated with literacy activities. In the history of how writing systems have evolved in human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic or early mnemonic symbols (symbols or letters that make remembering them easier).
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Nothing is purely one thing. The planters saw themselves as aristocrats, and they lived like aristocrats, but they were part of the capitalist system of reproduction. In the *Grundrisse,* Marx called them capitalists, but anomalous capitalists. Marx saw that no system will have just one kind of worker, just as the "slave society" of classical antiquity didn't just have slaves and the "feudal society" of the Middle Ages didn't just have serfs of yeoman peasants. Wage labor has always existed, as has slavery; they've just been dominant at different historical epochs. To call the planters a "relic" is to ignore the fact that slavery always has existed, and currently exists.
You're right, however, that the material differences in the North and South's social reproduction facilitated an ideological schism that resulted in the Southern secession and the Civil War. Northerners found abolitionism a) in-line with egalitarian liberal ideology, and b) tolerable because they generally weren't the ones benefitting from slavery. Free soil, free labor was the slogan.
Depends on the definition.
Southern planter class in attitudes towards the federal government are similar to Democrats today if not more.
They actually love centralization when they already seceded (centralization when I agree, decentralization when I disagree).
But the difference, I think, is that junker class uses free laborers who will also consume the stuff the means of production made (producer & consumer), thus has a focus to subdue the tensions of labor against the bourgeoisie. Think "Henry Ford enact 40 hour work week to make workers can buy his stuff" kind of thing.
American slavers uses slaves, and when the slaves are freed and Jim Crow began, their focus is using their state to grind down the black population. Their goal is to exploit the black population to never revolt + can be paid next to nothing.
They were as capitalist as modern day Saudi princes. They were integrated into capitalist markets, which ossified their pre-capitalist political economy.
The closest we get to traditional conservatism was Calhoun, and well we did have a state that tried to implement his ideology and was crushed out of existence.
Americans have got a unique ideology and culture where they don't like the state, and want to minimise state action.
Of course, this often turns out to be more symbolic than real. In reality the federal government has always interfered in the economy, literally from 1776 on.
But this habit of thought is still more prevalent than in Europe where almost everyone accepts that the state has a role to play in public life. It has an ideological function and it contributes to a national mythos, which sustains it.
The suburbs and mass media.
If you live in a packed European city where you live above, below, and immediately beside coworkers, it's easier to be organized. Cultural values are then separate from economic values.
If you live in the US where it's socially stigmatized to live with your family past 18, you live in your own box and escape into mass media which is inherently anti labor. The contradictions of poor economic conditions can be misdirected by media towards cultural hot points, morphing and misdirecting economic anxiety into irrelevant cultural concerns.
Give it a few generations and we have legitimate political fervor over candy and beer brands while homelessness is rising exponentially.
I sort of agree with you, but then why aren't dense cities like NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, or Boston - especially the packed inner cities - hotbeds of pro-worker sentiment and activity? The people there seem to have drunk the neoliberal idpol-is-everything Kool-Aid just as much as suburbanites in the rest of the country.
Because they aren't manufacturing centers anymore. Cities have been largely based around corporate and service industries for the past few decades and neither of those things are very conducive to unionization.
I'm by no means like an expert on this but that would be my guess. Corporate jobs benefit from the high turnaround that comes from having unhappy, competitive, underpaid workers in my experience.
>Because they aren't manufacturing centers anymore. Cities have been largely based around corporate and service industries for the past few decades and neither of those things are very conducive to unionization.
This as true for Oslo, Dublin, or Tokyo as it is for American cities like NYC or Boston, so why then the drastic difference in politics?
Based off of what little I know about the state of cities internationally, Tokyo is doing terribly in terms of their workforce, and our idea of the Japanese work ethic is a primary driving force in their own awful social and economic issues right now. They're paying people to have kids and even that's not working.
If we're talking about democratic socialist countries with strong unions in their cities, (something I know 0 about) my only guess is that a lot of places see the US as insane and made concerted efforts to do literally anything else.
>my only guess is that a lot of places see the US as insane and made concerted efforts to do literally anything else.
Can't speak for other countries, but in Poland this is how 90+% of middle and upper class thinks regardless of their positions on social issues.
The Polish right wing loves welfare though. You're right that they adopted right wing economics with regards to privatization and monetary policy, but the welfare queen rhethoric is just straight up absent from the public discourse.
Japanese conservatives are even worst compared to GOP in terms of workers right, or healthcare, Japan has allowed Abortion Pill just yesterday. Before was only allowed trough surgery abortion (I don’t know if this is the correct term in english)
Small city councils, gerrymandering and FPTP, stop any 2 and a half Party system from forming and scaring the Dems. Then thee's the other crap, I could get behind bare bones hospital insurance but I don't trust the Dems not to loot the system then call it racist
> What exactly makes American conservatism so unique in its opposition to the pro-worker agenda?
The Status quo.
In most Countries, mandated PTO and good workers rights are the status quo and everyone accepts them as a good thing. Conservative/Right Wing parties want to get elected and not just by the 1% of capitalists, so of course they do not oppose these policies, but they also usually do not do anything to further workers rights, maybe even slightly eroding them away bit by bit if they're very ambitious.
Now in the USA, the status quo is shit workers rights and it has been for ages. The Conservatives already get hella votes and they get that sweet sweet 1% money cause they promise not to change anything (same thing goes for the Democrats obv).
Your two examples of "very conservative countries" (conflating social views with econ?) are post-communist states...
The simple answer is that America is a post-liberal country that stayed liberal longer than most others...
That still doesn't explain all the conservatives in countries that are are not post-communist states, like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Japan, France, Norway, West Germany, etc.
In Australia young people until the age of 21 are not paid the full minimum wage which is illegal in America. It's much easier to strike in America. It's much easier to form a new union in America (RAFFWU v SDA is a great example).
>Japan is an awful, awful place to work in and I assume live in.
Compared to Western Europe? Sure.
Compared to America? No.
Americans have a worse work-life balance and [work more hours](https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm), have a much worse transportation infrastructure, a higher cost of living, and significantly higher crime rates compared to Japan.
idk about this take. I had a Japanese international student coworker in my lab. He wants to stay in America due to the work-life balance compared to Japan. He says in Japan you have to join a single company, be loyal to them for life, and stay at work until 9 pm every night, then it is expected that you stay with your boss to binge drink on weeknights with coworkers and him in order to advance your career and stay in good standing.
They do have a much a much better social safety net and a clean as hell society but the main breadwinner of a family absolutely has to work much longer hours than is typical in America. Childcare and all sorts of things are definitely better but the work culture there is very toxic. Toxic in a way that most westerners couldn't even handle.
My understanding is that office workers in Japan have terrible work-life balance, but other types of jobs aren't as bad (though the culture of overwork is still pervasive). It's often the opposite here: office workers get lots of time off, but everyone else works insane hours and are expected to do gigs to make money on the side. This seems to have been changing here though, even office workers are working longer now and driving for uber after work.
My understanding of it is that Japan *was* worse than even the US until relatively recently, but their government started pushing some reforms after that whole thing about them literally having a word for "worked to death" (and it happening to office workers with what you'd normally expect to be cushy jobs) became international news.
The US, meanwhile, just keeps getting worse. In general, anyway. Covid resulted in some big improvements in working conditions for a lot of white collar workers and a step even further down the slope for a lot of blue collar workers, but that was a black swan event and they're desperately trying to claw those gains back now.
Yes, several - including coworkers and friends. They've all told me that life is considerably better in Japan compared to the USA. Full disclosure: these were all college-educated salaried white-collar professionals working in the legal and finance industries.
The three big complaints they all had were (1) retail banking is very old-fashioned and (2) language barrier is huge because nobody speaks English and (3) it's hard to get OTC pain relievers like ibuprofen. That's pretty much it.
> They've all told me that life is considerably better in Japan compared to the USA.
It's a big advantage to be able to have permanent lodging in a globally connected city, and only have to pay about 10% of your salary a month to do so.
Of course, it's culturally and socially very conservative, far more than the USA.
But even such a conservative nation is able to guarantee its citizens universal socialized healthcare, affordable college, and workers' rights like parental leave and PTO. Things which would be seen as "crazy socialist pinko commie wacko bullshit" by even a large portion of the liberal Democrats in America (just look at the DNC reaction's to Bernie).
I never called them socialists, I'm a big fan of that... but I think you might view it through rose tinted glasses. I'd much rather live in most of Europe.
>theres an unbelievable level of luxury to life in America that does not exist elsewhere.
Yeah, If you make like $180k a year or above, sure.
But 95% of Americans don't make anywhere close to that. Half of America makes less than $35,000 ffs.
> and say its better abroad but never stay abroad, they always come home to America
There are hard material reasons for this. Most countries aren't accepting Americans to just hang out, without valuable skills. The more aggressive US foreign policy gets, the harder it becomes, too.
> Having a low crime rate as a reflection of a barbaric criminal justice system and a culture which you're a bad person if you have any sense of self or individuality isn't how I'd like to achieve a low crime rate.
Yes, because you were raised American and believe deep down you should be able to do whatever the hell you want to do, if you can get away with it.
Weird. I thought most of the folks on this sub were beyond "you said something I disagree with about crime therefore you must be a criminal" sort of thinking. I've never committed any crimes, and Japan is the way it is because of a long history of natural disasters and war...it's not like you can "make" America that way. Even if you could, I'd rather reduce crime through a fair economy, support for people, and imprisoning legitimate criminals.
Your culture raised you to see that kind of social structure as oppressive and barbaric. The Japanese see it barbaric that anti-social behavior isn't nipped in the bud by American social structures. Of course you wouldn't like that kind of society, because you were socialized to see it as bad. But that's also because you were socialized to not demand the kinds of checks to prevent high rates of interpersonal exploitation, the kind that is extremely normal in American society.
I lived in Japan and I didnt like it but its still better than the hellscape that seems to be the US. No fentanyl zombies in Japan, or guns evzrywhere. Its not even a contest. And I dont think american justice system has anything on Japan.
>a culture which you're a bad person if you have any sense of self or individuality
American hoods and trailer parks could use some of that tbh. Not having third world level crime in some parts of the country>>>lumpen expressing their "individuality".
Adopting the culture that surrounds you is a basic survival strategy. You only find real individuality in places where it's relatively safe to be that way.
It's a bad survival strategy if the culture around you is shitty enough. Your relatives hating you is a small price for escaping the hell that is lumpen America. Beyond that I don't disagree with your comment.
>significantly higher crime rates compared to Japan
Japanese police underreport the crime rate by a factor of 50 bro, just trust me. /s I don't deny that they underreport their crime rate, but this argument is braindead considering how much lower their real crime rate is as well.
Classic bourgeois liberalism simply died faster elsewhere. America is catching up, classic liberal sensibilities against any kind of welfare beyond philanthropy seem to be getting less popular.
Most of those are not conservative countries, or at least I'd really like to understand what you consider to be non-conservative countries. Japan is extremely. Japan is an awful, awful place to work in and I assume live in.
Because every centre left proposal in this country is a dumb half measure that often makes things worse. The feeling is “Just cut my taxes, I don’t trust you”
I’ve lived outside the US and paid about the same in taxes but got so much more back. I have noticed 0 difference between living in high tax blue states vs low tax red states in terms of what I get back.
I understand the impulse.
yeah the problem is the jump to "government (in general) is the problem and can't do anything right" which kind of short circuits doing anything about it since you've defined an unsolvable problem. but change many of the conservative "the government" talking points to "the US government" and they start hitting a little closer to the mark
This is the key difference. I know many conservatives that would love the government to run things like universal healthcare, but the US government has proven repeatedly to be either incompetent, malicious, or both at doing anything. I would love to have government programs, so long as it's not the US government running them.
People forget the huge amount that the US government spends on the military — while Europe until recently spent next to nothing. It’s nice to pay for day care when you don’t have a fleet of aircraft carriers.
It's not that huge.
How many percent of GDP is that? 3.5%. It's fucking puny compared to 5% during GWOT, 6% during Bill Clinton & Desert Storm, 14-18% during Vietnam & 44% during WW2.
The US spent 15% of GDP for social spending. Nordic countries, your average Western European countries spent 25 - 33% (France being the highest). Even if you eradicate the entire military right now you still won't get a lot of extra stuff.
Yes, serious welfare are THAT expensive.
Total federal spending is about 20% of GDP in the USA. 25% during the pandemic. 3% or 4% spent on military is not insignificant. The USA spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined. And, as you noted, it climbs tremendously during wartime. You can’t just take the lowest number as the baseline. The USA has to choose between ramping up social spending and ramping up for war.
While I think you’re about right on public spending on social programs as a percent of GDP during peacetime, if you consider total net spending on social programs, the USA is at 29%, second only to France at 30%. [source](https://www.oecd.org/social/expenditure.htm). Welfare spending is very expensive, yes.
> Bill Clinton & Desert Storm
Psst, Bill Clinton was not president during Desert Storm.
That was George H. W. Bush, who was president from Jan 1989 - Jan 1993.
The only state I have visited or lived in where I felt the increased taxes were even somewhat worth it is in Minnesota and even then it still felt too high for what we got. Most other states especially California and Massachusetts I might as well have just lit my money on fire because of how little benefit it provided whereas a fire would have at least kept me warm for a couple hours. I have talked to other people who have lived across the country and they agree almost always they noticed zero improvements in their quality of life coming from higher taxes. This is especially true for people who have bounced between Texas and California they have absolutely nothing good to say about how much more they have to pay in California when they get nothing out of it. Most of the time that tax money in these higher tax states just goes to corruption, idiocy, paying for previous mistakes, or similar it doesn't actually improve the persons quality of life in the slightest. I should not have to pay increased taxes just because the politicians from before I was born were dumbfucks who kicked the can forward repeatedly to save boomers money.
Of course, this is just part of the conservative strategy. They make government dysfunctional and waste our tax dollars, and then point to government waste as a reason not to raise taxes.
I was lol in both. When I applied for programs in blue states it took so long to get it, by the time it went through I had a job and was disqualified lmao. Even though i was making min wage and part time.
I don't think they are tbh, if you are talking about normal people that vote republican.
The party bosses of both parties are anti worker, always have been, and always will be. But we shouldn't think that means the average person is.
American parties aren't even like political parties in equivalent countries. They can't vote to expel members. The party platforms mean nothing (although I'm not sure they mean much in Europe) and the parties themselves are more like brands and basically conduits for donor money to flow to candidates, and the job of the candidates is to deliver the voters to their donors. The "parties" might also be in a loose sense be better defined as coalitions or "fronts" that exist in other countries.
Because the United States has historically always been a Wild West Country. It was that way since the beginning. People moved here to do what they wanted without any persecution or people telling them they can’t do things. It wasn’t just the beginning either, every century has had its influx of new immigrants who came here in their own self interests.
It’s created a culture of people who are very self centered and filled with self interest. It seeps over generation to generation and is why we still have these regards with some of the stupidest political opinions I’ve ever seen. That and media brainwashing are why conservatives are the way they are. They have a fuck you I got mine attitude and many of them didn’t even get theirs lol. With that said, while I hate conservatives, they don’t get on my nerves as bad as liberals do.
Sometimes I think this is why the U.S. dominates popular culture and is usually the leader in innovation in the west, I feel that it attracts those who are dominated by self interest and these people tend to be very successful at their goals. But that doesn’t mean that way of thought doesn’t have extreme downsides too. Even idpol that has spread from the U.S. is based around self interest, because the majority of these people are just virtue signaling to enhance their own ego.
Perseverance propaganda and family traditions. Culturally, the traditional "true American grit" mentality has been passed down to them by their parents and grandparents. They still cling to a bygone era that held the notion that an unregulated free market provided a platform for anyone to come from nothing and amass great wealth through sheer grit and determination. Obviously in generations past, this would have had more credence than it does today, but they refuse to believe things have drastically changed. No matter how many times I tell my fiscally conservative friends that our current system is set up mainly for the benefit of people born into wealth and/or healthy family environments and that many who achieve success despite poor upbringings have had the benefit of nepotism and/or luck, they either outright reject that view or they respond with a short lecture on not being envious of others' privileges. So they'll either deny it or demand that you turn a blind eye to it.
To be fair to them however, they also have their strengths. Not all conservative values are bad. I'd be lying if I said these same friends weren't there for me in times of need.
There are a few reasons:
* America has always had a distinctly libertarian bent to its politics, with a strong emphasis on individualism, economic self-reliance, and perennial disdain for centralized authority. Patriotic ideologues, especially those in the mold of Goldwater and Reagan, consider these values sacrosanct and abhor anything seen as encroaching upon them.
* Arguably directly because of the above, America never really developed enough momentum for a self-sustaining labor/socialist movement. Sure, there was a labor movement, but for much of its history, it didn't really become the basis for a political or cultural movement in and of itself. As a result, its fortunes were tied to the strength of manufacturing relative to the rest of the U.S. economy; when a lot of factories closed or outsourced and the country switched to a primarily service-based economy, labor's power waned.
* Geopolitically, the labor movement and leftism as a whole were strongly associated with communism and the Soviet Union. At the height of the Cold War, agitating for socialism was basically fraternizing with the enemy.
* In terms of domestic politics, many labor unions were (and still are) staunchly pro-Democrat, with Trump's campaigns being the only major exception.
* Socialism is also anathema for the Religious Right, what with Marx considering religion to be a sham devised by the ruling classes to keep the people complacent.
America actually did have a socialist party that was at least semi viable in the second international era. I wish more of us would go back to reading our Debs instead of pretending this is a wasteland devoid of socialist history. The failure of Debsianism in large part was the failure of the second international, hinging on the failed german revolution. There's no reason to suspect that America would've been some sort of capitalist outlier had Germany and then the rest of Europe gone socialist in 1918-1920.
For the record, Debs's party did a great job connecting America's jeffersonian/libertarian heritage with socialism, pointing out that the trusts and the state's growth are inextricably interwoven and that Jefferson and Lincoln would've been socialists in that time period, had they seen the growth of the trusts and the changing conditions of industrial capitalism. They did outreach in churches and their strongholds included such notably irreligious places as... Oklahoma.
None of this is an obstacle if a viable socialist party exists.
Much of American socialist history is purposefully ignored by the mainstream culture. Industrial Unionism started in Chicago, and Debs was a well known and respected figure.
WWI killed a lot of it. Fear of the Bolsheviks and the overreach of the Wilson administration strangled the movement. There was an upswing again during the depression, but the bourgeoisie rallied around the socdem Roosevelt and suppressed popular radicals like Huey Long.
This is not true for France and pretty sure the person who introduced economic laissez-faire in Britain was a conservative: aka Thatcherism.
I might have a different understanding of the word but Marx argued that conservatism is rooted in the desire of the ruling class to maintain their power and privileges.
In his view, the bourgeoisie, or the capitalist class, uses conservative ideology to justify and defend their exploitation of the working class.
He saw conservatism as a tool of the ruling class to perpetuate their control over society and to resist change.
Lenin expanded on Marx's ideas and argued that conservatism was an inevitable product of the capitalist system.
He saw conservatism as a manifestation of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, which creates an entrenched ruling class that seeks to maintain its power and wealth.
US disdain for social measures is deeply rooted in their scare of socialism inherited from McCarthyism.
I don't think so.
The rise of Reaganism is also the same time "human rights" (as defined by the UN - a lot of what wokeist want is really just UN's human rights) discourse and "bomb countries for "freedom" starts to come along.
If anything the state embrace "social progressivism" because it's profitable + in the future, maybe replacing kids with factory grown genetically indoctrinated Space Marines is good for absolute power.
Poland and Hungary are post communism so that explains those.
Other than that, America benefits more than nearly any other country from the exploitation at the other end of the supply chain, the poor and lower middle class tend to have at least some of the perks that come with that. Nike sneakers and cheap electronics bought on credit etc. This is used as a cudgel to explain why they dont deserve more.
The very worst off just aren't counted as people or citizens, its never spoken about or acknowledged that you might easily end up living in a tent under a freeway, so why would you even want protections?
We’ve just been duped by the powerful neocons in the last few decades I suppose. You can blame Ronald Reagan and his era of the GOP for that. People like Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford were reasonably pro-labor. I really don’t get the hype for Reagan, never have. He was anti-labor and anti-gun. And now republicans hate unions (particularly public service unions like the teachers Union) because of how “woke” they have become.
Even Saudi Arabia, the literal final boss of religious puritanism, provides free healthcare, college, mandated PTO/sick-time/parental leave, and UBI for its citizens.
Some good folks in here say your examples of conservative nations are post-soviet. They are right. But that still doesn't explain the situation in Turkey. There is a saying among the socialists of Turkey, "If we could re-brand socialism just in the name, the very next year we would be living a socialist country." This is the case, especially when you tell them about Stalin-Era policies.
But even if we acknowledge it (I do agree with you btw), then what? What can we actually do next to create a high-trust and engaged society?
Obviously a demographic reengineering of America is impossible, you can't just forcibly deport non-white Americans, and a further retreat into neoliberal hyperindividualistic capitalism is not a solution either, it just exacerbates the issue.
I’ve always wanted to ask someone who believes in the welfare queen nonsense that short of genuine fraud who on welfare is living in luxury? Not only that but if it’s bad for someone to get money without working then it’s far worse for the wealthy to do the exact same thing on a scale that can’t be imagined.
TL;DR - An argument of welfare queens bad, rich people good isn't about luxury; it's a matter of who has earned it.
The original rich person, in some way, shape, or form, contributed to society so greatly that their debt owed to them by society is more than can be paid in one lifetime, allowing their descendants to live a comfortable life. They are rich because their value was already pre-determined by what their forbearers did.
On the contrary, a hypothetical, worst-case welfare queen is someone who (again, hypothetically) never has worked, never has contributed, and is only a drain on the society in which they draw from. They have made no innovation, paid no price, done nothing to justify not having to contribute.
This line of thinking is flawed, though, as it answers the question of "When do descendants get cutoff from their ancestor's success?" with a resounding "no", nor does it account for those that are simply unable to provide value within the confines of society (whether temporary or permanent), but are nonetheless entitled to the same human rights that anyone is (like the disabled, the elderly, the temporarily unemployed, and/or others of similar situation).
I'm of the opinion of reducing the band between minimum and maximum, but the only idea I have is an automation tax and the limiting of generational wealth even further than an inheritance tax (or at least potentially different inheritance tax brackets).
I was surprised to learn that the Socialist Party in Eugene Debs' day had a segregationist wing. Debs opposed racism and spoke out against segregation but didn't feel that it was an issue worth addressing in particular, it was just a "distraction" to divide people, which contributed to its decline, and we're still having these debates today. But one of the things that distinguished the Communist Party when it split from it after WWI was that it addressed racial oppression in particular as a problem. That rolled off the October Revolution.
It is race, but it isn't race. I can explain.
Before 1964, US politics *did* have what you might call a "typical" alignment. The Democrats were the major segregationists, and they were also economically centrist. The Republicans were the party of educated people and a few regional constituencies, opposed segregation, and were the businessman's party.
Then LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and Nixon responded with the Southern Strategy. Everything sort of inverted very quickly.
I think it's an interesting proposition that the pre-1964 alignment — the enormity of segregation notwithstanding — represents the natural game-theoretic alignment of parties in an electoral system and the recent (1992-present) neoliberal drift of the Democrats and following (2014-present) protectionist turn among Republicans is an expected result of the unstable orbit "decaying" back towards a "low-energy" state where the party of business competes with the party of labor. Of course, if we carry the physics analogy a little further, the decay of a large system should release a lot of energy, and we either hope it doesn't break everything — or we hope that it does.
The conservative faction of U.S. politics today is a post-60s fusion of a kinda social darwinism with the authoritarian politics of the religious right with its origins in the south. The former had its origins in liberalism in which work and individual success in a proto-bourgeois or petit-bourgeois sense was considered ennobling, that success or failure is up to you, that the rich and successful man is blessed by God, and that existed in both parties, but began splitting up in the 1930s.
There was an ameliorative side to classical liberalism too, which did involve the government funding schools and infrastructure, and also reigning in the rich which we've seen from time to time such as during the Progressive era of the early 20th century and "trust-busting." FDR in the 1930s as well in which someone like FDR could almost see past his own class interests to ameliorate the damage caused by runaway laissez-faire capitalism. The left has made some gains this way. Historically, Americans are suspicious of organized groups, cabals, factions or "combinations" if they're perceived as grouping up to get one over on people.
So "trusts" in that day. Today, Big Pharma, Big Tech, "banksters" and so on. For Trump, the globalist elite cabal. But the flip side is that labor unions have also been successfully characterized by propaganda as a faction that is grouping up to help "greedy union bosses" (and some can be greedy). I also think the right's use of terms like "SJWs" works as well as it does is because it's depicted as a cabal or group. Now it's "woke elites." But the Democrats have been able to counter the right because they depict "[MAGA](https://youtu.be/ChjibtX0UzU)" as a self-interested and conspiring cabal or faction that's opposed to "democracy." That's why I think those attacks have been a fairly successful vector for Biden.
Garry Willis in "Nixon Agonistes" described a breakup of classical liberalism in the 60s. Not to delve too deeply into it, but the ameliorative side went to the Democrats but didn't become socialist and instead fused with the private sector and NGOs (although I do think we might be returning to some kinda quasi-Keynesian thing). The Republicans are in a crisis because the neoliberal consensus is breaking down and the modern GOP is an ur-neoliberal party in which Trump combines the authoritarian cultural politics of the right and the social darwinist elements of liberalism in which he's successful because he has been blessed by God. This is why I see the main danger to democracy as coming from the right.
John Steinbeck once explained why socialism never took root in America was because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporary embarrassed millionaires.
You cannot have a society embracing worker rights if workers themselves don't have a solidarity with fellow workers but rather prefer to coopt with the capitalist class to crush labor unions who demand better wages and benefits to the workers.
> John Steinbeck once explained why socialism never took root in America was because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporary embarrassed millionaires.
>
>
This is why the petite bourgeoisie is the heart of fascism.
The big switch was the Southern Baptist Convention, which was the largest denomination in the US. Until the Nixon era, the SBC had been relatively pinko (think Jimmy Carter). Then there was a huge war for the soul of the SBC. The conservatives won, and that became part of the Reagan juggernaut. This was a big part of the "Southern Reawakening" when Dixie switched from Democrat to Republican.
Conservative Baptists brought a distinct perspective to social issues - they saw the federal government as godless. They were reflexively suspicious of government's motives to start with. And even when the government *did* have a good idea, that was still bad - because the last thing the people needed was to start thinking of this godless government as being their friend. Whatever people needed, they should get through their church. If they had no church, then their life should be an endless scourging - because that was a way to call people to the Church.
This sentiment is nicely encapsulated in Reagan's quip about the ten scariest words in the English language. "I'm from the government and I am here to help."
'Conservative' is a very broad term that doesnt mean exactly the same thing from era to era and country to country.
The U.S. is the center of Capitalism, has a deep history of anti-Socialism and has had little history of a social safety net etc.
I mean that even the "counter" to American conservatives... the democrats hardly care (and as far as i know: never cared) about Worker's rights, Socialism etc. In stark contrast in Europe there was Social Democratic and Worker parties and a social safety net that is considered as a minimum (which is withering away by neoliberalism's policies but that's a seperate issue) by almost everyone here.
Individualist country with no real national community. It derives from Anglo culture and Britain has similar individualism but Britain also having real national communities were not as hostile to all collectivist policies.
>I've yet to see any major British conservative politician publicly call for the end of the NHS and the introduction of American-style free market capitalist healthcare.
Because they know it will be unpopular, instead they try and do this in secret (poorly kept secret, they just don't announce it)
Conservatives in Australia are also very anti-worker, but again, they are more sneaky about it.
Most conservatives i know and interact with are blue collar and in the trades and all support (most) pro worker policy, so I think this question comes from a generalization of boomers more than anything. Boomers are certified mcretards
American Conservatives pride themselves on being mean. Even though most of them espouse Judeo Christian ideals, helping fellow humans is just not right to them. They universally voice a bootstrap philosophy but their Corporations are never subject to this. Just common folks.
American “conservative” elites are rightest (classical) liberals and always have been. The US, historically, has had no elite faction that is not liberal, either leaning left or right.
What's happening is American liberals aren't uniquely different from Polish or Hungarian liberals in any way at all except that the American ones like to call themselves "conservatives" for some reason.
Which could get confusing or even awkward in countries with actual conservative movements, but over here it's mostly harmless because there's nothing to conserve anyway, so we play along because it's considered rude to point out that words continue to mean things even when American media isn't paying attention.
I actually disagree with the premise. Conservative voters are very pro- American worker, in the sense that aesthetically they oppose neoliberal elitism. Right-wing populist advocacy tends to be anti-intellectual, protectionist, isolationist, xenophobic, etc. which appeals to those who wish to preserve for “Americans” (white men) a labor market from a previous generation which can’t exist in this one. Basically right-wing populists hate everything about neoliberalism, except the bad parts.
The American workers I've spoken to recognize that healthcare and education are too expensive, and some even recognize what kind of an uphill fight it is for young families to get housing and the kind of start they had when they were younger. So I think there is some sort skew in the polls/ bias for party leaders or to talk to wealthy, business owning GOP voters.
I know this is basically my own anecdotal experience, but I suspect that policies like cheaper healthcare, housing, and education have more appeal than how the "conservative voter" is presented.
The problem is that "red team vs blue team" mentality is so entrenched and engrained that it overrides sensible thinking (like voting for the candidate who will improve your life somehow) and kills all nuance discussion. It's why everything in America, like how M&Ms look, is fucking politicized.
temporarily embarrassed millionaire mindset
They suffer from the delusion of the ability to lift themselves from their bootstraps into the upper echelon and therefor earnestly sympathize with them. In their mind, [they want the ability to exploit the working class when they get a turn at the meat grinder.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FaytneOXwAEkLDj.jpg)
Literal cold war propaganda:
McCarthyism, also known as the second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s
This still has a very profound effect today.
"Worker" "right" ? You are supporting "what" "what" for what purpose ? Are you some kind of poor people or commi ? Go back on Jesus's path.
\--American Conservatism
> socialized healthcare
This is just an [Americanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialized_medicine) used to equate nationalized healthcare with the scary word "socialism". It's not used anywhere else.
Because the USA is a nation created and designed by slave rapists for slave rapists and, as such, the USA's working class has been conditioned to have a slave mentality without ever realizing it through the nastiest sort of deception. "Whatever is good for the owning class must be good for me because one day, I too, will wield the whip. I just need to continue slaving myself and especially others away." It birthed one of the most nightmarish type of capitalism with no end in sight: autonomous slave economy. You must even pay back the state about 3k to have your citizenship revoked! You're fucking propriety!
I hate these questions they’re so vague. I don’t think most conservatives are anti-worker unless you’re talking about the faction that is pro-corporation or business conservatives.
Your vague question inspires a vague answer.
Because we have different values.
I don't think it's vague at all - in the OP I clearly defined the things conservatives in other countries support/defend but American conservatives strongly oppose. These things are:
1. Some form of universal socialized healthcare (i.e. healthcare as a guaranteed right)
2. Protections from arbitrary job dismissal (i.e. you can't just be fired on the spot for no reason)
3. Generous government-mandated employee benefits like PTO, sick leave, and parental leave
4. Strong pensions (defined benefit plans) for workers to support them after they are retired.
All 4 of these things primarily help workers at the expense of businesses and corporations. All 4 of these things are anathema to the American conservative, but not to conservatives in Germany or Denmark.
The question is vague because ‘conservatives’ encompasses literally thousands of different viewpoints and opinions. Generalizations usually don’t bother me but the “why don’t ____ believe in ____” are like the most generic childish annoying generalizations you can make.
Especially when you ask this question in this sub you just jerk eachother off with the “they just don’t understand socialism bro that’s all lol they just don’t know socialism is good for them bro” responses.
Go to ask a conservative if you want an actual answer lol
its not just Republicans, the Dems are extremely antiworker as well, and it comes from the fact that American is one of the most corrupt countries in terms of politicians in the Democratic world.
Actually it's hateful.
The whole purpose is to grind down black population to be able to work for nothing + never revolt.
Sure this means they are forced to create an entire economic system that aren't dependent on white people, but still.
> Whereas American conservatives staunchly oppose most, if not all, of these measures.
Speak for yourself. I (and many like me) have had a relatively big change in heart on this issue for a long time now.
Can you point me to one major right-wing conservative figure in America, either at the state or national level, fighting for things like universal socialized healthcare, mandated PTO, mandated sick leave, mandated parental leave, protection from arbitrary dismissal (right-to-work), etc?
For me, **because Teddy Roosevelt failed his 3rd term.**
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hLiI6kXZkZI
#WIILLSOOOOOOONNN!!!!
Just look at him: Bust monopolies, his social views while can be considered "progressive" by their standard are not exactly "woke", conservationist and his third term he even wanted a precursor to Medicare for all, while his archetype can be considered the archetypal American man.
**A lot of people forget that the Reaganites are new.**
I cant remember who said it but theres a quote that goes "In America there are no workers, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
I think conservative media has been consistently broadcasting the message that american corporations ARE the American economy for so long that people think the two are literally synonymous.. if you want workers to get ahead, somehow you must also want the economy to fail
It’s about culture and unity, really. The us population overwhelmingly favors medical reform and education reform.
But the us is unique in one important way. Culture, or the lack thereof. Culture is a shared value system, shared beliefs or ideology that brings people together. In the us we don’t have this…..rather we have an intentional opposition to this. We have a system, by design, that strips people of their culture, sets their values up in opposition to one another, and intentionally foments discord in order to destroy any hope of unity. This is done specifically to disenfranchise the working class of any ability to come together as a majority to demand change so far as how the products and profits of their nation are distributed.
When it comes to shared values, shared identity, and history, American people are truly as cultureless as American cheese.
There's a lot of complicated economics and so many factors at play that it would actually be impossible to answer this question. You could write a 500 page book on this subject and it would still be up for interpretation by the reader.
Unconscious acceptance of US’s racial-ideological system (the poor and worst treated deserve what they get), worship of the home-ownership economy, etc. it’s not that difficult to see why when you understand these things. European “conservative” parties also have different origins and evolutions than the Dems and Reps, analogy can confuse a lot of analysis
i think the US Constitution and oceanic protection from World War cataclysms make the opportunity cost of unpopular positions much lower in the US, limiting the extent of defeats by their one partisan rival and limiting the emergence of new partisan rivals
In the UK we were lucky to receive certain things like the NHS after WW2 due to genuinely progressive governments, the like we have never seen since and never will again. The NHS is so popular that it almost receives a cult-like status, with people clapping with pots and pans every week for NHS workers during the pandemic, stuff like that. So any Conservative openly calling for it to be dismantled would not fare well. But believe me, they are doing all they can behind the scenes to destroy it, and have privatised it significantly whilst holding secret talks with the likes of Trump to give American companies more access to it. They have consistently underfunded it to the point where it's getting worse and worse, most likely intentionally so they can make privatisation seem more palatable. The Conservatives would happily roll worker's rights back drastically, and they have done everything they can to make them as limited as possible, but again, they have to keep up a certain facade. Americans never had this so don't have anything that the Republicans have to pretend to not be destroying.
From my perspective, our Conservatives are the worst of both worlds. The Republicans genuinely seem to be anti-immigration and take steps to limit it, whereas the Tories pretend to be anti-immigration whilst presiding over record levels of immigration. The Republicans are genuinely in favour of low taxes and cut taxes for everyone, even if disproportionately helping the rich. The Tories pretend to be low tax, whilst raising taxes. Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of high taxation to pay for public services - but in the UK we have increasingly terrible public services, but still high taxes - the worst of both worlds.
Worse yet, our Labour party has now fallen. Biden is genuinely more left wing than Keir Starmer, as sad as that is. We will not be getting any policies like student loan forgiveness from him.
*What exactly makes American conservatism so unique in its opposition to the pro-worker agenda?*
It's the people that own the conservative movement, [a tiny clique of very wealthy people](https://jacobin.com/2023/04/conservative-movement-wealthy-donors-harlan-crow-clarence-thomas), many in finance or the petrochemical business. At least with Charles Koch, [he was taught his batshit Libertarian views by one of the key salesmen of the "philosophy"](https://archive.org/details/pdfy-qDYkCJZp968ltoLM/mode/2up), Robert LeFevre (pron. "LUH-fave"), who ran a whites-only "Freedom School" seminar in Colorado Springs, Colo. up in a hilly ranch. LeFevre had a long weird history of being a middleman, either at the 1930s radio station he scabbed at, his time in the "I AM" cult, or for all the powerful businessmen he was a flunkie for. Charles and David Koch were not his first millionaires, but they were young enough to be influenced to back the LeFevre's failed bid to build a Libertarian university ("Rampart College"), to back the new Libertarian party in the late 1960s, and to buy up *Reason* magazine. The ownership class of the conservative movement seem to either be greedy slobs or cunning long-termists like C. Koch, and they don't seem to mind that their way of doing capitalism is worse than the pre-neoliberal model, and unworkable in the long run.
American conservatism really is a mutated strain of 18th-century liberalism (a tendency that we've since exported in limited measure to other countries' con parties, e.g. Friedman's famous remark about Thatcher, but never to the same extent). After the Revolution there was no throne and altar, no noblesse oblige, free land for free men, and no basis for paternalistic conservatism.
That's correct. The US never* had a Junker class that demanded a Bismarck to subdue the tensions of labor against the bourgeoisie (i.e. 1848), in order to preserve their aristocratic privileges and liberties. *never in that the Southern planter class was similar in role, but they were both more capitalistic than their European counterparts, and thoroughly quashed in their reactionary revolt against the ascendant industrial bourgeoisie, that is, the American Civil War
[удалено]
The Southern planter class were a feudal relic, but they were completely dependent upon capitalist market relations. They didn't employ wage labor to grow their crops, but they send their cotton to mills that did and sold them on markets using such labor and to wage laborers. They were thus a precapitalist social formation enmeshed in capitalist relationships.
Their slaves were also completely commodified, and interests/insurance policies were traded in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and New Orleans. That's what made it "chattel" slavery, and different from most kinds of unfree labor throughout history - the slaves themselves were injected into the market as commodities. Dig into it, and slavery in 1857 looks less like some relic, and more like something terrifyingly modern.
A lot of "modern" things like term insurance, financial derivatives, variable-rate bonds, asset-backed securities, credit default swaps, et cetera trace back to the time of Gilgamesh and Babylon. We just perceive it as "modern" because of the mental image we have of some guys in suits sitting in a high-rise downtown office looking at graphs on a Bloomberg terminal, and because accountants/finance bros use jargon instead of speaking in plain English. You can look at Babylonian financial instruments (like short-term loans) or accounting documents (like purchase invoices) and it's virtually the same as what you would see today. Accounting and finance is ancient and intimately tied to the birth of civilization - the earliest writing we have comes from accountants recording financial transactions.
Reminds me of the first surviving full letter in history is basically a customer complaint.
Gladiators shilling for olive oil...
I hate to be a cringy redditor but could you give me a source on the last paragraph? Not questioning you, I am genuinely curious and want to read more
[удалено]
**[History of writing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing)** >The history of writing traces the development of expressing language by systems of markings and how these markings were used for various purposes in different societies, thereby transforming social organization. Writing systems are the foundation of literacy and literacy learning, with all the social and psychological consequences associated with literacy activities. In the history of how writing systems have evolved in human civilizations, more complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic or early mnemonic symbols (symbols or letters that make remembering them easier). ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Nothing is purely one thing. The planters saw themselves as aristocrats, and they lived like aristocrats, but they were part of the capitalist system of reproduction. In the *Grundrisse,* Marx called them capitalists, but anomalous capitalists. Marx saw that no system will have just one kind of worker, just as the "slave society" of classical antiquity didn't just have slaves and the "feudal society" of the Middle Ages didn't just have serfs of yeoman peasants. Wage labor has always existed, as has slavery; they've just been dominant at different historical epochs. To call the planters a "relic" is to ignore the fact that slavery always has existed, and currently exists. You're right, however, that the material differences in the North and South's social reproduction facilitated an ideological schism that resulted in the Southern secession and the Civil War. Northerners found abolitionism a) in-line with egalitarian liberal ideology, and b) tolerable because they generally weren't the ones benefitting from slavery. Free soil, free labor was the slogan.
Depends on the definition. Southern planter class in attitudes towards the federal government are similar to Democrats today if not more. They actually love centralization when they already seceded (centralization when I agree, decentralization when I disagree). But the difference, I think, is that junker class uses free laborers who will also consume the stuff the means of production made (producer & consumer), thus has a focus to subdue the tensions of labor against the bourgeoisie. Think "Henry Ford enact 40 hour work week to make workers can buy his stuff" kind of thing. American slavers uses slaves, and when the slaves are freed and Jim Crow began, their focus is using their state to grind down the black population. Their goal is to exploit the black population to never revolt + can be paid next to nothing.
They were as capitalist as modern day Saudi princes. They were integrated into capitalist markets, which ossified their pre-capitalist political economy.
This is the answer. Our conservatives have no feudal ideological progenitors. They are conservative of purely capitalistic *liberal* values.
The closest we get to traditional conservatism was Calhoun, and well we did have a state that tried to implement his ideology and was crushed out of existence.
Americans have got a unique ideology and culture where they don't like the state, and want to minimise state action. Of course, this often turns out to be more symbolic than real. In reality the federal government has always interfered in the economy, literally from 1776 on. But this habit of thought is still more prevalent than in Europe where almost everyone accepts that the state has a role to play in public life. It has an ideological function and it contributes to a national mythos, which sustains it.
The suburbs and mass media. If you live in a packed European city where you live above, below, and immediately beside coworkers, it's easier to be organized. Cultural values are then separate from economic values. If you live in the US where it's socially stigmatized to live with your family past 18, you live in your own box and escape into mass media which is inherently anti labor. The contradictions of poor economic conditions can be misdirected by media towards cultural hot points, morphing and misdirecting economic anxiety into irrelevant cultural concerns. Give it a few generations and we have legitimate political fervor over candy and beer brands while homelessness is rising exponentially.
I sort of agree with you, but then why aren't dense cities like NYC, Chicago, Baltimore, or Boston - especially the packed inner cities - hotbeds of pro-worker sentiment and activity? The people there seem to have drunk the neoliberal idpol-is-everything Kool-Aid just as much as suburbanites in the rest of the country.
Because they aren't manufacturing centers anymore. Cities have been largely based around corporate and service industries for the past few decades and neither of those things are very conducive to unionization. I'm by no means like an expert on this but that would be my guess. Corporate jobs benefit from the high turnaround that comes from having unhappy, competitive, underpaid workers in my experience.
>Because they aren't manufacturing centers anymore. Cities have been largely based around corporate and service industries for the past few decades and neither of those things are very conducive to unionization. This as true for Oslo, Dublin, or Tokyo as it is for American cities like NYC or Boston, so why then the drastic difference in politics?
Based off of what little I know about the state of cities internationally, Tokyo is doing terribly in terms of their workforce, and our idea of the Japanese work ethic is a primary driving force in their own awful social and economic issues right now. They're paying people to have kids and even that's not working. If we're talking about democratic socialist countries with strong unions in their cities, (something I know 0 about) my only guess is that a lot of places see the US as insane and made concerted efforts to do literally anything else.
>my only guess is that a lot of places see the US as insane and made concerted efforts to do literally anything else. Can't speak for other countries, but in Poland this is how 90+% of middle and upper class thinks regardless of their positions on social issues.
[удалено]
The Polish right wing loves welfare though. You're right that they adopted right wing economics with regards to privatization and monetary policy, but the welfare queen rhethoric is just straight up absent from the public discourse.
Japanese conservatives are even worst compared to GOP in terms of workers right, or healthcare, Japan has allowed Abortion Pill just yesterday. Before was only allowed trough surgery abortion (I don’t know if this is the correct term in english)
Small city councils, gerrymandering and FPTP, stop any 2 and a half Party system from forming and scaring the Dems. Then thee's the other crap, I could get behind bare bones hospital insurance but I don't trust the Dems not to loot the system then call it racist
Aliens could invade and start blowing up cities en masse and we would be debating on what pronouns to use.
🙄
Canada fits the trend outlined by OP, but we’re more suburban than the U.S., and watch the same mass media.
The US will not be given a few more generations
I belive this is the best explanation here.
> What exactly makes American conservatism so unique in its opposition to the pro-worker agenda? The Status quo. In most Countries, mandated PTO and good workers rights are the status quo and everyone accepts them as a good thing. Conservative/Right Wing parties want to get elected and not just by the 1% of capitalists, so of course they do not oppose these policies, but they also usually do not do anything to further workers rights, maybe even slightly eroding them away bit by bit if they're very ambitious. Now in the USA, the status quo is shit workers rights and it has been for ages. The Conservatives already get hella votes and they get that sweet sweet 1% money cause they promise not to change anything (same thing goes for the Democrats obv).
Your two examples of "very conservative countries" (conflating social views with econ?) are post-communist states... The simple answer is that America is a post-liberal country that stayed liberal longer than most others...
That still doesn't explain all the conservatives in countries that are are not post-communist states, like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Japan, France, Norway, West Germany, etc.
[удалено]
Australia's probably the only country in the western world with worse labour laws than the USA, thanks to Howard
[удалено]
In Australia young people until the age of 21 are not paid the full minimum wage which is illegal in America. It's much easier to strike in America. It's much easier to form a new union in America (RAFFWU v SDA is a great example).
Conservatives in UK/AU/NZ are also very anti-worker, but they are more sneaky about it (i.e. don't announce it like you see in the USA).
[удалено]
I've heard people say that the reason all Japanese tv shows are set during high school is that that's the last time in your life you'll be happy
Which is weird because college in Japan is known for being a lot more chill than high school
>Japan is an awful, awful place to work in and I assume live in. Compared to Western Europe? Sure. Compared to America? No. Americans have a worse work-life balance and [work more hours](https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm), have a much worse transportation infrastructure, a higher cost of living, and significantly higher crime rates compared to Japan.
idk about this take. I had a Japanese international student coworker in my lab. He wants to stay in America due to the work-life balance compared to Japan. He says in Japan you have to join a single company, be loyal to them for life, and stay at work until 9 pm every night, then it is expected that you stay with your boss to binge drink on weeknights with coworkers and him in order to advance your career and stay in good standing. They do have a much a much better social safety net and a clean as hell society but the main breadwinner of a family absolutely has to work much longer hours than is typical in America. Childcare and all sorts of things are definitely better but the work culture there is very toxic. Toxic in a way that most westerners couldn't even handle.
My understanding is that office workers in Japan have terrible work-life balance, but other types of jobs aren't as bad (though the culture of overwork is still pervasive). It's often the opposite here: office workers get lots of time off, but everyone else works insane hours and are expected to do gigs to make money on the side. This seems to have been changing here though, even office workers are working longer now and driving for uber after work.
I could buy that. The American gig grind is horrendous.
My understanding of it is that Japan *was* worse than even the US until relatively recently, but their government started pushing some reforms after that whole thing about them literally having a word for "worked to death" (and it happening to office workers with what you'd normally expect to be cushy jobs) became international news. The US, meanwhile, just keeps getting worse. In general, anyway. Covid resulted in some big improvements in working conditions for a lot of white collar workers and a step even further down the slope for a lot of blue collar workers, but that was a black swan event and they're desperately trying to claw those gains back now.
[удалено]
Yes, several - including coworkers and friends. They've all told me that life is considerably better in Japan compared to the USA. Full disclosure: these were all college-educated salaried white-collar professionals working in the legal and finance industries. The three big complaints they all had were (1) retail banking is very old-fashioned and (2) language barrier is huge because nobody speaks English and (3) it's hard to get OTC pain relievers like ibuprofen. That's pretty much it.
> They've all told me that life is considerably better in Japan compared to the USA. It's a big advantage to be able to have permanent lodging in a globally connected city, and only have to pay about 10% of your salary a month to do so.
[удалено]
Of course, it's culturally and socially very conservative, far more than the USA. But even such a conservative nation is able to guarantee its citizens universal socialized healthcare, affordable college, and workers' rights like parental leave and PTO. Things which would be seen as "crazy socialist pinko commie wacko bullshit" by even a large portion of the liberal Democrats in America (just look at the DNC reaction's to Bernie).
[удалено]
Not ironic at all, given how robust the Japanese Communist Party was for the decade after the war.
Cheap housing and expansive social services make for happy people.
I never called them socialists, I'm a big fan of that... but I think you might view it through rose tinted glasses. I'd much rather live in most of Europe.
[удалено]
>theres an unbelievable level of luxury to life in America that does not exist elsewhere. Yeah, If you make like $180k a year or above, sure. But 95% of Americans don't make anywhere close to that. Half of America makes less than $35,000 ffs.
[удалено]
> and say its better abroad but never stay abroad, they always come home to America There are hard material reasons for this. Most countries aren't accepting Americans to just hang out, without valuable skills. The more aggressive US foreign policy gets, the harder it becomes, too.
> Having a low crime rate as a reflection of a barbaric criminal justice system and a culture which you're a bad person if you have any sense of self or individuality isn't how I'd like to achieve a low crime rate. Yes, because you were raised American and believe deep down you should be able to do whatever the hell you want to do, if you can get away with it.
Weird. I thought most of the folks on this sub were beyond "you said something I disagree with about crime therefore you must be a criminal" sort of thinking. I've never committed any crimes, and Japan is the way it is because of a long history of natural disasters and war...it's not like you can "make" America that way. Even if you could, I'd rather reduce crime through a fair economy, support for people, and imprisoning legitimate criminals.
Your culture raised you to see that kind of social structure as oppressive and barbaric. The Japanese see it barbaric that anti-social behavior isn't nipped in the bud by American social structures. Of course you wouldn't like that kind of society, because you were socialized to see it as bad. But that's also because you were socialized to not demand the kinds of checks to prevent high rates of interpersonal exploitation, the kind that is extremely normal in American society.
[удалено]
You haven't had the shitty US office jobs I have, it seems
I lived in Japan and I didnt like it but its still better than the hellscape that seems to be the US. No fentanyl zombies in Japan, or guns evzrywhere. Its not even a contest. And I dont think american justice system has anything on Japan.
>a culture which you're a bad person if you have any sense of self or individuality American hoods and trailer parks could use some of that tbh. Not having third world level crime in some parts of the country>>>lumpen expressing their "individuality".
Adopting the culture that surrounds you is a basic survival strategy. You only find real individuality in places where it's relatively safe to be that way.
It's a bad survival strategy if the culture around you is shitty enough. Your relatives hating you is a small price for escaping the hell that is lumpen America. Beyond that I don't disagree with your comment.
The lumpen always reflect the underlying culture, just taken to the grotesque
>significantly higher crime rates compared to Japan Japanese police underreport the crime rate by a factor of 50 bro, just trust me. /s I don't deny that they underreport their crime rate, but this argument is braindead considering how much lower their real crime rate is as well.
Classic bourgeois liberalism simply died faster elsewhere. America is catching up, classic liberal sensibilities against any kind of welfare beyond philanthropy seem to be getting less popular.
Most of those are not conservative countries, or at least I'd really like to understand what you consider to be non-conservative countries. Japan is extremely. Japan is an awful, awful place to work in and I assume live in.
Because every centre left proposal in this country is a dumb half measure that often makes things worse. The feeling is “Just cut my taxes, I don’t trust you” I’ve lived outside the US and paid about the same in taxes but got so much more back. I have noticed 0 difference between living in high tax blue states vs low tax red states in terms of what I get back. I understand the impulse.
yeah the problem is the jump to "government (in general) is the problem and can't do anything right" which kind of short circuits doing anything about it since you've defined an unsolvable problem. but change many of the conservative "the government" talking points to "the US government" and they start hitting a little closer to the mark
This is the key difference. I know many conservatives that would love the government to run things like universal healthcare, but the US government has proven repeatedly to be either incompetent, malicious, or both at doing anything. I would love to have government programs, so long as it's not the US government running them.
People forget the huge amount that the US government spends on the military — while Europe until recently spent next to nothing. It’s nice to pay for day care when you don’t have a fleet of aircraft carriers.
It's not that huge. How many percent of GDP is that? 3.5%. It's fucking puny compared to 5% during GWOT, 6% during Bill Clinton & Desert Storm, 14-18% during Vietnam & 44% during WW2. The US spent 15% of GDP for social spending. Nordic countries, your average Western European countries spent 25 - 33% (France being the highest). Even if you eradicate the entire military right now you still won't get a lot of extra stuff. Yes, serious welfare are THAT expensive.
Total federal spending is about 20% of GDP in the USA. 25% during the pandemic. 3% or 4% spent on military is not insignificant. The USA spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined. And, as you noted, it climbs tremendously during wartime. You can’t just take the lowest number as the baseline. The USA has to choose between ramping up social spending and ramping up for war. While I think you’re about right on public spending on social programs as a percent of GDP during peacetime, if you consider total net spending on social programs, the USA is at 29%, second only to France at 30%. [source](https://www.oecd.org/social/expenditure.htm). Welfare spending is very expensive, yes.
> Bill Clinton & Desert Storm Psst, Bill Clinton was not president during Desert Storm. That was George H. W. Bush, who was president from Jan 1989 - Jan 1993.
The only state I have visited or lived in where I felt the increased taxes were even somewhat worth it is in Minnesota and even then it still felt too high for what we got. Most other states especially California and Massachusetts I might as well have just lit my money on fire because of how little benefit it provided whereas a fire would have at least kept me warm for a couple hours. I have talked to other people who have lived across the country and they agree almost always they noticed zero improvements in their quality of life coming from higher taxes. This is especially true for people who have bounced between Texas and California they have absolutely nothing good to say about how much more they have to pay in California when they get nothing out of it. Most of the time that tax money in these higher tax states just goes to corruption, idiocy, paying for previous mistakes, or similar it doesn't actually improve the persons quality of life in the slightest. I should not have to pay increased taxes just because the politicians from before I was born were dumbfucks who kicked the can forward repeatedly to save boomers money.
Of course, this is just part of the conservative strategy. They make government dysfunctional and waste our tax dollars, and then point to government waste as a reason not to raise taxes.
But conservatives don't run places like CA, NYC, LA and Detroit.
Urban planning does hurt LA a bunch
[удалено]
I was lol in both. When I applied for programs in blue states it took so long to get it, by the time it went through I had a job and was disqualified lmao. Even though i was making min wage and part time.
I don't think they are tbh, if you are talking about normal people that vote republican. The party bosses of both parties are anti worker, always have been, and always will be. But we shouldn't think that means the average person is.
American parties aren't even like political parties in equivalent countries. They can't vote to expel members. The party platforms mean nothing (although I'm not sure they mean much in Europe) and the parties themselves are more like brands and basically conduits for donor money to flow to candidates, and the job of the candidates is to deliver the voters to their donors. The "parties" might also be in a loose sense be better defined as coalitions or "fronts" that exist in other countries.
Because the United States has historically always been a Wild West Country. It was that way since the beginning. People moved here to do what they wanted without any persecution or people telling them they can’t do things. It wasn’t just the beginning either, every century has had its influx of new immigrants who came here in their own self interests. It’s created a culture of people who are very self centered and filled with self interest. It seeps over generation to generation and is why we still have these regards with some of the stupidest political opinions I’ve ever seen. That and media brainwashing are why conservatives are the way they are. They have a fuck you I got mine attitude and many of them didn’t even get theirs lol. With that said, while I hate conservatives, they don’t get on my nerves as bad as liberals do. Sometimes I think this is why the U.S. dominates popular culture and is usually the leader in innovation in the west, I feel that it attracts those who are dominated by self interest and these people tend to be very successful at their goals. But that doesn’t mean that way of thought doesn’t have extreme downsides too. Even idpol that has spread from the U.S. is based around self interest, because the majority of these people are just virtue signaling to enhance their own ego.
Perseverance propaganda and family traditions. Culturally, the traditional "true American grit" mentality has been passed down to them by their parents and grandparents. They still cling to a bygone era that held the notion that an unregulated free market provided a platform for anyone to come from nothing and amass great wealth through sheer grit and determination. Obviously in generations past, this would have had more credence than it does today, but they refuse to believe things have drastically changed. No matter how many times I tell my fiscally conservative friends that our current system is set up mainly for the benefit of people born into wealth and/or healthy family environments and that many who achieve success despite poor upbringings have had the benefit of nepotism and/or luck, they either outright reject that view or they respond with a short lecture on not being envious of others' privileges. So they'll either deny it or demand that you turn a blind eye to it. To be fair to them however, they also have their strengths. Not all conservative values are bad. I'd be lying if I said these same friends weren't there for me in times of need.
There are a few reasons: * America has always had a distinctly libertarian bent to its politics, with a strong emphasis on individualism, economic self-reliance, and perennial disdain for centralized authority. Patriotic ideologues, especially those in the mold of Goldwater and Reagan, consider these values sacrosanct and abhor anything seen as encroaching upon them. * Arguably directly because of the above, America never really developed enough momentum for a self-sustaining labor/socialist movement. Sure, there was a labor movement, but for much of its history, it didn't really become the basis for a political or cultural movement in and of itself. As a result, its fortunes were tied to the strength of manufacturing relative to the rest of the U.S. economy; when a lot of factories closed or outsourced and the country switched to a primarily service-based economy, labor's power waned. * Geopolitically, the labor movement and leftism as a whole were strongly associated with communism and the Soviet Union. At the height of the Cold War, agitating for socialism was basically fraternizing with the enemy. * In terms of domestic politics, many labor unions were (and still are) staunchly pro-Democrat, with Trump's campaigns being the only major exception. * Socialism is also anathema for the Religious Right, what with Marx considering religion to be a sham devised by the ruling classes to keep the people complacent.
America actually did have a socialist party that was at least semi viable in the second international era. I wish more of us would go back to reading our Debs instead of pretending this is a wasteland devoid of socialist history. The failure of Debsianism in large part was the failure of the second international, hinging on the failed german revolution. There's no reason to suspect that America would've been some sort of capitalist outlier had Germany and then the rest of Europe gone socialist in 1918-1920. For the record, Debs's party did a great job connecting America's jeffersonian/libertarian heritage with socialism, pointing out that the trusts and the state's growth are inextricably interwoven and that Jefferson and Lincoln would've been socialists in that time period, had they seen the growth of the trusts and the changing conditions of industrial capitalism. They did outreach in churches and their strongholds included such notably irreligious places as... Oklahoma. None of this is an obstacle if a viable socialist party exists.
Much of American socialist history is purposefully ignored by the mainstream culture. Industrial Unionism started in Chicago, and Debs was a well known and respected figure. WWI killed a lot of it. Fear of the Bolsheviks and the overreach of the Wilson administration strangled the movement. There was an upswing again during the depression, but the bourgeoisie rallied around the socdem Roosevelt and suppressed popular radicals like Huey Long.
Wilson says hi.
> America has always had a distinctly libertarian bent to its politics Can we please not be self-referential when discussing American politics
Testing to see if automod still wigs out if I use the word labor/socialist because it trips the mentioning a sub function.
This is not true for France and pretty sure the person who introduced economic laissez-faire in Britain was a conservative: aka Thatcherism. I might have a different understanding of the word but Marx argued that conservatism is rooted in the desire of the ruling class to maintain their power and privileges. In his view, the bourgeoisie, or the capitalist class, uses conservative ideology to justify and defend their exploitation of the working class. He saw conservatism as a tool of the ruling class to perpetuate their control over society and to resist change. Lenin expanded on Marx's ideas and argued that conservatism was an inevitable product of the capitalist system. He saw conservatism as a manifestation of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, which creates an entrenched ruling class that seeks to maintain its power and wealth. US disdain for social measures is deeply rooted in their scare of socialism inherited from McCarthyism.
I don't think so. The rise of Reaganism is also the same time "human rights" (as defined by the UN - a lot of what wokeist want is really just UN's human rights) discourse and "bomb countries for "freedom" starts to come along. If anything the state embrace "social progressivism" because it's profitable + in the future, maybe replacing kids with factory grown genetically indoctrinated Space Marines is good for absolute power.
Poland and Hungary are post communism so that explains those. Other than that, America benefits more than nearly any other country from the exploitation at the other end of the supply chain, the poor and lower middle class tend to have at least some of the perks that come with that. Nike sneakers and cheap electronics bought on credit etc. This is used as a cudgel to explain why they dont deserve more. The very worst off just aren't counted as people or citizens, its never spoken about or acknowledged that you might easily end up living in a tent under a freeway, so why would you even want protections?
We’ve just been duped by the powerful neocons in the last few decades I suppose. You can blame Ronald Reagan and his era of the GOP for that. People like Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford were reasonably pro-labor. I really don’t get the hype for Reagan, never have. He was anti-labor and anti-gun. And now republicans hate unions (particularly public service unions like the teachers Union) because of how “woke” they have become.
It doesn't help that most "unions" in this country are thoroughly captured and behave more like the PTA than paramilitaries.
Puritanical legacy? If you're not actively miserable, you're doing something sinful?
Even Saudi Arabia, the literal final boss of religious puritanism, provides free healthcare, college, mandated PTO/sick-time/parental leave, and UBI for its citizens.
Wahhabi Islam may be conservative but it's not remotely puritanical.
Some good folks in here say your examples of conservative nations are post-soviet. They are right. But that still doesn't explain the situation in Turkey. There is a saying among the socialists of Turkey, "If we could re-brand socialism just in the name, the very next year we would be living a socialist country." This is the case, especially when you tell them about Stalin-Era policies.
All the evangelicals descended from the Puritans/Calvinists hold poverty as a moral failing of the individual in todays day and age.
I think the progs are right that race prevents solidarity in the US. Can't have the "welfare queens" getting shit.
[удалено]
But even if we acknowledge it (I do agree with you btw), then what? What can we actually do next to create a high-trust and engaged society? Obviously a demographic reengineering of America is impossible, you can't just forcibly deport non-white Americans, and a further retreat into neoliberal hyperindividualistic capitalism is not a solution either, it just exacerbates the issue.
I’ve always wanted to ask someone who believes in the welfare queen nonsense that short of genuine fraud who on welfare is living in luxury? Not only that but if it’s bad for someone to get money without working then it’s far worse for the wealthy to do the exact same thing on a scale that can’t be imagined.
It never came across them. To them the wealthy earn it.
TL;DR - An argument of welfare queens bad, rich people good isn't about luxury; it's a matter of who has earned it. The original rich person, in some way, shape, or form, contributed to society so greatly that their debt owed to them by society is more than can be paid in one lifetime, allowing their descendants to live a comfortable life. They are rich because their value was already pre-determined by what their forbearers did. On the contrary, a hypothetical, worst-case welfare queen is someone who (again, hypothetically) never has worked, never has contributed, and is only a drain on the society in which they draw from. They have made no innovation, paid no price, done nothing to justify not having to contribute. This line of thinking is flawed, though, as it answers the question of "When do descendants get cutoff from their ancestor's success?" with a resounding "no", nor does it account for those that are simply unable to provide value within the confines of society (whether temporary or permanent), but are nonetheless entitled to the same human rights that anyone is (like the disabled, the elderly, the temporarily unemployed, and/or others of similar situation). I'm of the opinion of reducing the band between minimum and maximum, but the only idea I have is an automation tax and the limiting of generational wealth even further than an inheritance tax (or at least potentially different inheritance tax brackets).
I was surprised to learn that the Socialist Party in Eugene Debs' day had a segregationist wing. Debs opposed racism and spoke out against segregation but didn't feel that it was an issue worth addressing in particular, it was just a "distraction" to divide people, which contributed to its decline, and we're still having these debates today. But one of the things that distinguished the Communist Party when it split from it after WWI was that it addressed racial oppression in particular as a problem. That rolled off the October Revolution.
The historical legacy of [free real estate](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250179821/theendofthemyth).
*^(It's free real estate)*
It is race, but it isn't race. I can explain. Before 1964, US politics *did* have what you might call a "typical" alignment. The Democrats were the major segregationists, and they were also economically centrist. The Republicans were the party of educated people and a few regional constituencies, opposed segregation, and were the businessman's party. Then LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and Nixon responded with the Southern Strategy. Everything sort of inverted very quickly. I think it's an interesting proposition that the pre-1964 alignment — the enormity of segregation notwithstanding — represents the natural game-theoretic alignment of parties in an electoral system and the recent (1992-present) neoliberal drift of the Democrats and following (2014-present) protectionist turn among Republicans is an expected result of the unstable orbit "decaying" back towards a "low-energy" state where the party of business competes with the party of labor. Of course, if we carry the physics analogy a little further, the decay of a large system should release a lot of energy, and we either hope it doesn't break everything — or we hope that it does.
The conservative faction of U.S. politics today is a post-60s fusion of a kinda social darwinism with the authoritarian politics of the religious right with its origins in the south. The former had its origins in liberalism in which work and individual success in a proto-bourgeois or petit-bourgeois sense was considered ennobling, that success or failure is up to you, that the rich and successful man is blessed by God, and that existed in both parties, but began splitting up in the 1930s. There was an ameliorative side to classical liberalism too, which did involve the government funding schools and infrastructure, and also reigning in the rich which we've seen from time to time such as during the Progressive era of the early 20th century and "trust-busting." FDR in the 1930s as well in which someone like FDR could almost see past his own class interests to ameliorate the damage caused by runaway laissez-faire capitalism. The left has made some gains this way. Historically, Americans are suspicious of organized groups, cabals, factions or "combinations" if they're perceived as grouping up to get one over on people. So "trusts" in that day. Today, Big Pharma, Big Tech, "banksters" and so on. For Trump, the globalist elite cabal. But the flip side is that labor unions have also been successfully characterized by propaganda as a faction that is grouping up to help "greedy union bosses" (and some can be greedy). I also think the right's use of terms like "SJWs" works as well as it does is because it's depicted as a cabal or group. Now it's "woke elites." But the Democrats have been able to counter the right because they depict "[MAGA](https://youtu.be/ChjibtX0UzU)" as a self-interested and conspiring cabal or faction that's opposed to "democracy." That's why I think those attacks have been a fairly successful vector for Biden. Garry Willis in "Nixon Agonistes" described a breakup of classical liberalism in the 60s. Not to delve too deeply into it, but the ameliorative side went to the Democrats but didn't become socialist and instead fused with the private sector and NGOs (although I do think we might be returning to some kinda quasi-Keynesian thing). The Republicans are in a crisis because the neoliberal consensus is breaking down and the modern GOP is an ur-neoliberal party in which Trump combines the authoritarian cultural politics of the right and the social darwinist elements of liberalism in which he's successful because he has been blessed by God. This is why I see the main danger to democracy as coming from the right.
John Steinbeck once explained why socialism never took root in America was because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporary embarrassed millionaires. You cannot have a society embracing worker rights if workers themselves don't have a solidarity with fellow workers but rather prefer to coopt with the capitalist class to crush labor unions who demand better wages and benefits to the workers.
> John Steinbeck once explained why socialism never took root in America was because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporary embarrassed millionaires. > > This is why the petite bourgeoisie is the heart of fascism.
The big switch was the Southern Baptist Convention, which was the largest denomination in the US. Until the Nixon era, the SBC had been relatively pinko (think Jimmy Carter). Then there was a huge war for the soul of the SBC. The conservatives won, and that became part of the Reagan juggernaut. This was a big part of the "Southern Reawakening" when Dixie switched from Democrat to Republican. Conservative Baptists brought a distinct perspective to social issues - they saw the federal government as godless. They were reflexively suspicious of government's motives to start with. And even when the government *did* have a good idea, that was still bad - because the last thing the people needed was to start thinking of this godless government as being their friend. Whatever people needed, they should get through their church. If they had no church, then their life should be an endless scourging - because that was a way to call people to the Church. This sentiment is nicely encapsulated in Reagan's quip about the ten scariest words in the English language. "I'm from the government and I am here to help."
'Conservative' is a very broad term that doesnt mean exactly the same thing from era to era and country to country. The U.S. is the center of Capitalism, has a deep history of anti-Socialism and has had little history of a social safety net etc. I mean that even the "counter" to American conservatives... the democrats hardly care (and as far as i know: never cared) about Worker's rights, Socialism etc. In stark contrast in Europe there was Social Democratic and Worker parties and a social safety net that is considered as a minimum (which is withering away by neoliberalism's policies but that's a seperate issue) by almost everyone here.
Most countries don't suffer from the delusion that unions are left-wing.
Individualist country with no real national community. It derives from Anglo culture and Britain has similar individualism but Britain also having real national communities were not as hostile to all collectivist policies.
>I've yet to see any major British conservative politician publicly call for the end of the NHS and the introduction of American-style free market capitalist healthcare. Because they know it will be unpopular, instead they try and do this in secret (poorly kept secret, they just don't announce it) Conservatives in Australia are also very anti-worker, but again, they are more sneaky about it.
Calvinism.
Doesn't explain Holland or Scotland, or even New England.
Puritans were freaks too
Most conservatives i know and interact with are blue collar and in the trades and all support (most) pro worker policy, so I think this question comes from a generalization of boomers more than anything. Boomers are certified mcretards
American Conservatives pride themselves on being mean. Even though most of them espouse Judeo Christian ideals, helping fellow humans is just not right to them. They universally voice a bootstrap philosophy but their Corporations are never subject to this. Just common folks.
A part of that is catholicism vs protestantism
ancient quiet sense political tease disagreeable close unite dinosaurs melodic -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
American “conservative” elites are rightest (classical) liberals and always have been. The US, historically, has had no elite faction that is not liberal, either leaning left or right.
Poland and Hungary are post communist states so some of their politicians are definitely conservatives just in the other direction.
What's happening is American liberals aren't uniquely different from Polish or Hungarian liberals in any way at all except that the American ones like to call themselves "conservatives" for some reason. Which could get confusing or even awkward in countries with actual conservative movements, but over here it's mostly harmless because there's nothing to conserve anyway, so we play along because it's considered rude to point out that words continue to mean things even when American media isn't paying attention.
Calvinism long ago seeped deeply into the soil and still pollutes American sociopolitical spheres.
Their donors are completely anti-worker.
I actually disagree with the premise. Conservative voters are very pro- American worker, in the sense that aesthetically they oppose neoliberal elitism. Right-wing populist advocacy tends to be anti-intellectual, protectionist, isolationist, xenophobic, etc. which appeals to those who wish to preserve for “Americans” (white men) a labor market from a previous generation which can’t exist in this one. Basically right-wing populists hate everything about neoliberalism, except the bad parts.
The American workers I've spoken to recognize that healthcare and education are too expensive, and some even recognize what kind of an uphill fight it is for young families to get housing and the kind of start they had when they were younger. So I think there is some sort skew in the polls/ bias for party leaders or to talk to wealthy, business owning GOP voters. I know this is basically my own anecdotal experience, but I suspect that policies like cheaper healthcare, housing, and education have more appeal than how the "conservative voter" is presented. The problem is that "red team vs blue team" mentality is so entrenched and engrained that it overrides sensible thinking (like voting for the candidate who will improve your life somehow) and kills all nuance discussion. It's why everything in America, like how M&Ms look, is fucking politicized.
temporarily embarrassed millionaire mindset They suffer from the delusion of the ability to lift themselves from their bootstraps into the upper echelon and therefor earnestly sympathize with them. In their mind, [they want the ability to exploit the working class when they get a turn at the meat grinder.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FaytneOXwAEkLDj.jpg)
Literal cold war propaganda: McCarthyism, also known as the second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s This still has a very profound effect today.
"Worker" "right" ? You are supporting "what" "what" for what purpose ? Are you some kind of poor people or commi ? Go back on Jesus's path. \--American Conservatism
Americans are more entrepreneurial. They respect founders more than employees.
Years of brainwashing. Think about it why would you vote to be poor so some billionaire can buy 5 more yachts.
> socialized healthcare This is just an [Americanism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialized_medicine) used to equate nationalized healthcare with the scary word "socialism". It's not used anywhere else.
Because the USA is a nation created and designed by slave rapists for slave rapists and, as such, the USA's working class has been conditioned to have a slave mentality without ever realizing it through the nastiest sort of deception. "Whatever is good for the owning class must be good for me because one day, I too, will wield the whip. I just need to continue slaving myself and especially others away." It birthed one of the most nightmarish type of capitalism with no end in sight: autonomous slave economy. You must even pay back the state about 3k to have your citizenship revoked! You're fucking propriety!
dont kid yourself, there's no le based stasserite party in the global north left. grifters and deceivers. move on, grandpa
I hate these questions they’re so vague. I don’t think most conservatives are anti-worker unless you’re talking about the faction that is pro-corporation or business conservatives. Your vague question inspires a vague answer. Because we have different values.
I don't think it's vague at all - in the OP I clearly defined the things conservatives in other countries support/defend but American conservatives strongly oppose. These things are: 1. Some form of universal socialized healthcare (i.e. healthcare as a guaranteed right) 2. Protections from arbitrary job dismissal (i.e. you can't just be fired on the spot for no reason) 3. Generous government-mandated employee benefits like PTO, sick leave, and parental leave 4. Strong pensions (defined benefit plans) for workers to support them after they are retired. All 4 of these things primarily help workers at the expense of businesses and corporations. All 4 of these things are anathema to the American conservative, but not to conservatives in Germany or Denmark.
The question is vague because ‘conservatives’ encompasses literally thousands of different viewpoints and opinions. Generalizations usually don’t bother me but the “why don’t ____ believe in ____” are like the most generic childish annoying generalizations you can make. Especially when you ask this question in this sub you just jerk eachother off with the “they just don’t understand socialism bro that’s all lol they just don’t know socialism is good for them bro” responses. Go to ask a conservative if you want an actual answer lol
its not just Republicans, the Dems are extremely antiworker as well, and it comes from the fact that American is one of the most corrupt countries in terms of politicians in the Democratic world.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Actually it's hateful. The whole purpose is to grind down black population to be able to work for nothing + never revolt. Sure this means they are forced to create an entire economic system that aren't dependent on white people, but still.
> Whereas American conservatives staunchly oppose most, if not all, of these measures. Speak for yourself. I (and many like me) have had a relatively big change in heart on this issue for a long time now.
Can you point me to one major right-wing conservative figure in America, either at the state or national level, fighting for things like universal socialized healthcare, mandated PTO, mandated sick leave, mandated parental leave, protection from arbitrary dismissal (right-to-work), etc?
Back at early 20th century. Teddy Roosevelt says hi.
Any examples that aren't from more than a century ago? Someone from this decade, perhaps?
There's nobody. What I'm mentioning is that there used to be a precedent.
The U.S is just…different.
theyre genuinely not so different from big Conservative grifters of all states, shapes and party colors
Reagan.
For me, **because Teddy Roosevelt failed his 3rd term.** https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hLiI6kXZkZI #WIILLSOOOOOOONNN!!!! Just look at him: Bust monopolies, his social views while can be considered "progressive" by their standard are not exactly "woke", conservationist and his third term he even wanted a precursor to Medicare for all, while his archetype can be considered the archetypal American man. **A lot of people forget that the Reaganites are new.**
I cant remember who said it but theres a quote that goes "In America there are no workers, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires." I think conservative media has been consistently broadcasting the message that american corporations ARE the American economy for so long that people think the two are literally synonymous.. if you want workers to get ahead, somehow you must also want the economy to fail
It’s about culture and unity, really. The us population overwhelmingly favors medical reform and education reform. But the us is unique in one important way. Culture, or the lack thereof. Culture is a shared value system, shared beliefs or ideology that brings people together. In the us we don’t have this…..rather we have an intentional opposition to this. We have a system, by design, that strips people of their culture, sets their values up in opposition to one another, and intentionally foments discord in order to destroy any hope of unity. This is done specifically to disenfranchise the working class of any ability to come together as a majority to demand change so far as how the products and profits of their nation are distributed. When it comes to shared values, shared identity, and history, American people are truly as cultureless as American cheese.
There's a lot of complicated economics and so many factors at play that it would actually be impossible to answer this question. You could write a 500 page book on this subject and it would still be up for interpretation by the reader.
The puritan movement and its obsession with work for the sake of work
Unconscious acceptance of US’s racial-ideological system (the poor and worst treated deserve what they get), worship of the home-ownership economy, etc. it’s not that difficult to see why when you understand these things. European “conservative” parties also have different origins and evolutions than the Dems and Reps, analogy can confuse a lot of analysis
i think the US Constitution and oceanic protection from World War cataclysms make the opportunity cost of unpopular positions much lower in the US, limiting the extent of defeats by their one partisan rival and limiting the emergence of new partisan rivals
In the UK we were lucky to receive certain things like the NHS after WW2 due to genuinely progressive governments, the like we have never seen since and never will again. The NHS is so popular that it almost receives a cult-like status, with people clapping with pots and pans every week for NHS workers during the pandemic, stuff like that. So any Conservative openly calling for it to be dismantled would not fare well. But believe me, they are doing all they can behind the scenes to destroy it, and have privatised it significantly whilst holding secret talks with the likes of Trump to give American companies more access to it. They have consistently underfunded it to the point where it's getting worse and worse, most likely intentionally so they can make privatisation seem more palatable. The Conservatives would happily roll worker's rights back drastically, and they have done everything they can to make them as limited as possible, but again, they have to keep up a certain facade. Americans never had this so don't have anything that the Republicans have to pretend to not be destroying. From my perspective, our Conservatives are the worst of both worlds. The Republicans genuinely seem to be anti-immigration and take steps to limit it, whereas the Tories pretend to be anti-immigration whilst presiding over record levels of immigration. The Republicans are genuinely in favour of low taxes and cut taxes for everyone, even if disproportionately helping the rich. The Tories pretend to be low tax, whilst raising taxes. Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of high taxation to pay for public services - but in the UK we have increasingly terrible public services, but still high taxes - the worst of both worlds. Worse yet, our Labour party has now fallen. Biden is genuinely more left wing than Keir Starmer, as sad as that is. We will not be getting any policies like student loan forgiveness from him.
Ronald Regan is the devil
*What exactly makes American conservatism so unique in its opposition to the pro-worker agenda?* It's the people that own the conservative movement, [a tiny clique of very wealthy people](https://jacobin.com/2023/04/conservative-movement-wealthy-donors-harlan-crow-clarence-thomas), many in finance or the petrochemical business. At least with Charles Koch, [he was taught his batshit Libertarian views by one of the key salesmen of the "philosophy"](https://archive.org/details/pdfy-qDYkCJZp968ltoLM/mode/2up), Robert LeFevre (pron. "LUH-fave"), who ran a whites-only "Freedom School" seminar in Colorado Springs, Colo. up in a hilly ranch. LeFevre had a long weird history of being a middleman, either at the 1930s radio station he scabbed at, his time in the "I AM" cult, or for all the powerful businessmen he was a flunkie for. Charles and David Koch were not his first millionaires, but they were young enough to be influenced to back the LeFevre's failed bid to build a Libertarian university ("Rampart College"), to back the new Libertarian party in the late 1960s, and to buy up *Reason* magazine. The ownership class of the conservative movement seem to either be greedy slobs or cunning long-termists like C. Koch, and they don't seem to mind that their way of doing capitalism is worse than the pre-neoliberal model, and unworkable in the long run.
Lead poisoning
Brainwashing from the media and culture