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[WealthyRadish]

The continual decline of wages has more to do with decreasing margins of production and the monopoly of land ownership than it does with the gross supply of labor or pressures of population (though you are right about a "progressive" society depressing wages in the sense of technological innovation). As society grows more efficient and productive (and a greater portion of economic activity is done in large cities with extremely high land values), the gain in the value of goods and services produced does not translate into higher wages; it actually has the opposite effect, as increasingly marginal land is exploited and labor grows increasingly dependent on land and capital. Almost all of the newly created wealth is swallowed up by rent, either directly or indirectly, while labor (and to a lesser extent capital) experiences a decrease in the portion earned.

It's often said that medieval serfs and peasants had a higher share of wealth than modern workers, and this is technically true (hundreds or thousands times more in fact). But as long as the gross amount of wealth continues to grow and prices fall, modern workers do still benefit from material progress (though the lowest can only really be kept above starvation level by government intervention and collective bargaining since we seem incapable of the necessary lasting reforms).

Anyway, the main point is that labor is not just "supply and demand." In fact, in a perfect society, supply and demand should not even operate with respect to labor. The scarcities in employment that force competition for work and the vast amounts of wasted talent and ability left idle are due to other factors than the supply of labor.

[Kot]

<snip>

Spoiler: Strong horse, you say? (click to show/hide)

Turk simply stands no chance.

[TempAcc]

<snip>

Spoiler: Strong horse, you say? (click to show/hide)

Turk simply stands no chance.

I believe in the polan spirit.
We will march together

[Dorsidwarf]

TempAcc: A nice summary. Everyone was in such a rush to shit on their own culture and past for its flaws, without realising that there was a hell of a lot more value there then they'd ever realised.

All the blue-haired dragon-kin demi-girls hated things like tradition, or the Church, because those things said they were wrong, so they tore them down - not realising that those things were a bulwark against much more serious threats.

Grim: 'Appropriated by the financial elite' is a good way to put it. The old left fought for the working class. The new left fights for its paymasters, while distracting everyone with guff about transgender bathrooms or 'mansplaining'.

I'd more argue that at some point the left disintegrated into a bunch of factions each with their own issue that as far as they're concerned is the most important thing in the world, many of whom are directly opposed to each other and largely sharing few values other than "Is not right-wing or centrist(the modern-day dirty word in politics)".
I personally think the reason the left is weak these days is because it isn't about strength in unity any more, but rather about individualism and self-expression. These are lovely ideals but they sure as hell dont make for a united political front.

---
E:  "All the blue-haired dragon-kin demi-girls hated things like tradition, or the Church, because those things said they were wrong, so they tore them down"
The newest generation always rejects the stability of its forefathers for adventurism in some degree (see: Islamic kids from well-adjusted families declaring jihad, renouncing their parents and adopted culture and fleeing to Syria). Also internet tumblrites didn't tear down tradition and the church, since they didn't arrive for 30-40 years afterwards.

[Rolepgeek]

I have no idea whether working class wages were deliberately not kept up with inflation or were just simply ignored, or progressives or whoever thought wages would just keep up on their own.

There's two sides of the coin to the two person working class households thing, the first is that more women entered the workforce (for a variety of reasons, including the feminism movement, but that's not what we're discussing) due to more opportunities, and having women enter the workforce is actually a good thing. The second is that low wages are certainly a factor, but not the only factor.

And third, no, society didn't 'force' women into the workforce, thus society didn't force two working parent households.

You double the workforce, you double the amount of people able to do jobs without having double the jobs to do, you halve the wage. It's really simple economics. Supply vs demand.

That is simple economics, but economics isn't simple.

You halve the wage, you reduce the cost of labor. When labor costs are reduced, costs of running a business are reduced, meaning more people can start them. Which means more jobs. It's obviously going to reduce the wage, but doubling number of people in workforce is not a direct line to halving the wage, particularly when it doesn't happen all at once.

Two-income trap still suuuuucks though. Less flexibility, more stress, same purchasing power worth of wealth.

Hell, (salaried) people are working 50 or 60 hour work weeks now because employers seem to have forgotten the productivity & efficiency benefits of having well-rested, happy employees, who have the energy to do their jobs right the first time.

As for the culture&whatnot: People forgot that though the scaffolding restricts, it also supports. The goal is to have a society free enough to enable people to strike out on their own and pursue their passions if they have the drive and desire, but structured enough that you don't leave the people who want or need more structure out in the cold. I do well with routines. I need a bit of structure in my life. I know for a fact that doesn't make me stupid, but people maybe don't realize that what works for some people doesn't work for others. People who do well with the freedom of an individualist culture are often stifled under more structured, restrictive cultures, and people who function well with structure to support and build off of are left foundationless in more chaotic environs.

@Covenant: Unfortunately, the right doesn't seem much better at the moment. :/ I remember a study (and things like this are notoriously unreliable, mind) where they found that the right (in America, at least, which is all I can really use as the basis for Europe, though it's obviously farther right) serves the interests of the 99th-100th percentiles of wealth, while the left serves the interests of the 95th to 100th percentiles.

Though it frustrates me to no end that somehow innovation and efficiency leave more people worse off. It's not how that's supposed to work. You get fewer people required for specific types of labor, and it should enable more people to create value/wealth through other means, resulting in more prosperity overall. When you hit the cap on methods of value production, then you enable people to do art and the like that allows everyone more enjoyment and quality of life. It's not supposed to be a concentration in the hands of the few who honestly don't need that much money to live extraordinarily nicely. Million dollars per year is plenty, more than that and it's just being wasteful. >.<

Or excess wealth goes to helping deal with disease or develop other nations (once we can trade we'll get a ROI anyway, if you lack the innate desire to help others because it's the right thing to do) or funding research or a hundred other things it could be spent on that would be better.

Goddamn I wish research was better funded

TempAcc: A nice summary. Everyone was in such a rush to shit on their own culture and past for its flaws, without realising that there was a hell of a lot more value there then they'd ever realised.

All the blue-haired dragon-kin demi-girls hated things like tradition, or the Church, because those things said they were wrong, so they tore them down - not realising that those things were a bulwark against much more serious threats.

Grim: 'Appropriated by the financial elite' is a good way to put it. The old left fought for the working class. The new left fights for its paymasters, while distracting everyone with guff about transgender bathrooms or 'mansplaining'.

I'd more argue that at some point the left disintegrated into a bunch of factions each with their own issue that as far as they're concerned is the most important thing in the world, many of whom are directly opposed to each other and largely sharing few values other than "Is not right-wing or centrist(the modern-day dirty word in politics)".
I personally think the reason the left is weak these days is because it isn't about strength in unity any more, but rather about individualism and self-expression. These are lovely ideals but they sure as hell dont make for a united political front.

The left has always been about individualism. It is the alliance of rebels, at heart, and always has been. When the rebels begin to win, the overriding survival need that drove them to band together becomes weaker. Rebel groups often splinter after they win. After all, by their nature they were the people more likely to push back against authority. That doesn't end just because they won. That's why rebellions often have such brutal methods of suppression immediately after, and why cancer often has distinct stages. If it gets too big and doesn't have the right support network built inside itself, it'll starve, so it has to wait until one of it's cells develops the right mutation and survives to take over and have that become the predominant genome type within the cancer.

United front is what's used up until that point, and then they realize the differences between themselves, and begin to squabble about the proper next steps.

[Sergarr]

The left has always been about individualism.

I'm pretty sure it used to be for worker's rights and redistribution of wealth via collective action like unionisation and going on strikes. Though modern mainstream left seems to be more about "fuck the workers, those uneducated idiots, we're the elite professionals who are better than you".

[Rolepgeek]

Individualism is about equality, at it's heart. It is is rooted in the belief that no individual is better than another, and the belief in individual liberty that almost necessarily follows from that; that everyone should be as free to do as they wish as possible. It believes in change over stagnation and in the power of the individual. That does not mean it does not believe in collective action. Just because it's called individualism does not mean it only believes in solitary action. Partially because solitary action often fails. Slavery, including wage slavery, is opposed in every way to individualism, as all forms of oppression are.

Elitism in the left is rooted in the belief that if people were educated they'd agree, and since being right (and everyone thinks they're right, or they wouldn't think it) is better than being wrong, that if people are uneducated, they're the enemy. It's not just ideology, it's also tribalism. And with the vilification of anyone not on one's own side...well, let's just say there might be some cognitive dissidence in the movement as a whole.

[TempAcc]

Worse, the modern mainstream left isn't even about individualism, its about an elite class of leftists that declares themselves as ultimate bearers or all virtues telling all others how things should be, and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously a racist extreme right wing conspiracy theorist.

Hell, if the left was about actual liberalism anymore, I'd be more than happy. That got thrown away a while ago in favor of leftist populism, massively controlling state models and leader figure worship, I'm afraid. Except the left can't do the whole revolution thing anymore since the average leftist nowadays gets PTSD from touching a firearm, so everything is done through social networking and crying a whole lot, instead.

[Rolepgeek]

Worse, the modern mainstream left isn't even about individualism, its about an elite class of leftists that declares themselves as ultimate bearers or all virtues telling all others how things should be, and anyone who disagrees with them is obviously a racist extreme right wing conspiracy theorist.

Hell, if the left was about actual liberalism anymore, I'd be more than happy. That got thrown away a while ago in favor of leftist populism, massively controlling state models and leader figure worship, I'm afraid.

Dunno if I agree with you, there. It's certainly nowhere near as much about classical liberalism anymore, but the rest seems only partially accurate to me. Populism is inevitable to some degree in democracy, leader figure worship is a symptom of tribalism ("OUR GUYS ARE GREAT AND NEVER DO ANYTHING WRONG AND YOURS ARE ALL TERRIBLE") and I don't think it's quite that level anyway, and not sure how much the state model thing applies.

[Grim Portent]

The left has always been about individualism.

I'm pretty sure it used to be for worker's rights and redistribution of wealth via collective action like unionisation and going on strikes. Though modern mainstream left seems to be more about "fuck the workers, those uneducated idiots, we're the elite professionals who are better than you".

Depends on what you define as the left wing of politics.

Economically the left has always been composed of things ranging from socialists through to communists. Basic idea is in favour of spreading wealth out more and providing for the poor. This bit got abandoned by a lot of parties in the 90s in favour of free market-ish ideals, which are more right/center-right in nature.

Socially the left has tended to be liberal and anti-abrahamic religion, in favour of helping the groups who were made outcasts by the political and cultural establishment. This bit got kept by most of the parties that shifted to right wing economics.

What we used to have was economically left wing parties that were also socially liberal contrasted against economically right wing parties that were socially conservative.

Now what we have is economically right wing parties that are socially liberal contrasted against economically right wing parties that are also socially conservative.

Using the UK as an example there has arguably not been a major party that could really be called left wing for the better part of 20 years. The Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats were all economically conservative in most ways, believing in market economics and the gradual decrease in public services, though the latter two were liberal on most social issues.

The main socialist party for a long time in the UK was the Green Party of England and Wales, who are not exactly popular at the best of times. Now Corybn's Labour is trapped in some horrid limbo between New Labour as conceived by Blair (and inspired by Thatcher of all people,) and old style socialist Labour. Then there's the SNP which subscribes to social democrat principles but which has very little freedom to exercise them and only runs in one part of the UK.

[smjjames]

The left has always been about individualism.

I'm pretty sure it used to be for worker's rights and redistribution of wealth via collective action like unionisation and going on strikes. Though modern mainstream left seems to be more about "fuck the workers, those uneducated idiots, we're the elite professionals who are better than you".

They WERE for workers rights in the past, as were some Republicans (notably, Teddy Roosevelt), but both parties have drifted away from that, the Rightwing is more like grumpily saying "I'm gonna sit in this mud and I'll LIKE IT!" and the Leftwing have more like "I'm in the Ivory Tower! Um, why are you getting smaller?". Really though, I don't know the full history of how both parties have mostly abandoned the working class in different ways.

@Grim Portent: I really wouldn't say that the Left in the US is anti-religion, more like separating church from the state. The Right likes to claim that the Left is anti-religion, when I really don't see it as that way. Also, we have to remember that the perspective on left vs right is going to depend on which side of the Atlantic you are on, the Left wing in the US is actually right of the European counterparts, more like centrist to Europe I think, not sure.

[TempAcc]

The left nowadays is anti-religion, but only when its convenient to be so. See how buddhism and other eastern religions became popular in the west after the 60s. Hell, the left gave birth to some religious, one could argue that american unitarianism was born out of the religious left.

However, the left in the west in general has kind of always been anti roman catholic, and more recently anti protestant christianity. Any shade of christianity that doesnt sit on the agnostic fence is kind of a no no to the left nowadays. Islam became accepted because it was seen as a good way to draw in lots of new people who weren't very fond of the western right or Israel (still very christian at its core, but much less so than before) to the voterbase, and in europe, as a way to remedy native europeans' notorious ineptitude at breeding more young workers, in order to avoid becoming japan 2.0 .

[smjjames]

I wouldn't say the low birth rate is inepitude, just the consequence of being lifted out of poverty and being an industrialized society, and the fact that not all nations are at equal level.

Theres likely some cultural factors too, but the same trend has been seen accross all cultures.

[Grim Portent]

The left has always been about individualism.

I'm pretty sure it used to be for worker's rights and redistribution of wealth via collective action like unionisation and going on strikes. Though modern mainstream left seems to be more about "fuck the workers, those uneducated idiots, we're the elite professionals who are better than you".

They WERE for workers rights in the past, as were some Republicans (notably, Teddy Roosevelt), but both parties have drifted away from that, the Rightwing is more like grumpily saying "I'm gonna sit in this mud and I'll LIKE IT!" and the Leftwing have more like "I'm in the Ivory Tower! Um, why are you getting smaller?"

@Grim Portent: I really wouldn't say that the Left in the US is anti-religion, more like separating church from the state. The Right likes to claim that the Left is anti-religion, when I really don't see it as that way. Also, we have to remember that the perspective on left vs right is going to depend on which side of the Atlantic you are on, the Left wing in the US is actually right of the European counterparts, more like centrist to Europe I think, not sure.

Anti-abrahamic religion (to a lesser extent religion in general) was part of the older left, and was never a big thing in the US.

It ties into a general trend in Europe for churches to be integrated or closely tied to the established political parties a lot of the original left wing movements struggled against. To keep using the UK as an example there were (and still are) actual Bishops of what was the de-facto state religion in the House of Lords and the clergy were generally inclined towards the conservative party during the initial socialist movements in the UK in the late 1800s and early 1900s. A more extreme example would be the Soviet Union which actively suppressed churches, or for a more recent one the classic metal and rock culture of Europe (60s through 80s roughly speaking) was slanted towards Atheism (the US version was pro-Eastern philosophy as I understand it) and had it's roots in various sub groups of the working classes.

The left nowadays is anti-religion, but only when its convenient to be so. See how buddhism and other eastern religions became popular in the west after the 60s. Hell, the left gave birth to some religious, one could argue that american unitarianism was born out of the religious left.

However, the left in the west in general has kind of always been anti roman catholic, and more recently anti protestant christianity. Any shade of christianity that doesnt sit on the agnostic fence is kind of a no no to the left nowadays. Islam became accepted because it was seen as a good way to draw in lots of new people who weren't very fond of the western right (still very christian at its core, but much less so than before) to the voterbase, and in europe, as a way to remedy native europeans' notorious ineptitude at breeding more young workers, in order to avoid becoming japan 2.0 .

I suspect the attempt to include Islam into the modern 'left wing' fold is more likely a result of the decline in the lefts old tendency towards Atheism, bleed over from the philosophical mysticism of the US left in the 60s and 70s making them experiment with non-Christian faiths, the shift from workers rights to outgroup rights in general and people forgetting that the natural opponents of the left were generally religious hardliners of every faith rather than just the Christian ones, just depending on where you were in the world.

It's notable to me that the American left in the 60s was very into Eastern philosophies while the socialist movement in China actively crushed them as an opponent of their political agenda.

[Wolfhunter107]

I'd personally argue that the inclusion of Islam into the left was, in the United States at least, was a part of the pushback against the backlash against Muslims in the wake of 9/11. Before that, they tended much more towards the right, and usually went pretty reliably for the Republicans.