I’d like to start a series seeking viewpoints from across the political spectrum in general discussions about modern society and where everyone stands on what is not working, what is working, and where we see things going in the future.
Please answer in good-faith and if you don’t consider yourself conservative or “to the right”, please reserve top-level discussion for those folks so it reaches the “right” folks haha.
Please don’t downvote respectful content that is merely contrary to your political sensibillities, lets have actual discourse and learn more about each other and our respective viewpoints.
Will be doing other sides soon but lets start with this and see where it takes us.
So I’ve always been left leaning. But I went to uni for economics so some of my left views I believe are best solved through the market, which appear right wing.
Also I have given up with current left parties for the moment so will probably vote right in the next election.
I think more things need to be nationalised, like rail and water, need more money for schools and hospitals and the police (somehow that’s a right wing view on this website unbelievably everything short of communism seems right wing in this place.)
But largely I think we need more money in the hands of people, more taxes and value needs to be more accurately addressed (externalities).
The belief coming forward in economics is money beats everything. Poor people don’t have enough food? Don’t give them free food give them cash, it’s better for them and cheaper for the state. So eventually UBI needs to exist but cash transfers are the way for people that need help.
Things that pay back in 20 years should be focused on. Subsidised nurseries and free things for teenagers to do.
Rail adds value to the area directly around it so rail is subsidised by a Land value tax on the wealth it creates around it. (Japan does this sort of, they own land around stations). Land value tax in general is great.
This is all going to cost money and people ultimately need to pay for it. So people will have less wealth but if you can free up costs then it can be a win win. More for the state and more for the people. So let’s solve the housing crisis and wage stagnation. Immigration! That’s why I’m voting right wing. Unskilled labour keeps wages down and house prices up, it’s as simple as that. The capitalist win and that’s why they try to gaslight everyone into thinking bringing in people that contribute less to the economy and commit more crime than locals is a good thing. (Stats are out there. Some countries absolutely don’t do this, some do. A lot is lost in averages but some demographics make the country worse some obviously better).
Personally I’d demolish a lot of low density land and build more houses (privately) downtown and link it with public transport.
We work too much and we need to start reducing the working hours and put more money into reeducation. I’d probably give tax discounts to business that set up outside of the main cities too.
On a personal societal level we have also lost sight of what equality actually is. Equality isn’t treating people differently because they are different, it’s treating people the same even if they are different.
This idea really breaks down when you apply it to people with disabilities who have different needs than the norm, and that problem applies to systemically disadvantaged people too. Society isn’t one size fits all, we need to cater to everyone.
Obviously if you need some disability then that’s going to be an exception to the rule.
But when someone says “We need more women in the workforce so let’s only hire women. Men need not apply” that’s not equality. If we said “This person worse at the job but he’s black so we will make the enter easier for him because he can’t compete with white people.” That’s not equality.
Minorities get passed over and screwed over for basic needs like housing, education, childcare, etc. As a result, when someone says “we only hire competent people, the best people for the job, it’s not our fault if these minorities we interviewed happen to be incompetent” that’s already setting things up to reduce their presence in society, which loops into making them poorer, with less access to basic needs and so on. Refusing to hire a woman for one job and hiring a man instead because you think she’s less competent is tunnel vision, you’re focusing on a single job and trying to scale that to the whole of society; the most direct answer is just to hire more people and train everyone. It’s corporate thinking to assume you will only hire a single perfect worker for all of your jobs, but all you’re doing is only reducing your work force, which only ever works for the corporate bottom line until you run out of people to fire. And when the imbalance is so bad, there is a point where, on a large sale, you need to hire a higher number of women / Black people / handicapped people to catch up, because you’ve shut them down the whole time; and that basically makes it your own fault if you think they’re less competent than educated competent men, because they didn’t get the opportunity, because they didn’t get the training, because… they didn’t get the opportunity.
The “hire only competent people = only white men” is a self-fulfilling prophecy because it creates the entire situation of everyone else being less competent, being lower on the decision totem pole (like the decision to help minorities get out of that loop), having lower incomes. If you help only your own because they have the skills you want, you are creating the situation where you perceive everyone else to be lower by your own standards. Someone’s gotta make the first step to bring everyone up to the same level, and you know it’s not going to start in education and housing. Because those people are not up there making the decision to help with that. The people who can make the decision choose not to help, because those minorities don’t have the same skills as this other guy here.
So you’re saying to start a new system where you only hire non white/ non males. Suddenly you have a whole generation of young men/ young whites being passed over for positions just because they are white/ male. So what happens the next generation? You only hire white males because they were past over in the last generation.
No mention of hiring based on lower income. No you are doing it based on race. So rich black people get a huge benefit over poor white people who never had any opportunities and currently don’t but, fuck them right, they are white. They shouldn’t feel hard done by that they are poor have no opportunities in life because hey that CEO is an old white guy.
This is why it’s stupid you are actively disenfranchising people. Sure people got mistreated in the past but misreading people now isn’t going to make them be not mistreated. It just means twice as many people have been mistreated.
I say balance and that’s your take?
Man. I spoke about hiring based on skills the whole time. This imbalance in poor, less skilled white men was already there before you started talking about diversity hire, but you chose to blame diversity hire, because you think unskilled women or minorities get hired over skilled but poor white men. I spoke about improving housing, education, childcare, and all other basic needs, I didn’t say that only applies if you’re not a white man. It goes for everyone. But those poor white men aren’t getting help from the current situation either way, and you seem to think that the only solution is to hire them over minorities. You’re not talking about helping all the people in this situation, you just want the poor white men to get hired and not get passed over for less skilled women - you’re fine with leaving everyone else behind. You’re not even considering that everyone might deserve a spot somewhere, you think there’s only one spot and it should go to the skilled white man.
Aren’t you also talking about diversity hires? I’m assuming you think there’s an imbalance that needs fixing, and your way of fixing it seems to be to hire minorities at a much greater proportion than how they’re represented in the population? Shouldn’t your solution be more class based?
You complained that hiring was focusing on women and men didn’t need to apply and that’s not equality. I discussed why diversity is important to lift up people in need and why that is, in fact, equality. You’re the one who keeps focusing on poor white men, pretending that I’m ignoring them, why are you pretending they don’t benefit from equality and improving housing, education, childcare? Equality helps everyone.
Oh okay you’re just straight up lying then lmao. To those used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Did you know that about half of humanity is female? You know half the people in high places aren’t female. Or even in medium places. And let’s not even talk about all the other minorities.
Wherever you are, see if you can find some unemployment or income numbers for your area, if it’s broken down by gender or ethnicity. It might surprise you!
Firstly, I’m a different person. I’m just interested on what your solution is. No need to be so hostile. I’ve likely just misunderstood you.
My critique is specifically on the bit I quoted. You need to divide it by generation. The hiring, especially for starting roles, is heavily biased towards the young. These people are just coming out of college.
Giving your example of 50% women in the population, and a law firm is 100 people, 90 of which are men. That firm now needs to hire 90 women and 10 men to reach that 50% goal. But now you’ve also influxed a tonne of women into that workforce, meaning now you’ll need to hire disproportionately more men next generation after the original 90 men have retired. It creates a cycle of discrimination. Obviously that’s oversimplified, and there’s additional factors you could add to the example e.g. staff turnover.
I don’t disagree with setting hiring goals 50/50 men/women if that’s what your advocating for? It doesn’t immediately change workplace demographics, but it should even out over time. And there are still issues stemming from the amount of male vs female degree holders in certain subjects that are heavily gender biased, like engineering, vetinary practice, and IT.
I’m also totally for raising funding for public services and education to ensure everyone gets the best start on life they can. No disagreement there. It’d be ideal if we could encourage young men/women to more evenly participate in different subjects.
Again I’m sorry if I misunderstood your point, it wasn’t clear to me
Thus reads like diversity hire.
Look we both agree give everyone the sane opportunity, education houses etc.
But you get a company like this 100 people. Over 30’s: male 80:20 female
So you get 10 new entry level openings, applications male 70:30 female. There a load of shit going on here, but to make it simple we both agree women have previously been under represented (let’s ignore children and whatever).
There are some people who say we are going to have an intake of under 30’s so because the workforce isn’t 50:50 male to female we should ideally hire only women until we get it to 50:50.
So now you hire 10 women and have a workforce of male 80:30 women. Right?
That’s not fair. Even hiring 50% women isn’t fair. Everyone should have equal opportunity, thats thr only way it is fair. It should be 7 men 3 women, on average.
Discriminating against men now doesn’t stop women in the past being discriminated against it just adds to the amount of people discriminated against. There is no other way to treat people than fairly.
No, it should not. That’s just ridiculous. You don’t fix unequality by maintaining it just because that’s what you’re always known. You want to keep the privileges you have now while denying improving the situation of others, because you think losing your unfair advantage over others becomes unfair to you, that’s nonsense.
Hiring 50/50 is not discriminating against you just because you were at 70 before. You don’t get to decide that half the female population of the planet shouldn’t be allowed to work - because that’s what your 70/30 is, if the 70 is most of the male population (let’s imagine a >90% employment rate), then the 30 is around half of the female population, you’re saying the other half will never be allowed to work. You’re assuming they can keep being SAHM or whatever else.
The thing is that the 70% of workers being men shouldn’t mean there are less men if it becomes 50%. Men aren’t losing their jobs. It means there are more workers, including the same number of men, and more women. This isn’t supposed to be a zero sum game when population grows.
You’re an idiot. Every single person gets a fair 10% chance.
Just because 1 woman wants to be an engineer and 10 men do doesn’t mean the woman is 10 times better than men. Or that she should be 10 times as likely to get a job just for being a woman. It should me she gets equal opportunity as men. If you only hire a woman because she is a woman that’s not equality.
It never goes the other way around. Do you think we should we only hire male teachers and male nursery staff and male nurses because they are under represented?
I’m not arguing for affirmative action, but the current system does not treat everyone equally. People applying to jobs with black sounding names get hired/interviewed much less than white sounding names on equivalent resumes.
I don’t know what the solution is but the current system is not working.
Take names off then.
Hiring unevenly now to make up for things in the past just makes inequality now. It doesn’t solve any inequality of the past.
I keep seeing this claim, but where are those numbers coming from? Are they from recent studies, or 20 year old studies? Are they major national employers or rinky dink mom and pop shops in Alabama? If you check the news you will see that companies like Google are actually being sued for purging white candidates, and Asian males. Straight up just deleting their applications based on their ethnicity and sex. Google is not alone in this. There are plenty of other companies you can find news for. The company I work for said that 85% of all interviewees need to classify as “diversity hires”. So, I keep seeing the claim that white people have an advantage when applying for jobs, but what I actually see at the corporate policy level is the exact opposite.
Pretty much nothing you said is conservative except your views on immigration.
Immigrants are also not unskilled workers, a lot of countries only accept people with degrees or useful skills unless they are refugees.
At lot of left leaning parties historically have been the most against immigration also, but I’m voting right now.
I do think the left really fuck up with how they think the government should control a lot of the market. The government waste money horrifically.
Everyone on this website seems to think I’m die hard right winger.
I’m not against immigration overall (I’m for it in many ways) I’m just strongly against how immigration is being used currently.
That’s the thing, viewpoints are so skewed here that as a Biden supporter (not just “better than Trump” but actually supporting Biden) I’m called a right wing conservative.
Name one left leaning party.
Have you considered harm/benefit planet-wide? Is it really better leaving the escaping people under oppression / war / climate disaster caused by pollution from the West? They’ll contribute even less to the economy in their home country.
Yes. Lots of people leave their country, burn their passport then hop the border. I think people should make their own country better, if they want to move to another country they need to contribute more than the average person and be a better citizen (including culturally) than the average local.
My country tried real hard to build up other countries and make the most of them. Now they are on their own.
Are these “left parties” (lmfao wut???) in the room with us now???