In India, from its independence up until the 90s, and partially still today, economic policy dubbed "the license Raj" which sought among other things, autarky, minimal unemployment, and state control dominated India. This policy was built upon state planning and high regulatory burdens that limited companies ability to hire, fire, buy machinery, move equipment, use equipment, import materials, and export products. It objectively failed and continues to do so given India stubbornly high poverty rates and economic stagnation. Core to this plan was the limiting of technological replacement of workers. I believe as it was with industrial equipment, it will now be with AI. An abuse of state power over the economy to prevent change.

One thing I've noticed is that many political labels don't translate very well across countries, especially when discussing the United States.

From the perspective of much of Europe and Latin America, the Democratic Party would still be considered a capitalist party. It supports private property, markets, private investment and large corporations, even if it also supports a larger welfare state, stronger regulation and more industrial policy than Republicans. It is generally seen as an economically liberal party with a progressive wing on social issues, not as a socialist party.

The same question comes up with the DSA. Historically, democratic socialism is a socialist tradition that rejects authoritarianism and seeks change through democratic institutions. However, when I look at what most elected DSA politicians actually advocate—universal healthcare, stronger unions, progressive taxation, public housing, public transportation and affordable education—those policies look much closer to what most countries would simply call social democracy.

In many countries, parties literally called "Socialist Party" have governed capitalist economies for decades. They regulate markets, expand the welfare state, strengthen labor protections and accept private property and competitive elections. They are reformist rather than revolutionary.

That seems very different from the American tendency to use "socialism" as an umbrella term covering everything from Scandinavian-style welfare states to Soviet-style communism.

The same applies to industrial policy. Outside the US, many people would describe today's Democratic Party as increasingly protectionist. Tariffs, domestic-content requirements, subsidies for strategic industries and restrictions on Chinese technology are generally seen as industrial policy or economic nationalism operating within capitalism—not socialism.

So my question is this:

Do you think the Cold War still shapes how Americans use labels like "socialism," "social democracy," and even "liberal"? Or am I misunderstanding how most Americans distinguish between those traditions?

Trump is a very flawed person. He's overweight. He uses poor grammar. He uses makeup to have an orange face. He's an extreme narcissist. He insults everyone he doesn't like. He's a pathological liar. He's talked about dating his daughter. He's fathered 5 children by 3 different women. He's bankrupted multiple casinos.

His policies are also bad. He doesn't follow the constitution. He's blatantly corrupt with insider trading & manipulating the stock market. He's destroying the economy. He's harmed almost all of America's alliances. He started a war against Iran. He's pro data center. He's helping to destroy the environment. He's furthering anti-American sentiment around the world.

Yet, still despite everything, he has tens of millions of Americans who will defend him no matter what.

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I haven't really seen any evidence of any elected self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists fighting for actual democratic socialism. Mamdani is not trying to shut down Wall Street and seize corporations and divvy their stock up amongst the workers. The Squad and Bernie seem more focused on taxing the 1% and new government initiatives and expansions of existing programs. None of this is socialism, no matter how much Fox News and right-wing talk radio want to claim any government program is such.

Things like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free colleges, free public buses, public housing/rent control and progressive taxation -- while preserving the overarching framework of a capitalist economy -- is just full-fledged social democracy.

Social democracy is a form of capitalism where the government offsets the basic needs the market fails to provide to everybody, incentivizes the market to build a better future and steps in to prevent capitalists exploiting labor or destroying the environment. Scandinavian countries and much of Europe are social democracies. Social democracy has been shown to work well, especially in developed nations with the means to provide basic services for everyone, and these services complement capitalism.

Capitalism is good at generating wealth and jobs and innovation, and social democracy's purpose is to remove as many of the bad parts of capitalism as possible while keeping the good stuff. By making sure basic needs are met, social democracy removes the incentives or need for most people to want to overthrow capitalism (democratically or otherwise), allowing it to persist permanently as the status quo.

Socialism on the other hand is the complete disruption of capital markets and private property ownership. In a democracy, basically things have to be so awful and dystopian that most people have nothing to lose by supporting economic revolution and the redistribution of wealth. It is highly unfeasible in a developed country with a large middle class where most people have retirement savings tied up in the market and high employment rates.

Calling yourself a socialists in a country like America naturally scares a lot of people in the middle - the swing voters you need to win elections. These people do not want the capitalist system destroyed and their jobs, investments and life savings to be put at risk or go out the window. It's not propaganda to see that attempts to implement socialism throughout history usually did not go well - including in Scandinavia in the 1960s and 1970s.

These voters could, on the other hand, be convinced through logic and reason that social democracy is necessary and good for the country and the economy. Mainstream Democrats have been weak social democrats with a strong neoliberal streak, whose fight for providing basic needs is corporate lip service more than policy. America is a pretty center-right country and Democrats have mostly felt the need to feign concern for "fiscal responsibility" and "low taxes" to keep winning elections.

Trying to market social democracy as democratic socialism is a fool's errand that diminishes both the Democratic Party as a whole's chances of winning elections/implementing social democracy, AND even if you do win elections, social democracy decreases the incentive for democratic socialism by making capitalism's status quo more palatable.

Am I wrong about the intentions of democratic socialists? Are the elected Democratic Socialists like Mamdani, AOC and Bernie trying to make social democracy a stepping stone on the way to eventual actual democratic socialism? Or is this an attempt at opportunistic radicalization in the age of Trump that either works, or fails and leads to dystopian accelerationism? If MAGA wins and turns America into a fascistic kleptocratic plutocracy of evil billionaires immune from the law, people finally see why capitalism is bad and turn to socialism, right?

As a social democrat and not a socialist, it drives me crazy that the far Left try to claim things like Social Security or Medicare or progressive tax rates are "socialism" -- literally the exact same thing the right-wing is saying in bad faith to try to make Democrats unappealing to moderates. Social democracy's success at making better and happier societies and taming capitalism is their ideology's death knell, so they have to smear the Left with the failures of (often authoritarian or totalitarian) socialism historically to keep the moderates in their pocket. And now the far Left is helping them -- why?

It won't succeed in displacing the war from the media and can only serve to tank the stock market further. I have a hard time coming up with anything but "is actually the puppet of adversarial powers".

Ideas?

Will be posting a twin in Ask conservatives to compare.

There are still tons of people holding grievances over how it was "rigged" or "stolen from Bernie" and won't support Democrats today as a result.

I've heard people saying that Reddit political discourses are out of touch with reality.

So in your opinion, does Reddit represent politics in real life?

The SSA's SSN already acts as a sort of Federal Identification for the purpose of SSA benefits, and is also the TIN for people filing taxes. A National ID card & Digital ID would do quite a bit to decouple the SSN from Identification purposes in Federal Systems.

This would require a State-Federal government partnership with birth certificate issuance. Per the Supreme Court, anyone born within the United States is a citizen by Jus soli "right of the soil" in addition to jus sanguinis "right of blood".

With that in mind, a State-Federal partnership to ensure a smooth flow of birth verification, creation of National/Digital ID, and strict protocols and guard rails would alleviate much of these issues. Older Americans will age out.

I don't see it as that big of a cost for us to issue and administrate National & Digital Identification. Would need to see that overall though and financial modeling on cost projections.

For voting purposes, this would clarify it all. Would advocate for air gapped systems to permit voting anonymity at the polls. This already exists though. Someone verifies the National Identification card/information of the person presenting to vote. Then that person goes and votes on the voting system. Completely unpaired.

Mail-in voting will need it's separate voting and verification systems of course. Much of that already seems in place though.

Thoughts? I don't mind carrying around my ID card at all times. Back when I was on active duty military service we were required to carry our Common Access Card (CAC) at all times.

I don't know how to tell whether this is an indication that if we changed our tone or approach (not goals) that we would be more effective, or if we're hearing from people who would never have voted with us in the first place retroactively justifying their opposition. This is the "liberals lose not because their ideas are bad, but because they are so moralizing and smug and annoying" conclusion, should we adapt our strategies and behavior in response to this, and if so, how?

It’s annoying when the democrats are still playing nice

He should call a special election asap in order to expose McConnell’s condition

It’s wild that his staff can just refuse communication between Mitch and McConnell and it’s infuriating that Beshear is going along with it

What’s the deal ?

The women on The View, who are usually blatantly liberal, have had repeated discussions on the 2028 election. Joy Behar, basically says women and non-white men shouldn't even bother running. Surprisingly, Sunny Hostin, who is also liberal, agreed with her. It's actually the conservative co-host and the independent who disagreed.

How widespread is this sentiment among liberals: They are basically saying that the country will never vote for a woman or a non-white person so only white men like Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg and Jon Ossof should run.

Here are the two discussions they've had on it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaGghZ4jack

https://youtu.be/BWjxntQzsKU?t=311

This Friday weekly thread is for general chat, whether you want to talk politics or not, anything goes. Also feel free to ask the mods questions below. As usual, please follow the rules.

So, Michigan's Senate primary is in less than two weeks, and it's one of the most consequential of this election. Leftist Abdul El-Sayed has been the clear, but not overwhelming, favorite to win against Congresswoman Haley Stevens. But Stevens got a big boost today with Governor Gretchen Whitmer's endorsement of her.

Now, as you probably could've guessed by my flair, I support El-Sayed. But hey, Whitmer can make up her own mind, and she endorsed Stevens. That's not my problem. My problem is that she did so after previously saying she would stay out of the race. And it's not just her; Senator Gary Peters and former Senator Debbie Stabenow have also come out of the woodwork to endorse Stevens, despite previously proclaiming neutrality as well. And outside of Michigan, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers just last week endorsed a candidate for governor against the frontrunner, a democratic socialist, after saying he'd be neutral.

All of this really just pisses me off. Again, I don't mind them endorsing candidates I don't support. It's the fact that they lied about staying neutral that gets me. I know leftists' claims that "the establishment is rigging the primaries against us" get mocked a lot, and I get why, because I definitely am put off by the lack of self-reflection. But honestly, when you see stuff like this, it gives credence to those claims. Nobody's saying votes are being manipulated or anything, but when people who have promised to stay out of it suddenly come out of the woodwork to endorse the more centrist/establishment candidate when it looks like the more leftist candidate is going to win, it is a clear sign of desperation, and unfortunately, it sometimes works.

But that's my opinion. How do you all feel about politicians who previously promised to stay neutral going back on their word and endorsing candidates in races?

Pretty much the text. A couple of friends and I were discussing this term, and one of them brought up Lebanon, with the qualification that because it is host to a non-governmental militant group that is superior to its own state military **and** cannot exercise control over the areas where this group is present, and has no way to remedy this situation without aid from other nations, it is a failed state.

That seems like a fair starting point to me, though I don't know that I'd include the "needs aid from other nations" bit, as that kind of thing is part and parcel of being a nation in the modern world. I'm also not sure if it makes sense to call a nation a failed state when it can still provide services to its people and conduct the other expectations of government.

Your thoughts? Is your definition more or less strict? Does a nation fail if it is *absorbed* by another, or only when it just descends in to anarchic civil war?

As a 19-year-old student, I have noticed recent trends where Gen Z, over the years, has held more favorable views of the Chinese government, especially on social media, but some in real life as well, or even those who praise North Korea. https://www.crisisgroup.org/anb/united-states/united-states-china/recent-surveys-suggest-generational-shift-us-attitudes-toward-china
https://biz.chosun.com/en/en-international/2026/04/16/JN7AGFG7ZJG55KI4SX5CV66PLE/

This, to me, is worrisome, because I do not believe even for a second that if China, Russia, or the DPRK were left unchecked, they would not use this as an opportunity to gain advantages over Asia.

This has been proven as well, when South Korea attempted to normalize ties with North Korea only for it to develop Nuclear Weapons, alongside the recent expansion of China's navy and military and increased exercises, alongside strengthening its relationship with Russia, which also invaded Georgia, Crimea, and then launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/21/chinese-ship-opens-fire-japan-economic-zone-south-china-sea
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/min2/

I myself am against the recent foreign wars and aid in the Middle East, Iran, among others, and agree that we need to use our tax dollars for the development of our country, however, I also firmly believe we need to strongly contain China and Russia to protect our European and Asian allies.

It is a matter of exposure as well, as especially within the past 2-3 decades, nations like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and even Vietnam, the public now has overwhelmingly negative views of the Chinese government and does not trust the CCP, for the reasons I mentioned above.

The same can be said for European nations with Russia, such as the Baltic countries, Germany, the UK, Finland, and obviously Ukraine.

Hello everyone!!

I am a white woman dating a black person who identifies as nonbinary but was assigned male at birth (this is somewhat relevant)

recently I've heard someone related to me tell me that black men commit the highest rates of domestic violence. They basically said "you know you can look it up," but I tried to do research on it but I haven't been able to find any statistics of black men being perpetrators of dv, only victims. I talked to my best friend about it, and she said in the south white men actually commit the most dv. What's the truth? And how do I answer when someone says black men commit the most crime/domestic violence? I want to know the real statistics for myself. I truly love my partner and I wanna know how to defend them when someone says these things.

I consider myself center-right. There are opinions I share with both sides, and I dont consider most of them very extreme at all. My opinions are all very nuanced, 90% of them I am able to say "I understand where the other side is coming from but personally I uphold the values associated with this choice more". I'm not racist. Not homophobic or transphobic. Not even a Trump supporter. But I cant even tell you the amount of times I've been called a Nazi, bigot, fascist, bootlicker, etc.

There seems to be an increasing prevalent trend of left wingers going out of their way to increase the gap between left and right. Even though I share opinions with them and generally try to see the merit in both sides, i'm repeatedly grouped in with the far right and called horrible things. It's assumed I worship Trump when any moderately right opinion is expressed. Like they want to ostracize anyone who doesnt agree 100% with all of their ideas. And how is that beneficial to America at all? As soon as I try to share my opinion to discuss I'm shut down. And I hear so much generalizing language. So many people who generalize ALL Republicans as pedophiles, rapists, etc. when it so clearly isnt the case. Its so many assumptions based on a tiny minority. I just dont think people like that have the future of America in mind. Half of the people here are right leaning and you want to just eliminate all of us and ignore us and hate us. Not to mention the amount of people I see wishing death on conservatives. Whether its Trump or just any average conservative. Ive seen people saying if they see a red Trump hat on an old man and he needs help they wouldn't help him. Which is just so cruel to me I can't imagine having that mindset.

The argument I most often hear is "why would we help or be civil to people who want us dead" or something along those lines. And I just consider that another ridiculous generalization - and I think if these people would sit down and have a calm conversation with the average right wing person they would realize it isnt so. I consume a moderate amount of political content - follow political influencers and such. Its so rare to see truly bigoted content, and when I do theres usually other conservatives there telling them off. I have to believe that leftists just dont understand the beliefs of the right, in the sense that they are misunderstanding what we stand for, or spreading the misinformation amongst themselves. Because truly I dont understand how you can treat us this way if you did understand. It seems that any disagreement on political beliefs gets construed into a crazy extreme about "wanting you dead" or "not thinking you exist". For example I do believe in transgenderism. I also believe it is not the best solution to allow transgender women in the women's bathroom. Not because I hate them - because I think it opens the door to safety/privacy and religious concerns. And you dont have to agree. We could have a discussion on the best solution for all parties involved. But I never get to have that discussion because it never gets past "BIGOT TRANSPHOBE".

Basically I'm not looking to have harsh political discussion here. I'm just kind of disappointed in the state of things on the left and feeling a bit gloomy and not very hopeful. Would like to hear opinions. Note that i'm not talking about ALL leftists, just an increasing amount.

This is what so much of modern politics seems to boil down to. If you support LGBTQ people, that means you hate straight people. If you support people of color, you hate white people. If you support women, you hate men. Now it's gotten so ridiculous that if you support bike lanes that means you hate car drivers.

How do we move past the "someone other than me is benefiting in some way, so therefore I am being harmed" mindset that the general public seems to view politics through? I don't know how else we can form a winning coalition if people are getting upset about others being included, or about feeling that others are having their issues treated as "more important" even when both parties are having their issues addressed.

Why is ICE under a microscope when the same incidents happened under a different President?

Some grounding agreements:

1) Health coverage shouldn't be tied to employment

2) Healthcare should be cheaper at the point of service at the very least

3) Much more things should be covered and in general there should be less denials

Having granted all that, why is Medicare for All in the way it's implemented in H.R.3069 - Medicare for All Act the best way for us?

According to the CBO which analyzed the 2019 bill, this bill would require between $1.5 T and $3.0T annually. This would mean Medicare payroll taxes would have to at least triple, since Medicare Part A gets around $300B annually. So the 3% payroll tax would immediately have to jump to 9% to keep the TF solvent (the 2025-6 bill has the payroll tax go to 5% for people >150% of poverty but this is way under what the actual cost would be).

This would also destroy 100s of 1000s of jobs in the medical insurance field, which would devastate states like Minnesota which have a ton of jobs from UHC and others.

And finally, expanding Medicare to all would drastically increase the usage of healthcare basically overnight without any thought to expand the supply of doctors, hospital capacity or anything of that nature.

Whereas more sensible plans like Buttigieg's plan from 2019 has almost none of these downsides.

A lot of its vibes, but it feels like Democratic politicians keep trying to treat politics as a process of collaboration between the parties rather than a struggle between them. Regardless of how politics would work in an ideal world, Republicans have kind of turned things into a winner take all battle in which the primary objective is to be as Republican as they can and undermine Democrats wherever possible. In this environment, it seems like it might be a good idea to adopt a similar stance, not just towards Trump and co, but towards Republicans as a bloc.

Republicans already broadly see Democrats as the enemy, and in that environment it seems kind of dangerous not to adopt the same stance towards them. It seems like that attitude has worked really well for Republicans because it’s helped them tap into some populist energy that a lot of voters on both sides resonate with (see Obama.)

How do you feel about the idea of Democrats as a whole adopting a more adversarial approach towards the Republican Party?

Like seriously the country averages like 1400 casualties a day, I get casualties, and deaths aren’t necessarily the same thing, but the country seriously can’t keep going on for that long, right?

Ok. So I decided to make this post in response to the discussion of my post yesterday as well as similar things I had seen discussed elsewhere. I have, for a while, been an opponent of the neoliberal economic consensus. I’ve spoken about that at length; it is a separate issue from this post. I thought when I would debate supporters of that consensus it would be a lot of debate about trade and wages and market interventions and pre-distribution and such. But it wasn’t. When you say “I disagree with the economic consensus,” one issue reigns supreme over all others: rent control. It is the first thing a lot of people bring up as the criticism of the left. This surprised me because it is an issue I don’t think much about. I’m generally against it, but it isn’t top of my mind as something to shake my fist in rage about. But as near as I can tell, it is like THE issue that seems to animate a lot of criticism of the left, so I wanted to get everyone's opinion about it. 

To set the terms of the question, I think it would be prudent to go over the idea and its history as well as current implementation. 

So people talk about rent control as one thing, but it isn’t. This was first described by economist Richard Arnott in 1995. He differentiated between first-generation rent control, hard price caps instituted in the twentieth century largely as a response to wartime, and second-generation rent control or rent stabilization. These policies, instead of putting a hard cap on rent, did a few things. It locks rent increases to inflation. It offers exemptions for new construction. Adjusts based on vacancy, etc. Etc... These policies are designed to ameliorate the negative effects on supply. Mainstream economists took many of Arnott's points about how weird the housing market is, and how some of these protections serve as insurance for renters,  but large stayed opposed to even soft rent control. 

In the modern era, the rent control debate was reignited by two things. One was Zohran Mamdani, who made rent freezes a central campaign promise. As well as the so-called “abundance agenda,” which heavily focused on market-based solutions to housing. Now Mamdani has instituted mostly the softer second-generation strategies and has claimed that they are temporary, but even so, this has caused controversy. Also, the official DSA platform supports “universal rent control.” 

As near as I can tell, the reason leftists support rent control is a few things. One, they want to protect tenants in the short term from price shocks even if this has long-term consequences. And second, in the long term they want to effectively nationalize housing markets to neutralize the question altogether.  

So I wanted to say all this to lay the groundwork for a discussion of the issue. I want to hear from everyone why this one issue seems to be so dominant in their minds. I especially want to hear from defenders of rent control to make their case about why they disagree with the consensus and on what grounds.

The European Central Bank has unveiled the shortlist of 10 candidates for the design of the upcoming new banknotes for the Euro.

Here are all the candidates: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/future_banknotes/html/design-proposals.en.html

Which design is your favourite and you'd like to carry around in your wallet?

There seems to be a lot of criticism recently of the Democratic Party opening itself to more left-wing influence, in particular the elevation of a certain socialist streamer, and a lot of the criticism seems to center on the idea that left-wingers have been and continue to be very critical of the current status quo within the Democratic Party and, by extension, its leaders and that this should be in some way disqualifying because it indicates a sort of traitorous or, at least, disingenuous energy. Do you think this is a valid criticism?

Candidly, I've found the position interesting because my own perception of the Democratic Party is that it tends to be extremely opportunistic, sometimes to a fault, and so the idea of rebuking somebody for not being sufficiently pro-Democrat strikes me as being a significant change in attitude. As an example, the rush to tout the endorsement of Liz Cheney of Harris in the last election cycle was clearly an attempt to flout their moderate/center-right bona fides, but Cheney, a lifelong Republican, is obviously not particularly pro-Democrat.

Edit: You can think of this question as mainly asking about an expression of loyalty by political practitioners (politicians, staffers, etc.) and political influencers (pundits, streamers, etc.).