Hardkill

But being a hardcore progressive/leftist doesn't work for winning the greatest amount of power.

Yeah, I don't get how Mike's PhD is necessarily fraudulent. There may be some valid arguments that some are making about the merits of his doctoral dissertation, but those are just their opinions.

What do you mean you never worked a day legally? Also, how are you going to pay for any healthcare services that you'll need in this day and age? How will you plan to retire comfortably?

So, why not raise taxes back to what they were in mid 1900s? Also, what will you do if you don't have a job or any welfare during an economic crisis? Btw, if I were you, I would worry more about the rise in corporate tyranny and corporate extremism that's spreading like a cancer in many parts of the world.

There actually isn't “Mammoth debt” in many of those countries, and debt level alone doesn’t tell you whether a welfare state is doomed. On standard gross-debt measures, the Nordics are generally moderate by rich-country standards (Norway and Denmark are low; Sweden is mid-range; Finland is higher). Check the IMF WEO dashboard for current ratios rather than memes. Norway actually runs a giant sovereign wealth fund (~NOK 19.6–20+ trillion in 2025), which supports its public finances. That’s the opposite of “unsustainable.” Even though Singapore has high gross debt, its government has a strong net asset position and actually budgets a recurring revenue line from investment returns (NIRC ~3.5% of GDP in recent years). Furthermore, interest burden matters more than just the stock. OECD data show debt-service costs have risen with rates, but the squeeze is concentrated in a handful of large borrowers; many smaller, high-trust/high-tax states still carry low-interest bills relative to GDP. Sustainability is about servicing costs vs. tax capacity and growth. Moreover, countries like Sweden have a public pension with an automatic balancing mechanism (ABM) that adjusts indexation/benefits to keep the system solvent—one reason its “big welfare” doesn’t implode when demographics or markets shift. Inflation isn't solely caused by giant deficit spending. It happens when the supply of goods and/or services is too low in proportion to the demand for such goods and/or services. What developed countries need to do is protect the corporate base, raise and equalize capital-income taxes at the top, broaden VAT/carbon/land bases with rebates, enforce hard, and pair it with cost-curve reforms in health/pensions and pro-growth housing/productivity moves.

Limiting welfare and having more limited government intervention backfires in the long-run. Mixed economies like in the Nordic countries have the most progressive, most fair, and most sustainable type of economies for everyone. Central European countries, Western European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea have the second 2nd fairest and 2nd most sustainable types of economies. The kind of Left that you are talking about in the former USSR was far-left in economics, whereby there was state ownership, central planning, and redistribution of EVERYTHING. That doesn't well work for long either. Plus, the USSR's extreme left-wing regime had no liberal democracy, was authoritarian with a one-party rule, implemented censorship, had coercive security services, and had top-down bureaucracy; the promised council democracy never materialized.

Wait, I just realized something. If today's liberals in America are centrists who rather keep the status quo/capitalism, and the broad middle or moderates are still the largest percentage of people in America, then does that mean that today's liberals in America are the largest percentage of people in America?

Wow. I kinda thought that. However, that's gotta be extremely rare given how contradictory conservatism and stage Yellow seem to be with each other.

Can a right-winger or even a center-right person with good principles and healthy values be stage Yellow as well?

Yeah! It is very interesting even though they are conservative-leaning individuals with healthy and good Blue values and Orange.

I've had it with news anchors like Jake Tapper or Anderson Cooper for not doing nearly enough to warn the people about the dangers of Trump and their constant bothsideism. I am also disgusted with Owen Cook and Joe Rogan. That means that everyone associated with Chorus and Pod Save America must have a lot more Green in them than all of the abovementioned names.

Okay, so liberals aren’t solid Orange either, but are like in an area that’s transitioning from Orange to Green.

But liberalism and progressivism are both examples of stage Green, whereas the status quo/capitalism in America is primarily stage Orange. So, you mean that liberals are center-left, whereas progressives are solid leftists?

And Trump could pardon him if he pays Trump a lot of money and/or makes friends with him.

These days, I've been listening much more to pragmatic progressives like David Pakman, Pod Save America, BTC, Thom Hartmann, Hutch, IRI, etc. I still hate-watch TYT and Secular Talk, which I know I gotta stop doing.

I'd be very careful with your "bothsideism" if I were you.

I am glad the Democrats didn't let the funding for this tyrannical government continue. Hopefully it lasts for weeks.

As someone once told me before: Canada is looking real good now.

How so? I didn't say that they don't, but the electorate is just not the same. Here's a quote from Dan Pfieffer about this: "As many of you know, Democrats are the party of high-propensity voters. As data from Catalist, a Democratic analytics firm, shows: the more frequently someone votes, the more likely they are to vote Democratic. That means as overall turnout increases, the additional, less-frequent voters who enter the electorate tend to lean Republican. In 2024, those voters broke for Trump — which explains how Biden could be trailing Trump in the polls even as Democrats were winning down-ballot races in red states like Kentucky." https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/democrats-keep-winning-special-elections?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

Some Leftists are already freaking out about this:

Yeah, well not so much anymore. They lost to Trump and the GOP in 2016, they barely beat them in 2020 when they should’ve killed them in a landslide, and they lost to them again in 2024.

Again, special elections don't have a lot of those dumb, low-information, and less engaged voters like in presidential elections.

The Democratic brand is still more damaged than the Republican brand, sadly. So even though many people dislike the GOP, even more dislike the Democrats. Before the 2024 election year, I thought that the Democrats’ strong performance in special elections, midterms, and off-year elections was a good sign for their chances in 2024. However, it’s clear to me now that the electorate in special elections, midterms, and off-year races is too different from the general electorate in presidential elections. Presidential general elections bring out a much higher percentage of low-information, less engaged, and less politically developed voters than special, midterm, or off-year elections do. I don’t see how Democrats can win over enough of those voters when so many are too misinformed, too disengaged, or too deeply influenced by right-wing and alternative media.

It's still not clear that Newsom can pull it off. What if the damage to the Democratic brand has been so great that they never want to elect another Democrat for president again, no matter how talented any Democrat out there is?