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That’s not “liberal economics”, that’s just “Capitalism in practice”.
Have you noticed how liberalism is always pro-capitalism?
Uh, liberals tend to want to shift capitalism towards something more equitable - you know, something that doesn’t leave so many people jobless or homeless.
liberals tend to want to shift capitalism towards something more equitable
No, they don’t - they try to reform capitalism to head off revolt against the capitalist status quo. That is why liberal reforms to capitalism (at best) only makes life better for a certain part of the working class - see how Roosevelt’s GI Bill left black vets and their communities out in the cold for an example. When this fails to protect the capitalist order, liberal-types will happily co-operate with fascists to violently repress the working class - see Weimar Germany for an example of that.
If you are the reading type, I’d suggest Clara Mattei’s The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism - I haven’t encountered anyone who explains the history as well as she does.
Liberals are not your friends - Malcolm X was perfectly accurate when he described them as “smiling foxes.”
You just said the same thing twice
Liberals tend to be against handing large amounts of money over to big corporations, though.
Where is the difference?
So if your question is in good faith let’s break it down a little.
Capitalism is a economic system. It may have some liberal or conservative slant inherently, but in theory there isn’t anything implicit.
A liberal or conservative economic policy would be how you manage that economic system. Liberal economic policy should tend to favor rules and regulations to account for the flaws of unchecked capitalism. Conservative policy tends towards less regulation, relying on the market system to set prices for goods and services.
Personally, I’m liberal because the ultimate goal for any capitalist is a monopoly. Often in that situation, you get an unequal power dynamic that allows a company to stay ahead of competition or bully them out of the market, preventing the market from setting prices. Additionally liberal policy tries to regulate negative externalities, such as companies dumping chemicals in a river (such as when the Ohio river caught on fire leading to the creation of the EPA). Frankly, these are real problems inherent in capitalism that conservative policy doesn’t address because it makes the rich richer. It’s pretty disingenuous to argue that liberal policy is there to benefit the rich.
Anyway, that’s a super basic breakdown. None of that is say there isn’t corruption from the rich and greedy in politics. Frankly, money equating to political influence is crazy and has allowed the weathly to completely shape world policy. If you want change, look to rank choice voting systems or other ways to move more choice and power back to voters.
I appreciate you trying to answer a question in good faith, but you’re conflating ‘liberal’ with ‘vaguely left-leaning’, and none of what you’ve said makes any sense outside of current US political ‘discourse’ where ‘Liberal’ means ‘slightly left-wing’.
What you describe as liberal economics is closer to Keynsianism or Social Democracy.
In economics, the ‘Liberal’ school of thought is generally against regulation and interference in the market, seeing it as being ‘self-regulating’. In economic terms, Reagan and Thatcher were Liberals - hence them being associated with ‘Neoliberalism’.
The whole thing you said about Capitalism tending towards monopoly is actually a very Marxist/Socialist idea - Liberal economic theory tends to argue that monopolies form because of government and that they wouldn’t occur in a truly free market (although its more nuanced than that, there’s major disagreements over ‘Natural Monopolies’ etc. within the Liberal school). Source: look up any Liberal economist/thinker and their view on monopolies. E.g Friedman, J.S Mill.
Capitalism being an economic system doesn’t make it apolitical. ‘In theory’ Liberalism and Capitalism are very very closely intertwined, it’s not implicit, it’s absolutely explicit if you read any Liberal political or economic theory.
Economics is inherently political.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/#Libe Sections 3 and 4 of this are a decent starting point.
Also the idea of slightly changing our voting systems as the way to drive change is quite hilarious. Sure, moving away from FPTP would probably help a bit, but it’s not like countries with other systems are doing fine. These issues are more fundamental. And historically, fundamental change has never occured through small technical adjustments to political systems.
USian detected.
aka “Reaganomics”
Neo liberal, but yes.
How is a liberal not a capitalist supporter?
There’s a drastic difference between a neoliberal and a liberal. They’re very different terms.
that’s billions of tax payers money with the tax burden being disproportionately heavy for the 90% while the 10% pay less and less taxes the richer they are
I like how on lemmy you see both how much upvotes and downvotes you have, on reddit you could have a score of 1 and don’t know much has happened, but with lemmy you could have 50 upvotes and 49 downvotes, making you really think about it…
Not only that, but admins and kbinners can actually view which accounts upvoted and which downvoted each comment.
What’s a kbinner?
A user on kbin
False, the bottom 90% paid about 25% of income taxes (in the US at least). https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/
it’s about the percentage of income paid, not the net sum
Ok, so what percentage of income do the various income brackets pay?
Why don’t you look it up?
I don’t get it. Billionaires do billionaires things, but this meme being made the same week as a liberal policy requiring fair taxes for the rich to cover social security for the next 75 years makes this poster 100% out of touch.
The use of the word liberal here is not the same as the one used by the one commonly used in conversation. This meme is talking about neoliberalism which is the dominant economic idea in the US and UK right now.
It’s the dominant economic idea in the entire western world.
Even the Social democracies like Sweden are just a degree of neo liberalism. You won’t find most people saying they want communism.
If anything hardcore leftists are out of touch, including the OP.
You can downvote me all you want, but it’s no secret that this instance was essentially a communist refuge lol.
I think you’re equating “is dominant” to “is good”. These are very very much not the same thing.
Has this liberal policy you talk about actually done anything to threaten capitalism in any way?
First of all, I don’t know which country you are talking about which put these policies in place. And it does not matter as it does not alleviate the exploitation inherent in capitalism, it only puts a nice coat of paint over it…
They’re probably US-American, who thinks liberalism is the farthest you can get as a “leftist” and that liberalism is not just spiced up centre(-left).
could be the case, ppl from the USA often assume they are the center of the universe for whatever reason
Well, have you ever looked at a map? We are always right in the center of it!
good one. Smth else that I find quite funny as well: ppl from the US equating “America” with “USA” as if they are somehow more important than two literal continents
Liberal in economics and Liberal in US politics mean two very distinct and different things. It’s like the way a ‘runner’ in a race is different to a ‘runner’ in a restaurant. They’re not the same things at all.
Economic liberalism means free trade and deregulation. If it makes money, it’s good. Neoliberalism is also referred to as ‘hypercapitalism’.
‘Liberal’ in US politics means ‘left of the GOP’ and is its own unique thing. It bears no relation to economic liberalism at all. The two may coincide but they’re independent of one another.
OP’s account is full of this type of half thought out, zero context, communist propaganda memes. I don’t even disagree with the premise of most of them in general, but it’s just turning this place into an auth-left Facebook.
Oh no! Not the “auth-left.” They may make corporations exist for the good of the people instead of profit.
*exist for the good of those in power. I really don’t see the value of concentrating power into a single point of failure.
Neither do most Communists, to be fair.
Yeah see, these are the lazy non evidence driven meme statements I’m talking about which Facebook is commonly criticized for
You’re so right lol. Most of these memes are completely brain dead.
Did that policy become law?
Which policy is that? Does it have a built in way to prevent accumlation of wealth? Maybe a death tax? Maybe some nationalizing of industry’s? No? Then it sounds like you are the one out of touch.
It’s just socialism for companies
not rly, it’s capitalism working as intended
I guess I forgot the /s What I meant was capitalist socialism
It’s imperialism to be precise, the highest stage of capitalism which see the merging of monopolies and state power, resulting in things like widespread corruption (lobbying), state waging wars in the interest of big capital, policies being subordinate to the stonks line and of course bailing out corpos which are “too big to fail”.
In a nutshell, it’s just natural development of capitalism.
I guess you could say it’s “corporate welfare” but the word “socialism” is not correct and shouldn’t be used here.
reagan’s a liberal?
He’s a neoliberal which is an economic stance that promotes deregulation of the markets and support of free trade along with government austerity.
People upvoting this do not understand geopolitics.
People who think this is geopolitical don’t know what “geo” means
What definition of liberal are you using here?
the one of (neo)liberalism. An economic state which is accepted and perpetuated by virtually all sides of the culture war
Historically by the right wing then.
Historically by both, the democrats just give out a couple treats now and then to make themselves look progressive
Edit: unless of course you’re using the actual definitions of left and right wing, but most people in this thread aren’t so forgive me if I’m mistaken
While this is definitely a true flow chart, the headline is misguided. Considering the only difference between the right and left when it comes to corporations is how honest they are about their policies. The right says they will do it, the left says they won’t, and then they both do exactly the same shit.
that’s not a left/right divide. it’s a right/further right divide. And even staunch conservatives follow (neo)liberal economics.
This is a flow chart from a leftists/socialist perspective
This is a flow chart from a leftist/socialist perspective
Then you have socialist governments wasting billions of the tax payer money to rescue shitty state owned companies. Look at Portugal with TAP and Efacec. Socialist party, billions of the tax payer money going down the drain. Those companies were partially or privately owned and the socialist party only rescued it to save these private owners investments.
Liberal economics would actually be telling them to go fuck themselves and give no money to them.
Socialism is defined as the working people either directly owning or democratically controlling the economy. I don’t see how that is the case in any “socialist” country at the moment (speaking of the nordic ones, Portugal, China etc)
Lmao you are literally the ‘but that’s not real socialism/communism’ meme right now 🤣
Imma bring up an example to maybe explain it easier. North Korea calls itself the “Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea”. In their official understanding/rhetoric they have a democracy in which the administration acts in the interest of the people instead of a few bureaucratic elites. In reality it’s the other way around. Now, if someone said “Look at what democracy does to a country!!11!”, would you not object?
God damn that is an excellent, concise refutation of his tired point. Definitely going to borrow that argument in the future
yeah… the cognitive dissonance hurts
This comment will not go down well here, this site leans left pretty heavily and it’s easy to upset them lol
While this is true, most left leaning people still know how economy works and why it should keep on working.
Germany is considered heavily left leaning nowadays. Especially in comparison to countries like the US. But that doesn’t mean that Germans are suddenly borderline communist.
lol, who in their right mind considers germany as left leaning?
I am German. And Bernie sanders was even more konservative than us.
Probably, but considering Germany as a left-leaning country is still rich.
It sounds more like your perception of Germany is a little displaced from reality.
Liberal economics be like let’s get rid of capitalism
No, those are socialist economics.
To-may-to to-mah-to
Yeah that’s the scam. Not actually liberal
It appears you havent read your own link there.
I don’t know if I can be clearer than it is. It’s very obvious that capitalism is not compatible with liberalism. Conservative capitalists try to use terms like “economic liberalism” with results showing the opposite
Liberals espouse various views … but generally support private property, market economies, … economic and political freedom …
and when we click on “economic freedom”:
One approach to economic freedom comes from the liberal tradition emphasizing free markets, free trade, and private property under free enterprise.
The commenter suggesting you should read your own links was right…
“liberal economics” ? Seriously? This flowchart describes every POS robber baron capitalist for the last several centuries.
Economic liberalism is the economic theory of both American parties. Idk how it came to be applied to only the democratic party but that’s incorrect. OP is presumably critiquing economic liberalism from a leftist perspective, of which the Democrats are not
Right?! This is gaslighting pure and simple. Trump gave tax breaks to his corporate cronies on the backs of the poor and middle class. Was Trump a liberal? How about Bush? Clinton (who was a Democrat) made substantial strides toward fixing the economy. But I guess he was a conservative? Idiots don’t know the meanings of words. Next you’ll tell us that socialism and communism are both the same thing and what liberals want for the country.
Once again, I blame the Chicago school of economics. Fuck that economic theory. It’s exactly why we have the mega corporations of today, it’s entire purpose was to neuter the Sherman antitrust act after Roosevelt’s crusade against the trusts.
the chicago school is just a natural development of capitalism. In competition instead of cooperation, the winner absorbs the looser and cetralizes production more and more into oligopolies. Even if you turned back the time before the era of “crony/coorperate capitalism” it would take but a bit of time to get back to the state we are in right now…
Now I must ask, who are you implying is giving money for free to investors?
Because that’s not how economy works.
sir, this is a
Wendiesmeme. In the end it boils down to the capitalist goverments bayling out those who don’t need it (billionaires and millionaires) and giving credit for virtually nothing. Ofc it’s a simplification since this is a meme, not a chart for econ classBut that’s how capitalism works. You invest your money into something instead of using it on yourself.
And in exchange for the risk taking, because each investment is a huge risk, you become (in case of stocks) a shareholder. And a as a shareholder and risk taker, you get compensated for your risk taking with dividends.
Why invest your own cash into something and take a risk without getting something in exchange? That would be considered stupid.
I invested into Wirecard back then and guess where the money went… Investments are bound to risk. And taking a risk must be rewarded.
Investments are bound to risk. And taking a risk must be rewarded.
Err, no. Risk taking could be rewarding, but it inherently should not be guaranteed to be.
And it is not. Sometimes your investment looses a lot of worth if the companies value falls.
Bought Amazon stocks at the wrong time and lost 40% of value 3 months later. Climbed back to 15% loss.
It definitely is not risk free. Not even the biggest, most stable companies are safe from risk.
and I’m just supposed to give a fuck?
you have to do zero real work to get profits that way. The profits you are getting are just a share of the wealth the workers of the company produce. There is no such thing as passive income, the money is always taken from working people. The really rich people take 0 risk. The instant they start making serious losses banks and goverments step in and give them taxpayers money.
Also: to get relevant income that way you already need to have a lot of money, which you either get by inheritance or exploiting others. Either way you had to do zero real work yourself. (and no, just shoving capital around is not real work)
Well, most of what you state here is wrong.
People like you never analysed a company. Looked into the paperwork.
I am working 8 hours a day and 2 more hours, I take my time to look into companies to invest my hard earned money.
I am by far not rich. It I can tell you, that the more money you have to manage, the harder it gets.
No human on this earth, except trust fund babies, who just throw away their inheritance without investing, are living off their money without personal time investment and hard work.
It just doesn’t work the way you imagine it.
The moment the government intervened with Tax payer money, they usually ask for dividends as well, or another kind of favour. Nothing comes for free.
real work means creating value/efficiency/services where there was none before and not researching how you can syphon off that value in the best way
But your investment can fund this creation of value. And that’s how economy works.
The research and identification of where value can be expected with proper funding is simply a part of finding what will work best.
And it is only reasonable to find the things that will work out best at first.
One step after another. That’s how progress works.
I believe that’s how it works, but I just don’t understand how that makes any sense. They’re just playing with numbers in the air, making a line diagraph go up and down… I just don’t get it.
The “line diagraph” represents real physical things that you can eat or sleep in or wear.
So they make the worth of that different? People give money so the worth of those things change? Who decides what worth is? What am I missing?
Well. It’s not that difficult.
You can either invest into materials (oil, Gold, Uranium, Silver,… literally any thing)
Or stocks. Shares of a company.
And of course there are derivates like etf (the only reasonable Derivate). And there is the rest which is basically gambling.
The easiest to understand is Material investments. Let’s take a look into Uranium: Uranium is mined in Uranium Mines. And specialised companies are processing it and storing it. They are basically the vendor to power plants.
Now these vendors allow you to invest in Uranium as well. You can literally buy Uranium and the company selling it to you will store it for you. You receive a certificate of ownership.
Now if you predict, that more and more nuclear plants will be build in the future, this means that there will be higher demand. If you start buying uranium and you refuse to sell it, then supply decreases while demand increases. This means power plant companies will need to offer more money for Uranium. They will need to eventually rise their offer to your price. This means the graph climbs up. Unfortunately there were already many people much earlier having the idea to invest into uranium. So investing now might be too late.
It is basically the same what happened with graphics cards.
Stocks work very similar. But I cannot explain you everything. Eventually you will have to do research yourself. Thanks to the internet, us normal people are empowered to invest in the same way as expert economists would. Just do your research, you will have to read a lot about it. Nothing comes for free. A good start is always YouTube videos. There are some rly good explanations out there. Eventually you will need to start reading further into the subject. Thankfully the internet has tons of stuff about it as well.
Nothing should stop you at this point. Simply start investing 2 hours each week into learning about the stock market and what all the terms mean.
This is of course no financial advice. I just advice you to get some knowledge about the workings of the stock market.
Interesting, you made me understand it better! Not planning on investing though…
Now I must ask, who are you implying is giving money for free to investors? Because that’s not how economy works.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/448336-did-the-rich-get-all-of-trumps-tax-cuts/
Whether the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) disproportionately helped the rich may be 2020’s biggest political issue. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin claims that it benefited most Americans. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) calls it a massive giveaway to the rich.
First off, there was no money given. You are speaking about tax cuts.
And in the same article you linked, it is not clarified if the rich actually profited more from it/ made better use of the tax cuts. The article claims that the analysts are wrong. And that’s it.
Massive Tax cuts is not giving money to the rich?
No, tax cuts are applying to every citizen. Tax cuts for companies are something else.
How many millions of dollars in tax cuts did you get this year, huh?
Wake up.
There’s 0 real economists who hold anything close to these views. What a stupid take. Before you downvote, I ask that you find a single source that contradicts my claim. Since all liberal economics is like that, it should be easy, right?
Sure, real economists don’t explicitly hold those views. But the kinds of metrics and models liberal economists are fond of using basically lead to that flowchart.
Doesn’t matter what academics think or teach when this is what happens in the real world
Examples? I would love some free billions!
Well you need to start with a bunch of billions and some billionaire friends.
Were you not alive during the 2008 global financial meltdown? Where the entire world had to subsidize the 1% because the banks they own sold garbage mortgages?
What about more recently with the bank runs that we had a month or so ago? The fed implented a new “insurance warranty” to make banks whole again “without using tax payer funds” but we both know that’s a load of bullshit…
Now we have this never ending inflation, interest rates only going up for who knows how long… Literally siphoning your money from whatever savings you have left and if you’re already broke, they are taking away any buying power you had and taking it down to nothing…
So yea, fuck whatever bullshit economic theory or whatever academic bullshit you are talking about, regardless of whatever “politics” it’s tagged under… Its the 1% snatching away any and all power that the people accumulated over this covid recovery (strong labour market, practically 0 interest during peak covid, work from home, etc)
Thanks for listening to my Ted talk…
*a word
Economists may not be like that, but politicians are, and they’re the ones that run the economy.
Sure, but that’s not what the post is about.
It seem to me like the intention was to say the economics practiced by liberals, not the beliefs of liberal economists. It’s phrased ambiguously, but I prefer to interpret things generously.
