Tag Archives: Populism

For some reason in this time of crisis both foreign and domestic, I feel the need to remind Angrybear readers of a very simple stylized fact: If the income tax is constitutional and the top rate is less than 69% then non-incumbent Democratic candidates for President have won if and only if they promise to increase taxes on the rich and cut taxes for everyone else. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden did that (and Obama and Biden actually kept...

At the Battle of Ideas last Saturday, a panel on "populism" spent an hour and a half discussing everything except economics. Sherelle Jacobs of the Telegraph called for the Tory party to replace what she called a "twisted morality of sacrifice and dependency" with the "Judaeo-Christian" values of thrift and personal responsibility. And when a brave audience member asked "shouldn't we be discussing economics?" Tom Slater of Spiked brushed him off and carried on talking about cultural issues....

The Argentinean primary elections, which are very peculiar and take place all at once with all parties, were last Sunday. The primaries made some sense when the Peronist party was all divided and that allowed the main candidate to proceed, but with the move of Cristina Kirchner to the vice-presidential spot next to Alberto Fernández, and the unification of a good part of Peronism (in particular Sergio Massa), the primaries become essentially an anticipated election. And Peronism won...

I think this article is partially true as an articulation of one factor in a complex and emergent challenge. It is from a conservative think tank and was published in Foreign Policy (CFR organ behind a paywall). My take is as a have been saying, following Alexander Dugin. The underlying dynamic of the 19th century was socialism-capitalism and its political manifestation as communism-fascism versus liberalism. The fundamental dynamic in the early 21st century is the historical dialectic...

The European Parliament elections start today and finish at the weekend (May 23-26). The Europe Elects site provides updated information about the opinion polls and seat projections, although given the disastrous showing of the polls in last Saturday’s Australian federal election, one should not take the polling results too seriously. But it is clear that there is an upsurge in the so-called populist parties of the Right at the expense of the traditional core political movements...

Perhaps worth reposting what I said about Russiagate, now that the Mueller Report led to no additional indictments and validated the No Collusion slogan we're going to hear for the next year and a half. Just a brief note on the whole firing of Comey scandal that is still unfolding, and the incredible degree of anxiety on the left, which somehow thinks this means that there is a 'pee' tape and that Trump will be eventually impeached (here, for example; too many of these). This is at least...

  Cartoonish figures... and Disney toons too With the incoming inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the United States and the two largest countries in the Latin American region will have what the press has more or less universally and uncritically referred to as populist leaders in power. It has been very common in the press to compare Trump and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) as right and left-wing populists. And although the term has not been applied as often to Bolsonaro,...

POTUS "discovers" that international conflict (igniting nationalism, jingoism and xenophobia) can increase national unity and reduce divisiveness by focusing national attention on a common external foe or threat.Sputnik InternationalUS-China Trade War Can Strengthen National Unity, Trump SaysSee alsoNATO preparing color revolution in BelarusSouthFront EX-NATO GENERAL SECRETARY SAYS US-LED MILITARY BLOC WOULD LIKE TO SEE UKRAINE-STYLE CHANGES IN BELARUSSee alsoSputnik InternationalLarry King...

The Iraq war? An honest mistake. The bailouts of criminal bankers in 2008? Unfair, but necessary. This is how they see things and it makes people apoplectic. In the face of a booming stock market and a grotesquely lopsided economic “recovery” during which the most wealthy members of society gained share from the bailouts, people remain angry and they have every right to be. The U.S. is not a free market economy, but a kakistocracy in which the “elites” have placed themselves above the law...

Should read. Goebbels present Nazism as a political form that combines nationalism, socialism, populism, and progressivism, and is opposed to internationalism, bourgeois liberalism, and capitalism, which Goebbels equates with "international Jewry."Grasping RealityJoseph Goebbels (1932): Those Damned Nazis!: Weekend ReadingBrad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley