I wanted to touch on this point. Based on a lot of the rhetoric floating around, including the rhetoric in this letter, it really seems like that is the deal that is being offered. Wealth/comfort transfer from the (white) middle class to the intersectional alliance.

I don't think it is a big secret that both political parties cater primarily to wealthy elites. It really seems like the Democratic Party is telling this intersectional alliance we will give you guys what is left of the (white) middle class as long as you leave the elites and their wealth alone.

I mean look at everyone being affected by this movement. It is all middle class. The wealthy are mostly benefiting from it. Does anyone think for a second that housing/zoning/schooling reform Biden is talking about is going to touch elite neighborhoods?

Maybe it is possible to design a better society where actually more wealth is created and shared equally, and maybe it isn't. I really don't know. But based on a lot of the rhetoric of this movement and the signaling by the Democratic Party, this doesn't even seem to be the plan right now.

You mean neo liberal corporate dems ?

If so, yeah. Obviously. But they're not actually liberals, they're conservatives who pretend.

To have a better society where wealth is shared in a reasonable manner requires middle class jobs and pro labor laws/regulations. Obama didn't provide that and neither will Biden.

That being said, the proposed law is asking that 20% of new construction be affordable housing. That's a much less destructive approach then taking an established middle class neighborhood and building a section 8 high rise in the middle of it. As always the details are what matter.

And as always there will be winners and losers. Property values can go down for any number of reasons. I just can't see this really effecting already established wealthy towns though. They just won't build.

But again, odds of this happening are less than zero but not by much.

no I mean suburban liberals that drive a Prius and watch MSNBC. the corporate Dems dont give a ****. they send their kids to private schools. but if you think the white suburbs with their high property values, brand new shiny school, and .01% minority population are gonna open enrollment for the kids that live arcross the river in the city then you dont know a thing about liberals.

I always distinguish between progressive and 'other'.
The upper middle class libs are just fashionistas.

I live in a middle of the road suburb and there are lots of Trump voters in our economic class. Not many limousine liberals. The women or gays or poc may vote Dem because of identity politics but they aren't necessarily progressive at all.

So yeah, what you're saying makes sense to me.

The Democratic party is the party of the ten percent, the GOP the party of the 1% as Tom Hartman likes to say. Maybe it's not 10% anymore maybe it's 5.

This is actually true, and is one of the principal weakness that the Democrats have. They represent the complacent upper middle class that wants to placate its conscience with respect to the lifestyle choices it has made.

Section 8 houses are not built together. Those are public housing, different program. Section 8 opens housing on the general market. So, how do you keep them out (even though you have disabled and older white folks on section 8)? Make the rents too high.

We have integrated several neighborhoods, but Medina (where Bill Gates lives) seems to be elusive for some odd reason.

Interesting article on Seattle area diversity in schools:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...e-to-find-out/

Got it, Section 8 = vouchers.

I think Biden/Booker are proposing 20% of new development is offered at lower than market prices for lower income families.

And zoning changes would allow more dwelling units.

Pretty right on imo at least for the most part. The Elem school where I own a place here has an invisible force field around it that's probably more secure than FortKnox Pretty much everyone will jump thru their a-holes to claim how not-racist they are until someone brings up widening the area for kids to go their--then **** tightens up real quick. If anything they're usually trying to make it smaller--our property values!! lol

This is why Biden and the neo libs are twits.

If you provide living wage jobs to anyone who wants to work (government can employ people as necessary) and provide citizens with health care and housing and food as a right you then eliminate poverty and allow people to work on improving their social standing.

Then people can earn their way into better neighborhoods or just be happy and get by without suffering the effects of intense poverty.

But you know...that might drive wages up and we can't have that.

there is an easy fix to this. open a business. pay higher wages. and bingo. see how easy that is. oh wait. you cant afford food stamps you say. well maybe someone else will open a business and not pay higher wages and nothing changes. you see people can talk and make ideas all they want. but you need someone to put those ideqas into action. maybe lebron james. oh no he wont even put black lives matter on his jersey. starting to see the cracks. uh oh

There's no way the govt can handle doing all that **** and not **** it up into a disaster. This is why scrapping everything and just putting in UBI + single payer is more realistic. No administrative bloat/mismanagement.

Yeah, except me paying higher wages doesn't change an entire system.

You're not very bright, are you ?

You're not wrong.

But that bloat has made people like McConnel and Pelosi very rich.
I don't think it's going away any time soon.

School integration is fought against tooth and nail by basically everyone. Busing was okay in the north for white kids until they started putting black kids on the buses to predominantly white schools. Then suddenly "neighborhood control" and "community bonds" became rallying cries of the NIMBY liberals.*

There are some true believers who will put their own kids into integrated schools but history suggests they are very much a tiny minority.

*To be fair, to my surprise when I found out, many black American leaders themselves are anti-busing, at least in NYC and DC. They often say they want black children to retain black culture and prove that one can succeed growing up black without being whitewashed (they would never use this word, but in effect this is what they're saying) by, for example, private boarding schools (who are all trying VERY hard to fight for the best black scholarship students.)

In the past many busing schemes had kids on the bus 2-3 hours a day. That's a serious cost too.

LeBron started a school and is putting tons of kids thru college. Proly not the best example.

Sure.
My observation in life is people are happy among their own kind. Whatever that 'kind' may be. In a poker forum, class, race, job interests etc. Forcing people together may work but odds are it will cause more problems than it solves.

And I remember when Affirmative Action was big and even when all the promotions where going to women. It always stained any real achievement the person had because everyone said they got the job because of....fill in the blank.

That's why I think providing the structure for a large and ever expanding middle class solves most of our problems. Then a person achieves what they achieve and no one can doubt it.

Shrinking the middle class as we're doing now is just depressing.
Especially when you take our military spending and war debt into account. ugh.

Channelle Helms 10 requests resonate more powerfully now than they did three years ago
https://allthatsinteresting.com/chan...k-lives-matter

Sounds fair and reasonable.

Bump



So in Seattle area last night BLM protesters went through a residential area demanding homeowners abandon their houses and give them to black people. I am presuming most of the wokesters sympathize with this behavior, as long as it is someone else being harassed, but would never dream of giving up their houses.

Scoured the DailyMail and not a word on this.

It is great that you use your thread about white people helping stop systemic racism to stump hard for gentrification.

Saw this yesterday. Pretty shocked it took kel so long to post it.

Pardon Mr. Frederick Douglass' politically incorrect language but he thought white middle class should do nothing.

Well Mr. Douglass didn't get his wish, considering they instituted Jim Crow, which was far far worse than doing nothing.