So, what's the solution to prevent such escalations? As per the discussion, there are at least some hints that some countries are heading in that direction again.
Mark Blyth has been trying to explain this situation ever since his warning about economic policy leading to a rise of populism, "Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea"[1]. For a very good overview of the problem - and some suggestions on how to fix it - see this[2] recent talk.
Briefly, the political situation can be fixed quickly if-and-only-if the actual needs of the working classes are actually addressed. That means e.g. some type of single payer healthcare and paying off the student loan burden.
While I'm not familiar with Blythe, I'd address your comment:
I certainly don't think it _helps_. Take the Keynes quote from the paper, that given an uncertain financial future people wanted "A Change", and a population that took out substantial debt and didn't leverage this effectively may be looking at a very uncertain financial future of their own.
There's also a certain similarity I can see in the psychological impact of inflation, high taxes, and high debt loads without high earning potential, in that they by their nature are difficult to overcome (and in some cases impossible to), and here I'd cite the many prior HN discussions on "the cost of being poor" to throw more wood on that fire.
Finally, they observed in the paper that much of the nazi voting came from those who had the most to loose from austerity, so the fact that student debt is tied to upper middle class doesn't seem to necessarily contradict that possibility either, even if it's within the self-selecting group of those who imposed that debt on themselves in the first place.
It's limiting who can even enter college. Blyth specifically recommends "Free College Tuition". I (perhaps unwisely) mentioned the milder goal only addressing current student debt with the goal of avoiding being dismissed as "marxism".
I strongly recommend listening to Blyth's actual explanation (in this or his other talks & publications), not my poor-quality summary.
The idea that the solution to the core problem of toxic populism just happens to be the policy prescriptions of the Bernie Sanders campaign (I say this as a Democrat!) seems like a bit of a just-so story.
Well sure, it seems dubious if you frame it chronologically like that but that's not necessarily how it happened. "The idea that the solution to the core problem of X just happens to be the prescriptions of Y" is exactly the case whenever Y is purposefully and intentionally constructed to solve the problem X.
Who's to say social democratic policies (i.e. Sanders, FDR) don't usually arise in response to the toxic populism that austerity creates because they (anti-austerity) are the natural cure? Isn't that the story behind the new deal?
Is it so hard to believe that creating an entire generation of people who will have negative net worth until they are 40 fosters resentment?
That's a tautological argument. No good-faith participant in public policy debates aims to push whole generations into debt; they simply disagree about the best way to avoid that outcome.
I don't doubt that people who believe in single payer and subsidized tuition do so because they think it's the best way to keep generations out of debt. It would be weird for them to think otherwise.
What I'm doubting is that they can evoke public policy outcomes from the 1930s as a natural experiment proving that those are the best policy interventions. I think that argument assumes a whole variety of facts not really in evidence.
>No good-faith participant in public policy debates aims to push whole generations into debt
I agree, but I don't agree that even a majority of participants in public policy debates are acting in good faith. I think it's possible, but given the results and empirical evidence we have to the contrary you should provide some evidence or argument to back up this extremely controversial claim.
I don't think they actively wish to push generations into debt like mustache-twirling cartoon villains, but I do think they are not particularly concerned with this side effect of their other policy goals which are essentially a massive transfer of wealth and power to the private sector, like, e.g. privatization of the loan industry and education.
>I think that argument assumes a whole variety of facts not really in evidence.
The original argument was made by Blyth, who is a serious academic, not me, and you haven't made any attempt to engage with him at all. The crux of the argument is that "anti-austerity is the cure to the ills of austerity" which is honestly nearly tautological because of its obvious correctness, not because of a flaw in its reasoning. It's natural to look back at similar historical situations, like a gilded age of massive inequality and the destruction of working class power preceding a depression. The only real difference between then and now is that we've chosen to call our depression a recession, and pretended there was a recovery from it instead of creating one.
> No good-faith participant in public policy debates aims to push whole generations into debt; they simply disagree about the best way to avoid that outcome.
I feel there is more disagreement about the outcome itself.
Maybe no one could wish upon others financial debt, but a lot of people question why they'd need to help others achieve financial stability.
The idea that we need to actively find ways to raise the minimum standards of living and create a financial baseline seem to me like leaning on socialist ideas.
The other side can claim that there are winners and there are losers, and that's exactly how things should be. Reward the winners, and motivate the losers to work harder, simply make sure they are allowed to compete.
It would cost a lot less to just have companies take a little more risk when hiring.
(There's nothing wrong with making higher education cost less for people that want to do it, but plenty of people are just seeking a credential they see as necessary for access to certain jobs, jobs which often don't need much of the higher education they purport to require)
The upper middle class can often avoid the worst of the debt thanks to money from mommy and daddy.
Of the ~35% of Americans who get college degrees and the debt that goes with it, the ones who end up in the most debt will overwhelmingly be those whose parents didn't save up a college fund for them - i.e. kids who came from working and lower middle classes.
Following this explanation this doesn't explain the political developments in Germany. Or perhaps it does, as the rise of right-wing politicians and extremists is still rather limited. Worrisome nevertheless.
I should mention that Blyth specifically discusses the recent German election in the above talk. He agrees that yes, the rise of extremists is still limited, but also points out the huge drop in support for traditional parties, which is also worrisome.
Why is it so hard for some to understand that eventually people get tired of the "same old same old", especially when they start thinking that things are getting worse in their day to day lives?
Of course people will be looking for some change. And if none of the established parties comes out with that real change, or no other "rational" party comes out promising that change, then that leaves the extremists/authoritarians, so they'll go for those.
Sometimes I'm amazed at just how blind some people can be at this, and think that people should (or will) always vote for the lesser evil (in the downward spiral). No, eventually people will get fed up with that, whether you like it or not. So it's important to have a real, but also rational, alternative to the slow-moving political establishment.
It would be best if the main political parties would pre-empt this by actually addressing people's latest concerns and being in tune with what those concerns are, but often they get too comfortable with the power and the relationships they have at the top, so it almost comes natural to them not to do that.
We need single payer healthcare to avoid another Nazi party and Holocaust.
This is the logic of what you're saying, right? Will single payer be enough or is it just the start of the policy requirements to avoid another Nazi party?
Edit: people are voting me down but his last paragraph almost says this straight out. It is such a wild idea that without socialist policies were headed for nazis again is crazy.
This comment violates the site guideline that asks you to "please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize". Would you please do a better job of following the rules here?
I think you simply have to borrow money, or pay of debts with inflation. From what I've read the much maligned inflation policy of the weimar republic was actually fairly successful, despite the imagery of people buying bread with buckets of money.
Greece could not do this because they were in the Euro area, and had not control over their own money. It seems Iceland which controlled their own currency handled the economic problems much better. Although it is hard to compare as Iceland is a pretty well run country, while Greece struggles with basic stuff like simply collecting taxes.
The best is of course to have the discipline to save a lot of money in good years to spend in bad years. For my native Norway this was the situation which is why we basically didn't feel the 2008 downturn at all. We had save a lot of oil money over many years and just spent more of it.
The US too weathered the storm not too badly through the expansionary policies of Obama. While the austerity measures in Europe totally screwed up several economies.
Austerity causes wage repression in the following ways:
* Cuts in benefits make people more reliant upon income from their jobs and give them less leverage.
* Cuts to the public sector workforce increases the supply of labor. When the supply of available labor goes up, wages come down.
* Cuts to public sector wages reduces competition from the public sector, so wages in the private sector come down too.
The strongest effect of this can be seen today in Greece where wages fell ~20%.
In Weimar, Bruning actually also issued a direct order to suppress wages (which I'm surprised the authors didn't mention). This did not go down well.
People who have suffered from wage repression tend to look for somebody to blame. Extreme nationalism provides targets for that blame. And, the Nazis did end austerity and wages went up again, and of course they provided a scapegoat.
Weimar also violently crushed the left wing opposition (the KPD), so people were left with "centrists" vs. "the (Nazi) alternative" and of course a lot of the people who wanted "an alternative" supported the alternative that was available to them, just because it was there.
I just scanned through the paper and here's a quote:
With dashed hopes and a loss of faith in the Weimar Republic, fury and despair were channelled
into the ranks of populists and demagogues, with the Nazi party campaigning against austerity
and offering promises for a new era of prosperity.
So, it's not nationalism rather people getting angry against the government which failed them. Any party can then shape the agenda and turn it towards nationalism or a particular community while promising prosperity.
Consider old school New deal socialists or paleoconservatives. If you told those guys that honest married black men were out of work and couldn't support their families, they would be concerned. Seeing it as their duty to do something.
Compare that with Ayn Randian Libertarians who generally think that the destitute should just up and die already. And Hayekian neoliberals that think that's simply not their problem.
It's the above attitude that leads to fascism and communism. They become dominant when the social leaders abandon any sense of duty. It's very scary because that's the exact situation in the US currently.
My theory is, people want to survive, and they are selfish in order to make sure they do. They first would want to make sure their well-being. Next they would care about their family's survival. Next, their tribe's survival. How big is the tribe, is it the same village, or the same nation, or is it the same race/culture background?
And "survival" can be an abstract term. Most people in Western Europe have a warm place to sleep and enough to eat to survive. But maybe they worry about rising prices and worry if they'll have enough (if their government will have enough for them) to retire in 20-30 years. They see their neighbor who got laid off and is still looking for a job months later. Their government says they need to cut some social safety nets because of austerity, and then they hear about the government saying refugees are welcome, with money from... where?
My belief is, Angela Merkel basically became the leader of Europe and her (and her finance minister's) disastrous austerity policies lead to so much unhappiness all over Europe, even in Germany itself. As for refugees, someone who says they have no right to be in Europe should -- in my opinion -- stop calling him- or herself a human being.
Germany isn't an economic hero, it's exploiting the effects of the single currency while other countries around it are suffering economically. And this has also lead to the rise of populism all over Europe.
You've broken the request above to keep political rhetoric out of the thread. Independently of whether your point is correct or not, this has a reliably degrading effect on discussion.
By no means is it a coincidence that the flamebait bit of your comment is precisely the one other users respond to. Flames start fires. Please don't start them on HN.
> As for refugees, someone who says they have no right to be in Europe should -- in my opinion -- stop calling him- or herself a human being.
This kind of moralistic stance is part of what people drives towards populist parties: being denied even the right to hold an opinion makes people angry. We totally have the right to chose who can come in our country and under which conditions. And that applies to refugees as well. This is not a problem of begin "human" or not, it is about making decisions that will have impact for decades on the European societies.
Additionally, they are not refugees at all. By international law's definition they stop being refugees when they reach the first safe country, which for most of them is Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, or other Middle East/African country.By the time they decide to go to Europe they are just plain old immigrants, seeking for better life standard, and we should treat them as such.
So far the most reasonable approach to the refugee issue was proposed by Hungarian Prime Minister, who wants EU to help them right there, in the Middle East, instead of letting them in.
There were plenty of refugees turned away prior to WW2 who ended up in the extermination camps. This is where the 1951 international convention on refugees comes from.
Also, nobody's saying you don't have the right to hold that opinion, it's just that if you do we're going to have an extremely negative opinion of you.
Well, I'm not a law-making politician, I'm not denying anyone of anything. But it seems like a convenient deflection from self-reflection (what if what I said is right?); just be outraged and say it's my fault that people are joining populist parties.
I do agree about the impact, and at least for Germany, the half-assed way the government is handling the crisis will lead to a lot of pain and grief, on both sides (the refugees and the native population)
As the mods say, let's just stay out of the politics.
I'm a friendly man who tries to make foreigners lives in my home country better, regardless of where they come from.
A lot of what you say makes sense.
But at the end I think you get very harsh while also being partly wrong (If I read you correctly.)
You say: "As for refugees, someone who says they have no right to be in Europe should -- in my opinion -- stop calling him- or herself a human being."
As far as I'm aware nobody has the right to be in another country than those that they belong to, except when it is agreed otherwise (visas, visa free zones, international rules about refugees etc).
