dcharles
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This has exactly nothing to do with why the Confederate Constitution allowed a single presidential term of six years.
Why Did the Confederate Constitution Have a Single-Term Presidency?
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This has exactly nothing to do with why the Confederate Constitution allowed a single presidential term of six years.
I regard every one of these points as a gross misstatement of reality. But I will not get into the weeds as it's against forum rules to discuss current politics and I don't want to get into a flame war. Needless to say, the US was downgraded by the EIU in 2016, so your whole argument is nonsense.
To return to the broader conversation, the point is that the US was for many times to considered a notable exception to the tendency for presidential systems to devolve into autocracy. And the most recent rankings show that the US may not be as immune as once thought. As such, I don't think four year terms versus six year terms, or term limits, matter that much. The design flaw was being a presidential system in the first place, and the CSA is highly likely to collapse into dictatorship.
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Optical_Illusion
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Marx's position appears to have varied through his life and to be unclear even to people who are deeply immersed in Marx - "When it became clear that the conditions of the working class were not growing worse in objective terms (for example wages continued to rise and living conditions improved), it was suggested that Marx did not believe the working class would be immiserated in absolute terms but rather in relative terms i.e the worker would become more exploited. However, Neven Sesardic criticises this view on two grounds. Firstly, it is unclear if this is an empirical statement that can actually be examined, whereas absolute immiseration can be. Secondly, Sesardic argues that it is not clear Marx did mean relative immiseration; Sesardic observes that in the Communist Manifesto, Marx talks about the workers having nothing to lose but their chains, which is more in line with the view of absolute immiseration. Even by 1865 when Marx had moved towards a more scientific analysis, his work still implied absolute immiseration - in the 1865 paper "Value, Price and Profit", read at the International Workers' Association, Marx states that capitalism will drive down the average standard of wages."
A lack of scholarly rigor and competence even on the most basic and important points of his work is nothing unusual to Marx (and mostly why he appears to have been disregarded from his field very shortly after his activity and by his death, with his appeal to political revolutionaries saving his bacon). So for practical purposes would fall to sympathy to how "charitably" he is to be interpreted.
You have to be one of the very few who didn't vote for him in 2016 who will vote for him in 2020. At the risk of debating current politics do you think he was impeached because of the Steele Dossier? Was the Mueller Report based on the Steele Dossier? Was the FBI looking at Carter Page because of Trump? Did the FBI bug Trump Tower? Who said the 2016 Election was rigged? Who said the 2020 Election will be rigged? Who said they would accept foreign help in an election? Who publicly called for foreign Governments to investigate his political opponents? And who has called his political opponents traitors?
Guys, if you don't want to be kicked, I suggest you move this to chat.
Recent statistical developments in the analysis of labor conflict actually corroborate the immiseration thesis -- the material well-being of the working class has decreased significantly in the face of the massive growth of the capitalist class in recent years, according to Regeneration Magazine: https://regenerationmag.org/the-actuality-of-marxs-immiseration-thesis-in-the-21st-century/
Marx might have been wrong on the inevitable impoverishment of the working class, but he was correct on the issue of the very disproportionate growth of the wealth of the capitalist class -- such a phenomenon increases overall inequality and further decreases the power of the working class on the ownership of the means of production. What is the point of a good raise in your wage if Bill Gates' pile increases almost tenfold in a year, to illustrate?
Also, i'd be careful in using someone such as Sesardic as a source -- he seems to openly believe in racist pseudoscience.
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The best way not to debate current politics is NOT to discuss them.
Seems like an unbiased source.
The point is that a raise in real wages allows you to have more goods and services consumption, a better standard of living and a longer, healthier life, regardless of what is happening to some billionaire you never meet.
There are lots of good arguments for restraining inequality in capitalism (excessive concentration of wealth allows undemocratic concentration of political power, concentration of wealth causes inelastic goods (like homes in major cities) to reduce the standard of living etc. But this is all an argument for adjustments to capitalism to maximize the real earnings growth of the low income, not for preventing real earnings growth of the low income because the rich get more.
Churchill said it best:
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. "
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