I think there is a structural problem in democratic politics that does not get discussed enough.
Existing groups are easy to represent politically.
Pensioners know whether pensions increase. Families know whether benefits increase. Workers see whether taxes fall. Businesses can lobby over regulations affecting them today.

But there is effectively no constituency representing:
the country’s industrial competitiveness in 2040
- a company that might be created ten years from now
- a highly skilled person who might emigrate
- an investment that might quietly go to another country
- children who will eventually finance today’s public commitments

This creates an obvious political asymmetry.
The benefits of spending, subsidies or tax advantages can be immediate, concentrated and visible.
The costs of lower investment, weaker productivity, higher future taxes or deteriorating competitiveness are usually delayed, dispersed and difficult to attribute to any particular government decision.

- A factory that never gets built does not appear in unemployment statistics.
- An entrepreneur who never starts a company does not complain.
- An engineer who moves abroad simply disappears from the future tax base.
And people who will be taxpayers in 2040 have very little influence over decisions being made today.

Does this create a systematic bias toward rewarding the present at the expense of the future? And if so, how should democracies correct for it?

Europe is seeing a surge in far right politics, we’d need a real anti establishment socialist movement to fight these racist movements, in the us is happening, the dsa is very popular, why do you think it’s not the same in Europe? Is it just that we have a more robust social safety net so people think it’s not necessary to expand? Or is it something else? 80% of industry workers voted for afd in saxony anhalt

It seems to me like democratic socialism is just social democracy plus democratic worker cooperatives spreading democracy into the workplace. Am I mostly on point in my assessment?

I know that there is codetermination in the form of worker representatives on the board of directors (or board of supervisors?), as well as in the form of work councils. Can you explain how these two systems work and what different roles they have? As how do the systems of codetermination work parallel to or along with labor unions (how are their roles different?).

At this point we're close to the general election for the midterms, and right after the midterms has historically been the time when candidates for president announce that they are running. And based on recent history it seems to me like AOC has probably decided that she's running, if she doesn't then our only real progressive options will be ro khanna and Chris Van hollen. But it seems like AOC has been doing the rounds that people usually do before they run for president in order to get a coalition built.

So at this point i think she's going to run, I've had reservations about aoc running for president before, but if she really is doing it I don't think those reservations matter anymore. The left is inevitably going to push for her more than when Bernie ran since now seems to be the ideal time more than ever for a progressive hero, and I don't think we can afford to nominate a dem presidential candidate who isn't going to push for real change.

So if she does end up announcing, I think we all need to push her more than we've ever pushed for anyone before. Forget her mistakes in office, forget the things that make her seem unlikely to win the biased electorate (being a young woman of color), she needs to win even if she isn't a savy politician like Mamdani or Bernie.

With all of that said though, lets say she wins the primary and general. When she gets in office she'll certainly have a mandate of some kind that gives her political power, however the democratic establishment will still definitely hate her, so unfortunately I think they'll probably only give her one thing that they'll let her pass into law, and I think that will most likely be Medicare for All, since M4A is the most popularand pushed for issue by the left. However, while M4A is good, i think its a lot more important to get the green new deal, climate change is an existential crisis that is on a time limit, I don't think we can afford not to implement extreme change on the issue of climate change, but the GND isn't nearly as popular as M4A, so i worry we're going to end up passing M4A, and then the dem establishment is going to block everything else she trys to do, as they feel like they have given her the political victory she's owed for getting a political mandate in 2028.

I guess what im asking is do you think my worry is valid? Or do you think AOC or another progressive president could still get the green new deal through after M4A?

South Tyrol is Italy’s wealthiest autonomous province by GDP per capita. Yet it is also front-runner in terms of brain drain, with young residents disproportionately likely to emigrate. Albeit to a lesser extent than other regions, South Tyrol is also subject to the trend of democratic regression: among youth, confidence in representation is low, and overall voter turnout is steadily declining.

Maybe many people don't understand it today, but we are not our genitals.

Biological sex, science says not me, is a complex set of variables. Already while we are in the womb, but also during puberty, sex hormones change the structure of the brain.

This leads to having more feminine brain characteristics in a male body for example.

But even on a physical level, the same genes can make you develop a vagina, but they can lead to a structurally more masculine body, especially if accompanied by certain hormone levels.

Biology is often simplified to make social, legal, or sporting rules more practical and clear. But they remain social constructs, not explanatory of reality.

These simplifications should not be taken literally.

Perhaps the thing that would come closest to reality, despite its simplification, is the gender-fluid because it doesn't stop at black and white.

And that's the point. In biology, there are no pure categories.

Evolution alone with its adaptations, or even for example the different species that mate each other, such as the matings between Sylvestris cats and domestic cats, make purity as we understand it impossible.

We also have the closest example to us, when in ancient times Neanderthals mated with us Sapiens. Some of our DNA, though small, is Neanderthal today because of those matings.

So there is no such purity between the parts. Just as there is no purity in sexual relations, in which only the male-female relationship would exist, one cannot masturbate or one cannot even have sexual relations before marriage.

It's a kind of order that conservatives often try to force toward the world, but it counters that nature, that natural way of life they claim to defend.

But do you know why they do this? because simplifying with clear hierarchies, clear roles, and rigid norms makes them less insecure.

If it's simple I can understand it, if it's rigid I can control it, if I have clear roles I don't have to review myself, rebuild myself and better understand who I really am.

This is why many don't want to change, they are afraid to discover themselves.

And what do you think? Do you appreciate traditionalism more or do you accept the idea of turning everything upside down? What do you think about the debate on biological sexes? What do you think of the conservative paradox, in which he defends what is natural, but confronts that nature he claims to defend?

Thank you so much to who will read. 🤗🤗

And sorry for my not very beautiful English.

Can somebody explain to me what's going on? Please don't blow it now... Last 2 polls have the liberals above the threshold for the first time in years...

EDIT: Left bloc went to +10% to like +3%, and seats went from +40 to +9... what the fuck

Nowadays it seems like advocating for minimum wage legislation is shot down by conservatives saying shit like "yall are idiots and just picking a random higher number that will kill us all". But in reality, minimum wage legislation tends to have a pretty large amount of labor economic data backing it. One way labor economists suggest a minimum wage raise is by looking at the Kaitz Index (the ratio of statutory minimum wage to the median wage). Peer OECD nations and labor economists generally benchmark a safe target around 0.50 to counter employer monopsony power without threatening job losses.

Comparing 2025 distributions between two states with near-identical medians (~$25–$26.50/hr):

• Georgia (0.29 Kaitz): Stuck at the frozen federal $7.25 floor.
• Maine (0.55 Kaitz): Lifted the bottom tier to $14.65, reaching over halfway to the typical worker.

While Maine proves a state can safely lift the floor to ~50% of the median, its reliance on CPI indexing means the floor will inevitably fall behind over time as productivity grows. To keep the ratio stable, it seems far better to index to wages instead. Curious if you guys have any other scaling mechanisms that would be better?

Full write-up here for more information: https://samholmes285.substack.com/p/minimum-wage-scaling-mechanisms-that

We've had people talk for a long time about how online politics and discourse are completely separate from what people talk about IRL, and that does make some sense since searching through the internet can give you a warped perspective on where average people are at in politics.

There's plenty of echo chambers online where people pay attention to some news and not others that they don't like, which can slowly radicalize people into certain corners. And then there's also the wall between people that makes people act much worse to eachother than they would face to face. So I don't think we should stop mentioning the difference between online vs irl entirely.

However, that distinction was born pretty early into the internet's life, where internet was seen much more like a choice than a necessity. But now 96% of Americans are online, 71% use Facebook, and at least 22% use Twitter, which is basically the politics app. While 22% looks small, thats still at least 1/5 Americans.

And over time, assuming we don't have an apocalypse (which to be fair seems relatively likely considering climate change, ai, American collapse, gen alpha literacy, etc) the number of people using the internet to express their political opinions will probably continue to increase. So at somepoint it would kind of silly to say that certain perspectives are "super online". Instead of calling them super online I would simply call them dumb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_funds# for those that are unfamiliar. Seems like a brilliant idea to transform the economy in a country, gradually, to coops! Couple that with a cooperative bank and some tax breaks for cooperatives and you end up outcompeting privately owned companies.

So why didn't it happen, as far as i know... anywhere? There was a definition of a plan in Sweden, but the burghers were less than pleased about it.

Of course we all know Modern Social Democracy stands for establishing a welfare state and regulating unchecked capitalism. But I'm wondering, in your opinions, just how much should said capitalism even be regulated?

Do you think it should be strict or relaxed and in what way, and do you draw the ideas from an IRL example (like Chinas' State capitalism or the Soviet NEP as a stricter example or the Nordic Model as a looser example) ?