wes.whitman's blog

Bernie Sanders opposes getting rid of the filibuster or changing Senate processes to be more democratic. Why? Likely because his support for the $15/hour minimum wage is just virtue signalling. Doubling the minimum wage over night would displace a lot of people. Smaller businesses with budget constraints would lay off half of their current employees to make up the difference, while larger companies with more resources would double down on automation, replacing human labor with robots/computers/algorithms.

Single-Payer isn’t the only possible healthcare reform. My preferred solution would be something like this: (1) use tax incentives to encourage doctor’s offices to switch to a direct primary care model, which would greatly reduce cost [i.e.

I'm starting to really like John Rawls. His idea of "property-owning democracy" (republican distributism) as the only just alternative to socialism is quite interesting.

This is an excellent work. A series of 4 short articles written by Noel Skelton in 1923/1924.

This shows a living conservatism that evolved with the times, making improvements upon standard traditional conservatism while retaining its traditional values. First and foremost, Skelter embraced universal suffrage and democracy, making him a partisan of modern liberal democracy. Traditional conservatives did not tend to be too fond of democracy, remaining either neutral or skeptical of democracy. Skelter fully embraced republicanism as a conservative.

Today's headlines demonstrate that liberals and social democrats can also be economically illiterate idiots. Two states just passed laws to double their minimum wage. Doubling the minimum wage overnight is going to cause a shock to the system and cause tons of people to be displaced. Also, we might expect to see the absurdity of two-way migration, as jobs leave as companies move to states where they can pay lower wages and workers migrate to seek higher wages in these states (but can't find jobs after moving).

Wrong belief is sinful and is a personal fault. It is sin because "ideas have consequences" and bad belief leads to bad behavior.

Social democracy is an American tradition. If you hate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her views, you would have hated every single one of America's Founding Fathers too!

Progressive taxation was supported by the Founding Fathers for a good reason.

Neoliberalism is a lot like socialism/communism. It's a broad term that covers a lot of extremely different ideologies, some better and some worse. "A Neoliberal's Manifesto" is a lot like "The Communist Manifesto." When I read it, there's a lot that I disagree with but there's also a lot that I agree with. Overall, the ideology is flawed, but it makes many valid points.

The more you are informed and educated about the facts and the evidence, the more your views will align center-left. Not with the radical left, not with marxists and anarchists, but with social democrats, German neoliberals, and proponents of the "open society." It Is a fact that conservatives and right-wingers are generally uninformed about the matters on which they have the strongest opinions.