Why does a state like California that has supermajorities in both houses of the legislature not have a livable wage, housing guarantees, universal healthcare, and other very progressive policies?

I keep being told it's because of the Republicans that we can't have nice things. So what gives in California? We should be overflowing with progressive policies.

alsaaas ,
@alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

The USA has a two faced one party system. Two sides of the same medal or "good cop/bad cop" if you will.

Both parties serve the rich, support imperialism and so on. In terms of economics they have the exact same function of serving the 10% over the 90%.

In terms of domestic affairs the good/bad cop dynamic really kicks in. The reps are ultraconservative, while the dems try to mud the waters with their slight progressiveness, in the end only coopting those things as not to endanger capitalism.

The best you will get from the dems is a
"I'll try to not make things worse - for now. Vote for me or my buddy elephant over there will beat you up".
(the not making things worse refers to their social policy, not their economic ones. Those will still get progressively worse for the working majority, even if it might be a bit more indirect. All the dems really are is a silken glove over the iron fist of capital).

And tbh, for everyone outside of the US it doesn't make a difference whether the bombs the policeman of the world drops wherever they please & the bags of money they send to genociders/reactionaries/faacists/terrorists have prideflag & BLM stickers on them, or not...

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Ignoring all direct political alignments, also keep in mind that such problems are never trivial.

If they were, sooner or later we would have long solved them, even with enough idiots willfully not wanting them.
But it's not easy. For example, California by and large cannot print money. And it's not like the things you mention are the only problems any modern society faces, especially on a multi-culture multi-urban multi-layer multi-level scale like the whole of California.

That is to say, if a bridge collapses, that's urgent to fix. More so, to people in the immediate area, than to work towards a living wage with a 10-15y plan on how to deeply and permanently change and transform the job market and job situation. But now some money needed for the latter went towards the former. And a host of things are "on fire" every single day. Could you still put down policy changes? Sure, but if you cannot at least start on putting them into action, there's no point. You'd just end up wording them in such a way that whoever comes after you could trivially ignore them, and you don't want that.

And then we get into issues that do not benefit from human mass survival, and in fact would often benefit from the lack of it, like climate change, ozone depletion and species extermination. Which also cost insane amounts of money to work on, and if we're being honest should take priority as they would automatically make all other considerations useless if we don't first focus everything onto such basic issues.

So in short, it's usually a combination of:

  • Lots of problems
  • All kinds of problems at the same time
  • Lots of needs-fixing-right-now problems
  • Lots of 105% prioty problems
  • Lack of resources to fix all of those above + then also add more to the pile.
hanrahan ,
@hanrahan@slrpnk.net avatar

Thr Democrats in the US are center right comppred to most European countires, the Repliblocans are .... Some sort of fucking thing that's hard to describe.

You're going to need to Vote elsewhere in droves for that..

Good luck

StalinIsMaiWaifu ,
@StalinIsMaiWaifu@lemmygrad.ml avatar

You forget that not all Democrats are progressive, especially politicians who can get an advantage (also kickbacks) from political donations

themurphy ,

You'd have to understand what they are coming from - that they have to build up from a lower standard. You can't just jump directly to super progressive without paving the road to it.

The people in the US are also more right leaning and religious in general compared to Europe. The US left is the EU right in some European countries.

California's also still part of the US, and there will always be problems that they'll share with their neighbour states.

TL;DR California DOES have nice things compared to the rest of the country, and I also believe that's because of the lack of Republicans.

ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

I have some bad news about what centrist Democrats actually want.

elbucho ,
@elbucho@lemmy.world avatar

I think you've got some very mistaken ideas about who Democrats are if you think that a supermajority of them would be totally up for implementing a slew of progressive policies. They're way more progressive than the Republican party is, for sure. But that's such an incredibly low bar that it's laughable. Democrats will do things like make Cesar Chavez day a holiday, or fly BLM and LGBTQI flags, but expecting them to actually pass legislation that addresses the root inequities in a meaningful way is an uphill battle.

ultranaut ,

The Democratic party is a big tent and California is a big state with lots of competing interests. California does tend to lead the US in adopting progressive policies but the reality is progressives are one faction among many.

lemmefixdat4u ,

They are trying. AB 2200 aims at laying the groundwork for universal healthcare. Minimum wage just went up to $16 for everyone and $20 for fast food workers. There are experiments going on in several cities with guaranteed income. But everything comes with a cost, and the state is having budget problems. There have been job losses associated with the wage increases. Employers have begun to get very picky about who they hire for even minimum wage jobs. Hours have been cut.

Even Democrats realize one state can't offer free stuff without attracting every freeloader in the country. Someone has to pay for the benefits, and if they tax those folks too heavily, they'll find another place to live. There's a real limit to how many social programs can be offered before they break the piggy bank.

novibe ,

Your conclusion makes no sense. California can’t afford the policies because states don’t print their money, the federal government does. And California doesn’t get much help from the federal government. So it’s constrained by what it can tax locally.

Those policies would work perfectly and cause no budgetary issues if the federal government paid for them by printing money.

The massive printing of money from 2008 to COVID really not make people realise that? We CAN pay for everything. The government just has to print for the money, and use it for that instead of bailing out the capitalists over and over.

Carighan ,
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

Ah yeah, that's how Zimbabwe did it, too! 💡

novibe ,

Zimbabwe is not sovereign monetarily. The US is the most monetarily sovereign country in the world. They can literally print trillions and it doesn’t do anything to inflation. It has happened multiple times already!! Like why would people deny reality?

Brkdncr ,

Orange country.

reversebananimals ,

Rule #2 - Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions.

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