Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sun Oct 21, 2018 6:32 am

boglerdude wrote:
Sat Oct 20, 2018 10:34 pm
Give the folks on Skid Row UBI and it goes to the drug dealer. Thats why they're there in the first place. We need more social workers and cops before UBI.
IMO we have enough police, but we are using them inefficiently due to bad laws. Legalize and tax drugs. Modify vehicular laws and enforcement to more emulate Germany's. Those two things alone would do wonders, and taxes on American's massive drug use/enforcement costs elimination, and fines on drivers breaking the law would aid in overcoming our deficit/implementing a UBI.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by boglerdude » Sun Oct 21, 2018 9:27 pm

> I think of the resources we give to people (welfare, food stamps, disability, etc) as being "on loan" by people who loan the government money, and by expropriating resources of American tax payers. Loans need to be paid back

The Fed doesnt need to be paid back, and X% of the population will always keep savings in US bonds. So, inflation...

> Modify vehicular laws and enforcement to more emulate Germany's

Explain
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by jacksonM » Mon Oct 22, 2018 3:36 pm

I see that Spartacus wants to give all poor kids a $50k nest egg for a decent start in life https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... baby-bonds. Details about who would qualify as poor are sketchy. Sounded like race might be a factor from the article.

Probably cheaper in the long run than Kamala Harris' proposal to revoke the Trump tax cuts and give poor families $600/month.

But maybe we will see a Booker/Harris ticket and people can vote for both.

In the meantime we have the caravan coming up from South America to join the socialist revolution.

We live in interesting times.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by Kriegsspiel » Mon Oct 22, 2018 4:45 pm

boglerdude wrote:
Sun Oct 21, 2018 9:27 pm
> I think of the resources we give to people (welfare, food stamps, disability, etc) as being "on loan" by people who loan the government money, and by expropriating resources of American tax payers. Loans need to be paid back

The Fed doesnt need to be paid back, and X% of the population will always keep savings in US bonds. So, inflation...
As far as I understand it, yea. Debt that is "bought" by the Fed can be inflated away. Debt bought by Americans, Chinese, etc, needs to be paid back with inflated dollars or higher taxes at some point.
> Modify vehicular laws and enforcement to more emulate Germany's

Explain
Speeding tickets issued by cameras and by police, highly enforced. Fines for bad driving practices (like bee bopping along in the left lane on the Autobahn). Draconian speeding and drunk driving punishments (loss of license). I guess in the context of my post it's not a huge change, but I just think they work better than ours seem to.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by Kriegsspiel » Tue Dec 04, 2018 1:49 pm

France has been adopting some of the things I said I liked. Lowering speed limits, installing labor-saving radar ticketing robots, etc.
  • On July 1, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe... [lowered] the speed limit... on secondary (country) roads by 10 km/h, decreasing the limit from 90 km/h (56 mph) to 80 km/h (50 mph)
  • At about the same time came the contracts that the government decided to write with private corporations, handing the business of the state's (plainclothes) gendarmes over to their company employees, to take over the business of the mobile radars in their shiny new fleets of vehicles. (Meanwhile, other private companies have been getting similar contracts from city governments, meaning wage earners doing mostly nothing but driving up and down the city streets, while a license plate reader decides which cars' owners will be getting automatically-generated fines.)
  • More recently, the government added more gratuitous sanctions to the driver’s license point system, which is already far more punitive than that of most European countries, not least neighboring Germany's.
  • Finally, with the announcement of the gas prise rise.
The results?








Image

The French have subsequently done what they usually do, and destroyed parts of several cities in full blown riots.

Image

Image

Image

Image

LOL. Vive le France
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by dualstow » Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:55 pm

Very sad to see Paris in such a state, again.
I do like the wings of fire on that first shot. Great photography.
But, sad.

I agree with Pug. If/when it happens here, it’s going to be scary. I wonder whom I’d want for president to meet such a challenge.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by Mountaineer » Tue Dec 04, 2018 5:41 pm

dualstow wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:55 pm
Very sad to see Paris in such a state, again.
I do like the wings of fire on that first shot. Great photography.
But, sad.

I agree with Pug. If/when it happens here, it’s going to be scary. I wonder whom I’d want for president to meet such a challenge.
Let's hope it does not become president case/primer/powder/bullet and all their various siblings. :'(
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by moda0306 » Wed Dec 05, 2018 11:17 am

MangoMan wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:38 pm
You LOL now, but when the idiot leftist protesters here start destroying our cities, it won't be nearly as amusing. The stupidest thing Macron could have done was give in to the protesters, and that's exactly what he did. What happened to never negotiate with terrorists? Now the mobs here will be emboldened by the results there. This can't end well.
People give into terrorists all the time. Neoliberal state capitalism is essentially that on an economic level. They do it cuz Profits. If you're going to do that for Profits with foreign elites & governments but have a hard-nosed approach towards your own populations, it's clear what your agenda is...

By "your" I don't mean you, but governments and elites in-general.

But there is no marginal benefit to ones-self by joining a protest. People do it as an irrational response towards a supposed problem. Responding with a police state to change already emotionally charged incentives isn't the correct one, IMO.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by Cortopassi » Wed Dec 05, 2018 12:49 pm

Why isn't it happening here on a daily basis? It should be. Pug and I, living outside Chicago, see this sort of stuff every day on the news:

http://www.fox32chicago.com/news/crime/ ... o-students

Murders dropped in Chicago from ~500 something to 400 something in 2018 (as of Oct 1). Woo Hoo.

Protests, vigils, etc happen after most, but then are forgotten as the next set of violence occurs.

For comparison we had 15 soldiers killed in Afghanistan last year.

I don't understand how anyone can live in this environment day after day and why fixing it has been completely unsuccessful. How many decades has Chicago tried to improve this? And yet it continues and there is no uprising by the people affected. You've got your Mag Mile, Gold Coast, etc, but go a few short blocks west and it is a different world and this should be priority #1. Not just policing crime, but improving the situation. I don't have the answers for sure.

Anyway, just some thoughts.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by stuper1 » Wed Dec 05, 2018 3:19 pm

It's very hard to legislate morality. Big government throws money at problems, but in ways that tend to exacerbate problems rather than helping -- for example, incentivising more births of children into homes without fathers. Hollyweird doesn't help by making morality look passe. Everyone says that more education is the answer, but it's very hard to get people to learn if they don't want to learn, or don't have two parents in the household who create a strong environment for learning.

America is a fascinating, if sad, story of how a very strong and creative country (note I avoided the word "great", because I'm not sure that's true) developed, but along the way planted the seeds for what looks to me like its own decline should things continue (the main seed being slavery, but also greed and hedonism which of course have been problems for other uber-successful nations throughout history). I guess every "great" nation eventually declines for one reason or another.

Just some random thoughts, no answers. On a personal level, Jesus is the answer for those who will really follow him, but not many will, and he even said that. The rest choose their own means of destruction, fast or slow.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by Kriegsspiel » Wed Dec 05, 2018 3:58 pm

MangoMan wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:38 pm
You LOL now, but when the idiot leftist protesters here start destroying our cities, it won't be nearly as amusing.
I takes my lulz where I can.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by dualstow » Thu Dec 06, 2018 1:48 am

Q: Popeye, what is the secret to your longevity?

Ans.:
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Wed Dec 05, 2018 3:58 pm
I takes my lulz where I can.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by Maddy » Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:56 pm

moda0306 wrote:
Wed Dec 05, 2018 11:17 am
MangoMan wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:38 pm
You LOL now, but when the idiot leftist protesters here start destroying our cities, it won't be nearly as amusing. The stupidest thing Macron could have done was give in to the protesters, and that's exactly what he did. What happened to never negotiate with terrorists? Now the mobs here will be emboldened by the results there. This can't end well.
People give into terrorists all the time. Neoliberal state capitalism is essentially that on an economic level. They do it cuz Profits. If you're going to do that for Profits with foreign elites & governments but have a hard-nosed approach towards your own populations, it's clear what your agenda is...

By "your" I don't mean you, but governments and elites in-general.

But there is no marginal benefit to ones-self by joining a protest. People do it as an irrational response towards a supposed problem. Responding with a police state to change already emotionally charged incentives isn't the correct one, IMO.
The modern phenomenon of "protesting" shouldn't be viewed as a negotiation strategy, the latter of which assumes some degree of power or influence and the intelligence to put it to good use. To the contrary, your typical protest represents the primal scream of a self-disenfranchised segment of the population that's been so coddled and catered to that they're incapable of functioning in a truly diverse world where their wants and needs are in conflict with those of the next guy. (Again I'm reminded of Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom," and his rebuke of the self-defeating habit of wasting energy thrashing about in angst over how others are limiting you rather than finding ways of getting what you want out of life despite the things you can't change.) Anybody who's spent any time with a badly socialized two-year-old can immediately relate; the strategy is one of maximum annoyance, not some kind of bargained-for exchange. At least the two-year-old wields some power by virtue of the fact that the weary parents have no choice but to deal with him. The protester, whom the rest of the world would just as soon see run over, is laughably devoid of even that bargaining chip.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by moda0306 » Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:11 pm

Maddy wrote:
Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:56 pm
moda0306 wrote:
Wed Dec 05, 2018 11:17 am
MangoMan wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:38 pm
You LOL now, but when the idiot leftist protesters here start destroying our cities, it won't be nearly as amusing. The stupidest thing Macron could have done was give in to the protesters, and that's exactly what he did. What happened to never negotiate with terrorists? Now the mobs here will be emboldened by the results there. This can't end well.
People give into terrorists all the time. Neoliberal state capitalism is essentially that on an economic level. They do it cuz Profits. If you're going to do that for Profits with foreign elites & governments but have a hard-nosed approach towards your own populations, it's clear what your agenda is...

By "your" I don't mean you, but governments and elites in-general.

But there is no marginal benefit to ones-self by joining a protest. People do it as an irrational response towards a supposed problem. Responding with a police state to change already emotionally charged incentives isn't the correct one, IMO.
The modern phenomenon of "protesting" shouldn't be viewed as a negotiation strategy, the latter of which assumes some degree of power or influence and the intelligence to put it to good use. To the contrary, your typical protest represents the primal scream of a self-disenfranchised segment of the population that's been so coddled and catered to that they're incapable of functioning in a truly diverse world where their wants and needs are in conflict with those of the next guy. (Again I'm reminded of Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom," and his rebuke of the self-defeating habit of wasting energy thrashing about in angst over how others are limiting you rather than finding ways of getting what you want out of life despite the things you can't change.) Anybody who's spent any time with a badly socialized two-year-old can immediately relate; the strategy is one of maximum annoyance, not some kind of bargained-for exchange. At least the two-year-old wields some power by virtue of the fact that the weary parents have no choice but to deal with him. The protester, whom the rest of the world would just as soon see run over, is laughably devoid of even that bargaining chip.
That's a pretty broad generalization. Does that include Tea Party Protesters? Does that include folks in Iceland who peacefully protested when their government was going to engage in a massive banking bail out?

What about other forms of gathering in the streets? Is a parade or fair more desirable because a local government wants to do it and a certain segment of the population doesn't mind streets being shut down for that purpose rather than some form of holding the powerful accountable?

Of course it's not a negotiation strategy. It's far-too decentralized for that. But it sends messages about the degree to which masses of people are willing to behave irrationally to their best interests for a given principle (same with voting). It either lends or removes legitimacy to power structures.

For someone who constantly berates a segment of political power as being so disgusting as to not even be legitimate in holding that power, you seem to have a very passive attitude towards more active forms of civic participation.

While on an individualist basis I agree with HB on protesting, the same could be said for voting. If we want to talk about entitled folks, let's look no further than the baby boomers that vote in droves to keep the massive amounts of public benefits flowing towards them, issuing nary a peep when a massive theft of the American people occurs (bank bailout), and then lecture protesters about how entitled and short sighted they are.

When a crowd drags Tim Geithner, Dick Cheney or Scott Pruitt to the bottom of a guillotine, maybe then they'd have a point. Until then, keep em coming. Fewer parades. More protests.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by Mountaineer » Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:22 pm

moda0306 wrote:
Thu Dec 06, 2018 5:11 pm
Maddy wrote:
Thu Dec 06, 2018 4:56 pm
moda0306 wrote:
Wed Dec 05, 2018 11:17 am


People give into terrorists all the time. Neoliberal state capitalism is essentially that on an economic level. They do it cuz Profits. If you're going to do that for Profits with foreign elites & governments but have a hard-nosed approach towards your own populations, it's clear what your agenda is...

By "your" I don't mean you, but governments and elites in-general.

But there is no marginal benefit to ones-self by joining a protest. People do it as an irrational response towards a supposed problem. Responding with a police state to change already emotionally charged incentives isn't the correct one, IMO.
The modern phenomenon of "protesting" shouldn't be viewed as a negotiation strategy, the latter of which assumes some degree of power or influence and the intelligence to put it to good use. To the contrary, your typical protest represents the primal scream of a self-disenfranchised segment of the population that's been so coddled and catered to that they're incapable of functioning in a truly diverse world where their wants and needs are in conflict with those of the next guy. (Again I'm reminded of Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom," and his rebuke of the self-defeating habit of wasting energy thrashing about in angst over how others are limiting you rather than finding ways of getting what you want out of life despite the things you can't change.) Anybody who's spent any time with a badly socialized two-year-old can immediately relate; the strategy is one of maximum annoyance, not some kind of bargained-for exchange. At least the two-year-old wields some power by virtue of the fact that the weary parents have no choice but to deal with him. The protester, whom the rest of the world would just as soon see run over, is laughably devoid of even that bargaining chip.
That's a pretty broad generalization. Does that include Tea Party Protesters? Does that include folks in Iceland who peacefully protested when their government was going to engage in a massive banking bail out?

What about other forms of gathering in the streets? Is a parade or fair more desirable because a local government wants to do it and a certain segment of the population doesn't mind streets being shut down for that purpose rather than some form of holding the powerful accountable?

Of course it's not a negotiation strategy. It's far-too decentralized for that. But it sends messages about the degree to which masses of people are willing to behave irrationally to their best interests for a given principle (same with voting). It either lends or removes legitimacy to power structures.

For someone who constantly berates a segment of political power as being so disgusting as to not even be legitimate in holding that power, you seem to have a very passive attitude towards more active forms of civic participation.

While on an individualist basis I agree with HB on protesting, the same could be said for voting. If we want to talk about entitled folks, let's look no further than the baby boomers that vote in droves to keep the massive amounts of public benefits flowing towards them, issuing nary a peep when a massive theft of the American people occurs (bank bailout), and then lecture protesters about how entitled and short sighted they are.

When a crowd drags Tim Geithner, Dick Cheney or Scott Pruitt to the bottom of a guillotine, maybe then they'd have a point. Until then, keep em coming. Fewer parades. More protests.
Hey, don't mess with our hog troughs! The masses are too lazy to find another. ;)
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by Xan » Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:41 am

MangoMan wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 8:58 am
The WSJ has an interesting perspective on Macron and the protesters.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macrons-wa ... 1544139254
Refreshing to see a piece calling out the practice of 50.1% dictating everything to 49.9%.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by dualstow » Fri Dec 07, 2018 12:46 pm

MangoMan wrote:
Fri Dec 07, 2018 8:58 am
The WSJ has an interesting perspective on Macron and the protesters.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macrons-wa ... 1544139254
Hey, when did you get a subscription?
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by boglerdude » Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:06 pm

"The most common explanation for France’s gilets jaunes protests against fuel-tax hikes is that they arise from too little democracy. Lower-income and rural citizens feel left behind by President Emmanuel Macron’s aggressive economic reform agenda, which ignores their interests and benefits an urban elite. The opposite is true. The protests are happening because France has too much democracy. What it’s lacking is politics.

Mr. Macron’s political movement was born of the notion that France needed to become more democratic. As a young technocrat-in-training and junior government minister, he became convinced that special interests within the traditional parties obstructed national progress.

As Economist correspondent WiseOne Pedder notes in her illuminating biography of the president, the premise is that as a numerical matter there are enough actual or potential winners from economic reform and globalization that a leader could cull those voters from the old parties and unite them under a new banner. It would then be possible to steamroll minority opposition.

Which is precisely what Mr. Macron did. It helped that his rise came in an era when French politics was becoming steadily more democratic overall.

A 2000 constitutional amendment shortened the presidential term to five years from seven—explicitly to align the presidential and legislative election calendars. This amplifies a president’s mandate (already bolstered by a runoff voting system meant to exaggerate electoral support for the eventual winner) by reducing the risk that he might have to “cohabit” with a National Assembly controlled by the opposing party. Mainstream parties have adopted the U.S. style of intraparty primary campaigning, allowing party members to pick who leads them into general elections.

The inexorable logic of all this democratization: If the rural, low-income yellow-vest protesters feel left behind, well, leave them behind. Christophe Guilluy, the geographer who coined the phrase “peripheral France” to describe this segment of the population, estimates it at about 60%. But there’s reason to suspect that’s an overcount. Most conspicuously, the far-right National Front that everyone thinks is the natural home for peripheral voters keeps losing. Marine Le Pen, the party’s presidential candidate last year, scored only 21% in the first round and 34% in the runoff against Mr. Macron.

Similar “peripheral” movements elsewhere, from the Sweden Democrats to the Alternative for Germany, also have discovered there’s a limit to their support somewhere short of one-third of the electorate. Not even Donald Trump represents a full victory of the periphery, having run two percentage points behind Hillary Clinton in the nationwide popular vote.

Yet peripheral voters still are a substantial minority. And the widespread rioting in France shows the dangers of allowing a healthy dose of democracy to transmogrify into a brutal majoritarianism. Majority rule has its place, but it’s no way to knit together a diverse society.

Those special interests Mr. Macron derided turn out to have provided ballast. A center-right Republican Party under its failed 2017 candidate, François Fillon, would have effected some labor-law and civil-service reforms for which there is now broad support, but that party’s rural base would have precluded the green-energy follies that are sinking Mr. Macron.

The other word for this is “politics,” whose practitioners delicately trade interests and strike compromises to make majority rule more palatable to the minority. Having eschewed this form of politics, and lacking any formal way to account for peripheral concerns in a constitutional system that mercilessly rewards majority rule, Mr. Macron can only flail. The fuel tax that started this mess is on hold. So may be other parts of his agenda, some of which could have enjoyed more durable support.


Do America’s coastal Democrats get the message? They believe they represent an ascendant majority, and election results in recent years suggest they may be right for now. One can sympathize with their frustration that America’s complex federal system doesn’t automatically translate an electoral majority into power where it counts in Congress or the White House. This frustration increasingly leads to rhetorical attacks on the Constitution, whose mechanisms—especially the Senate and the Electoral College—block majoritarianism and make it impossible for progressives to govern from their demographic strongholds on the coasts.

The lesson from France is that restraints on majority rule are a good thing. Democrats would do better to focus on the practice of politics rather than on constitutional re-engineering. Mr. Macron is discovering that those politicians who live by strict majoritarianism can die by the social unrest it triggers. So can their agendas."
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by dualstow » Fri Dec 21, 2018 4:55 pm

MangoMan wrote:
Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:38 pm
You LOL now, but when the <snip>
protesters here start destroying our cities, it won't be nearly as amusing.
The yellow vest protests have spread to Taiwan.
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Re: Universal Basic Income vs Universal Basic Assets

Post by moda0306 » Sun Dec 30, 2018 10:38 am

boglerdude wrote:
Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:06 pm
"The most common explanation for France’s gilets jaunes protests against fuel-tax hikes is that they arise from too little democracy. Lower-income and rural citizens feel left behind by President Emmanuel Macron’s aggressive economic reform agenda, which ignores their interests and benefits an urban elite. The opposite is true. The protests are happening because France has too much democracy. What it’s lacking is politics.

Mr. Macron’s political movement was born of the notion that France needed to become more democratic. As a young technocrat-in-training and junior government minister, he became convinced that special interests within the traditional parties obstructed national progress.

As Economist correspondent WiseOne Pedder notes in her illuminating biography of the president, the premise is that as a numerical matter there are enough actual or potential winners from economic reform and globalization that a leader could cull those voters from the old parties and unite them under a new banner. It would then be possible to steamroll minority opposition.

Which is precisely what Mr. Macron did. It helped that his rise came in an era when French politics was becoming steadily more democratic overall.

A 2000 constitutional amendment shortened the presidential term to five years from seven—explicitly to align the presidential and legislative election calendars. This amplifies a president’s mandate (already bolstered by a runoff voting system meant to exaggerate electoral support for the eventual winner) by reducing the risk that he might have to “cohabit” with a National Assembly controlled by the opposing party. Mainstream parties have adopted the U.S. style of intraparty primary campaigning, allowing party members to pick who leads them into general elections.

The inexorable logic of all this democratization: If the rural, low-income yellow-vest protesters feel left behind, well, leave them behind. Christophe Guilluy, the geographer who coined the phrase “peripheral France” to describe this segment of the population, estimates it at about 60%. But there’s reason to suspect that’s an overcount. Most conspicuously, the far-right National Front that everyone thinks is the natural home for peripheral voters keeps losing. Marine Le Pen, the party’s presidential candidate last year, scored only 21% in the first round and 34% in the runoff against Mr. Macron.

Similar “peripheral” movements elsewhere, from the Sweden Democrats to the Alternative for Germany, also have discovered there’s a limit to their support somewhere short of one-third of the electorate. Not even Donald Trump represents a full victory of the periphery, having run two percentage points behind Hillary Clinton in the nationwide popular vote.

Yet peripheral voters still are a substantial minority. And the widespread rioting in France shows the dangers of allowing a healthy dose of democracy to transmogrify into a brutal majoritarianism. Majority rule has its place, but it’s no way to knit together a diverse society.

Those special interests Mr. Macron derided turn out to have provided ballast. A center-right Republican Party under its failed 2017 candidate, François Fillon, would have effected some labor-law and civil-service reforms for which there is now broad support, but that party’s rural base would have precluded the green-energy follies that are sinking Mr. Macron.

The other word for this is “politics,” whose practitioners delicately trade interests and strike compromises to make majority rule more palatable to the minority. Having eschewed this form of politics, and lacking any formal way to account for peripheral concerns in a constitutional system that mercilessly rewards majority rule, Mr. Macron can only flail. The fuel tax that started this mess is on hold. So may be other parts of his agenda, some of which could have enjoyed more durable support.


Do America’s coastal Democrats get the message? They believe they represent an ascendant majority, and election results in recent years suggest they may be right for now. One can sympathize with their frustration that America’s complex federal system doesn’t automatically translate an electoral majority into power where it counts in Congress or the White House. This frustration increasingly leads to rhetorical attacks on the Constitution, whose mechanisms—especially the Senate and the Electoral College—block majoritarianism and make it impossible for progressives to govern from their demographic strongholds on the coasts.

The lesson from France is that restraints on majority rule are a good thing. Democrats would do better to focus on the practice of politics rather than on constitutional re-engineering. Mr. Macron is discovering that those politicians who live by strict majoritarianism can die by the social unrest it triggers. So can their agendas."
These protests have massive support. This isn't about too much democracy. This is about too much neoliberal establishment politics heaping ever-lower wages on the working class, slashing wealth taxes, and using consumption taxes to pad their fiscal deficit.

This is what the protestors are mostly upset about. It's capital's intrusion into otherwise possibly democratic systems.
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