Do the Democrats

[tradeunionsupporter]

Do the Democrats just support a Progressive Income Tax and Welfare and Universal Healthcare to make it seem like they are a Working Class party to keep the Working Class from revolting against the Capitalist system to make the Workers think they are supporting Income Equality and stopping the Rich/Wealthy from having too much and to stop a Revolution from happening ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Marxism


Argument For


The U.S. and many other capitalist countries institute a progressive tax due to the nature of income inequality that usually happens in a system of winners and losers. To prevent the rich from becoming too wealthy and owning too much in the system a progressive tax redistributes wealth to prevent this income gap. A progressive tax system also believes that the rich should pay more because they tend to have more sway in the political system than the poor, and should thus pay for this privilege.


http://www.ehow.com/about_5475898_progressive-taxation-fair.html

[Dumb]

It's hard for me to say that the Democrats even support that much. They've helped build one of the flattest, most regressive taxing schemes in the modern industrialised world, and their universal health care reforms leave in place the most right-wing health care system in said industrialised world.

[thesadmafioso]

Yes, every week the Democrats hold a secret meeting where they discuss how better to oppress the working class through progressive tax policy. Republicans attend the meeting too, and everyone just laughs about how much fun it is to destroy the working class together in their grand political conspiracy.

[Dumb]

More to the point, the Democrats pay lip service towards progressive taxation and universal health care so that they can win the working-class votes necessary to enact a center-right agenda.

[eric922]

The Democratic Party is simply the nicer wing of the Corporate Party, which really rules America. America would be much better off if Kucinich, Sanders, Weiner,Grayson, and other people who actually care about the working class,left the dems and formed their own party

[Dumb]

I'm personally not sold on Kucinich, Sanders, Weiner, Grayson, etc. on an ideological basis. However, you can at least count on them to give a damn about working-class issues, even if their approach is hardly the revolutionary one that most of us on this site support.

[tachosomoza]

I'm personally not sold on Kucinich, Sanders, Weiner, Grayson, etc. on an ideological basis. However, you can at least count on them to give a damn about working-class issues, even if their approach is hardly the revolutionary one that most of us on this site support.

Well, if they took our approach, they wouldn't be allowed to hold office in this fascist country. Radical change doesn't come from inside the establishment.

[Revolution starts with U]

They kind of have to be dems... or else they couldn't get the funding for their campaigns. It's a vicous cycle in a capitalist democracy.

[Dumb]

Well, if they took our approach, they wouldn't be allowed to hold office in this fascist country. Radical change doesn't come from inside the establishment.

Agreed - to their credit, they're about as good as it gets within the establishment. I'd rather they weren't within the establishment, though...but hey, to each one's own.

[eric922]

Agreed - to their credit, they're about as good as it gets within the establishment. I'd rather they weren't within the establishment, though...but hey, to each one's own. They probably think that can do more good within the establishment than outside it. To their credit they have instituted a few meaningful reforms, but they don't go nearly far enough.

[Bardo]

I consider the Dems and Reps to be different factions of the same party. The Dems pander to a left wing base and the Reps a right wing base. Different politicians have different opinions but in practice there's really not a major difference between the two parties.

[Tim Finnegan]

I consider the Dems and Reps to be different factions of the same party.
This is a claim that gets thrown around a lot, but I'm not sure that I understand it. What definition of "party" are we using, exactly, for this to be anything more than a rhetorical flourish? Presumably it's not merely a comment on the fact that they are both fundamentally bourgeois parties, because the same could be said of, for example, the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties in the United Kingdom, but nobody ever makes that sort of explicit claim about them.

[Dumb]

This is a claim that gets thrown around a lot, but I'm not sure that I understand it. What exact definition of "party" are we using, here, for this to be anything more than a rhetorical flourish?

It means that, regardless of their stated platforms, Democrats and Republicans end up working together to advance the same right-wing agenda whenever they get to the point of actually having to govern. Rather than just being bourgeois parties, they're bourgeois parties that frequently aid one another in passing that same agenda. (E.g. Democrats when Bush wanted to cut taxes and go to war).