How do you describe "far-right"?

Edit: the reason I ask the question is that I've noticed a trend among people from very left-leaning areas to define anyone slightly right of center as being "far-right". I've been called "far-right" because of beliefs that were typical of moderate Democrats in the 1990s.

What label that leaves for people like actual Nazis, fascists, neo-Confederates, etc, I'm not sure. Far-far-far right?

I've been called far-right simply because I praised trump for a single executive order.

The virtue signaling left has made it to the point that words don't mean what they should anymore because they crank things up to 100 every time they accuse anybody of anything.

Some views Moderate Democrats held in the 90s could be very far right, depending on the subject. Bill Clinton supported "Don't ask, don't tell" and the defense of marriage act. They were considered moderate in the 90s, but I would classify them as far right today. A moderate in the 1930s could literally have supported Fascism, and the "progressive" Woodrow Wilson supported the Klu Klux Klan. I'm not saying this applies to you, but "moderate XX years ago" is not an argument against something being far right.

Exactly. By your standards, Bill Clinton was "far right".

Excellent example.

For the record, I support civil rights protections for all humans, including gays on the basis on sexual orientation. I disagreed then with most of Bill Clinton's policies toward gay rights (I also strongly supported making marriage a uniquely civil institution vis-a-vis government recognition available to all citizens, like France).

By the way, you know who else had that exact same views on gay rights as Bill Clinton when he entered office?

Barack Obama.

Was he "far right" in 2008?

If you didn't say it was Obama and polled Democrat's based on his actions/views I'd be pretty confident they'd say "far right".

I'm pretty sure you're right, particularly if you combined the socio-cultural views from his first term and the global military actions of the second.

It's absolutely untethered how far much of the left has moved in 10-15 years. The right has also moved toward the right, but they're much less homogeneous in their beliefs.

This is reflected in polls over time from Pew and others:

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-...

(click "animate" to see to 2017).

How about the nuts between San Antonio and Austin that tried to run the Biden/Harris bus off the road. There are plenty like them in Texas. I live here I know.

I don't know much about them - probably "right" and possessed with the same moral hysteria as the left. I'm not a Trump supporter or voter, if that's what you're trying to goad out of me.

I'm not trying to say you are anything not sure why you are taking it as an attack on you I was just stating that those people exist in Texas and aren't a quiet minority. I live here I have reference.

We have a new lines drawn on acceptance for behavior towards sexuality, religion, women's rights and race since the 90's. The line has moved. The 90's was 30 years ago.

I don't know your exact situation at all and criticism of you may indeed have been unfair. But for fucks sake don't try to make a case that you're not far-right by looking to the behavior of people in the past. That indicates strongly you may indeed have backwards views that are 30's years out of date.

A belief that morality improves over time as you describe, aka whiggism/meliorism, is itself a kind of religious tenet of a particular set of worldviews (often called left, progressive etc). So I don't think one can say that rejecting that tenet places one outside of the Overton window of acceptability, while at the same time claiming tolerance of a wide range of viewpoints.

Morality has improved over time though and is still improving. I mean, if you look at how gay people were still treated in the 90s, it was terrible. Most gay people were afraid to be publicly "out" and forget about any sort of trans rights, if you were trans in the 90s you just never transitioned or basically told nobody.

Do you think going back to a world where gay people were often attacked and beaten in public is a good idea? Where women were regularly subjected to sexual assault at work? My mum who worked as a teacher in the 80s and 90s told me she was regularly slapped on the ass by male teachers at work. Is this ok? Would you be ok with your daughters getting this treatment?

I think your examples touch on the enforcement of certain norms, not on the change in the reigning social view. In other words, in the 90s neither the average man on the street nor the ruling class would agree that publicly assaulting gay people or workplace sexual assault are anything but immoral. Both were also still crimes at that time, of course. I'm also not quite sure that workplace incidents of that kind have declined substantially up to the present, but I'd be interested in seeing data.

That's a lot of words for "How dare you not be tolerant of intolerance".

Interesting.

How do you reconcile the fact that slavery was once widespread and morally acceptable by the majority of society, and defended by the church, with your position that morality does not improve over time?

How about the fact that interracial marriage was once considered sin, and that women allowed to own property or vote was also morally acceptable?

Would you prefer a return to the morality of the 1800s, since in your view morality does not change, where women and dark skinned people returned to their "rightful place"?

Even the Church has undergone massive reformation over the centuries, and what was considered morally acceptable in the 1200s is not acceptable to modern Christians.

I don't believe, correct me otherwise, that there are any major religions whose main stream/expression universally taught that interracial marriage was a sin. Certainly some Protestants in 1800s USA did, but Christians in 200, 500, 1300 etc did not.

Atlantic chattel slavery could be argued to be crueler than ancient/traditional forms of slavery and hence a temporal decline in moral goodness from the middle ages to late 1800s. It may also be noted that in a low-tech society, feudalist and traditional slave economies may have had some advantages over e.g. a laissez faire wage worker economy. (In a famine perhaps? A question for historians). The cruelty of nature itself on human lives in a low tech society interacts with moral judgments about economic systems etc. in ways that complicate these questions - I would say be careful not to credit to improved virtue what is really the due of technological innovation.

A counterexample of moral improvement could be respect and care for elders and parents, broadly speaking. The point being only that the march of progress is not always consistent nor can it be counted on to be so.

Exactly. Morality rises and falls. It's not an inevitable progress toward "better". Some new moral "innovations" lead to horrible moral outcomes, like when John Punch was turned from an indentured servant into a lifetime slave, presumably on the basis on his skin color.

And how to describe Nazism except as a moral abberation? That wasn't moral progress after the (already declining) morality of the Weimar republic.

And I'm getting weird dystopian vibes from a significant % of the present left. The moral crusading. The authoritarianism. The absolutism. The shaming. The religious ferver of its movements.

I don't mean to start a flame war, but how is the left more authoritarian? I don't really get it.

Conservative leaders, at least in the US, seem far more authoritarian and xenophobic than left leaning leaders. I'm curious what you see as authoritarian about the modern left.

Also, it is interesting that you associate shaming with authoritarianism. Shaming is intrinsically a grass roots thing - it's the people, not some autocrat, that shames people. Authoritarian governments don't need to shame people, they simply imprison them or take other direct coercive measures.

Societies shame people because they cannot physically do anything to them. That's a huge distinction.

I never said the left was more authoritarian than the right. That's your tribal brain making that assumption. I belong to neither your tribe, nor the other. The right has its own problems.

But as for all the others I insist that they are primarily left-wing phenomena.

And regarding your argument for shaming, what happens when the folks who do the shaming gain power?

I suspect we'll find out in the coming years.

I don't think this argument helps your case at all.

If you say morality was better in the past, which past are you talking about? After all, as you just admitted, morality changed in the past just as much as it did in the present.

Not only was morality not constant in the past, it was not constant geographically, nor even within the same religion (Protestant vs Catholic, Southern Baptist vs Episcopalian). Protestants in the US did not agree with Catholics in Europe, to say nothing of Muslims in the middle east and Buddhists in Asia.

What "eternal constant morality" are you appealing to? Are we talking about Protestantism in 1800? Roman Catholicism in 1400? Buddhism in 800 AD? Theocratic Judaism in 200 BC? Kantian categorical imperatives of the early 20th century?

So, again, if you claim that morality is constant based on some "past", it is incumbent upon you to answer : Which past, and in what country/tribe/kingdom, was the absolute "constant" morality that you claim we should now uphold here in the 21st Century?

Rejecting progressivism or meliorism of course doesn't place someone outside that window of acceptability by itself. It depends on what a person is clinging onto.

And I think it's still fair for a person to claim tolerance of a wide range of viewpoints while rejecting positions that are bigoted or deemed unacceptable.

For someone who rejects meliorism, what moment in human history is the correct frame for evaluating the world? Many social or religious conservatives positions today often overlook that certain perspectives they hold now were unacceptable a century ago. The use of contraceptives being one example.

I feel like the thread of the conversation has been lost. The answer here is that "no frame" is correct. If you simply believe what is morally fashionable then you likely would have had very objectionable "far right" beliefs in the 90s. This is the premise of http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

The original thread was a person upset about the definition of what society considers extreme viewpoints. I don't see anyone arguing which frame is correct but merely that the bar moves over time. Which we know it does. Your above link and statement reinforces this. So you can be an extremist today with a viewpoint that was common 30 years ago. That doesn't change the fact that you're an extremist today.

Let's say that 30 years from now some of your beliefs would be considered extremist. What value judgement do you place on yourself today?

Can we live in a world where "if you believe this now you're evil but if you believed this 10 years ago you're cool."? Replace 10 with any number of years.

Yes. What you've described is common. Think of all the encounters with racist old people that we tend to laugh off with "she's from a different era". The brush off we do doesn't change the fact that they have grossly outdated and evil views by todays norms. Also think about old people that did change. We don't judge them too harshly for past behavior given it was the norm at the time.

As a personal anecdote; every time i've been slow to adapt to the new societal norms, when i look back it's been me who was wrong, not society. It's just taken me time to realize it. I've learnt to force myself to accept, based on repeated past experience, that it's probably not society that's wrong when the overton window moves, it's probably me. I'm yet to regret adapting my viewpoint even if at the time it irks me somewhat. If you're over 30 think back to the school yard gay insults and compare your own viewpoints now. It's not wrong you've changed is it? Take that lesson into account with todays changes and you won't regret it.

What i'm trying to say here is that fighting against changes to the overton window will cause you to end up as a sterotypical old person with grossly outdated views. There's no need to be this way.

If you had been slow to adopt the moral changes of Nazism in the 1930s, would you have been "wrong"? What about women slow to adopt the moral changes of revolutionary Islamic Iran? Are they wrong?

And before you ask what my morality is, I'll just sum it up as enlightenment Western liberalism, for want of a longer essay to explain it. And today's left (and right!) are starting to leave that outlook behind, to our detriment.

I don't care what your views are and yes you're right. Sometimes it's quite right to have views outside the social norms.

Now remember this thread started because you specifically raised an issue with being called far right. Do you think that maybe you do have views outside the norm. Note that i'm not saying it's right or wrong nor do i even want to know what your views are, i'm just pointing out that you might just fit the description of far right/left if your measuring stick for normal is to compare your views to those of a decade that started over 30years ago.

You say you don't care what my views are, but all of your responses suggest otherwise.

And yes, I'm right. It's sometimes right to have views outside social norms.

However, my views are not "outside social norms", unless you only count members of the full-on right, and full-on left as "social norms". My views are right in between those two.

Edit: "You can still be outside norms without being at the fringes." Hehe, we used to have a name for this: centrist. I know your kind hates us even worse than Trump supporters. They're beyond your influence, but you know that bullying, shaming, and harassment can "convince" many centrists. Well, not this one.

And boy, I screwed up by saying 1990s moderate Democrats. I should have said a 2008 Obama moderate, which is basically the same thing but few would dare call him "far right". BTW, I voted for him in 2008 (but not 2012).

You can still be outside norms without being at the fringes. This has always been the case and nothing new. And i really don't care about your views, note from the start i have explicitly noted that you may be right or wrong. It's just that what you've said about having views that other people had in the 90's isn't proof that your views are within social norms. You may be outside them or you may be within them but "Someone X years ago had the same views as me" isn't a defense to be called outside the norm.

> You can still be outside norms without being at the fringes. This has always been the case and nothing new.

That's absolutely ridiculous. "outside norms"? Whose norms? Your in-group's norms, which is at best around 20-30% of the country. There's a stronger argument that you all are the ones who are outside our country's norms, at least at present.

I think the three of us are in agreement here!

BTW, I'm directly in the center of the country wrt most of "my views". I have a few economic views that are center-left. So I'm certainly not in any "extreme", the delusions of the left aside.

The problem I have with this statement is recently(past 4-5 years) the left has gone extremely far in their beliefs and ideas. Take real life examples like - completely disbanding the police, emptying prisons, outlawing all criminal laws. Deciding that people of a certain race/social class are the cause of all problems. Destruction of city statues without due process. These ideas are dangerous for any functioning society and saying every idea from 30 years ago is bad or backwards is wrongheaded.

In addition alot of the far left is pinning 'nazi' or 'facsict' on any politician or idea that does not meet their ever changing ideas. Even feminists are now getting trampled on if their ideas don't meet up to the week culture temperature checks.

So much of what you just said is completely untrue. Not a single leading Democrat is calling for any of those things. Emptying prisons? Completely disbanding the police? Outlawing criminal laws? What does that even mean?

here are some facts to back my argument:

AOC (a leading democratic congresswomen) has called for complete prison abolishment - https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/yes-aoc-tweeted-she-want...

A insightful piece from the NYtimes talking about 'abolishing' not defunding the police - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

Here's another article about when Jacob Frey (mayor of Minneapolis) is asked by a sea of left wing activists if he will abolish the police, he said no and was greeted by a sea of boos - https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0615-abo...

CA decriminalizing shoplifting, which is fueling a huge boom in theft across the west coast - https://www.city-journal.org/west-coast-shoplifting-boom

I think the commentor was as much concerned with the namespace pollution: to some people on the left, there doesn't seem to be a "right" (or even a "center"), anymore, only a "far right". This isn't because because they all share the same views, but rather because there's a lack of nuance to the language used by many people in discussing politics.

(I say people because the same thing occurs in reverse when talking about "extremist leftists")

This is precisely my complaint.

Just so we’re clear. You’re position is that the democrats in the 90s were far right? Like actual racists/ultra nationalists/believers in the superiority of certain races etc?

What constitutes center right, center, center left in your view?

Great example of the attitude I'm describing.

And my specific viewpoint in question? That all people should be treated equally, and given equal opportunity, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

I will die with that belief, even if 99% of the population believes otherwise.

morality doesn't necessarily get better as time goes on. if you're a secular, then a place such as iran has got worse over time.

People today are no more morally superior to the people back in Roman times.

Is this a successful way to dodge taxes? If so, that loophole should be fixed. I left California 4 years ago and yet somehow still pay taxes to the state.

If you're saying that anyone who was professionally successful in California has no right to ever leave the state, that seems like a tough sell.

(I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice)

I left California for Nevada many years ago, and I subsequently sold stock I accumulated while in California without paying state income tax.

It is legal and you can do it, but there are a lot of legal hurdles. They're pretty well documented around page 5 of FTB 1031 [1].

In my case, I quit my W2 job in California, entered into a contract to lease a home in NV, got rid of all leased or owned real estate in CA, sold or re-titled all motor vehicles from CA, registered to vote in NV, surrendered my CA driver license for a new NV license, re-titled all my financial accounts at my new address, got a NV phone number, etc.

This was all easy because I was single without children. If my situation was more complicated, like I had a spouse or ex-spouse with children enrolled in CA schools, or decided to retain owned real estate in CA, the situation can quickly fall into a gray zone.

If you have a W2 job in CA while claiming you're in NV, it's very hard to escape the CA FTB.

CA is very aggressive about chasing down its former residents. It's important to check all the boxes to get them from chasing you.

After I left, I filed non-resident CA returns for three years basically saying, "I had income but I am not a resident and it was not from a CA source, therefore I owe no CA tax." This is important because it starts the statute of limitations running. If you don't file, the statute of limitations doesn't start.

And while I'm writing all this: what in the world is up with a 13.3% state tax bracket? Screw California.

[1] https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2019/2019-1031-publication.pdf

Those high brackets really only apply to people that are making a lot of money. I make $100k right now and my state tax in California would be nearly the same as it is in Ohio at that rate. That being said, with my work being remote indefinitely I’m going to Texas to save over $400 a month in tax (and cost of living is about the same — very low).

I guess your case was extra special. I remained employed by the same company after moving from CA to AZ and the FTB never bothered me. The year I relocated, I filed my.. 540? after determining what income I earned while living in CA. And that was that. No issues with my options or RSUs either. Being married and having a child was also a non-issue.

If you're married or have children AND they come with you to AZ, that's obviously no problem. In that case, it works in your favor: it's just more data that you're a bona fide AZ resident. I was pointing out that if your children stay in CA while you go to NV, it works against you.

And AZ isn't NV. The FTB pays special attention to NV in particular because it has no income tax. Someone who moves to AZ isn't so obviously trying to skirt CA state income tax.

My case was a little special because I sold a lot of stock right after leaving CA, which makes it a little suspicious to the FTB.

Thank you for this. Very useful for someone considering moving out :)

Why do you still pay taxes in California? Do you have a residence there?

If you have RSUs that were in while you were working in California or a resident of California, the Franchise Tax Board claims a portion of the income as California source when (if) they finally vest. That could be years later, when you're no longer a resident.

If you move from California to another country, and are subject to US Federal Income tax, and don't qualify for an exemption, the Franchise Tax Board still considers you a resident of the state, and as such, taxes you on your worldwide income; as you did not end your residency by establishing residency in another state.

In this case, one also assumes that Musk will continue to spend a fair bit of time in the state. Low-profile people can usually get off with just paying taxes in their home state even though they spend a lot of their time at company offices, conferences, etc. elsewhere. But presumably there is some threshold beyond which you're supposed to be filing taxes in other locales.

New York city has its own income tax rate of 3.9% for high earners. This can be quite a bit of money for hedge fund managers/owners. I've read that some of them live outside NYC to avoid the tax but need to hire a full time person to document and make sure they are not counted as a NYC resident by the city. You can only spend so many nights in NYC and not be counted as a resident, show proof of you being somewhere else, etc.

Income taxes has so many bad consequences. It would be great to ban it and replace it with land value taxes.

The letter of the law in a lot of places can be even worse than that. [1] There's been federal legislation proposed but AFAIK, nothing has been passed. A lot of states theoretically require you to file a tax return even if you only travel there for a day. Of course, I'd be shocked if pretty much anyone complied with that for sometimes travel. But it means lots of people are basically committing tax fraud; many/most probably don't even know they are.

[1] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...

I did on internship in Texas when living in California. I had to pay California state income tax on what I earned there. Luckily Texas has no state income tax or I would have been paying in both states.

> If you move from California to another country, and are subject to US Federal Income tax, and don't qualify for an exemption, the Franchise Tax Board still considers you a resident of the state, and as such, taxes you on your worldwide income; as you did not end your residency by establishing residency in another state.

While this is strictly correct, I think the implications of what you wrote are too strong. If you move from California to another country or U.S. state, the requirements to get an "exemption" from California tax residency are essentially "convince the FTB that you have weaker ties to California than to your new location."

While arbitrary and open to abuse in theory, it appears less so in practice. Quoting from California's Guidelines For Determining [Tax] Resident Status [1], heading "Leaving California" on page 6:

> Example 4 - You and your spouse/RDP are California residents. You accept a contract to work in South America for 16 months. You lease an apartment near the job site. Your contract states that your employer will arrange your return back to California when your contract expires. Your spouse/RDP and your children will remain in California residing in the home you own.

> Determination: You maintain strong ties with California because your spouse/RDP and children remain in your California home during your absence. Your intent is to return to California, and your absence is temporary and transitory. You remain a California resident during your absence. You are taxed on income from all sources, including income earned in South America.

> Example 5 - You receive and accept a permanent job offer in Spain. You and your spouse/RDP sell your home in California, pack all of your possessions and move to Spain on May 5, 2019, with your children. You lease an apartment and enroll your children in school in Spain. You obtain a driver’s license from Spain and make numerous social connections in your new home. You have no intention of returning to California.

> Determination: You are a part-year resident. Through May 4, 2019, you were a California resident. On May 5, 2019, you became a nonresident. All your income while you were a resident is taxable by California. While you are a nonresident, only income from California sources is taxable by California.

> Example 6 - You are a resident of California. You accept a 15-month assignment in Saudi Arabia. You put your personal belongings, including your automobile, in storage in California. You have a California driver’s license and are registered to vote in California. You maintain bank accounts in California. In Saudi Arabia, you stay in a compound provided for you by your employer, and the only ties you establish there are connected to your employment. Upon completion of your assignment, you will return to California.

> Determination: You have maintained greater connections with California than you have established in Saudi Arabia. Your absence is for a temporary or transitory purpose. Therefore, you remain a California resident. As a California resident, your income from all sources is taxable by California, including the income that you earned from your assignment in Saudi Arabia.

Example 5 above is closest to what I think you were talking about by "moving from California to another country." The only way I think FTB could go after you for here is to argue that you could have an "intention" of returning to California eventually, and I do not know whether keeping your American bank accounts at California banks would be enough of a hook for FTB to decide it's worth the effort to try that argument.

For myself, if I did move from California to become an indefinite expat, I wouldn't worry too much about the FTB going after me. Opinions may vary, of course.

[1] CA FTB Publication 1031, 2019 edition: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2019/2019-1031-publication.pdf

Thanks! I hadn't seen the FTB guidance for example 5. I think the tricky bit comes when you plan to live in another country for an indefinite period of at least several years, but not forever (and without any specific return state in mind), and keep a storage unit (in California) with some stuff that you want to keep, but don't want to move to another country because of the expense.

FTB can use 'has a storage unit in California' as a factor; and maybe combined with California banks and California voting, and maybe a California mailing address, if you use friends/family to forward your mail, could be enough to tip the scales for them. It's rather opaque.

What if you have your own CA LLC? Would they require paying a tax on its sale even if it's re-incorporated in another state?

This looks like you are making stuff up.

I don't think it's a small motivation of Musk to escape the tax rate when he starts to sell his shares. Just because he vested them while in CA - if he's a resident of Texas when he sells I don't think he owes CA a dime.

I wasn't responding specifically to Musk's tax burden, but the question of why would someone who moved out of the state still be paying taxes to the state several years later.

It depends on what type of shares/options/equity grants, and what's still vesting, and what isn't.

ISOs that are exercised in a qualifying disposition are taxed based on residency on the day of exercise.

RSUs that vest while you're a resident are taxed on vest day, and any capital gains from that are taxed based on residency on the day of the sale, yes.

RSUs that vest while you're not a resident are taxed on vest day, and a portion of the income will be california source if you worked in California during a portion of the vesting period, or if you were a residing during a portion of the vesting period.

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/misc/1004.html#E-Restricted-Sto...

CA Tax Board is pretty aggressive: if you work for a business located in CA, they want your income.

I recognize this is just my personal experience, but this doesn't hold true for me in the slightest. I grew up and lived in CA for over two decades, but now located in a state with no income tax and employed by a company in the bay area. I pay zero state income tax, as do all my coworkers in the area.

Yes, you need to retire outside California.

Which is often just not that necessary... must people's income levels in retirement are low enough that CA's income taxes are competitive with many other lower-tax states (not those with no income tax, though, of course).

That's just not true. You can fully move and start working for a non-CA company and you wouldn't be paying CA taxes.

You make it sound like if you ever lived in CA you have to pay CA tax for the rest of your life until you retire lol.

I don't know the specifics, but I believe the parent comment is alluding to business specific taxes, not the capital gains tax you probably pay as a no-longer-california-resident.

I think rather that people/gov gave a bunch of benefits to be in state that cost the state, but they didn't require that he stay in the state. So i think the implication is that he took resources from the state but didn't stay long enough for the gov/people to see an ROI.

But, as much as i am a lefty(+capitalist), that seems a fault of the state. States should expect this more imo. You give near negative returns to companies to come to your state and then you're shocked when they leave and you haven't gotten your ROI?

But maybe this will be good. If the migration continues perhaps California will have to stop subsidizing low-tax states and let them fend for themselves more.

> You give near negative returns to companies

Does California invest money/resources to companies? Or is it more of an indirect thing, such as maintaining roads and bridges?

Why are businesses choosing to hop off the California gravy train? Is the gravy not worth the taxes? Is the gravy just hyperbole?

Far-right aka everybody who's not a democrat.

The Democratic party is a center-right party. If you are further to the right of them, you are far-right.

I'm going to reply with a comment I made an hour ago.

"The far-left managed to create an "amazing" (and terrifying) perspective.

If you're a leftist but not as leftist as them, you're a centrist, maybe even center-right which makes everybody on the right to be automatically far-right."

If you're further left then democrats you're a troll, if you're further right you're a nazi.

It's a magical place where only those who agree with the person speaking are allowed to have an opinion and shouldn't be censored by big tech co.

I mean, the Third Way Democrats whole shtick is embracing right wing policies and injecting them into the democratic party. They gained power as a faction in the democratic party around 1992 with the argument that after Reagan changed politics in the US and after losing the presidency for three elections, they argued that the democratic party needed to shift heavily to the right to chase what Americans were looking for. Clinton got for instance got elected on a platform to "end the welfare system a we know it", and gun control (which at the time was a right wing policy because scary minorities were open carrying. Reagan actually passed the law against open carrying, the Mulford Act, stating at the time that there was "no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons"). The explicit goal here was courting center right moderates.

Since then the Democratic Party has continued tracking to the right, with Newt Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation's 1994/94 HEART Act being slightly edited and passed as Obamacare.

This isn't a "terrifying perspective", but literally public statements and accepted political science.

> I mean, the Third Way Democrats whole shtick is embracing right wing policies and injecting them into the democratic party. They gained power as a faction in the democratic party around 1992

They gained power before that (their main original organization, the DLC, was a powerful force in Democratic politics well before its former head became the Democratic nominee in 1992), but they were definitely the unquestionably dominant faction from that point forward, though that has gotten weaker over the past decade or so.

Sure, by "gained power", I mean that they went from fairly important group to _the_ leadership of the party, actively purging other groups, and their decisions were the de facto decisions of the party as a whole.

So then you are obligated, in the context of this conversation, to define "far-left."

I suspect you haven't elaborated on it because you recognize that your application of the term is easily disputed.

Anti-capitalists, socialists, police defunders, censors (they can be also far right wingers), haters of every western thing, etc. You can easily identify them inside the democratic party, they have a lot of power now.

Those aren't far-left. Especially the "haters of every western thing" lol.

Far-left is the complete abolition of private property, abolition of police and prisons, in some cases the abolition of monies period.

There are literally zero far-left people in elected or appointed positions within the US government today.

Your worldview is much smaller than reality and the dog-whistles you lean on are obvious. Educate yourself before choosing to expound your limited views.

"Educate yourself before choosing to expound your limited views."

Oh, come on. You can't really be that condescending and expect people to take you seriously.

Anyway, according to your broad worldview, communists are not far-left. Ok.

Communists advocate the abolition of private property. It's right there in the name -- it's the "commune" part.

So you're wrong again.

Folks seem to be taking me seriously. I don't know if you can say the same.

Attacks on rhetoric and not substance only serve to expose your lack of a basis on which to make your claims.

No, communists want to abolish the private means of production.

To reciprocate your condescending comments I could say you should read a little bit before making a fool of yourself.

I'm not wasting my time anymore with you.

Private property _is_ the private ownership of the means of production.

Your house and toothbrush and such is personal property.

What if I airbnb a room in my personal property house? Do I get "eaten as a landlord" in case I need to evict a freeloading squatter

Plugging your ears because the facts don't agree with your pre-conceptions?

Some call that... being a snowflake :)

Socialists want to end the private ownership of means of production. Communists go further.

You're being toxic.

I'm calling out a bullshitter.

Your attempts to silence me are petty.

I'm not the person you were arguing with. I don't like seeing the discussions here devolve into name calling.

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

> haters of every western thing

such a low level of discourse. I thought these kind of comments weren't allowed on HN?

Except for the fact that a mainstream democrat is a center-right politician anywhere else in the world. The "far-left" you reference doesn't exist outside Twitter and a small group of congresspeople, giving that small group an outsized image of power isn't very congruent with reality.

That is literally how the world neoliberalism got created. It has some very limited academic use before then but basically exploded in usage.

When center leftists started to embrace free trade and things like that.

So basically anybody not on the left fringe was label a neoliberalist, all the way from Clinton to Milton Friedman.

You can make it really easy if you just throw everybody in the same bucket and label it evil. Its a classic move in politics.

Neoliberalism is based on economic policy position. Your lack of understanding of the term doesn't mean people are using it incorrectly.

It does have a meaning.

> Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

So disheartening to see this low quality of discourse on HN.

The Democratic Party is a centrist party whose dominant faction is center-right but which has a substantial center-left and smaller further-left factions.

You can be right of the Democratic Party and be anywhere from merely slightly-less-center center-right to, well, anywhere to the right of that.

But the US polítical spectrum is basically bimodal, and the peak to the right of the dominant faction of the Democratic Party is far-right.

Or, the Democratic party is a center-right party only if you are far-left

No, only if your Overton window is as wide as the set of expressed political opinions through history.

No they're not. You don't define the overton window, society does. I'm right of the democrats but I'm not far right, that's the society we live in.

This isn't up for debate. In economic terms, socialism is what the left looks like.

Do you see anything that looks like "socialism" coming from the democratic party in the united states?

yes? you see people like yang advocating for things like UBI, and others like ocasio-cortez wanting similar programs along with other big spending programs like getting rid of student debt and free college.

OK? Yang is hardly a democrat and he is not in any position of power. Nothing you are saying is actually backing up what you are claiming. Quite the contrary, these are examples of democrats who have been pushed away from power because of their ideas. How many delegates did Yang get again?

Ocasio-Cortez is one congress woman who has been in office for less than two years. She is not in a position of power within the democratic party, in fact they actively oppose her.

So what is your point? AOC does not reflect where the democrats are as a party, and it's dishonest to pretend so.

And student loan relief is not socialism. Free college could arguably be, but what is being discussed is far from free college.

Yang is part of the democratic party and therefore a democrat politician, there's no debate on this. The same can be said for ocasio-cortez.

So a communist registers as a Republican and the Republican party is now a party of communism?

Your logic is astounding.

Well, yeah. Universal healthcare, subsidized childcare, forgiveness of student debt, etc.

That's all socialism.

You really need to read a political science report.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/31/the-repu...

That article uses "populism" as a derogatory term.

The GOP does not employ "populism" they employ scare tactics.

The GOP put itself out of power in CA by pursuing a series of explicitly racist policies in a white-plurality state, and then later settling on total political obstruction as its backup plan (in the short term this was effective at preventing the state government from addressing a wide range of serious problems). My former GOP state rep in SoCal used to send out mailers proudly proclaiming that he had voted ‘no’ on 100% of legislation, with some race baiting mixed in as seasoning. Considering that a couple decades of this led to the Democrats winning all of the statewide offices and supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, perhaps it wasn’t the best long-term strategy.

But the state remains a very conservative place overall, just like the rest of the USA. There’s a broad swath of the public who distrust the government, are opposed to taxes of any kind, and so on. Even in 2020, 34% of voters picked Trump, even though his rhetoric has included badmouthing CA as a cornerstone. And many CA Democrats are pretty conservative by the standards of most other developed countries, and would most naturally fit in a centrist or center-right party.

It's kind of funny how hard the CAGOP pushed for independent redistricting thinking that the Dems were gerrymandering them out of existence. After the independent redistricting happened they lost the few seats they had and now essentially cease to exist.

The Fremont factory and Palo Alto headquarters will still be in California... for now. I imagine they will open up some Texas sites, which everyone is doing, but I think Tesla will have a CA presence for some time. It's difficult to move these things. On the other hand, Elon has a "damned the torpedoes" attitude, so who knows.

More importantly, CA still has more subsidies, tax breaks, and other funding for everyone's favourite truffle hound to dig up.

Don’t forget talent. I personally would never move to Texas as there’s not nearly enough job opportunities

Genuine question: how do states like Texas, Florida, etc. get by without taxing income? Do they not need that money for their operations? What is the difference between their government and California's?

I figure Florida makes it up with their tourism industry but Texas decidedly does not have that.

> how do states like Texas, Florida, etc. get by without taxing income? Do they not need that money for their operations?

Sales tax and property tax.

> What is the difference between their government and California's?

Houstonian* here — Texas doesn't provide nearly the level of social services.

* I saw a post recently where someone said "I'm from Houston, not from Texas."

Houston, unlike the rest of Texas, has a strong Louisiana influence stretching back generations because of the shared oil and gas economy, and was enhanced by immigration and outflow from New Orleans by Katrina in 2005.

Hmm; apart from restaurants, I'm not sure many Houstonians would agree that Houston has "a strong Louisiana influence stretching back generations" — if anything we'd probably say it's the other way around (but then that might be just local boosterism).

As to Hurricane Katrina: We took in about 250K evacuees but only about 40K stayed permanently (which is a bunch, of course). I'd guess most of those were the sort who liked being here better, so they made lemonade out of the lemons that the storm forced upon them. [0]

[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/40460412/after-hurricane-harvey-...

I think a lot of what folks see as a "Louisiana influence" in Houston is mostly "Gulf Coast TX" vs the rest of Texas.

It's not that it's a Louisiana influence, it's that we're all on the gulf coast and all have a lot in common. (Not with New Orleans so much, but certainly with Lake Charles/etc.)

That somehow gets misnamed as a "Louisiana influence", when really it's just the region we're in.

Higher taxes elsewhere (which I think more sense anyway), and honestly probably just less wasteful spending and fewer beneficial (or potentially beneficial) programs.

To get a scope of how wasteful California regulations are and positions of people voting to propagate that insanity further:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/san-francisco-school...

Compared to California, most states depend less on income taxes and more on property taxes, which is part of the reason why property prices are higher in California.

I think California would have higher property taxes if they hadn't implemented prop 13 back in the 80s. Really messed up the state tax dynamics imho. Policy started from a good place but ended up with weird ripple effects.

Indeed. Proposition 13 was a monkey wrench.

>...implemented prop 13 back in the 80s.

Your math is a little off, it was 1978.

Oil is taxed quite a bit there, along with higher property taxes (some of the highest in the nation). But you'll also notice the roads aren't stellar, and many areas have issues with public education. Lack of state tax is reflected in all of this.

If you spend less money, you need less money.

Property taxes. This also means more taxes stay local and in the communities paying them. Of course there are opposing viewpoints on if this is good or bad. But the state still gets a good portion of those taxes.

On the east coast some of our states have high state income tax AND high property taxes (and property is very expensive) and I’m not sure the services or infrastructure are any better than in states like Texas. At least in California your property tax is locked in, which has its own problems of course.

At least where I live, a good deal of today’s tax revenues go to pensions to people that retired to Florida or Arizona (or some other tax free state) in their 50’s. I think Texas has avoided this trap many states are in today.

Those east cost states just have a lot of debt (including their unfunded deferred compensation such as defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare), plus debt from old infrastructure that needs to be updated.

By taxing the shit out of my property. I pay more in property tax in Texas than I did in income tax in CA. My property tax doesn't care how employed I am or how much money I'm pulling down either. It's probably going to nullify any appreciation on my home.

Lots of trade-offs.

P.S. Tourism's economic impact on my city in Texas was over 15b BC(before COVID).

There are different ways for states to generate income or save income:

- Personal income/wage tax

- Business income tax

- Capital gains taxes, Dividend taxes

- Sales tax

- Proper tax (homes, cars, etc.)

- Reducing services (e.g., worse schools, worse healthcare)

- Borrow (this can be a slippery slope)

- Create shadow liabilities that dont show up on the books (e.g., pension liabilities with poor growth assumptions)

Texas has a really high property tax.

On a percentage basis, yes. But property values are so much lower that you're likely to come out ahead.

Texas gets a lot of income from the energy industry (oil and gas). Texas recently changed the law to require a state-wide vote to allow income tax (previously, the state legislature could hypothetically introduce it).

Well, Curtis Yarvin is still in California, isn't he?