{"id":30698,"date":"2023-12-19T19:10:45","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T03:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=30698"},"modified":"2023-12-19T19:11:28","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T03:11:28","slug":"30698","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/12\/19\/30698\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is the Chron so freaked out about Socialism?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yes, neoliberal capitalism helped create the homelessness crisis. What are we even arguing about that?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By TIM REDMOND<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DECEMBER 17, 2023 (48hills.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the headline of the year, although the Chron keeps dishing up wonders: A socialist supports socialism<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hardly unusual to hear Sup. Dean Preston, a proud Democratic Socialist, saying that capitalism is a root cause of homelessness, drug addiction, and crime. That\u2019s something that many economists, sociologists, criminologists, and even the Pope<\/a> have said repeatedly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the way the Chron framed this\u2014as some kind of weird idea, \u201cprompting critics to question the logic of the supervisor, who\u2019s the only Democratic Socialist on the board,\u201d raises an important question in politics and news media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have we not gotten beyond the point, especially in San Francisco, where \u201csocialism\u201d is some sort of radical, frightening concept and criticizing capitalism is some kind of taboo?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Some socialists read Karl Mark as descriptive, not proscriptive, and besides he\u2019s been dead a long time. Wikimedia Images photo.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, polls show that US Democrats, especially people under 30, have\u00a0a more positive view of socialism than capitalism<\/a>. As many as 70 percent of young voters think the very rich got their wealth by cheating the system, and taxes on wealth are increasingly popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a reason Sen. Bernie Sanders came pretty close to winning the Democratic nomination for president, and is currently more popular among Democrats than President Joe Biden<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chron story is based on comments Preston made to a right-wing film crew from England that was making what the paper called an \u201cinvestigative documentary\u201d on San Francisco\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, it\u2019s a piece of conservative propaganda, but never mind. Preston told me his comments were taken out of context, and this was never supposed to be a documentary about capitalism, but he stands by the statement that capitalism, at least our current neoliberal version, is one of the major causes of our social problems.Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And why wouldn\u2019t he? Why would this be \u201cprompting critics\u201d (who are not cited in the story, except for a billionaire-funded \u201cDump Dean\u201d website) to question his priorities, which are and have always been affordable housing and tenant protections, among other things?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s as if the Chron is stuck in the 1950s, with a \u201cred scare\u201d mentality that fundamentally misses the point of what Democratic Socialism is about today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First: Even most socialists agree that there\u2019s no clear or easy definition<\/strong> of what that term means in today\u2019s United States. Socialist political agendas run a pretty wide spectrum, from those who think that the public sector should take over most essential services, including housing and utilities, to those who are good with market systems that are properly regulated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are Marxists in the US who argue that the state should seize most of the means of production, but there are also a lot of folks who call themselves socialists who think a version of capitalism that features much higher taxes on the rich, strong trade unions, and a much more robust safety net would be a huge improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of us agree that modern neoliberalism is an utter failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I keep coming back to this<\/a>: If the level of economic inequality in the US today was the same as in 1975, the bottom 90 percent would have an additional $50 trillion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a staggering number. It\u2019s enough to end homelessness in the country, provide free health care and education to all, make a huge dent in the desperation that leads to crime and opioid addiction \u2026 and the top ten percent would still be doing just fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US economy between 1946 and 1980 wasn\u2019t \u201csocialist,\u201d by the common meaning, but rich people paid as much as 80 percent of their marginal income in taxes. That meant, among other things, that as the late Tom Hayden once told me, \u201cnothing used to cost much.\u201d Hardly anyone could afford to spend $100,000 on a house, so houses cost $10,000. That\u2019s not about the Yimbys and supply-side economics, it\u2019s about what the housing market is always about, which is demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I arrived in San Francisco in 1981, there were almost no homeless people.<\/strong> At the Haight Ashbury Switchboard, where I volunteered, you would also find some guy (always a guy, the women were smarter) who thought it was still the Summer of Love and some \u201cdigger\u201d was going to offer a \u201ccrash pad,\u201d but they quickly got the message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An indigent adult could get $350 a month plus food stamps from the General Assistance Office. You could rent an SRO hotel room for $25 a week. Rooms in a shared flat went for $125 a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federal government paid for cities to build public housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There wasn\u2019t anywhere near today\u2019s level of economic inequality. Stanford MBA\u2019s used to brag about making \u201ctwice our age,\u201d which means like $50,000 a year. People who made a lot more than that paid high marginal taxes, and stock options, which hardly existed, were taxed at a reasonable level as capital gains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then came Reagan, and the tax cuts for the rich and the devastation of the safety net, followed by Bush, and Clinton, and Bush, and Obama, and Trump, and Biden\u2014and none of them, Democrat or Republican, has undone the tax cuts that allowed the massive fortunes we see today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were drug addicts in 1981; the city was dealing with a heroin and crack epidemic (and by the way, the number of homicides was about ten times what it is today).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we didn\u2019t see tent encampments on the streets, and the Tenderloin was a low-income neighborhood that looked nothing like it does today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who seriously thinks that homelessness and despair are not in part a result of neoliberal capitalism is delusional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can argue about solutions to local problems, and we have to accept that some of our crises require changes at the state and federal level. But Preston\u2019s comments aren\u2019t radical, or even newsworthy; they\u2019re just reality.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, neoliberal capitalism helped create the homelessness crisis. What are we even arguing about that? By TIM REDMOND DECEMBER 17, 2023 (48hills.org) Here\u2019s the headline of the year, although the Chron keeps dishing up wonders: A socialist supports socialism. It\u2019s hardly unusual to hear Sup. Dean Preston, a proud Democratic Socialist,… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[203,712,1636],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30698"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30698"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30701,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30698\/revisions\/30701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}