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Well - as I said the issue is more that voters still have an expectation that right-wing governments are still fundamentally on their side, but misguided.

Most of the economic posts on ET for the last few years have assumed this.

I think it's more realistic to assume that this isn't true, and hasn't been true since at least the middle of the 90s - much earlier in some countries.

In fact social democracy was a short Wiemar-esque interlude between the usual periods of insane imperialism and capitalist exploitation that dominated the last few centuries of the old millennium.

It's not a given, it's not How Things Are, and it doesn't stay social democracy for long - unless there are political, social, and financial checks and balances in place to keep it that way.

So the way to start a push back isn't to tell people that the government are mishandling the economy, but to explain to them that right and centre-right governments are invariably corrupt, dishonest, and fundamentally abusive, with an adversarial relationship with most of the population.

It's the adversarial relationship that gives it away. Currently in the UK people are still in denial about it, and about how nasty that relationship has the potential to become.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Feb 26th, 2013 at 09:50:06 AM EST
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Social democracy was based partially on high-paying low-skill jobs that existed in the West for about 30 year after WWII.

Spot on about adversarial.

(Side note: Should we stop buying anything from anything with shareholders?)

by Number 6 on Wed Feb 27th, 2013 at 07:59:37 AM EST
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