How Hey Arnold! taught a generation of viewers to hate capitalism

[TMC]

https://slate.com/culture/2022/03/he...-podcasts.html

"It’s not so much that Hey Arnold! radicalized millennials in their youth, it seems, but that it infused their inchoate political and social consciousnesses with ways to respond to their material realities later on," says Hannah Borenstein of the 1996-2004 Nickelodeon series. "A lot of the rhetoric of liberal capitalism—that it is driven by natural turns in the market—was flipped on its head in Hey Arnold! In the show, capitalism was nothing more than the destroyer of fun. It threatened not only the displacement of the city’s working class, but also the places in which young viewers played. And as millennials are now feeling many of the neoliberal structural changes of the 1990s, including being unable to buy homes or even rent in cities, it’s no surprise that the majority of young Americans now look unfavorably upon capitalism—just as their favorite cartoon characters did two decades ago. Hey Arnold! is not a perfect anti-capitalist show. Sometimes it embraces a very pro-work stance, espousing the virtues of loving one’s occupation. And sometimes it gets labor struggles very wrong. However, there are millennial leftists who remember this show fondly, returned to it, and found meaning in it having a place in the development of their political consciousnesses."

[GentlemanJim]

The problem is not with capitalism, per se. the problem is that wealthy capitalists have managed to buy too much influence from a corrupt system of government.

Control campaign spending in such a way as to level the playing field, eliminate the PACs, and you'll go a long way towards fixing things

Funny how the main gripe I heard as a child about communism is that by rewarding people who do not contribute actual productive effort, they became lazy and start to believe the world owes them an existence.

Here, we just call such people "stockholders" .

[Babalu]

Isn't it amazing that with what's going on in Europe right now with socialism/communism these morons still think it's better than capitalism?

[Caroline13]

I have no problem with capitalism but agree with GJ on how it controls so much of our world...wrong wrong wrong.

I'd rather be financially comfortable any day than uncomfortably living in poverty.

[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by Babalu

Isn't it amazing that with what's going on in Europe right now with socialism/communism these morons still think it's better than capitalism?

I don't think there is any single perfect solution. You'll always have people who play the game better than everybody else, who flatter themselves over their success. Greed, vanity, corruption.

I don't know how closely you have followed the skyrocketing cost of sending a shipping container of goods from Asia to the US west coast over the past 2 years. But it's pure opportunism they are raising their prices just because they can,

Now, we were stupid to put so much faith in off shoring, never should have left it get as far as it has....but that does nothing to forgive the robber barons for their greed.

So, in that context, I feel that capitalism's critics rightly have traction.

[RetroGuy2000]

The problem is not with capitalism but with crony capitalism. Unfortunately, it's a slippery slope.

It starts off with a system in which a company, say Walmart, offers to move into an area in exchange for reduced taxes. The municipal government agrees because they know they will be collecting more taxes from the jobs Walmart creates. But then local businesses, which never got the reduction in taxes, suffer. And because Walmart now can afford to sell at lower prices, they can put local retailers out of business. Eventually, they become they only game in town for many goods and services. And because the wages they offer are very low, the state government now has to pay the Walmart workers' food benefits (and the municipal government may have to pay housing subsidies), while Walmart's owners become the wealthiest people on the planet.

I can see why Hey Arnold's creators have mentioned some of the problems with our corrupt system: it's the crony capitalism mixture of big business and government that we have now which creates so much havoc with our economy. There are many other factors, as well, but in a true free market economy, we wouldn't be experiencing such huge economic disparities.


(The problems the world is experiencing in Ukraine and Russia have little to do with communism/socialism. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are socialist or communist states, and haven't been for decades. Ukraine is a free-market economy and has been since 1991. Russia also has a market economy, although these markets are controlled by billionaires).

[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by RetroGuy2000

The problem is not with capitalism but with crony capitalism. Unfortunately, it's a slippery slope.

It starts off with a system in which a company, say Walmart, offers to move into an area in exchange for reduced taxes. The municipal government agrees because they know they will be collecting more taxes from the jobs Walmart creates. But then local businesses, which never got the reduction in taxes, suffer. And because Walmart now can afford to sell at lower prices, they can put local retailers out of business. Eventually, they become they only game in town for many goods and services. And because the wages they offer are very low, the state government now has to pay the Walmart workers' food benefits (and the municipal government may have to pay housing subsidies), while Walmart's owners become the wealthiest people on the planet.

I can see why Hey Arnold's creators have mentioned some of the problems with our corrupt system: it's the crony capitalism mixture of big business and government that we have now which creates so much havoc with our economy. There are many other factors, as well, but in a true free market economy, we wouldn't be experiencing such huge economic disparities.


(The problems the world is experiencing in Ukraine and Russia have little to do with communism/socialism. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are socialist or communist states, and haven't been for decades. Ukraine is a free-market economy and has been since 1991. Russia also has a market economy, although these markets are controlled by billionaires).

[GentlemanJim]

BTW, Daylight Savings Time sucks, I just want to go on record as saying that. I saw a news story today reporting how several states are pushing through legislation to abolish the practice.

But the Federal government is requiring the states to submit detailed arguments establishing that such a change "serves the convenience of commerce", before any changes will be seriously considered.

So, there you have it. In this country personal freedoms are subordinate to the convenience of commerce. From sea to shining sea.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by GentlemanJim

BTW, Daylight Savings Time sucks, I just want to go on record as saying that. I saw a news story today reporting how several states are pushing through legislation to abolish the practice.

But the Federal government is requiring the states to submit detailed arguments establishing that such a change "serves the convenience of commerce", before any changes will be seriously considered.

So, there you have it. In this country personal freedoms are subordinate to the convenience of commerce. From sea to shining sea.

Yeah. We don't do it in my state, and it's kind of annoying trying to figure out when everybody else switches back and forth. Like watching people in the office run around twice a day to turn the thermostat up or down, based on personal preference: an amusing sight, but if everyone left things alone, we'd all be better off, instead of being alternately hot/cold.

Arizona ceased using Daylight Savings Time because an extra hour of sunlight in the summer made no sense in a state that doesn't need even more sunlight in the summer. The Navajo Nation portion of the state does go on DST because they are mostly farmers/ranchers. But the Hopi Reservation, inside the Navajo reservation, doesn't go on DST. There is a road which goes through that whole area, and it's hella confusing, switching time zones six times.

And you make a great point about this country's freedoms being subordinate to commerce, DST being a very good example. I am glad, however, that the US doesn't still observe local time, as that would be crazy for travelers: some standardization is fine, but DST should be up to the states.

[GentlemanJim]

By any chance do you know, if typical days were measured as being 24 hours long,.. BEFORE the world was discovered to be a globe?

Currently as it stands ....360 degrees (longitude) around the planet...divided by 24 hours.....yields 15 degrees per hour (typical time zone).

So, while "mid day" is a slam dunk, and has been for all eternity, I'm at a loss if folks back in the day measured their day in equal 24 hour increments?

And, that's mostly what honks me off. Based strictly upon degrees longitude, where I live now should "rightly" be in the central time zone. Based upon the geometry of the planet the eastern time zone should extend to further west than roughly Mansfield, Ohio.

But several decades ago some braniac got the great idea that we could be more sophisticated being on the same time zone as New York City...so we "moved"

And for years, did not follow daylight savings time....but in the early 2000s it was decided that we needed to conform to everyone else's standards and adopt savings time. It was branded as being "too confusing" being out of synch with the rest of the world ...

And from my perspective, that's like getting a doubly whammy...not only are we in a time zone based too far east to begin with, but the advent of daylight savings time only compounds the problem. I'd be much more at ease with DST if we were designated within the correct time zone.

I'm so glad that I live in a "free" society, where everyone has a choice.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by GentlemanJim

By any chance do you know, if typical days were measured as being 24 hours long,.. BEFORE the world was discovered to be a globe?

Scientific American has an article. The ancient Egyptians came up with a 12-period day, and then a 12-period night. The ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician Hipparchus of Nicaea came up with 24 periods of equal length, but by then, he also knew the world was round.

I remember reading in Galileo's Daughter that, while clocks of the 1500s had added the "minute", the "second" hadn't been invented yet. Galileo had to measure his gravity experiments in heartbeats.

[GentlemanJim]

Thanks!! Especially interesting where they were dividing the nights into 12 equal periods that were inconsistent with the 12 equal periods of daylight EXCEPT on the equinoxes.

I used to work extensively with mechanical time switches that had astronomic compensation. And back in those days the compensation was all done with gears, not electronics. They were fascinating beasts.