LEGO,
>But it is the Left which has always used class division,
Only insofar as they tried to do something about it. Australia almost became a classless society under the Hawke-Keating government, but governments since then have reinstated class divisions.

>class envy,
In Australia? You're going to need firm evidence if you want that claim to be taken seriously!
Here there's generally aspiration, not envy.

>and the politics of entitlement, to further their political aims.
And what's wrong with that? Australia is a rich country - why should only the rich have a good standard of living?

>with rising prosperity who needed a Labor Party?
Firstly, those who have not benefitted from the rising prosperity.
Secondly, those whose prosperity is under threat from the policies of the Libs.
Thirdly, those who see that Labor are better economic managers than the Libs.

>If your society has a reducing social problems through increased prosperity, then the Left knows that the best thing to do is to import new and hopefully intractable social problems.

Struth, I bet you're so ignorant about the Left that you actually believe that preposterous crap!

Social problems benefit nobody, and nobody wants more of them. The real question is what to do about them. While this is not entirely a Left v Right issue, the Right are currently dominated by conservatives, who tend to be more willing to sacrifice freedoms in an attempt to solve those problems.

(TBC)

LEGO (continued)
California's financial strife is nothing to do with "the most productive citizens leaving"; it's the direct result of Proposition 13 which has (over time) decimated that state's revenue base (as well as making the cost of land far higher).

As for the people leaving California, I suggest you read https://www.dailynews.com/2016/07/18/whos-leaving-california-not-who-you-think-thomas-elias/

Your attempt to politicise The Golden Goose is only a couple of orders of magnitude less stupid than the assumptions you make about your opponents. As I recall, the goose was killed in an attempt to get at the gold sooner. But nothing I, or indeed the Left, support is akin to killing the goose. You assume higher taxes on income and profits will cause the rich to flee - but the tax rates of the 1970s and 80s, despite being much higher than anyone is proposing now, did not have that effect.

To Aiden

There are two ways to deal with a debating opponent. The first, is to assume that that your opponent is intelligent, reasonable, and honest, and to engage in a one on one engagement using logic and reason. The second, is to assume that your opponent is either dumb or devious. In either case, the best tactic is to engage in a debate as if you are in a room full of impartial observers, and to pitch your premises directly to the audience and let them be the judge. I think I will take the second option in your case. But you should be glad to know that in choosing which type of opponent you are, I don't think you are dumb.

Now, a devious person always coaches his or her premises in terms of generalities which they have no intention of elaborating on. I submit your premise about the right side of politics engaging in vote buying, which although generally true, does not address the rampant, blatant, endless vote buying of the left side of politics, which shamelessly tells the poorer demographics that they are going to give them freebies by taxing "the rich."

My premise that the left has always promoted class division as a election strategy is so self evident that an honest and reasonable opponent would simply acknowledge the fact. But a devious opponent will vacillate forever on any point, and demand that I validate the obvious. So my response is, to leave the validity of that premise to the judgment of the audience.

As for your link to an article by Thomas Elias, I simply reject it. I would say that Elias is another Liberal in denial about the fact that 2 million of California's most valuable taxpayers are fleeing the high taxes and endless regulation of Democrat California. It is these regulations which are driving up housing, building and land costs. And it is Democrat "sanctuary cities" encouraging third world immigration that have turned Californian cities into sh--holes, where cleaning human waste off the streets is the only real growth industry.

LEGO,
The problem is you're assuming the entire Left to be either dumb or devious - and often both!
You don't bother to look at their real objectives - instead you assume altruism to be a cynical vote buying strategy, and that they'd resort to almost anything to stay in power. And those assumptions are genuinely stupid. I don't doubt you have the capability to think, but you seem to be too lazy to look at the actual evidence; instead you resort to stereotypes and incorrect assumptions you unthinkingly regard as self evident.

Your rejection of http://www.dailynews.com/2016/07/18/whos-leaving-california-not-who-you-think-thomas-elias/ is a case in point. You didn't find any evidence to the contrary, nor any logical flaw in what he was saying, but you rejected it because the author's political viewpoints go against your bias!

Do you doubt that were it not for Prop13, the state of California would be financially much better off, and land there wouldn't be so expensive?

Your claim about " the rampant, blatant, endless vote buying of the left side of politics, which shamelessly tells the poorer demographics that they are going to give them freebies by taxing 'the rich.'" seems rather dubious when you look at Chart 3 of http://archive.treasury.gov.au/documents/1156/HTML/docshell.asp?URL=01_Brief_History.asp

But before we go any further with this part of the discussion, please clarify: do you regard all of the government's wealth redistribution as vote buying?

As for class division, if it is an electoral strategy then it is a strategy for LOSING elections. The public don't want class division, and most in the ALP seem to know that. I acknowledge there are a few on the Left who do want it; Julia Gillard among them. But when she tried to promote class division, politically she became a dead woman walking!

Finally a reminder that when people claim something to be "self evident" it's usually because they believe it to be true but have no evidence at all.

To Aiden

Human beings think by using stereotypes. Of all the stupid slogans that your leftist peers have inculcated into your vestigial brain in lieu of developing it's ability for critical analysis, the one which claims that stereotyping is wrong, is the most stupid of all. Saying that stereotyping is wrong, is exactly like saying that thinking is wrong. Which why lefties always say it. The last thing they want Aiden to do is to think.

Now, your link presented a diatribe by some social justice warrior who claims that the best and the brightest are not fleeing California. Your premise appears to be, that just because he wrote this crap that I must believe it. I don't believe it. My information from numerous sources on Youtube is that in the last ten years, 2 million Californians and many leading corporations have fled the high state taxes and endless regulations in California, and are going to republican states like Nevada and Texas where state taxes do not exist and regulations are few. One industrialist claimed it would take his company two years to get through the numerous Californian state departments that would approve new construction. In Nevada it took one week.

This conforms with my unbiased historical observation, that whenever lefties get a hold of an economy through vote buying, they always stuff it up by taxing the most productive to death, sucking up to the least productive on the grounds that they are more numerous, and over regulating commercial activity to extinction in order to create regulatory non jobs for their numerous hangers on.

Your premise that the left don't want class division is a premise more worthy of hilarity than serious consideration. The Left has always portrayed themselves as the champions of the lower classes against the establishment, and the supposedly rapacious bourgeoisie. But their claim to want a classless society is beginning to fray because they just happen to be the biggest social snobs around who sneer at the lower "deplorable" class, and think themselves morally superior to the bourgeoisie, who are usually their parents.

LEGO,
I am disappointed that you've so far failed to answer the question: do you consider all wealth redistribution to be vote buying? Until you're willing to clarify what you mean, there's not much point in continuing that part of the discussion.

Human beings think very ineptly by using stereotypes. Doubly so when the stereotypes are as ludicrous as yours are, and doubly so again when, like you, they can't tell the difference between their stereotypes and facts! To think proficiently, one must frequently question one's assumptions.

>Your premise appears to be, that just because he wrote this crap that I must believe it

On the contrary, I don't want you to blindly take anybody's word for anything. What I want you to do is take it seriously; investigate its claims rather than instantly dismissing them because they don't fit your bias. And consider too the possibility that your preferred sources have the same bias you do, and are making the same mistakes.

Remember nobody's denying that there are people and businesses leaving California (and new ones coming in). If, as you claim, the high productivity workers are moving out and being replaced with low productivity immigrants, I'd expect to see a decline in the median wage (or at least stagnation and lagging behind the rest of the USA). Do the figures show this?

Most importantly, check the source that Thomas Elias uses:
http://next10.org/sites/default/files/california-migration.pdf

>The Left has always portrayed themselves as the champions of the lower classes against the establishment,
In the early 20th century of course they did, because a huge class divide existed. But the Left worked to close it, and were quite successful in doing so.

>and the supposedly rapacious bourgeoisie.
It appears you're having trouble distinguishing between the mainstream Left and the Communist Party!

>they just happen to be the biggest social snobs around who sneer at the lower "deplorable" class
No, it's not the lower class who are deplorable, it's the people like you who favour the interests of the rich over those of everyone else.