# Alternate universes: Conservative and liberals get everything they want. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 29, 2014, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941 "2014-10-29T23:01:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/41 "2014-10-31T14:46:48Z")
Perhaps a constructive way to do this would be to compare the two states at extreme ends: Which state has most consistently had Democrats in power for the last 50 years? Which state has most consistently had Republicans in power for the last 50 years? (I’m hoping one of the political junkies chimes in to tell me which these are: I have no idea.) How do policies on the ground differ in those two places, without regard to the talking points? In other words, never mind what they say: how do they actually govern? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/42 "2014-10-31T14:52:25Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Perhaps a constructive way to do this would be to compare the two states at extreme ends: > > Which state has most consistently had Democrats in power for the last 50 years? > Which state has most consistently had Republicans in power for the last 50 years? > > (I’m hoping one of the political junkies chimes in to tell me which these are: I have no idea.) > > How do policies on the ground differ in those two places, without regard to the talking points? In other words, never mind what they say: how do they actually govern? One problem with comparing, say, Alaska to New York is that they are shaped by their geography and circumstances. Same for Oklahoma vs., say, Massachusetts. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/43 "2014-10-31T14:55:24Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > There are the social conservatives who worry about abortion and guns. There are the hawks who care only about military might and think Israel is infallible. There’s no inherent contradiction between most of these views. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/44 "2014-10-31T14:58:40Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You aren’t going to have a population boom when you’ve genocided or ethnically cleansed a significant portion of the population, massively contaminated the environment, rolled back social programs and protections for workers and all the rest. You’ll have a population contraction, due to both all the direct killing and the massive amounts of illness and widespread starvation. Nobody said anything about genocide. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > You can’t eliminate the national debt, pay for a bigger military or pay for all those other police-state measures when you’ve massively lowered tax revenues with things like a flat tax and the impoverishment, imprisonment and/or extermination of most of the population. One of the possible things would be that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare would be rolled back. I’m not saying that’s a good thing. But it would reduce expenditures. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/45 "2014-10-31T17:04:17Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > One problem with comparing, say, Alaska to New York is that they are shaped by their geography and circumstances. Same for Oklahoma vs., say, Massachusetts. That’s true. Different things are different. I still think it would be a useful comparison, since imperfect real-world examples will get a lot closer than no real-world data. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/46 "2014-10-31T19:41:54Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Yeah, _only_ budget surpluses of a trillion a year. 😃 Right. Difficult and unlikely, but within the realm of possibility. > [@RTFirefly](#): > > My calculator says it’s 31% below minimum wage. We clearly have different definitions of ‘substantial.’ It’s definitely substantial on an individual scale–I certainly wouldn’t want my income reduced by 31%, nor would anyone else. But it’s peanuts on a macroeconomic scale, because minimum wage earners are only about 2% of all hourly workers, and because they earn so much less than other workers on average. Assuming all minimum wage workers work 40 hours a week, 51 weeks a year, abolishing the minimum wage would reduce their total income by about 7 billion dollars– a drop in the bucket relative to the total economy, and just .04% of GDP. There is the problem, though, that the Pew data only counts the federal minimum wage, and therefore ignores workers earning higher state minimum wages. There’s also the deal of sticky wages–people hate seeing wages go down, and so the effect would be more limited (or would take longer). > [@RTFirefly](#): > > The minimum wage isn’t just about people who are earning the minimum wage. It has a ripple effect - if you’ve got people working for you at minimum wage, and you also have some jobs that require more skills or are more difficult or less desirable in other ways, you’ve got to pay them at least a little more than minimum. And then there’s going to be jobs that are a little bit more difficult or require greater skills than those. So if you get rid of the minimum wage, and the effective minimum falls to the $5 equilibrium, those $8 and $9/hour jobs fall to $5.50 and $6.25, and so forth, with the upshot that tens of millions of people at the lower end of the economy earn thousands less each year. This is the hardest part to disagree with, because it’s the hardest part to find facts on. Obviously, the wage of a skilled tradesman earning $25/hour probably isn’t very dependent on whatever the minimum wage is, but a manager earning a dollar more than his employees is. A ripple effect certainly exists, but it’s hard to quantify. [Brookings](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2014/01/10-ripple-effect-of-increasing-the-minimum-wage-kearney-harris), which has a minor liberal bias but is by far less biased than most other sources, arbitrarily assumes that the any hourly wage within 150% of the minimum wage is dependent on it, and concludes that 35 million workers’ wages are dependent on the minimum wage. Using their numbers, near-minimum wage earners would see their wages reduced by 240 billion a year, or 1.4% of GDP. That’s no longer insubstantial on a macroeconomic scale, but it’s still a relatively minor effect (and the money wouldn’t just disappear, it’d be in the hands of businesses who would probably use some of it for capital investments or whatnot). Also, sticky wages would apply here, and wages wouldn’t just plummet as soon as the minimum wage was reduced. Math: (7.25-5)_1532000_40_51/16.8 trillion=.04% ((1.5_7.25-1.5_5)35 million40_51)/16.8 trillion=1.4% ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/47 "2014-10-31T20:12:31Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Perhaps a constructive way to do this would be to compare the two states at extreme ends . . . Isn’t it enough to compare the overall averages of liberal states and conservative states? Look at education rates, health conditions, longevity, income, and so on. Liberal states are statistically richer, healthier, cleaner, and have a better-educated populace. This doesn’t prove causation; it could well be that rich states are able to afford expensive programs like schools and health-care systems. (One could go further and say that public schools indoctrinate students into liberal beliefs. I think that’s bullshit, but I’ve heard it declared by many, many conservatives.) When liberal states have a better overall standard of living by nearly all measures, can we conclude that the comparison has been performed for us? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/48 "2014-10-31T20:23:13Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Isn’t it enough to compare the overall averages of liberal states and conservative states? I don’t think so, because most of those states switch back and forth between the two. I’m talking about examples where one side or the other has had relatively unfettered access to the reins of power. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2014, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/49 "2014-10-31T20:36:56Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Nobody said anything about genocide. How else are you going to get rid of millions of non-whites to produce that 80% white society? > [@Velocity](#): > > One of the possible things would be that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare would be rolled back. I’m not saying that’s a good thing. But it would reduce expenditures. And decrease economic activity while increasing social unrest and the death rate. Fighting food riots, the massive increase in crime and so forth costs money, so you likely aren’t going to _save_ money either. ---
**Author:** ![get\_lives](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@get\_lives](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/get_lives)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2014, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/50 "2014-11-01T19:46:32Z")
Libertarians and social conservatives actually differ quite a bit. There needs to be a third list for Libertarians…maybe separate lists for theocrats and Neocons, too. Dick Cheney, Mike Huckabee, and Rand Paul have pretty different agendas when it comes down to it. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2014, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/51 "2014-11-02T11:42:49Z")
> [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](#): > > Right. Difficult and unlikely, but within the realm of possibility. Kinda like a mission to Mars. Seriously, these are so far beyond the biggest surpluses ever that even ‘within the range of possibility’ is a stretch. Not to mention, you’re going up against the underlying assumption, which is that _conservatives get everything they want_. This one already got tested back in 2001 and a number of times since, and what we know is that today’s conservatives would rather have tax cuts than surpluses, and they’d rather have more tax cuts and bigger deficits than the same or higher taxes and budgets closer to balance. And that’s not just a mild preference, but a rather emphatic one. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2014, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/52 "2014-11-04T23:48:38Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > How else are you going to get rid of millions of non-whites to produce that 80% white society? Deporting 12 million illegal immigrants would make a dent in the numbers without resorting to murder, wouldn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/53 "2014-11-05T01:16:02Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Deporting 12 million illegal immigrants would make a dent in the numbers without resorting to murder, wouldn’t it? Does the 12 million number include their citizen children? ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2014, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/54 "2014-11-05T14:36:43Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2014, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941/55 "2014-11-07T05:04:24Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Does the 12 million number include their citizen children? No. The number would be much higher than 12 million if they took their kids who are legal citizens with them. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-universes-conservative-and-liberals-get-everything-they-want/702941.md?page=2)