The definitions of “liberal” and “conservative” in this country are so screwed up this question isn’t even answerable anymore.
I said poor conservative. I haven’t reached $250k yet. Operative word is yet, and I am conservative because that’s what will allow me to get there.
I guess I’m poor because I have no ambition to be rich. I’m liberal because every “conservative value” means nothing to me.
Not reading the other posts on purpose, just so I don’t sway my words in any direction.
We’re (barely) “rich” conservative by this arbitrary metric. I’ve had my views mostly unchanged since the 90s when I was in school or after military, earning a bit over minimum wage. When I was in high school, I got caught up reading socialist literature from Engels, Trotsky et al. I wrote very passionate papers supporting those authors, and got trounced on rebuttal, so to speak. But I didn’t just say “Ah, my teachers were stupid,” I read up on their points (which were more difficult to follow in those days, especially pre-widespread-internet) and I could only agree with the economic points of “conservatism.” I remain “liberal” (for what it’s worth) on almost all humanist issues.
Since then, I have wrestled back and forth with my views on socialized medicine, etc., and I can’t say I still lean one way or the other for those. My overall views on U.S. taxation laws haven’t much changed between my household income of less than $50k to a current one of ~$250k (“rich,” according to the thread’s metrics.). Why would it? I didn’t claim all the possible benefits when I was “poor,” because it wasn’t strictly necessary for survival. Now, I don’t take every nitpicking tax break that we probably could…and have opted out of quite a few…but that could be chalked up to a bit of laziness/fear of being scrutinized. At any rate, I think our balance with the government is somewhat fair. But I have PLENTY to say about the healthcare system in the U.S., and it doesn’t fall neatly in either category of liberal/conservatism, as is popularly described. But my position is fairly anomalous being both the spouse of a physician and a disabled person left pretty disenfranchised (for want of a better term) by modern medicine as practised by the current U.S. model.
TLDR: Me? Barely “Rich” conservative. LGBTetc. rights? Thumbs up to everything I’ve seen. Abortion rights? Very “liberal,” although my personal feelings lag on this. Medicinal drugs (cannabis, opioids, psychedelics, etc.)…extremely liberal. Immigration?–Moderate strictness. Minimum wage?–It’s complicated. Taxation? Actually, get rid of the IRS and enact a national sales tax with exemptions for the poorer folks. Simplify. Did I forget anything major?
Exactly so. (Now that I’m looking over previous posts.) You said it better than I did. I’m fairly apolitical now, since what is, is…and will be for a long time after I stop caring. But I know what you mean. My political position hasn’t changed much since my household income went from >$30k/year to around $250k/year. Why would it, indeed? The principles are the same. It would be, at the minimum, disingenuous for me to simply support whatever platform most benefited me at a certain stage. And those were my thoughts when I was relatively poor 20 years ago…not just recently.
As I’ve said earlier, healthcare is my sticking point. There’s a lot of nuances there that don’t necessarily hew to a liberal or conservative ruler, despite what anyone says.
Eh? I’m not disagreeing, per se. But how would you, personally, redefine “liberal” and “conservative” to unscrew the meanings, so that this question is answerable? This could be really interesting.