And to round out the equation, I don’t give a fuck.
Enjoy,
Jerry Cornelius
The system works.
I remember you too. Fondly.
Forget? Whaddaya mean “forget”? You used to be Anthracite, right?
I think I’d join you in your contentedness if those two things were the case. There are other facets, of course, but I think given a caveat or four I could conscientiously vote for a candidate who stood for those two things as long as a third wasn’t, say, taking over the world.
Or, as I like to say to my wife: “The Republican Party consists of three parts: millionaires, fundies, and suckers.”
In my book, if you’re not a millionaire or a fundie, and you vote Republican, you’re a sucker. Because they’re not looking out for your interests. They may say that they are, but their actions prove that they’re not.
Understand me, I used to be a sucker myself. back in the day. I was a libertarian and voted for Bush 41. That was back before I realized that, however attractive libertarianism may be in theory, in practice in modern America it’s merely a tool to give middlebrow philosophical legitimacy to corporate piggishness. And I really, really don’t like being a tool.
Glad to see you got the joke instead of taking offense.
Enjoy,
Steven
I remember, absolutely. Maybe a year ago, give or take a couple of months, you said that one of your energy-industry contacts had revealed some damning piece of information that forever and always would label Bush, for you, a dishonest greed-monkey. You also said you’d never tell us what it was, because you wanted to protect yourself and your source.
I really wanted to beg you for the dish, because I was dying of curiosity (hell, I still am), but I respected your rationale at the time, and continue to do so. It’s clear that your decision was and is based on strong (if undefined) principles, and that’s enough for me.
Though if you change your mind and decide to spill, I’ll be the first one there with drooling eyeballs. Or something. Mixed metaphors were never my strong suit.
The problem the Democrats have is that for too long, they let the neocons dictate what’s being discussed. Also, they joined the neocons in their misadventures, and swallowed the stories about Iraq’s imminent threat.
Now they have to purge the lies out of their system, and no matter how it is done, it will stink of armchair quarterbacking. Clinton had a detailed list of promises to chew on. Kerry will have to develop such a list himself, or once again he will be defined by his opponents.
Andrew Sullivan is looking pretty wobbly on Bush vote.
Here’s a recent complaint.
I have to say: I think the neocons are correct. The real strategic reasons for taking Iraq make sense. If the President had sold the war on those reasons, he would have won at least half my vote. Of course, the other half is being even near the ballpark of my thinking on social issues, so maybe he shouldn’t have bothered.
Isn’t it possible that poor people might, you know, agree with certain principles even though they might go against their interests? (and not everyone agrees that many of the government programs aimed at the poor really ARE in their best interests).
I disagree: deficits aren’t particularly bad.
What’s bad is the spending that created the deficit in the first place. That places an unavoidable burden that, no matter what, has to come out of the pockets of taxpayers at SOME POINT.
However, once it’s created, it’s not particularly bad to have it around longer as opposed to shorter: it’s not anywhere near as important when that “some point” comes about. While it may be advantageous or disadventageous in different economic conditions, how we choose to deal with the debt (pay it off now vs. later) is largely a matter of indifference. All this nonsense about burdening future generations is mostly silly. By not paying down the debt today (i.e. but not taxing) you indeed force your children to pay the interest on it. But… you also retain your money with which YOU can, if you wish, earn interest on, which ultimately ends up in the hands of your children: all other things equal nothing much has changed. Whether or not government debt burdens your children is mostly up to what private citizens do with their money, not what the government does with their money.
Methinks you’re conflating the defecit with the debt. The thing about an ongoing deficit is that it continues to grow the debt, increasing the amount that eventually has to come out of the taxpayers’ pockets down the road (and simultaneously decreasing what is available to them when the day of reckoning comes).
A deficit is just a tax increase to be implemented in the future. And from the looks of things, Dear Leader loves future tax increases.
Both–all–of the political parties leave me tired and disillusioned. (No wonder the old saw about eschewing discussions about politics and religion applies; they’re remarkably similar. Both frequently blow off substance in favor of passionate, self-contradictory quibbling.)
I suffered a queasy WTF moment during the Clinton/Bush Sr. election. An outraged Republican cried foul on frankly centrist Clinton’s election by (quote), “Stealing our ideas!”
Huh? ::shakes head again:: HUH? Does the freakin’ label matter all that much on an executive?
I wasn’t in love with Reagan but tolerated him because his actions were much more moderate than his rhetoric. I’ll never forgive him for short-sightedly loosing the wacko religious right into the Party of Lincoln. He could balance them. His succesors can’t.
I’m a firm social liberal and limiter of government interference in individual lives. I don’t see the conflict there, or that either major party is “right”. Both espouse elements but it’s an ugly choice.
I didn’t vote for Bush Jr., mainly because his track record for actual achievement and principle stank. Ballyhoo aside, Gore was more grounded than Shrub, i.e. much less likely to pull something awful and irretrievable. Gore was Clinton Lite. Shrub was Righteous Crazy.
I gave Shrub a chance, really did. Unlikely presidents grow into the office.
George W. Bush is a disaster, a pathetic disgrace. A nice guy, but no president. He’s a ruthless campainger for shifting party ground. He’s a cavalier spendthrift who’s used the Constitution and powers as office like toilet paper in search of re-election. Shrub never had the least clue about the terrible responsibilities of actually leading a huge country. He just “got” the slick game of winning the title. He doesn’t have a center. Politics can be a dirty game, but it can also be a sideways-noble, messy effort at compromise. I just can’t determine what or whom–if anyone–Shrub actually stands for, beyond narrow triggers.
George W. Bush is NOT a conservative. He’s certainly not a leader. Leaders garner power by persuasion, pure force of vision or just guile. He’s struck out on all bases, as far as I’m concerned.
I apologize, and I shouldn’t have mentioned anything at all then except IIRC people wondered why I had a sudden 180-degree change of opinion. I still can’t talk about it, moreso because I’ve recently been involved in some “sensitive” work related to it.
For awhile now I’ve been thinking of creating a thread dealing with this topic.
I voted for Bush because I didn’t like Gore. He simply didn’t appeal to me as the type of person I wanted running the nation. I’ve usually voted Republican simply because they are financially conservative. If gays want to get married, I’ll throw rice at the wedding and abortion doesn’t concern me in the least.
Up until Sep 11th I has no problem with Bush and figured he was doing a decent job although I admit not paying too much attention to his administration due to events in my personal life. After September 11, I was split on how effective I thought he was. While some of his actions seemed correct, he also failed to become the president he could have been. Great events often define a president but this wasn’t the case. FDR and Lincoln were put into difficult positions and dealt with them as great leaders. GWB did not rise to the occasion as they did.
The invasion of Iraq was pathetic. He jammed it down America’s throat and ignored world opinion causing the United States the negative consequences suffered today. Even if the stories about weapons of mass destruction were not lies, there was still no reason to invade Iraq. Iraq did not pose an immediate threat to the United States and should have been dealt with by the United Nations. Once the war started, it was unpatriotic to speak out against the war.
The uncontrolled spending can’t be ignored. Clinton might have lied about some things and gotten BJs under his desk but when he left office, the federal defecit was $0. There was even talk about starting to pay off the national debt. Fast forward to today and we have a $500 billion dollar defecit looming with. What in the hell happened? GWB.
The destruction of the Constitution doesn’t even factor in. It’s just another in a long list of reason why the Republican party lost me as a voter. I know people who are very hard core conservatives who also won’t vote for him in November. He needs to go and someone with new ideas should be put in office. Sadly I don’t think Kerry is the person but there isn’t much choice right now.
Er, they’re the same thing for my purposes: the deficit is just the yearly factor by which the debt grows. We can either tax people now to avoid having a deficit, or we can tax them later to pay it off. Whether or not we run a deficit or not, the exact same amount of spending has to be paid for. Running up a debt that you borrow to cover is just one way of financing those payments.
What I’m saying is simply that the current tax rate is irrelevant to the ultimate amount that has to come out of people’s pockets (though the tax rate can in part determine how much money is in people’s pockets to begin with). I think you agree with this already.
Oh, but I disagree with this last bit. It stands to reason that if we tax people less now, they will have more money than they otherwise would have when that day of reckoning comes. In fact, they could have substantially more, depending on the economic climate.
Consider, for instance, someone who has to run up their credit card in order to keep paying their daily living given a large tax burden. That puts them in personal debt: except that the rate of interest they pay on their credit card is much higher than the rate of interest on the debt. In this case, they’d do much better to not get taxed, not have to run up their credit card debt, and then have to pay back less money later in taxes than they’d otherwise have to later pay back in credit card bills.
And, in fact, if you are worried about the debt, you can personally pay off your share right away by buying a government bond for exactly the amount that constitutes your household’s share of the national debt. That bond will earn interest for you at exactly the same rate the debt earns interest that you’d have to pay back through higher taxes later on. Of course, you’ll have exactly that amount less in your pocket for the time being as well: but this is exactly the same situation you’d be in if the government were to call due your entire share of the national debt today anyway.
Apos:
It looks to me like you’re a believer in Ricardian Equivalence, though I seem to recall that you denied that some time ago.
[hijack]
Now that I have your attention, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to ask you. With apologies and with all due respect, I had formed the opinion early in your posting days that you were a right-winger, albeit one with some economic training.
Was I mistaken initially? Or did you have some sort of paradigmatic leap during one of my hiatuses? Translation: Please characterize your political beliefs in 100 words or less. 
(Feel free to ignore this request/comment, btw. For balance, I’ll characterize my beliefs: Politically, I’m a centrist European, which puts me on the far left side of the US spectrum. I am also an empiricist. My moral philosophy tends towards negative utilitarianism.)
[/hijack]
I don’t buy the larger theory (mostly because in practice there are a great deal of other things to worry about, such as if everyone started doing this, it would radically distort the market), but the example is quite illustrative as to how to understand the national debt. Because the government gets all its revenue from the taxpayers, from the taxpayer’s perspective, the government is pretty much like a cousin that steals your checkbook and runs up debts in your name that will later be called due. In theory, you can respond to these debts like you would any other debt, with a range of ways to finance it. You can even buy a share of your own debt.
In practice, however, the government is exceedingly unpredictable in who and when it will tax at what rates. There is no way to predict what your REAL share of the national debt is. For some savvy people with good tax accountants, that share is effectively 0.
I don’t generally characterize myself, though I have generally libertarian leanings, tempered by Rawlsian leanings, and both of those screwed up by my crazier philosophical fancies. As a scattershot survey, I believe:
-that schooling should be government supported to some extent, but not actually run by the government except perhaps in natural monopoly areas (like those that could only support one school)
-likewise that most of the big “social safety net” elements of our government are extremely poorly designed and wasteful, though I don’t want to see them gone entirely either
-that government is way way way too large and regulates far far too much
-that gay people should be able to marry, adopt, and continue making our civilization peechy keen
-that I could incinerate a billion stem cells for fun and have hurt absolutely no one except all the people that could have benefitted from the medical breakthroughs they offer
-that private businesses should be able to discriminate against whom they wish, and that I should be able to discriminate against them
-that civil society should be a far more important realm than government, even though it isn’t currently
-free speech, association, ownership of, within reason and with reasonable liscencing and enforcement, personal weapons
-freedom of religion and the government out of the business of having any religious opinions at all
-the judicious use of military force to defend the nation from threats, and in some cases to destroy tyrrany, genocide, and the abuse of the planet and humanity
- the decriminalization of drugs, with treatment instead of incarceration for the truly addictive ones
-anti death penalty in MOST of the cases for which it is applied, though not all.
-very strongly against the abuse of common natural resources and other public goods which currently have poor means of ownership
-think affirmative action had a place and a time, and it’s long over. This includes the affirmative action that keeps men in college over much more qualified women.
etc.
I believe very very strongly in the three pillars of classical liberalism: democracy, capitalism, and the liberal scientific method, all of which represent a rejection of traditionalist and Platonic ideas of centralized control of political power, trade, and ideas, respectively.
I’ve voted for precisely one Democratic President (Gore) so far, and I will vote for John Kerry this year. Regionally, I’ve voted for both Republicans and Democrats. I don’t think third parties have any real relevance nationally under our current system, though I wouldn’t be averse to voting for them locally. I’d generally say that I’m a Democrat when it comes down to it, though my hoped for aim is to reform the party to be fiscally responsible, for reducing the size and control of the government, and not so naive in foriegn policy, and a lot of other huge problems I have with them. I guess I see more hope of those previous things changing than I do the Republican party changing its conservative social stance and my nitpicks about it. Life, and democracy, is about compromise. You can’t have the candidate you want, right here, right now. You can only pull the consensus in one direction or another, over time, and you have to be strategic and long-term about it.