Well, language is a funny thing. What you call “being Fiscally Conservative” I more often see called “being fiscally responsible.” And on this board at least, it’s most often used in the context of a misunderstanding of the fiscal conservative position (born of the fact that fiscal liberals just simply have no way of asking the questions asked by fiscal conservatives). I’ve really never heard anyone say they are only into fiscal responsibility.
It also often comes up in strawman-type arguments, where someone will say that of course fiscal conservatives are full of shit because Reagan ran deficits. Or, for another example of the misunderstanding/strawman, look at the OP of this very thread.
It’s a nothing but a self-serving piece of sophistry that assigns the virtue of fiscal responsibility to the decision not to pay for things you don’t like. Everything else is a bunch of sophistry. One only needs to look at what happens to the state of national finances under the reign of “fiscal conservatives” to see that it bears no resemblance to financial responsibility. By this definition any liberal who opposed the grossly wasteful and unnecessary war in Iraq is a staunch fiscal conservative.
Wrong. I want to know why the champions of Reaganite Keynesianism (or at least the party of the same) are now offering jeremiads on the horrors of deficit spending.
Just as a general guideline, people with real lives and responsibilities sometimes spend 24 hours away from message boards. But I will say I’m only interested in contesting the OP I wrote and not your strawman characterization of it.
And your theory appears to be that some people are OK with deficit spending as long as it’s for the military but not OK with it as long as it’s for social programs. And I explained to you why that very well could be the case, and specifically is the case for me: I think the government should have a military and should have only very limited social programs, and I’m not really automatically bothered by deficit spending in the abstract. So, I’d be totally fine with deficit spending for the military and not fine with deficit spending for social programs, and there’s no contradiction or hypocrisy there–that position is just a natural result of my beliefs on the issues of the military, social programs, and deficit spending.
You promised to hoist me on my own petard, but so far I remain quite unhoisted.
You’ve really heard people say something like this: “I’m OK with the government spending x% of GDP as long as it takes in x% of GDP in the exact year the spending occurs, and the foregoing holds true for all values of x 1 to 100 inclusive.”?
If you have, your experience differs from mine. I’ve only seen the whole “fiscal responsibility” thing used as a misunderstanding/strawman of the fiscal conservative position. YMMV.
And I think that if the U.S. companies want invade other countries to further their business interests then they should pay for it themselves. And if they can’t pay for it then they should ask their relatives, or their neighbors or their church. A government by the people, for the people, should be focused on social welfare and improving the lot of it’s citizens, not killing brown people.
Does that mean I get to call myself a Fiscal Conservative? As stated elsewhere you won’t find an educated person in the country who can’t name something they don’t think the government should be doing, so unless there is something more subtle to your definition (like, it’s only conservative when it’s what I like) then it’s a pretty meaningless definition.
As I’ve said, I think fiscal conservatives ask “is this an area the government should be involved in.” I agree that even for fiscal liberals, there are certain things they don’t want the government to do, but I don’t think fiscal liberals ask that question. I think they ask “would the government doing this further my ideas about social justice etc.”
Also, in reading some people’s reactions to my definition, I think people are confusing (or I’m not effectively communicating) the difference between (i) the areas in which the government acts and (ii) the specific things the government does. I think everyone (i.e., all fiscal conservatives and fiscal liberals) agree that the government should make and enforce criminal laws–that’s one of the basic areas the government should be involved in, really just the most basic thing a government does. So, when deciding what those criminal laws should be, something more than fiscal conservatism v. fiscal liberalism is obviously needed. Stated another way, there’s been no harm done to my definition of fiscal conservatism just because fiscal liberals don’t want the government to use warrantless wiretaps or engage in enhanced interrogation techniques or whatever.
Let’s use Obamacare as an example. Fiscal conservatives would ask “is Obamacare something the government should be doing,” and different fiscal conservatives would reach different results. But fiscal liberals ask “would Obamacare advance my ideas of social justice”–they don’t have a conception of what areas the government should and should not be involved in, so they simply don’t ask the same question that fiscal conservatives do.
Why doesn’t a fiscal conservative ask if another health system would help business. If he sees that he had to compete with companies that do not fold health care into the price of their products, why wouldn’t he say we have to change our system like theirs to make more money?
A fiscal conservative would be behind a health care system that allows them to compete better. They also would back a system that provides better care cheaper, which the rest of the world has shown is achievable.
Because fiscal conservatives are not all about money. Their goal is not to make as much money as possible. You have created a strawman out of fiscal conservatives.
Seriously, if you think that Baboonanza’s post about the cost of protecting the business interests of the US abroad with military might is idiotic, then I don’t think you’re aware of how many protections our government provides people like you, and me.
No I haven’t because that’s nothing but hyperbolic bollocks and you know it.
To be fiscally responsible, in good times the government would pay down debt and set up a rainy day fund. When times call for Keynsian stimulous, a responsible fiscal adult would not demand to cut spending. Fiscal responsibility does not include prosecuting wars and hiding the cost in off balance sheet transactions. Fiscal responsibility does not include cutting taxes and raising spending. Tax and spend is fiscally responsible as contrasted by cutting taxes and increasing spending.
Now to be fair, I’m not really coming up with examples in the past few decades when the US was running surpluses, paying down debt, establishing a rainy day fund from any party. Happy to be educated if I’m mistaken.
And you have not answered the honest question of what President(s) does a fiscal conservative hold up as good example? Come on, throw out some names and we can debate that.
Actually, I should have said that “I’m OK with the government spending x% of GDP as long as it takes in x% of GDP in the exact year the spending occurs, and the foregoing holds true for all values of x 1 to 100 inclusive.”? sounds pretty much like what a fiscal conservative would say.
Since you’ve been ranting about strawmen and then setting up a scarecrow army, why don’t you start with highlighting what President(s) that you, as a self identified fiscal conservative, view as a good example of fiscal conservatism? We can go from there, thanks.
You describe your political stance, but do you define “fiscal conservative”? Do other “fiscal conservatives” agree with your definition?
Wiki’s article begins
Now I do realize Wiki’s editors are mostly Marxists who want to take your guns away and force your daughters to have abortions, so I don’t regard their definition as authoritative. But it does have the virtue of building on ordinary English. Knowing only “candle” and “wax” I can guess what “candle wax” means without consulting a dictionary. Knowing only “fiscal” and “conservative” I’d guess Wiki’s description long before I’d guess Rand Rover’s.
I’d ask for comment, but know that the right-wingers in these threads can’t deal with facts or logic. You’ll keep mute, tail-between-legs, then blurt out the same debunked gibberish next week in another thread.
Nah, not really interested. I’m more interested in discussing the idea and policy arguments based on it, not amy particular politician’s implementation of the idea.
Look budd, I’ve explained my beliefs and shown how people who hold my beliefs can unhypocritically have the views expressed in the OP. If you want to call my position “slartibartfastianism,” then you go right ahead.
I coulkd link you to any number of “test where you are on the political compass” type sites that use the four dimensions of fiscal conservative/liberal and social conservaticve/liberal, so it’s not like I’m making up my use of the term out of whole cloth. But, as I said, that doesn’t martter anyway–Ive described what I believe, call it what you will.
Taking your ball and going home? ]In other words, you got nothin’ but a pie in the sky ideological fantasy under the label of “fiscal conservative.”
Might as well call up the ghost of Marx and discuss how if Stalin and Mao hadn’t corrupted his theory we would be in the global communist paradise already.
Three comments and a commendation.
(1) What you speak of is two dimensions, not four. (Unless you argue that we live in 6-D space, the six dimensions being left, right, up, down, in, out. )
(2) Those sites are more likely to refer to “economic” rather than “fiscal” conservative, which is not quite the same thing.
(3) It is precisely that those sites distinguish economic and social conservatism that makes your definition of “fiscal conservative” incorrect: you’re conflating some of your social philosophy under the “fiscal” umbrella.
Setting (1)-(3) aside, I do applaud your willingness to state what you believe. You are happy with Bush-43’s deficit because he spent the money on war. You are presumably displeased with Johnson’s surplus: he should have had a larger surplus by spending less fighting poverty. You and I may disagree, but at least you’re not a hypocrite.
This is in contrast to the other “fiscal conservatives” who posted in this thread, then could only snark and run away tail-between-legs since the facts make a mockery of their hypocrisy.
