:rolleyes:
I think it’s possible to discuss ideas without discussing people who may hold similar ideas. YMMV of course.
This assertion turns out to be false. You insist when liberal ideas are being discussed on lumping all people that might support said ideas into one monolithic group.
You’ve said more than once just in this thread:
A good rule of thumb is that folks on one side of the spectrum general are not good at characterizing those on the other. What generally comes out is a caricature.
I even gave you a list generator of things government should be involved in and you dismissed it as off topic, even when is was in specific response to an issue you raised.
Hyperbollocks? 
Of course you can. It is also entirely possible to discuss economic and political abstractions strictly on an ideal plane, without reference to their applications in meatspace. In the instance of discussing “fiscal conservatism”, this will allow you to ignore and discount the actual havoc wrought by such persons who claim the title of fiscal conservative, whether they deserve to or not.
Is such a discussion desirable? I suppose so, not having any real objection. If any number of my fellow Dopers want to bore each other to tears discussing philosophical abstractions, sure, what the heck, freak freely, says I. Though such a discussion is probably best mounted in GD, which is more amenable to the “tea and strumpets” form of discourse.
And so long as you remain quarantined in abstraction, all well and good. Its only when you try to nudge a toe over the line and offer your abstractions as prescriptive, when you offer these principles as reliable rules for practical politics…that’s a whole 'nother kettle of piranha.
Just bumping the thread to point out that the right-wing idiots have indeed run away, unable to answer simple questions.
But those who read these threads for entertainment needn’t worry. The “fiscal conservative” babblers will be back in a week or two, in another thread, repeating the same debunked gibberish, using the same 6-syllable word they don’t even understand, and hoping to get some good snark in before they’re called out again.
Hyper-inflationary? Prestidigitation? Phenomenology?
Sweatysnugglebunnies?
This could be fun … but (to reduce confusion) I meant “fiscal conservatism.” As used in the thread, that must be treated as a single compound word since those so self-describing intended a meaning which doesn’t follow directly from its two constituent words.
Substituting “6-syllable phrase” wouldn’t have provided the proper satiric effect, obviously, since the ignorati have plenty of those. “Duuhh … it’s a no-brainer!”
Please. The story of this thread is that Cosmic Relief got all het up over a strawman he created, I showed how it’s a strawman and the two positions he outlined can be held sans hypocrisy, he asked for clarification of my position while promising to show my hypocrisy, I clarified, he ran away like a little bitch. And then the usual idiots claimed victory for their side because they apparently don’t understand the narrow topic we are discussing. I didn’t respond to several off-topic posts because they were off-topic.
I’d like to go back to this statement, though I realize I’m late to the party and the train has already been wrecked.
I don’t concern myself with the accounting balance. It’s not about a + or -. For me, it’s about just the expenditure side. It’s just spending that matters. What we do with taxes on the other end is a completely separate debate. The government should limit its spending to what we require of it, not what we want of it. There are too many things that people want from the government and they can get it by logrolling votes. And once a program starts, it will usually exist for all eternity. So when left to the people, the government will always spend beyond its means like a college kid with a credit card.
It’s THAT that needs to be curtailed. It’s endless spending and growth that needs to be stood against. That’s the essence of my fiscal conservatism. Taxes and income have nothing to do with this position, nor do deficits.
Chessic - I don’t mean to put words in your mouth but I find it hard to believe the only thing that is important is “limiting spending to what we require of it.” Don’t you think part of our current troubles is because fo things like the War in Iraq was not funded and the costs were kept off of the budget? Isn’t a lot of the fiscal mess we are in is because of the tendancy to start programs while not looking at how to pay for them? California being a great case in point.
I personally think the answer is to look at both what is funded and how it is funded.
You finally explained your position (however wrong! ) and I commended you for that. Chessic Sense also seems to agree that social spending is bad, whether paid via deficit or not. I happen to disagree with that, but in any case the thread title asks about “Deficit Spending.”
My comment was not directed at you, but at the on-topic hypocrites like Shagnasty and Shodan who posted. They claim to oppose deficits yet support the very same Presidents who cause deficits. I presented them evidence; they ran away tail-between-legs. But I’d bet money they reappear within the month in another thread posting similar bullshit. Those of us who choose to fight ignorance may need to dig out a link again.
I’d feel happier about this if posters of their ilk were allowed to post only in BBQ Pit. We could then simply answer their gibberish in a way reminiscent of British Minister’s Questions: “I refer Dishonourable Hypocrites to the answer I gave last week in the BBQ Pit.”
I’m not claiming you aren’t correct, but could you quote a post from Shodan and Shagnasty where they claim simply to oppose deficits (and not to just want smaller government–ie, my view)? Because, as I said, I think people conflate the two positions.
Once we’ve decided what we require of government, don’t you think that the revenue side of the ledger should at least cover those costs? Without that, your brand of fiscal conservatism will eventually bankrupt us.
Shagnasty wrote in #35:
That seems pretty clear. (Though on re-read it seems like silly strawmanism since we all disapprove of habitual deficits.)
I’m afraid I don’t study Shodan’s posts for content; the only one I saw in this thread could be paraphrased as “I don’t know how to read tables and I don’t understand Keynesianism.” If I implied any of his posts ever have intellectual content worth refuting, I misled.
Agreed. But re-read your post and pay special attention to “short-term deficit,” “surplus,” and “wisely saved.”
A better analogy would be to get laid off when your credit cards are already laden with debt, you have no money in the bank, and you continue to live like you did before you got laid off. If you think, “Gee, maybe we should cut out the premium cable until I get another job” then your wife and kids scream to high heavens and threaten to remove your decision making ability unless you agree to keep HBO AND add the Starz package.
And then when you get your job back you continue to put more and more on your credit cards with no intention of ever discontinuing your borrowing and certainly no intention of becoming debt-free.
Phrase it however you want… when you say fiscally conservative, you only mean conservative with causes you don’t like. When it comes to causes you do like, you’ll spend whatever it takes even if it means going into debt. There is nothing inherently fiscally conservative about that, except in the sense that it means taking all our fiscal resources and diverting them to ideological conservatives. But that doesn’t exactly carry the imprimatur of thrift that you seem to think.
You’re too dense to be hoisted.
Well, that’s pretty much true. I think the government should only do very limited things, and if it turns out that the government has to spend more money than it takes in that year on those things, then so be it. But you seem to think there’s some hypocrisy or something in that position, but there’s absolutely not.
Well, the fiscally conservative thing about it is that I want small government.
What is an “ideological conservative”? Or do you just mean that “conservatives” are ideological?
In any event, I don’t want to divert fiscal resources anywhere. I think money should simply go where people freely choose for it to go, except that there are certain things that are so important that it’s OK to force people to pay for them even if they don’t want to.
Or you’re too dense to hoist. Look, you started this thread with a premise, and I showed how that premise is wrong. You asked for me to clarify my position before you slam-dunked my ass. I clarified away, and you’ve done nothing but fail all over yourself. I think it’s clear who the dense one is here, bub.
So how does your view differ from plain-old, garden-variety conservatism? You want government to do things, and spend money, on some things but not on others. By that definition, everybody in the country is fiscally conservative.
I just think that “fiscally conservative” is a misnomer for the position you’re trying to describe. You’d like government to be smaller, except in the areas where it ought to be bigger. That means that you value some policy decisions (whatever they may be) above pure fiscal discipline. The mantle you choose should reflect that higher priority.
If you tell me what “plain-old, garden-variety conservatism” is then I’ll tell you how it differs (if it does).
I addressed this above. I think there are only certain areas the government should be involved in. Not everyone in the country thinks that. For many people, if they think it would be a good ting for the government to do x, then they would want the government to do x. They wouldn’t think “is x one of the proper areas for the government to be involved in?”
OK, super. Like I said, I described my position, call it what you want. I think “fiscally conservative” is a very good and accepted term for my position.
What? No. To restate again, the bigger/smaller thing relates to the areas I want the government to be involved in, not the amount of government activity that occurs or the amount spent on government.
That’s right. If some country gets all crazy and decides to invade the US, I’m not going to say “well, we took in $x in tax this year, so we can only spend $x to ramp up the military. Too bad if $x isn’t enough, we can’t run a deficit.”
How about “small government advocate”? Does that float your turd?
Look, I think the reason you object to my use of “fiscal conservative” is you are so used to the left’s strawman version of someone who just opposes deficits. I think I’m defining the term correctly. I want the fisc to be used for only very limited things, so I’m conservative with the fisc.