You know what? I think we’re talking about two different things.
Looking back through the thread, I see you’re talking about the Connecticut Compromise, which was the agreement to have two legislative bodies, one with proportional representation and one with equal representation. If so, then I’ll agree you’re right - that was over the issue of smaller states and larger states.
I thought you were talking about the Three-Fifths Compromise, which was the agreement that counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for apportionment purposes. That was a slave state vs free state issue.
I’m giving liberals the same credit I give conservatives. They’re trying to do what they think is best. Liberals aren’t advocating government assistance to make people dependent. They support these programs for the opposite reason. They feel that there are people who aren’t able to be self-sufficient in their current situation. They want to help raise these people up to the point where they can be self-sufficient. They’re trying to eliminate the problems that make people dependent.
To take this away from the diversions about race, consider Canada’s federation. In the 1970’s, the National Energy Program was devised by the federal government as a mechanism for extracting resources from the west without compensating them fairly for it. Our ‘senate’ is largely a joke, so we were at the mercy of the eastern voters. It took the threat of separation and a very aggressive stance by Alberta to stop this from happening. I remember watching on TV as a kid as our Premier in Alberta addressed the province (and the east) and said that we should shut it all down and stop the flow of resources completely if the east continued trying to push the NEP on us. The feds eventually backed down, but had it gone much farther it could have broken up the country. Even so, Canada has been close to breaking up several times in its history due to the power imbalances between the east and west.
Without regional representation, you wind up with something like colonialism, where isolated regions are ruled by distant leaders. It’s also a poor way to govern, as it separates power from information - someone in Washington is much less likely to understand the needs of Montana citizens than is a governor of the state.
We also have regional representation in voting districts and municipalities for similar reasons - government works best when it’s closest to the people it’s governing.
But why? He, and you too, don’t accept that it’s valid even to ask.
And it does nothing whatever to explain why any particular factional interests deserve special protection, and why those interests are chosen over others by defenders of unequal representation. The word “tyranny” is merely inflammatory, and suggests an unwillingness to abide by democratic principles.
Of course. If you’d bother to read anything I’ve noted, you’d know that. But that too does nothing to help explain why that is the case, why we should live today with the tavern backroom deals cut in Philly over two centuries ago.
“Do you not know” that the world, and the country, are very different today, and that the key issue that was compromised over back then has been dead for a century and a half already? Why do *you *think rural interests, whatever those may be (and you too are invited to list a few of your favorites), should have minority-veto power in a democracy?
If you can see anywhere I’ve made a personal attack, you’re free to notify the moderators.
You’re using “fairly” as a given. What did Albertans do, more than other Canadians, to get that oil there? What is it that makes them more “deserving” of the resulting income? How is the oil Alberta’s and not Canada’s? Hell, how is it not Athabasca County’s (or whatever name you have for the region) and Alberta’s instead? How is spreading the wealth over the entire province “fair”?
IOW, you threw a tantrum and got appeased.
When you would have told Ottawa “Now look what you made us do”, right?
The question is not regional representation. Every state has representation in Washington. The question is unequal representation, and minority veto, in a democracy. But someone whose conceptual framework is that a nation is merely an agglomeration of supreme states/provinces may have trouble with that.
For example, with modern communications you could set up a senate with sentators representing certain age groups.
And then give younger demographics higher representation than older ones. After all retired voters have different interests than those just starting their careers. Older voters won’t have to live with the consequences of their decisions as long there’s always the temptation to borrow tonnes of money and let paying the bills be the youngsters’ problem. Down with the tyranny of the gerontocracy!
There are lots of minorities that would love to have disproportionate electoral power, but since the voting systems were set up centuries ago we’re stuck with geographically unequal representation. I’ve never heard a good explanation for why this particular inequality is justified over any other.
While I think BobLibDem’s list was a little bit hyperbolic, magellan01’s is honest and real enough, and I believe disastrous in effect.
The flat tax is not fair as others have pointed out, it is essentially the same as expecting that a twenty-year old professional athlete and an eight-five year old who walks with a cane should be expected to have the same mile time.
Why not strengthen public education as other countries do rather than take even more money out of it and further ghettoize schools?
If anything the minimum wage is not high enough
I wouldn’t mind if we compensated by raising the income and estate taxes.
Right to work infringes on the rights of businesses to make a contract with a labour union.
This is vague.
Good.
So the children of illegal immigrants should suffer the sins of their parents?
A Guest worker’s program results in a form of a second-class work force.
In that case I wouldn’t be a US citizen (my parents are legal residents of the US but not citizens)
I agree.
Take steps to ensure that the spirit of the electoral college is protected
What will this recognition entail?
Unconstitutional and impracticable as others have pointed out.
This is not a “conservative” measure.
Sorry but the Supreme Court disagrees with you. Also I wonder what you will say to the hundreds of thousands of people who would have been previously denied insurance due to pre-existing coverage or the people who gained healthcare through Medicaid expansion.
Most of these reforms are trivial and have been found to not reduce costs significantly. I think Obamacare is simple enough (in terms of the modest scale of the law)
I see this get bandied about quite a bit. Has anyone ever insisted that the federal government is founded on the Christian religion? We could still be considered a Christian nation simply based upon demographics without having a “Christian government”, whatever that is.
Is it just me, or was there basically just a short stone’s throw between BobLibDem’s list and what actual conservatives later on showed up and posted? He may not have been batting 1000 with that list but he sure got damn close.
Really? This is your problem with progressive taxation? That the executive making $5 or $10 million a year spends “more days working for the government” than the burger-flipper at McD’s who also has to deliver pizzas at night to be able to feed his family? :rolleyes: That would be a pointless bit of ideological fluff even if it were true, but the reality is that the wealthy have the ability to save and invest such a large proportion of their excess income that it’s debatable how much of their income they work for at all, but more importantly, the regressive taxation policies that have come into force in recent decades have been major contributors to the vast and growing income disparity and social inequality in America, and the consequent social ills. The reality is that if you’re going to talk about “fairness”, then you have to talk about the fairness of a tax burden that prevents a low-income earner from being able to feed and clothe his family in comparison to a tax burden that a high-income earner doesn’t even notice or, as Dave Barry once put it, uses the money from tax cuts to buy sun hats for his race horses.
It’s interesting that through most of the 20th century the US (and Britain) were leaders in promoting social egalitarianism and individual liberty in part through progressive taxation, where marginal tax rates for the highest income earners were at times on the order of 90% – deliberately and with targeted intent the highest in the industrialized world. This changed drastically in the Reagan era of the 80s. One of the immediate consequences of the post-Reagan tax cuts for the wealthy was a dramatic and continuing rise in the astronomical salaries of top executives, a salary rise that has more to do with incestuous self-determination of pay scales than with any change in productivity whatsoever, and which is one of the major contributors to the growing income disparities and growing social divide. A recent OECD economic study reported that on the order of about 40% of total economic growth among its 28 member countries was captured by the financial gain of the top 1% of its wealthiest citizens. America was once the land of liberty and an absence of economic class distinctions; today, you may as well take the plutocracy with their multi-generational wealth and assign them aristocratic titles and dynastic privileges.
There is a huge difference between a good and fact-based education and the ability to pass a standardized test.
Yes, and just about every one of them opposed by conservatives because they were “anti-business”. Conservatives pine for Dickensian times when workers could be exploited – see “right to work laws” below. Gotta love the ironic name cons always give their laws, too – these are more like “right to be exploited” and “right to be fired for no reason” laws.
Corporations also find it beneficial to operate overseas due to ability to pay workers 10 cents an hour. There are legislative ways to deal with that, too, but conservatives think it’s terrific.
Yes, I’m aware. Roughly aligned with Republican governors and legislators. I’m also aware of at least one study that concludes that workers in these terrific states make an average of $5,300 less than workers in the other states. Even if the argument that more jobs were created was true, it might not be very persuasive if the strategy only creates crappy jobs or temporary ones, but the reality is that while it’s conclusive that workers in the so-called “right-to-work” or more accurately “right to be exploited” states are indeed being exploited and paid less, it’s been hard to show any employment changes that can be statistically attributed to that law. For instance it’s been claimed that after Oklahoma enacted “right-to-work” in 2001, manufacturing grew 2% a year. Terrific, except that it grew 7% in New Mexico right next door, which had no such law.
If there aren’t good statistics then why do you make assumptions like the workers are automatically being exploited? Also, what are the bases of those statistics provided? Just doing a quick lookup on the population and Oklahoma had 89% more people than New Mexico in 2001.
And joining a company without being forced to join a labor union or, as some right to work states have gone, not having to give cause for termination is not oppressive to workers like you intimate it is. Most employers act rationally with their employees. Instead of pretending that these laws are somehow leading to employees being used as railroad ties, how about you look at corporations that actually abuse their employees, like WalMart?
They do actual worker oppression and are shit to work for simply make the lives of the employees hell in a way just short of the line so that the labor board never bothers them and the employee leaves. But you may notice that companies that do this do it everywhere, not just Right to Work states. Heck, a company I worked for did it in an Illinois facility represented by teamsters and the union did nothing to protect the five or so employees that were being flushed in this way. (Reference: That facility hosted about 30 employees)
The reason they operate this way? Because even in right to work states, if you let someone go without cause you have to pay unemployment. And if, for any reason, you let someone go for cause, you need documentation for that cause. If it turns to he-said/she-said the labor board will generally default to the employee getting unemployment.
That’s actual worker oppression. And it has little to do with whether a state forces you to join a union at a job or not.
Was that study a direct comparison of income or cost of living adjusted?
Late to this. I grew up in Hong Kong. There are many things in Hong Kong that a conservative would not like: half of the population live in government housing; >100% taxes on cars, gasoline, and alcohol; universal health care; heavy government fiscal involvement including purchase of stocks using public funds to prop up the market; government mandated school curriculum and heavy testing, even for private schools, etc.
There are things that probably few Americans would accept: lack of any meaningful democracy, very small living quarters (we lived in a 150 sq ft government unit as a family of 5. Currently a 400 sq ft condo costs 10 years the median household income), insanely long work hours (24% more than Chicago and #4 among 72 major world cities surveyed here).
One can get very very rich in Hong Kong, no doubt about it. And the lack of capital gains tax certainly makes it attractive for the wealthy. But apart from the freedom to work a lot for barely enough income for shelter nevermind luxuries, “economic freedom” is fairly elusive for most Hong Kong residents. The “everyone is richer” part is definitely a lie.
It’s funny, somehow I have a feeling that conservatives who would like to make Christianity the official religion of the country would not like to make the above official policy.
He lists 17 items. As a conservative, I agree with one of them. The rest are mostly insane things that I’ve literally never heard any conservative say.
And I’m really curious, especially to hear from the ‘conservative’ side. Since all I seem to hear from the conservative side is about the evils of regulation etc, what keeps the environment liveable? In the real world, please, not some magical place where the CEOs act beneficently because they’re such good guys and always act primarily in the public interest.
Speaking for myself, I’m not anti-regulation. I think some regulation is necessary. Absolutely. Particularly those that protect our environment that we all depend on. It’s one thing for some hypothetical economic interest spoil what he owns that are confined to his four walls, or his acreage, but once it bleeds into the air and water we all depend on, I’m in favor in having very clear, limited regulations that come with stiff penalties. If you make it in someone’s interest to not pollute (for instance) they won’t pollute. But the guidelines to to be simple and clear. One shouldn’t have to hire a team of lawyers to understand what they can and can’t do.
In short, I think that protecting our vital and limited resources is a very, very conservative thing to do.