The Democrats' Contract with America

Great Debates
161

But that bargain come with other trade-offs as well, such as a markedly less entreprenuership and technological innovation. To say nothing of the fact that many people are quite unsure that Europe’s economic model is sustainable; it’s not like their welfare-state model has been in place for centuries. Every expert I’ve read says that “old Europe” is in need of some major reform.

But the bottom line, I think, is that Americans, by and large, seem to prefer their dog-eat-dog wild west capitalism, with all the trade-offs that entails. For good or ill, socialism doesn’t play here. Insisting it ought to seems a bit pointless.

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Wait, I’ve got a plank for you. Mind, I’m a libertarian. Man, I love that there free-market. OK, here’s my proposal:

FULLY FUND SCIENCE: In the last few years the NSF has shifted focus to require that grant recipients show some immediate tangible benefit to their research. But this is the exact opposite of what the NSF is for. The National Science Foundation should be funding foundational, basic science. The big corporations can fund science with an immediate or forseable payoff. The US used to be a destination for scientists and students from all over the world who couldn’t find a place do to fundamental research in their home countries. Now that flow is beginning to stop. Funding “practical” research is just corporate welfare. Yes, this includes crash programs on alternative fuels.
Instead of crash programs to develop alteranative fuels, how about a much more logical approach? OK, I know this will never ever ever ever be adopted by any political party in America ever, but how about proposing increasing the tax on gasoline by $1.00/gallon? Increase the cost of gasoline and let corporate america figure out how to deliver cost-effective alternative fuels. I know, I know, no one can win on a program of higher gasoline prices. But this way would be CHEAPER for the taxpayers than the other way!

Some other random proposals:

Balance the budget. Nuff said.

End corporate welfare through tax simplification…no more “tax breaks” for this or that particular activity. And other ways too, every damn way you can think of. This is a huge potential issue for Democrats, it would be hugely popular, Democrats can sell it many many ways…balancing the budget, sticking it to the fat cats, sticking it to the crony “capitalists”, rationalizing economic policy, letting the market decide, fairness for the little guy. Win-win-win.

Reform Social Security. Don’t actually do this one, you’d lose votes. But scrap the notion that you pay into your own “personal” account. Scrap separate social security taxes, they’re a regressive tax on low-income workers. Pay orphan and disability pensions and retirement pensions out of general revenues, make the rich pay their share!

Health Care. I’m not sure what the best approach to this is. But the key is recognizing that the problem isn’t the health care industry, most people are happy with their health care. The problem is health INSURANCE. Don’t talk about national health care, talk about national health insurance. Health insurance you don’t lose just because you lose your job.

Maybe I’ll think of some others…

163

:smiley:

Well, you could always use the slogan “Let’s Be More Like France”, I guess. It would at least be interesting to see what the new party that emerges would be like.

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Le contract avec America. Oui!!

165

See, here is exactly the problem. You are a ‘glass is half empty’ kind of guy. I’m a ‘glass is half full’ type. Problem? I don’t see it as a problem, I see it as a feature! :stuck_out_tongue:

Pretty much what Furt said. I’m one of those skeptics that don’t think nations like France have sustainable economies. They, er, want their cake and eat it too, so to speak. France, IMHO, is going to need to make some tough decisions in the next decade or so. Maybe I’m wrong…maybe they will find the secret of economic perpetual motion. Lots of benifits, short work weeks, lots of time off, universal health care and a safety net that allows for double digit unemployment while giving those without work nearly equal benifits to those that work and the ability to continue this despite an aging population who are entitled to retirement benifits nearly as good as when they worked. If they can and if this model stands the test of time then maybe I’ll agree sometime in the future that the US should seriously look at this with an eye to adoption. Right now though I remain unconvinced that this would be a good thing for this nation.

With reguards to this thread though I’d say that if you REALLY want to lose big time in the US in the next election push an agenda that says essentially ‘lets be like France!’. :wink:

-XT

166

It’s not my claim that it’s the role of the market. My claim is the market isn’t some magical thing that heals the sick, succors the friendless, and mows the lawn. An unfettered market leaves people behind.

If we agree on that, fine. Some people do not agree with that, and argue accordingly.

When we do agree that the market functions imperfectly when it comes to real lives and people getting left behind, we can offer two solutions, neither of which need to be exclusive (I will ignore the people who say “let 'em starve” because those people deserve to be ignored):

  1. A safety net, or
  2. Tampering with the market itself.

The value in 1 is that it leaves the market alone. The value in 2 is that it gets people involved in the economy even if in an imperfect way.

I favor a combination of both.

And, what’s significant for this thread is that most Democrats do, too.

167

But JS, how can you have it both ways?

Didn’t you say that if everybody were smart and advantaged that burger joints and such would have to raise prices (and then salaries) just to attract workers? And didn’t you say that the burger joints and such need workers? Obviously, the guy who is flipping burgers and dropping fries is economically way behind the guy who’s opening the franchises. So, what’s the problem with “people getting left behind”? As you’ve noted, society will always need people who are behind. They collect our trash and put our happy meals in boxes. What possible plan could you implement that would put all people in parity? You said yourself that not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur. Or at least, that you don’t. And surely, there are others like you.

If you simply must have a “safety net”, then may I suggest that you design it in such a way that it: (1) does not punish those who don’t need it, to avoid providing disincentive to succeed beyond a point of diminishing return; (2) does not reward those who have fallen into it, to avoid institutionalizing a whole class of people dependent in perpetuity on their own poverty; and (3) encourages responsible decision making to avoid the net in the first place?

168

I guess what I’m saying here is that it would help the image of Democrats in the eyes of Red Staters if they would come from a position of freedom and capitalism as the foundation of their thinking. You’re like outsiders, and you need to be insiders.

Your whole psyche seems to be wrapped around the safety net. The economic lives of people ought to be interrupted and adjusted to accomodate the net. Entrepreneurship is something intrinsically bad that should be prevented from getting out of hand. Whereas you perceive us as having an overblown esteem of capitalism, we percieve you as having an overblown esteem of the safety net.

Surely, it is a myth that Democrats are socialists. But it is up to you to dispel the myth. Stop presenting the safety net as the destination of choice. I know you think you’re not doing that, but you spend so much time and verbage on it as a party lately that it seems to be your raison d’etre. From our viewpoint, you’re determined to build that damn safety net even if it means putting all of us in it.

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Yep. And from my perspective, if we’re all inside the thing, there will be nobody outside the net holding it up.

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Here is one example of what I’m talking about.

I’ll bet any person ten dollars against a dollar that the OP is a Democrat. You need to explain to these people why they are not helpful.

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Ever heard of Nokia? Airbus?

Cite?

172

:dubious: What, exactly, about that OP is “not helpful”?

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I think Liberal is making some excellent points, here, but I don’t think Democrats are ever going to lose their interest in government run-safety nets, at least not sufficiently to erase the false Democrat=Socialist equation.

This, however, I see as a straw-man:

This is a caricature of the real position of most democrats, which is that human greed should not be overlooked. In fact, it should be monitored closely in those with the power (economic/political) to cause much harm to ordinary citizens via corruption, monopolisitic abuses of power, or manipulation of the market itself. We’ve seen examples of all three time and time again.

How did the market protect the tens of thousands of Enron workers’ pensions? As far as I could tell, the market, with at least tacit complicity, went along with supporting Enron as long as their stock was leading to mountains of cash. Surely many, many power powerful people in banks and so we at least vaguely aware that Enron’s spiralling success was based on something fishy (to say the least). But as long as the money was pouring in, they looked the other way.

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Argh! Hit submit when ment to hit preview. That should read “…many powerful people in banks were at least vaguely aware…”

Also, I wanted to add that the anomalous aspecs of Enron’s corruption nevertheless point to substantive flaws in the market. In the end, corrections were made, and yes, by the market (more or less). But a huge number of people had their pensions ruined along the way. That is the sort of thing many Democrats would like to prevent.

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Its hypocrisy mainly, but its as hysteria well.

176

:confused: The tone is angry but not hysterical, and where is the “hypocrisy”?

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It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature. When you make bad investments, you lose money. Enron was a bad investment. And the market corrected it. You seem to be implying that the market should instantaneously correct every bad decision made by the players. Things don’t work that way.

The way to fix the Enron problem is to more stringently enforce the laws governing auditing, not to bail people out when they invest in scams.

178

I agree with you. Two of my suggestions were shots straight at corporate corruption. (In fact, if I had my druthers, we’d eliminate corporations as they exist now altogether, but I won’t go there here…)

It really is a caricature, but it is also a perception. There used to be Democrats who were perceived as believers in free enterprise. Kennedy knocked the marginal tax rates down from 90% to 70%, for example, and seemed to encourage American prosperity.

Why is it that you can’t come from the position of, well, liberalism? Do you have any idea how powerful the names of your predecessors have been? Locke, Voltaire, Priestly, Jefferson, Thoreau, Lincoln. Yes, Lincoln. He was a Republican then, but he’d be a Democrat today. Well, he would have been in 1960. He argued for a system of political equity in his debates with Douglas.

I think that today’s perception is that Democrats are engaged in Busybodyism. People feel much like Thoreau did when he said, “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.” (Walden)

It’s great that you want to help people and everything, but again, you seem to be looking a gift horse in the mouth. You seem to despise the very thing that is the source of revenues that you get for taxes to fund your programs. There’s something just downright weird about that.

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I pointed it out in my post there (second post in the thread), which would be a good place to take a discussion about it. :slight_smile:

180

Um, Airbus ain’t a great example of entrepreneurship. You are aware, aren’t you, of it’s history?

Certainly the company has had its fair share of technological achievements, especially in their new airplane. But that’s like calling NASA an entrepreneurial body