On a dating site. Normally, since I’m a leftwinger, I look for women whose views are compatible with mine, but I’m pretty broadminded. I don’t really understand what “FC, SL” means though. I associate fiscal conservatism, in its worst sense, as being equivalent to “racist,” in that I find most fiscal conservativism to lightly veil spending any money that would benefit minorities, immigrants, gay people, etc, but theoretically a FC would oppose spending money on the Pentagon, and might even favor more money being spent by the states and less by the federal government, which would be acceptable to me. But am I being naive in putting so kind a blush on it?
I tend not to click on profiles that describe a woman as being “moderate” or “independent” or “centrist” since I’ve found in practice this just means “conservative who wants to attract liberals.” Is “FC, SL” another such work-around? If it meant what I want it to mean, someone who doesn’t like wasting money, personally–i.e., maintains a small footprint environmentally–that would describe me pretty well, but I suspect that’s being foolishly optimistic on my part.
I dont know if there is a shared mindset among people who have come to describe themselves in that fashion.
One possibility is that it means people who don’t think a redistributive economy works, and they associated all fiscally liberal views with socialism and they’re not enamored of it, but they believe in civil rights, fairness for all groups, they acknowledge the existence of patriarchy and systematic racism and think we need to do something about it, they believe in individual rights and not just liberties for corporations, etc.
My knee-jerk reaction to such a description is that they are in favour of low taxes, the free market and limited government intervention, but cool about gay marriage.
My honest answer is that I don’t think you’re likely to get a useful response from anyone other than the person in question. It could mean anything from “I oppose all forms of social support because welfare queens exploit the system” to “all taxation is theft” to “I think the country is a plutocracy shot through with corruption and that taxpayer money is wasted on pork and graft.” I’ve known so-called FC/SL folks that fit in any one of those slots and more. Some of them I thought were decent people who had different views on governance than me, others I thought were cryptofascists who just didn’t want the social stigma of owning their reprehensible views.
A different person identifying as FC, SL might mean they want spending to be equal or less than revenues — a balanced budget and fiscal responsibility at every turn — but that they have no problems with broad social programs designed to ameliorate economic unfairness.
Like I said, I don’t think there’s a single narrative that people have glommed onto and joined up with. Or yeah, what NinthAcolyte just said:
I’m asking here because asking individually is not a productive use of my time. More efficient to assume the worst and just move on. It’s not as if there aren’t profiles more attractive to me that I’m passing by for other reasons. I’m curious if there’s a consensus answer, but so far there doesn’t seem to be so I’ll happily give all "FC, SL"s a pass.
Basically, just sounds like “libertarian” to me. I know plenty of folks who would describe themselves as fiscally conservative and socially liberal – I’ve sometimes fallen into that category myself decades ago.
I used to use the label myself when I was much younger. I was raised in a very conservative religious environment but as I got into high school and beyond I was hanging out with a more and more diverse and liberal crowd. I used the FC/SL label to try and “pass” in both worlds, but I didn’t have any kind of coherent political theory behind it. I just didn’t want anyone to be mad at me.
As an adult, a close family friend used to use the label. He was a Very Bad Man who did horrible things. When he said it, he meant that 1: lesbians are hot 2: he didn’t want to pay taxes.
Finally, I have a friend who is the absolute salt of the earth. He is a kind, warm, and generous man who has absolutely no problem with social welfare and is happy to pay his fair share. He’d have no quibble with Finland or Scandinavia or whatever. He just thinks that the way financial governance is presently handled in the US is equivalent to brazen theft, and he thinks the only way to rein in politicians is effectively to starve them of cash. He uses the FC/SL label and also calls himself a libertarian.
This used to be me, in my 20s and 30s. I wanted the government to stay out of people’s bedrooms as well as their business decisions, and believed the free market could correct most of the world’s problems if only people would respect one another.
Of course, the more I realized that people would not simply respect one another, the more obvious it became that the free market wouldn’t fix shit.
I think these are the people who think something like this. “I’m pro-choice, I support BLM and the rights of LGBTQ people, but I don’t want to pay (high) taxes.”
I used to use this label myself, but the last decade or so, I’ve started using “fiscally responsible”, because the “conservative” label has been so corrupted by association with the social conservatives, and the domination of the “trickle down” theory that has been proven not to work.
My biggest concern was that ever-increasing debt levels would, at some point, cause the whole system to collapse. There are times the government should run a deficit (Hello, pandemic years?), but the acceptance that there will always be a deficit seems like a bad idea.
In the 80s, we had the idea of decreasing the deficit by aggressively growing the economy, via lower taxation, but as I said above, that’s been proven not to work. So now I’m more in favor of increased taxation, and targeted spending cuts on things like corporate welfare. Putting more money in the hands of rich people just doesn’t produce the results we wanted. So I figure lets try a few decades of putting money in everyone else’s hands. Just make sure you have a plan for where that money will come from.
This is pretty close to what I feel, and I use the term for myself, although I may also borrow the sub-term “fiscally responsible” for the reasons above.
As a subset of the above, but one which includes the ‘must ask’ category, is that many are okay with government spending, but feel that it is spent in the wrong areas, most often the military, pork barrel projects to contractors in the their district, or some other personal dislike.
And that leaves out those like myself, who in search of fixing the budget issues above, would be more than willing to suggest raising taxes (especially to the rich and corporations) but want more granularity and accountability on how the money is spent so we don’t end right back in deficit spending as a norm, just at a higher rate.
Of course, the majority of people using the term IMHO end up at the “I don’t care what people do in their bedrooms or who they want to be, just DON’T RAISE -MY- TAXES” as said earlier. Probably with a subclause “Especially for Welfare / Military / Bailouts / Etc”
ETA - extra emphasis on -MY- above, to reflect that they (and maybe me) care little about raising other people’s / entity’s taxes, often for the rich, but sometimes by other means such as removing EIC.
I think it has a general meaning. I expect people who say that to:
Be fine with same sex marriage
Oppose laws outlawing recreational drug use
Be pro-choice
Vote for lower taxes
Oppose social security and most forms of welfare
At least among actuaries, they might be okay with ACA because our healthcare payment system is so incredibly broken. But I’d expect people who aren’t in the industry and who self-describe that way to oppose ACA.
They probably also oppose regulations that attempt to protect us from pollution and climate change, but that’s less clear cut.
Actually, health care is a perfect example that distinguishes my “fiscal responsibility” from current “fiscal conservatism”. There was a time when the conservative parties liked to say they were “the ones who could do math”. But, the math on Universal Health Care is clear: UHC provides better service at less costs over the whole system. Anyone worried about how much money we, as a society, are spending should be in favor of UHC.
“Fiscal conservative, social liberal” was an actual joke from 30 Rock, the political position of Liz Lemon’s idiot boyfriend. At the time I took it as an incoherent, impossible position to hold, which is what made it funny.
Got to hand it to Tina Fey and the writers on that show. Life imitates art. Unfortunately.
Edit: Wait, I got it wrong. It was social conservative, fiscal liberal.
But that’s the thing, “Basic human rights” doesn’t actually cost anything. Gay marriage, trans rights, freedom of speech, where is the expense in allowing this? If anything, it costs us money to keep people down, because you need to hire people to oppress them.