I have no idea what the claim of FC/SL might mean in a dating context, but as the above conversation makes clear, it could be interpreted to mean almost anything. So it’s meaningless without further qualification, and is therefore at best a naive and thoughtless way to label yourself, one which unrealistically assumes that everyone will know what it means.
FTR, I used to sometimes label myself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, though I no longer do, at least not without qualification, for just those reasons. And what I personally would mean by that is vastly different from some of the interpretations upthread.
The way I’d qualify what that descriptor means to me is that I’m pretty much liberal across most criteria, including recognizing the vital importance to a well-functioning society of universal health care and a strong social safety net, but at the same time believing that governments tend not to have sufficient fiscal responsibility and accountability. It has nothing to do with taxes per se; we should all pay our fair share on a progressive tax scale. It has to do with governments often spending excessively, wasting money on pork projects for political reasons, running budget deficits, and growing the national debt with reckless abandon. Budgets should always be balanced except during bad recessions when government has a duty to bolster the economy.
This, to me, is a rational interpretation of FC/SL. It’s pretty much the opposite of “libertarian” while sharing a few of its values. What it means to someone else is anybody’s guess.
Really, just limit your site interactions to women identifying as liberal/progressive.* It’ll save a lot of time and angst, even if it does narrow the dating pool.
*better yet, make prospective dates fill out a questionnaire explicitly stating their positions on a dozen or so issues, to make sure they’re not flimflamming for a chance at your hot bod.
Usually, that’s exactly what I do. “Communist-friendly” a definite plus.
As to the questionnaire thing, I do that to the degree that it isn’t off-putting. That is, I try not to ask too many hostile-sounding questions, but I do ask early on about religious practices, political stances, and even about positions on artistic tastes, culinary preferences, and other potential dealbreakers because it’s good to eliminate women who wouldn’t get along with me anyway. Doing this stuff too abruptly can seem rude, though, so I try to approach these topics gingerly, but it is helpful to approach them sooner rather later.
Just for the record, lots of posters, including myself, have mentioned that for a lot of people using the identifier, that there is a feeling that the “fiscally conservative/responsible” > “socially liberal”. And in many cases it’s true.
For most of the posters in this thread who use / identify with the term though, it seems clear that we generally find the reverse to be the case.
So yeah, it’s not a super useful term in terms of the OPs dating site, but it’s no more and no less useful when it comes to defining a political orientation than terms like ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ in the first place.
As has been said many, Many, MANY times on this very site, what an American considers liberal is downright centrist to conservative for a European audience. So the terms in question are subjective to the point of all but requiring additional details.
Again, throwing no shade at anyone, but there’s been a lot of hostility towards the term, and for some posters, an out-and-out assumption of bad faith, which helps no one.
Yeah, this is the case for me. I used to vote Conservative here in Canada, because they used to be the closest to my actual political priorities. But as they pushed further and further into the “social conservative” side of things, I felt more and more alienated from them. Then they started playing games with their money math, and it just kept getting worse. Now I’m flipping between Liberal and NDP votes, depending on how the polls are looking.
People like the brother described here drive me nuts:
I can understand wanting to save money, but at the same time, I have to ask, “At what cost?” Now that it’s down to “Save or Destroy Democracy”, I can’t believe there are still people saying, “But won’t anyone think of my taxes?!?!”
Especially since the difference in expected taxation is usually no more than a few percentage points. It’s not like Dems would double your tax rate. If the difference between 25% and 28% is enough to outweigh everything else in your decision-making, maybe you need to take a step back.
This is not what I think most people mean, but the people I’ve known that claim that identity were just Republicans who didn’t claim to have Christian values. So they don’t care much about abortion but taxes are always bad and the fault of the Democrats. They’re also racists, but not the KKK kind so that’s fine right?
Horatius is surely right that basic right human rights don’t cost anything. Assuming you’re in a society where those things are already both common uncontroversial.
But in a society where half the populace actively fights against such ideas, it costs lots of money to change their minds. And even more money to enact and execute programs to offset the anti-rights things those folks do as a matter of private business, personal discrimination, organized hate, etc.
That’s the sorts of expenses the “FC” folks don’t want to pay for. That starving the government of the resources to fix these things just happens to perpetuate them all to the benefit of the FC crowd is just gravy. But unmentionable gravy.
‘Fiscal Conservative’ does not have to translate into “I want to pay less tax”. You can be a fiscal conservative because you think large deficit spending and high taxation is legitimately bad for the country and will lead to high inflation, reduced investment in new ventures, and ultimately lower growth as interst rates and inflation eat away at the middle class, small business, and entrepreneurism.
You know, like what’s actually happening right now.
I’m fiscally conservative for these reasons. The Keynesians who thought they could spend their way into prosperity were wrong. The long run is here, and all we got for it was a mountain of debt, looming bank failures, inflation, and high interest rates. And as a fiscal conservative, I would be okay right now paying more in tax if that money was used to pay down the debt, because right now debts and deficit spending are more dangerous to the economy than higher taxes.
Of course, that’s not what’s going to happen. Both American and Canadian governments are engaged in wildly reckless fiscal policy, and have been since the Bush administration in the U.S. and the Trudeau “Excuse me if I don’t think about monetary policy - I believe the budget will balance itself” Trudeau Government.
There’s another reason for general conservatism: The economy is a complex system, and when you shock it you get unintended consequences. Incrementalism is better than wholesale change which never works out the way you want. Small changes, not giant omnibus spending plans. Slow regulatory change, not ‘tear it down and build it back better’ nonsense. That way lies ruin. BTW, true conservatism also means checking the idiots on the right who want to make equally large changes.
This pretty much describes me; I’m not religious, I’m pro LGBTQ, pro legalization of drugs, pro immigration, I can’t stand Trump, etc. But I oppose most forms of welfare, I think our federal government is way to big, I am pro gun, pro states rights, pro capitalism, and I always vote no on any and all tax increases.
Voting no on tax increases is not fiscally conservative unless you think there are going to be substantial expenditure cuts to expenditure in line with revenue. Simply cutting or limiting revenue in isolation is not fiscally conservative; it’s fiscally reckless.
Hence my decision mentioned above to start using “fiscally responsible”. I characterize it by asking the question “How are you going to pay for that?” as an honest request for information, and not just as a dismissive way to suggest that we can’t pay for it.
If you have a plan for spending, have a plan for financing that spending. Raise taxes, cut other spending, borrow the money. Once we know the whole plan, we can evaluate it objectively.
Same thing with tax cuts. Okay, revenue is going down, how do you deal with that? Are you going to cut spending, or increase the deficit? Or do you imagine there’s a third option? If you’re going to cut spending, which specific cuts will you make, and do those numbers add up?
It is “conservative” in the sense of “continuing to do things the way we’ve always done things”, at least for the last 50 years. Conflating “fiscally conservative” with “fiscally responsible” harkens back to a semi-mythological time when “conservative” meant “grumpy old man who watched over the money”.
When do you get to vote on tax increases? Are you a member of some legislature? The closest I get to this are state and local expenditures put to a vote, and I frequently vote no on those, but I have no control over the tax rate or the creation of new taxes.
There used to be a ‘starve the beast’ justification for supporting tax cuts. The idea was that if you take away the revenue, the government will be forced to downsize.
I’ll wait for the laughing to subside…
It became clear about three decades ago that the beast cannot be starved, and that cutting taxes means more debt, not smaller government. The only way to shrink the government is to get elected on a platform of shrinking the government, then actually pass bills that do so. There is no appetite for either anymore, on either side.
That may change, because the consequences of living beyond our means are starting to become apparent to most. We’ve been kicking the can down the road for decades, and we’ve finally come to a cul-de-sac. Borrowing and spending will just create more inflation, and higher interest rates needed to fight the inflation will wipe out the ‘gains’ from deficit spending, leaving us with more debt for nothing. That’s what happened in the 70’s.
Fiscal conservatism doesn’t mean low taxes, unless those taxes come with reductions in spending. Spending IS the real taxation. Borrowing to do it just means your kids will pay for it. Fiscal conservatism means smaller government, taxes commensurate with government spending, and incremental change.
Remember when Trudeau said the deficit would never go over $10 billion? Oh, those were the days. This budget is $10 billion more than what they projected just a few months ago.
They justified the huge deficits before because Covid. Covid is over. This is their new permanent spending. All kinds of new government programs like universal day care. On borrowed/printed money, while we are trying to fight inflation. Madness.