Not true.
Someone can claim, entirely self-consistently, that the proper role of government is to protect the morals and values of Americans and at the same time maximize their economic freedom by adopting a hands-off policy in the economic sphere.
I am trying to understand this position, because it seems very inconsistent to me, so this discussion is helping me understand the basic TP position better. I can understand what you are saying in the quote, however, I don’t hear that out of any politician. So while yes someone can claim . . . . I don’t hear them actually claiming it. So there should be no surprise that there is a bit of cognitive dissonance that’s driving some people away.
Do you think that they are just hoping that no one notices the apparent contradiction? Or is someone saying it and it never gets picked up by bloggers or the news?
I await:
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Your explanation of how the government can (for example) tell someone he can’t buy pictures of nekkid women without interfering in the economic sphere, or
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Your assertion that the items cited by foolsguinea (poverty, homelessness, & living wage) have nothing whatsoever to do with “morals and values”, or
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Your admission of error and logical incoherence.
Now, given that Social Security is supposed to be the suspenders and belt of ‘at least you won’t starve’, I’ve got concerns with this concept. Bush wanted to do that really badly, and if he’d done it, we would have plunged the entire SS fund into the market about a month before it plunged. Gone. Wiped out. Decades of interest, lost in seconds.
Given that set of happenings, and given that the people who will make the worst possible investments are the people who will probably need it the most, I’ve got to be concerned here, Bricker, that the idea of investing in the market with this money, is possibly the worst possible idea someone can come up with. This is a T-Bill investment, not a mutual fund investment.
You seem the be forgetting the part of the Bible (the source of all morals, just ask any GOPer) where Jesus quoted Ford Fairlaine: “The poor? Fuck 'em.”
-Joe
All that needs be done to protect SS privatization investments is some sort of restrictions. Say, limit them to triple-A rated investment securities, which, as everybody knows, are perfectly safe. Well, sorta perfectly safe. Kinda.
And do you realize how defensive and prickly this post sounds? In fact, the one thing I found wrong with Obama’s “guns and religion” quote is that he used “bitter” rather than the more accurate “defensive” to describe the people in question.
And then the economy goes to hell and the folks Obama was talking about start freaking out about Muslims and “Second Amendment Remedies”.
They can get pissy about it if they want, but that doesn’t change the fact that the man was right.
-Joe
My 401(k) offers me about a dozen different funds to put my money into. If it weren’t that my employer is still offering a match, I would have lost money on it.
Social Security is not designed as a get-rich tool; it’s designed as a this-is-what-you-can-depend-on tool. People who don’t make enough money to invest, people who aren’t smart enough to invest, people who make mistakes investing: all of those people still have some minimal income guaranteed from Social Security.
It’s a bottom line income for people whose low-wage working career is over. It’s good for them, and it’s good for our society.
It’s even harder to fix the structural problem with Social Security and Medicare when the Democrats just took 500 billion in ‘low hanging fruit’ savings and applied it to yet another huge entitlement program.
The Democrats also want to continue the Bush tax cuts. Almost all of them want the middle class cuts retained, while some want all the cuts retained. The cuts where the bulk of Democrats differ with the bulk of Republicans amounts to $700 billion over 10 years, which is about 10% of the deficits expected to accrue over that period of time. The deficit problem is not because of the tax cuts for the ‘rich’.
I’d say this is more true of Democrats, who seem to think they can keep expanding programs for the poor and middle class, while the ‘rich’ pays for it. They can’t seem to do the simple math that will show then that the rich simply don’t have enough money. Nor can they understand that long before they confiscate a much larger portion of the Rich’s wealth, that wealth will start moving elsewhere.
Democrats also seem to be completely oblivious to the burden their policies put on the wealth-creating entities of society. New regulations on business are always seen as an unmitigated good. Higher taxes on corporations are seen as a way to stick it to the rich people. They fail to understand that such taxes just reduce expansion and investment, and in any event are paid by the customers of corporations.
Then why is it that the economy foundered in the 1970’s? You had stimulus programs, more government regulation, loose fiscal policy, more ‘investment’ in industry and green technology, government ‘partnerships’ with business, you name it.
Why did the economy of Britain sputter so badly when it was taken over by the left and the labor unions? It had high marginal tax rates, as strong social safety net, universal healthcare, and all the other trappings of the social democratic welfare state. It became an economic basket case.
How come Canada’s economy started to fail when we turned to the left and rapidly grew the size of government? We nationalized major industries, we raised taxes and increased government spending. We cut the size of our military and used the money to fund social programs. The result was that our structural unemployment went up about two or three points higher than the U.S’s, our dollar dropped to 70% of the U.S. dollar, and GDP growth began to lag. We also grew a huge debt because we used government money to ‘stimulate’ the economy.
In the mid-1990’s, Canada changed course, started cutting the size of government, reformed welfare, lowered taxes, and made taxes less progressive. We now have lower corporate and capital gains taxes than even Bush’s tax cuts created in the U.S. Our dollar is back to par with the U.S, our unemployment rate is two points lower than yours, and we have perhaps the healthiest economy in the G8 now.
You can see this pattern throughout the world. There’s plenty of scholarly research to support it. Bigger government and higher taxes means less employment, slower economic growth, and stagnation.
It’s the Democrats who refuse to accept the reality of this.
This is a crazy point, especially since you acknowledged that the Democrats do the same thing. Shall we go down the list? Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama… Only Clinton and Obama had any real star power. None of them were anywhere near the top of the ‘heavy hitter’ list of the Democratic Party. Obama is the least experienced man to ever hold office in the White House, as far as I can remember.
Both parties have a nominating process that tends to filter out people with actual accomplishment and a track record for doing things. The two-year election cycle puts an emphasis on mediocrity and gaffe-avoidance, as well as the ability to raise money. The primary election season is set up to crazily reward the people of Iowa and other small states - good candidates can be wiped out before people in major populated regions even have a say. It’s a crazy system, and it’s not the fault of the Republicans.
You mean like how the Democrats just followed their dear leader right off an electoral cliff?
Um, isn’t there even more opposition to the wars on the left? So how come Obama’s getting his way with no more than muted grumbling?
The answer is that this isn’t a ‘Republican’ problem. It’s a partisan problem. When your guy is in power, you keep quiet for fear of the ‘other guys’ getting back in.
GOP opposition to tax increases comes from the very sensible belief that deficits are primarily driven by spending. Many Republicans believe that if they allow taxes to increase, the only result will be less pressure to contain spending, and spending will just increase more.
There is plenty of evidence for that around the world. The countries with the highest taxes tend to be the ones with the biggest governments - AND the highest amount of debt. There’s no correlation between high taxes and fiscal responsibility. Japan has high taxes and a public debt of 160% of GDP. The high-taxing states in Europe are all running big debts.
On the other hand, Canada now has lower taxes than the U.S. - and lower debt. When we had higher taxes, we had higher debt - and bigger government.
Which is still a damn sight more fiscally responsible than Medicare Part D.
The claim was that “the GOP tends to unsustainable long-term planning”, and your rebuttal is to attack the Democrats for finding $500 billion in savings. If it was “low hanging fruit”, why didn’t the Republicans find it during their years in the majority? Tax cuts, prescription drugs, off-budget wars; when was the last time Republicans paid for anything?
The Democrats have not realized that 500 billion in savings - they’re promising to get it. Let’s wait and see, hmm?
And they didn’t ‘save’ anything. IF they cut that money, it will just reduce the cost of the health care plan to a little under 1 trillion over the next decade. If not, it’ll be 1.5 trillion, or twice what Bush’s tax cuts for the rich cost. So are they fiscally irresponsible too?
The Democrats have controlled the funding of the government since 2007. They now have controlled all three branches of government for two years. Have they put the U.S. on a sustainable long-term plan? Not a chance. They’ve taken the failings of the Bush administration and doubled down on them. He tried stimulus - the Democrats tried bigger ones. He tried tax cuts for the middle class - the Democrats want to keep his and add their own. He ran up deficits - the Democrats added to them. He at least tried to reform Social Security - the Democrats won’t go near it.
The only plan out there right now that can be said to be even remotely close to sustainable is Paul Ryan’s roadmap. The Obama administration’s 10 year budget plan fixes none of the structural problems facing the U.S., and in fact makes them worse. It also kicks the can for reform of Social Security and Medicare ten years down the road, where it will become a major crisis.
There’s no fiscal responsibility in Washington in either party. Which is why the Tea Party exists in the first place.
A. This thread is about the GOP, and again you come out swinging at the Democrats.
B. It’s conceivable that it might take more than two years to undo the damage done in the previous six years.
C. Ryan was elected in 1998, where was this roadmap for his first ten years in office?
D. The Tea Party; they’re promising to get it. Let’s wait and see, hmm?
Republicans are like going to lunch with someone who orders steak, can’t pay for it, and then criticizes me for paying for my hamburger.
Since the 1980’s the core of the GOP has consisted of three main blocks:
[ul]
[li]Rich People[/li][li]Fundamentalists[/li][li]Libertarians[/li][/ul]
The rich people (and corporations) are primarily interested in grabbing as much money and power for themselves as possible. They’re in favor of low taxes and high government spending, so long as the high government spending goes to them as pork and not to poor people as entitlements. They like regulations that hurt their competitors and hate regulations that hurt their own business interests. They’re the smallest block, with the fewest votes, so they can exert almost no electoral influence by themselves. However, their capacity to fund the activities of the other two blocks (and the election campaigns of Republican politicians) gives them power far beyond their numbers.
The fundamentalists aren’t trying to work government to their personal advantage like the rich are. In fact, they’ll quite happily vote in ways that are counter to their personal interests, if it allows them to make a statement of their values. They like soldiers and flags and other blatant symbols of patriotism. They like Christianity. They don’t like gays, immigrants, minorities, or, in fact anything that is unfamiliar or new.
The libertarians are looking for utopia. They approach government as an intellectual exercise and often vote to make an ideological point, rather than to achieve some specific policy result. They want less government and more individual freedom, which often puts them at odds with the fundamentalists.
Since Reagan the general strategy has been for the rich people who run the party to play the fundamentalists and the libertarians for suckers. They whip them up with hot button issues like abortion, gays, welfare, and deficit spending. The fundamentalists provide the enthusiasm, and the libertarian provide the intellectual cover. Then, once the rich are in power they loot the treasury to benefit themselves and their buddies, while only occasionally throwing a bone to the plebs.
(For example, in the early years when Bush was in power and had majorities in both houses, there wasn’t any attempt to make abortion illegal, or to balance the budget like the fundamentalists and libertarians want. But there was a big tax cut for the rich and lots and lots of new government contracts.)
The interplay of these three blocks explains a lot of the incoherence of the GOP platform. In some cases their goals are diametrically opposite to each other, but their differences are papered over to help the party as a whole to win elections.
What we’re seeing right now with the tea party is the fundamentalist block getting fed up with shouldering the blunt of the responsibility for getting Republicans elected while not reaping any of the benefits. They’re strong enough to take over the party. However, they’re probably not smart enough (and too principled) to turn that power into general election victories. That would require making compromises to win over the undecided ninnies in the middle … something that’s very hard for a fundamentalist to do.
Hamster King, as someone who grew up in the Religious Right, I pretty much agree with your analysis. I would add that as one gets interested in politics, there are all these magazines (& now websites) that helpfully try to justify different planks of the GOP platform, or what a coalition of conservatives would like it to be. So you may start out as a mildly culturally conservative person with strong religious convictions, & then National Review or one of its poor imitators will try to argue that you should also be for state’s rights, against the EPA, suspicious of urban mass transit (OK, I made that one up, but it’s weird enough), etc. Since this is in a proper “conservative” publication, that may convince a few people who invest the parties with quasi-religious meaning.
So you end up with all these mildly crankish people trying to convince each other of their specific crankeries, & sometimes succeeding.
One common thread in the different groups Wm F. Buckley put together was that each wanted to repeal something “newfangled” (whether it was 2 years old or 100) that most of society granted was good or at least reasonable. The conservative movement, especially in its more intensely pseudo-religious quarters, has been trying to link disparate versions of, “things were better before X” long enough that they have substantially succeeded.
Would you like to…
reverse Roe v. Wade?
reverse Griswold v. Connecticut?!
abolish the EPA?
gut the SEC?
end Affirmative Action?
make Social Security “opt-out”?
massively defund Medicare?
return prayer to public schools?
abolish the minimum wage?
slash the income & payroll taxes to a level incapable of supporting a modern welfare state?
repeal the Endangered Species Act?
prevent any new taxes from Congress, even to balance the budget?
restore the enforcement of the sodomy law?
outlaw labor unions?
outlaw public employee unions & prevailing wage laws as undesirable constraints on state fiscal policy?
…then the conservative movement/GOP may be the party for you!
But you have to put up with the rest of these cranks.
But to some degree, each movement of crankery succeeds because it’s in coalition with other cranks–who have their own obsessions & don’t care enough about that one, or just aren’t paying attention to that particular one. So we have a party for interest groups ranging from those who want to repeal the income tax to those who just want fathers’ rights in abortion law, & each group is if not persuaded of the others’ sanity at least willing to use them for votes.
Now, of course, the movement is known for being the party of its own new & stupid ideas. Like turning drug abuse into a felony (now rather established). Or trying to run a welfare state on either very low taxes & lots of borrowing or a national retail tax with no taxation of the finance sector at all.
Actually, there is such thing as organized opposition to urban mass transit and it is distinctly conservative (or Libertarian) in tone.
Well, I mentioned it because it’s the sort of thing I’ve seen silly people advocate, & most who do advocate it would seem to tend toward anti-tax political reflexes, suspicion of cities, &/or libertarian/free-market optimism. What’d the Pew Political Typology call that last group? Upbeats? Yeah.
But I qualified it, because I don’t remember seeing it given any credence in NR or the like. The party needs some urban support after all.
Actually, “wither” sounds better and better all the time. Yeah, put me down for “wither”.
Last night I remembered an article I read years ago about why many shoppers prefer having a car to using mass transit–they can go from store to store adding packages & storing them in the car. It could have been the Atlantic I suppose, but I suspect it was in National Review–which presumably was playing to a small, “I shouldn’t have to pay taxes to run buses,” constituency. So there is a right-wing tendency to look for reasons to undermine support for public infrastructure. But it’s not a major part of the platform.
Anti Mass transit from the right comes from a couple of directions. First, it is always directly subsidized and therefore rarely can stand on its own. That makes it an easy target for the fiscal types.
More importantly is the red / blue maps by county. When you see that the Left controls the cities, while the Right controls the suburbs and country - you can see why mass transit has little value to the right. Mass transit works in high density living, which is another way of saying Left controlled areas. Why would someone on the Right increase their own taxes to help someone on the Left get around town? This is especially true if the tax is a gas or other type of vehicle tax. That just does not sell to the average Right voter.