Lots of errors here. What makes you think that “progressive polices” are bad for the economy ? Our privatized “health care” system, for example, drives business away, it doesn’t attract them. Sicker employees that they have to foot the bill for are hardly an attraction.
As for corporate taxes going up like that, in taxphobic America that’ll never happen; we are more likely to destroy ourselves economically by a refusal to tax enough, no matter the cost. Nor, despite the myth are low corporate taxes effective at drawing companies somewhere. If you want to attract a corporation, work on the people who control it, not on the business itself; good golf courses and good private schools will draw a corporation to you, and away from the community that foolishly tries to attract business by lowering taxes.
And the idea that American regulatory structure is overly burdensome or about to become so is as ridiculous as the idea of punitive taxes. Obama isn’t some far left, or even moderate left winger; he’s a moderate corporatist. He’s a moderate right winger, not some socialist.
The very concept of a non-zero-sum game blurs the very definition here of ‘nothing’. And anyway, conditions are different now than when the Laffer curve was popularized (rates were higher). For all we know, tax rates might now be below the maximum revenue rate.
As a percentage of GDP, Canada has cut spending dramatically. My province, Alberta, embarked on major spending cuts.
Canada’s government consumed about 49% of GDP in 2001. Today, it’s at 38.5%. The Harper Government would like it to be about 30%.
You don’t have to slash spending - you just have to grow spending by a smaller amount than GDP growth.
Klein’s policies in Alberta actually had a fair bit of influence on the Republican party in the early 1990’s, and the ‘Contract with America’ that Gingrich ushered in was influenced by Alberta’s success.
A lot of people like to say that Alberta is only successful because of oil. But it’s not true. In 1992, Alberta was in rough shape. Ralph Klein was elected, and he inherited a debt of 22 billion dollars, and an annual deficit of 3.2 billion dollars. The population at the time was about 2.6 million people, so we had a deficit of about $1,200 per person, and a debt of about $8,400 per person.
Klein balanced the budget in two years. Within four years, Alberta’s government spending was cut from 24% of GDP to 16% of GDP. Taxes weren’t cut - government was. Once the deficit was eliminated, the province started turning surpluses, and all the surplus money went to paying down the debt. In fact, even after we started turning surpluses, Klein continued budget cutting, accelerating the rate of debt repayment. By 1992, overall government spending was down almost 20%, and GDP was way up. Eventually, the debt was pretty much gone, and Klein then turned the money back to the people with a round of tax cuts.
My wife was one of the health care workers to take major wage rollbacks. Financial aid to cities was cut by over 70%. Whole government departments were shuttered. Social services were cut. I don’t think there’s another major government anywhere that cut spending as much as Alberta did.
The result was an economic boom. And it had nothing to do with energy prices. In fact, one of the remarkable things about this period was that Alberta’s dependence on oil revenue actually declined - the growth was in diversified businesses. In 1992, oil was $31/bbl. In 1999, it had collapsed to $15/bbl. And yet, Alberta was running deficits when oil was high, and surpluses when it was low. Our low-regulation, low-tax environment was a magnet for entrepreneurs and big businesses alike. During this period, oil and natural gas went from making up 20% of our GDP to only 10%. The difference was made up by a huge boom in commercial investment in the province, and by an increase in exports as our economy diversified.
When oil prices began to climb again, Alberta was in a position to really take off. We had no debt, we were running surpluses, and we had a low tax environment. Alberta now has the strongest economy in North America, it ranks first or second in terms of economic freedom.
Contrast that with the way the Getty government ran Alberta before that - even though oil prices were higher, the government kept increasing spending, justifying it with rosy income scenarios. Government bloated, the economy became increasingly dependent on oil revenues, and in general the province didn’t benefit much from high oil prices - government ate it all up. Then the price of oil began to decline, and Alberta was stuck with a huge debt and a big deficit. So we kicked the bum out and elected Klein.
What Alberta did in the 1990’s proves that fiscal conservatism works. Run surpluses, pay off your debt. Cut spending before you cut taxes. Get your books in order. Get the world’s best credit rating, and eliminate the dead-weight of debt servicing costs.
It can be done. We did it. It was painful. There was a lot of kicking and screaming from the left. There were claims that without the government spending, our economy would crater. Without the social spending, the ranks of the poor would skyrocket. Education spending cuts would make our kids illiterate. Health care spending cuts would leave the sick with nowhere to go, people wouldn’t get the treatments they needed, and eventually cost even more money. We heard it all. Gloom and doom and disaster. Klein was a monster who hated the poor and hated children and the sick.
Fortunately, Alberta has a generally conservative population, and when people saw that Klein was serious about using the spending cuts to pay off the debt, they kept electing him.
first we see how everybody can be free to live the life of a slave-owning aristocrat like Benjamin Franklin without need to depend on working for anybody, then we work out how much machines can replace slaves, then how far convicts can serve, then how much individuals might have to surrender some part of their life to civil conscription just as is still expected of young men to serve in the military of some countries, then we get together to decide what we want and how to work together in co-operatives to provide it for each other. Then we do what we want free from worries about poverty.
Exactly. What’s really surprised me is that the cultural right seems to be in the process of taking control of the party from the big-money boys, to the extent that they see their interests differing, which is a serious display of political muscle, at least within the shrinking playing field of intra-GOP politics. So it’s hard to see Sam’s desired change taking place in the next decade or two.
So, the number of Americans calling themselves ‘Conservative’ is now at 40% - up from 37% a year ago. But the numbers of people who say they are ‘more conservative’ is truly startling. Even among Democrats, 34% say they are growing more conservative, vs only 23% who say they are becoming more liberal. For independents, it’s 37% conservative, only 19% more liberal. Only 9% of Republicans say they are becoming more liberal. Among adults over all, the numbers are 39% conservative, 19% liberal.
These are not small differences. This is really a very dramatic shift. Looking at the graphs and the numbers, I get the picture of a country turning pretty hard to the right.
A couple of conclusions from this:
Obama was elected not because he’s a liberal, but because he portrayed himself as a centrist, or even as conservative (remember his ‘net spending cut’ for the government? His appearance on the Rick Warren show? His emphasis on his religion? His speeches about personal responsibility and families?)
The Republicans were booted not because they were conservative, but because they were corrupt, and because they were fiscally irresponsible.
Obama has no mandate to govern from the left, and if he continues to do so, his poll numbers will continue to drop and Democrats will be in trouble in the next two elections. Another Gallup poll shows this More Americans see Democratic party as ‘too liberal’:
This after only a few months into Obama’s presidency, and while he’s still enjoying a ‘honeymoon’. Oh, and his popularity with independents dropped 8 points last week.
Perhaps we should have a thread entitled, “Is Liberalism dying?”
Got some questions about Alberta’s economic miracle, which is solely attributable to adopting policies that you admire.
Is there no dissent from this view, Sam? Total agreement across the board, its cut and dried, no one disagrees? Remarkable.
Nothing? How is that even possible? I am not an economist, I don’t have any expertise to throw around, but this is…well, what? A province, nation, state, whatever that exports energy simply must be at least somewhat dependent upon those prices, mustn’t it? Should such academics as Paul Krugman abandon their occupations and get in line for American Idol auditions? Since their economic opinions have been rendered into nonsense?
So, then, in the space of mere months, business and investment rushed pell-mell to Alberta, built the required infrastructure of offices, supply vendors, all that good stuff…I’m assuming that they weren’t required to build any factories? Or they simply planned, blue-printed and built them all, got them up and running profitably in record time.
Miracles make me suspicious, Sam.
And then oil prices became relevant. You see the problem here, Sam? Before miracle, no relevance, post miracle, relevant.
No doubt on the kicking and screaming part. But you left something out. If the gov was not paying for health care for the poor and sick, who did? They couldn’t, they were poor and sick. Did you buy them all one-way bus tickets to Quebec? Did they, well, die? Can Free Market conservative policies heal the sick and raise the dead, make the little girls talk out of their head?
You offer us no caveats, Sam, except the kicking and screaming of lefties, which must have torn at your gentle heart strings.
In the time intervening, between the installation of policy and its result, what did the poor do? The jobs that result from the miracle had not yet arrived, no? And the help they received from the gov was gone. Did they all just tighten their belts and tug on their bootstraps? Did they eat their belts and boot straps? Did they all get the bum’s rush to make way for a vigorous population of entrepreneurs?
If such were the case, I can readily see the value in some lefty kicking and screaming. I certainly would. But you didn’t? May we ask why?
And didn’t pay any attention? So certain were you, you didn’t feel any sense of risk, here? They’re lefties, they must, by definition, be wrong? What fallback plans were in place in case they weren’t? We are right, sometime, Sam. Surely you’ve noticed?
Caveats, Sam. Your case needs some, lest it appear to be a deus ex machina. Did you never, not ever, think this plan might have been drafted by Mr. Ross E. Scenario, with the help of statistician Marge N. Overra?
Can you offer us any dissenting views on this? Just for comic relief, you understand.
The problem, Sam, is that this self-perception of people as more conservative/liberal/whatever than they were last year is nothing but illusion unless they’ve changed their views on specific issues that tend to be interpreted along the left-right axis.
Are Americans less supportive of universal health care than a year ago? Are they more dubious about the reality of global warming? Are they more opposed to our withdrawal from Iraq? Are they less opposed to repeal of Roe? Less in favor of gay marriage?
Because unless Americans are actually much more conservative on specific issues than they were last year, there’s no ‘hard turn to the right.’
Well, Bush has been described as, “not a conservative, but a right-wing extremist”.
Liberalism doesn’t need to live, it just needs to succeed. Once everyone realizes that just because something is part of conservatism, that doesn’t make it right, then liberalism’s job is done and reality-based can take over.
Oh, give it up, Arty, we’re doomed. What with the massive electoral setbacks, and the economic disaster we forced down the throat of that poor, misunderstood Mr. Bush, we’ve had it, we’re boned. Some days its not worth it to gnaw through the leather straps…*
*Stolen from Emo Phillips, acknowledged because one of you weirdos might know…
It’s not at all clear that the rejection of the propositions were only about opposing tax increases. Some opposed some of them because they took money from schools, some put money back. The main ones had a spending cap, and no one is saying that the people oppose that. I was in a focus group on Prop 1A, and a lot of the opposition was either from confusion about what it contained, lack of trust in the government, or just disgust that the legislature chickened out and threw another hard decision to the voters. They were a mess - about as clear as a Sarah Palin press conference.
I agree with you that a tax increase will get more popular, but before that there will be a lot of noise asking why eliminating cars for legislators hasn’t solved the problem.
I’m quite well aware of the theoretical justification, and when there is a confiscatory tax rate it is even true. But that was hardly the case in 1980, so we got deficits instead. Supposed increases in tax revenue came from the natural growth of the economy, and actual tax revenue lagged what it would have been without the cuts. Same thing as under Bush.
And it sure as hell got sold as “cut taxes, get more revenue.”
The fact that Alberta underwent an economic boom is not a matter of interpretation.
From 1998 to 1992, per-capita GDP in Alberta declined from about $32,000 to about $30,000. From 1992 to 1996, the years of the biggest budget cuts, per-capita GDP increased to about $37,000.
Gee, I haven’t heard Krugman weigh in on Alberta. Can you point me to a cite where he disputes any of this?
As for oil, of course it has always been a component of our overall GDP, and a pretty significant one. But you missed the part where I pointed out that during the period in question, oil dropped in price from $31/bbl to about $15/bbl. Overall exports of resources increased, but the contribution of resources to our GDP stayed pretty much flat through those years. So no, the boom can not be attributed to oil and gas at all. In 1983, resource exports made up 23% of Alberta’s GDP. In 1992, when Klein was elected, that was down to about 10%. By the end of his first term, it had actually declined to about 9% of GDP.
Especially when they don’t fit your pre-disposed narrative. Nevertheless, it’s the truth. Here are some numbers for you:
In 1992, manufacturing made up about 22% of our overall exports. By 1996, it was 31%.
In 1992, capital investment by business contributed about $4500 to our per-capita GDP. By 1996, that had grown to about $7500, and by 1998 it was $10,000. In other words, in six years business investment in Alberta more than doubled. During a period when oil prices were declining.
I have intentionally not talked about the years after 2000, because oil prices started to climb dramatically, and absolutely did have a major effect on the huge economic boom Alberta saw in the 2000’s. What we’re discussing here, however, is the effect of true fiscal conservatism, which was the hallmark of Alberta in the 1990’s - a time when oil prices were low and the main drivers of change in Alberta’s economy were manufacturing and business investment.
You didn’t read my post very carefully, did you? In the 1980’s, oil revenues were higher. Their contribution to Alberta’s GDP was much greater. And yet, Alberta managed to rack up a huge debt and deficit, because government spending grew even faster than our revenues. The point is that deficits are not a problem of low revenue - they are a problem of spending more money than you have, regardless of how much revenue you have. During the period of increasing deficits in the U.S. under Bush, government revenue actually increased quite a bit. It’s just that spending increased even more.
Hey, we had temporary shortages because of the change. No doubt people were hurt by it. But Alberta today has the best health outcomes in the country, the least number of poor people in the country, and our per-capita income is twice the national average. In addition, these gains definitely trickled down to workers - average hourly wages increased by 10% per year.
There’s no mystery how this happened. The government got the hell out of the way. Our low tax/low regulation environment attracted business investment. This caused our unemployment rate to plummet. Low unemployment translates into more bargaining power for workers, which translates into higher wages. During the peak boom years, clerks at 7-11 were making $10/hr and getting $1000 signing bonuses for taking a job.
Eventually, with ou debt gone and our per-capita GDP rising, the govermnent could afford to spend more on basic services. While governments with high debt are giving up 10%-20% of their revenue to interest charges on their debt, Alberta could spend 10-20% more on services. And if Alberta spends 10% of GDP on health care, and BC spends 10% of GDP on health care, Alberta is actually spending much more per person, because our per-capita GDP is higher. So we have better services even though our government spends less money in terms of GDP per capita than any other province.
Caveats? Well, the left in Alberta always complained about any budget cuts. Then, when the economy boomed, they claimed that Alberta’s economy was unsustainable. And of course, there are environmental complaints regarding our oil sands production, some of them legitimate. The economic boom caused so many people to flood into the province that real-estate prices spiked, making it harder for low-income people. There are always complaints from the left that the government isn’t doing enough, that it should be spending even more. That never goes away.
A lot of the cuts took the form of wage rollbacks in the public sector. My wife took something like a 10% pay cut in the first year. We weren’t rich, but we managed. The government privatized our government registry services and a few other services (all of which are much better as a result). I do believe there was some real hardship experienced by people who were on assisted living and disabilities. I’m not trying to claim there was no pain. The point, however, is that the pain was temporary, and Alberta’s resulting economic improvement made life better for everyone.
For example, have you ever considered that Obama’s doubling of the national debt means that forever more, about 10% more of the revenue the government takes in will have to be spent just servicing his additional debt? The Stimulus package’s 800 billion dollars represents an annual servicing cost of maybe 30 billion dollars. That’s TWO NASA budgets, pissed away on interest every year, forever. Or, you could give every American without health insurance a cheque for $650 to use to pay for health insurance, every year, instead of paying interest on the stimulus. And of course, if you want to actually pay back the stimulus on a reasonable timetable, say 10 years, the costs more than double.
There are no free lunches. Debt is a deadweight on an economy, including on social programs. Alberta has no debt because we made draconian spending cuts. As a result, we can now pay more for social programs while maintaining lower taxes.
The left is often right when it comes to issues of social policy and human freedom and such. On economic matters, the left is usually completely wrong. In Canada, for example, British Columbia has generally elected more left-wing governments than has Alberta. British Columbia also has big resource revenues. But in the 1990’s, British Columbia elected the NDP, our most left-wing major political party, and Alberta elected the most right-wing government in Canada. And what happened? BC experienced a ‘lost decade’ of almost zero GDP growth (0.6% per year). When the NDP were elected, BC’s per-capita GDP was about $1000 above the Canadian average. By the end of the decade, BC’s per-capita GDP was $3,000 below the national average.
When the NDP were elected, they immediately embarked on a program of increased government expenditure, and it stayed high throughout the 1990’s. And while Alberta’s manufacturing base exploded and business investment drove GDP gains, BC’s anti-business environment caused their manufacturing to stall out. In fact, the last half the NDP’s rein was marked by annual declines in new business startups.
By the end of the 1990’s, BC’s debt was 28% of GDP, and Alberta had no debt and was putting surplus money into our Heritage Trust Fund. During this period, BC’s total government revenue increased, but their spending increased just as fast.
Just out of curiosity, why is it that I’m always supposed to be responsible for providing rebuttals to my own arguments, or couching my messages in caveats? Do you do that? When you post messages extolling liberal values, do you run over to CATO and do some research so you can present your viewpoint in a ‘balanced’ way? I’m constantly being called upon to do that. But you know what? That’s what DEBATE is for. If you think I’m blowing smoke, you are perfectly free to go do your own research and present a rebuttal. I know that’s not really your forte’ - you’d rather just drive-by and drop some snark in a thread. But the burden really is on you to do your own heavy lifting.
54% of Americans want less government and fewer services, vs 41% who want more government services
69% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of concern about “areas in which the federal government has taken a greater role, such as taking an ownership stake in General Motors, limiting levels of compensation that corporate executives can receive, and the role the government would play in a new health care system.”
when asked whether the private sector or the government would do a better job managing health care, 70% of Americans said the private sector was better, and only 20% said government was better.
By the way, support for health care reform today is much lower than it was in 1993 when Hillarycare tanked, indicating either a generally higher level of satisfaction with current health care today, or a shift to the right on this issue in the population. In 1993, 55% of Americans said health care needed a total overhaul. Today, about 41% do. Support for univeral insurance has dropped from 83% in 1993 to 72% today.
Of course not. Where’s the comparisons to polls from last year or the year before? How have people’s opinions changed since then?
Here’s one from the ABC-WaPo poll, courtesy of pollingreport.com:
“Do you think abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in most cases, illegal in most cases, or illegal in all cases?”
% % % % %
6/18-21/09 20 35 26 17 2
6/12-15/08 18 35 28 16 3
That’s the sort of data I’d be interested in looking at. If you can produce a few year-to-year comparisons that show the sharp right turn you claim has happened, we’ll have something to talk about. Right now, we don’t. Producing polls that only show where the public stands at a single point in time cannot possibly evidence a trend.
This is true, but there are problems with such comparisons. For one thing, more people are likely to support a vague, undefined goal than they will support a more detailed plan which necessarily has to address costs and benefits. This could actually be a point in your favor - it may be that if you find a poll that says more people oppose health care reform today than they did a year ago, it might not indicate a real trend, but rather the comparison of a cost-free vague preference with the reality that health care reform might include, say, higher taxes or the elimination of ‘gold standard’ medical plans.
But certainly I have shown polls that indicate that support for Obama’s specific policies have actually been declining since he took office, as has his approval rating. An 8-point drop among independents between the last two polls should be pretty worrying for an Obama supporter.
Yeah, he portrayed himself as a centrist who wanted to bring about universal health care, withdraw our troops from Iraq, regulate carbon emissions, and repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
You have any polling to support this?
He has a mandate to do the things he said he was going to do. People got a chance to vote for him or the other guy. They voted for him. People also could have hedged their bets by their Congressional votes, as has often happened in the past when people feel they’re voting for the lesser of evils. Not only did they elect Obama by a healthy margin, but you might notice that the Dems picked up something like 24 House seats and 8 Senate seats in last fall’s election - and this on top of their similarly large gains in 2006.
Ok…let’s assume you are correct. And let’s assume that Obama knows this and has read the polls as well. This begs the question…why isn’t he doing it then? If, indeed, he has such a mandate, why hasn’t he started ramming some of this stuff through? Do you feel that Obama is politically opposed to doing some of the stuff on your laundry list? Morally? Intellectually?
Why isn’t he pushing harder on these issues if he REALLY has such a mandate from the people to push through a more left leaning agenda?
In which case it ought to be easier for you to find polls supporting your point, comparing people’s reactions to last year’s fantasy with this year’s real tradeoffs. Sure, it gives me an argument for discounting the results, but you could at least produce some results.
The only one I can find in your posts is this one:
Did I overlook something?
At any rate, that doesn’t indicate a change in how people feel about anything specific. Presidential approval rates fluctuate all the time, and I won’t get heartburn over an 8% change in the approval of his handling of one general area.
Now if there’d been an 8% change in the number who felt he’d been too hard, or too easy, on Wall Street, then you’d have something that would indicate why his approval in that area went down, and would give us some clues as to whether they’re mad at him for being too liberal, or not liberal enough, as we generally understand these concepts.