“I’m an uninformed idiot.”
Conservatives are fiscally reckless. Look at every conservative president’s deficit spending, and economic crashes. Look at the states most dependent on federal funds.
Even if you had zero morals and voted 100% on fiscal policies, the best choice is very clearly not conservative.
I link this article every time the discussion comes up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidential_party
The first paragraph is a doozy.
Hence why republicans want to get rid of Wikipedia. For all of its faults they generally do a decent job of going slash and burn on any editors that cannot fully back themselves up or have clear political alegances.
Seeing the complete flopping of conservapedia, of course they want to get rid of it.
Anything that keeps a clear record of what people say or believe in, without that changing based on someone’s mood on a particular day is going to be a flop on that side of the spectrum.
I love yelling at my Facebook “friend” whenever gas prices go up a cent now. Under Biden it was all the damn time he’d cry about that but never acknowledged of it went down.
MUH EGGZ
Poes Law very much applies, but I’m pretty sure Conservapedia is a troll. Just look at their list of “Greatest Conservative Songs”.
it ain’t even edit protected
Does the fact that American “conservative” politicians are lying about it make it an invalid position to take?
Is it guaranteed they’re voting conservative when they say that?
“I don’t hate you because you’re a POC, a woman, or queer. I hate you because you’re poor.”
“I’m a prick but I also like to smoke weed”
Conservativism, in all forms, is not a real ideology. It’s narcissism. A conservative will redefine conservative values based on their own identity.
So the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” idiot is lying to themselves about who they are. They want fiscal policies that benefit themselves, and they don’t want to be labelled a bigot, but they are fine with bigots in office as long as they get the fiscal policies that benefit themselves.
Ask them what they mean by “fiscal conservative,” and they will probably vaguely gesture and say “lower taxes.” What they mean is “lower taxes for me.” Fiscal conservatives still want to spend government money on programs they like. They want boondoggles in their backyard, earmarks and pork barrel projects, and social safety nets as long as they are the recipient (Medicare, Social Security, Veteran benefits, etc.)
They want to frame it as responsible restraint. Pull funding from programs they don’t understand, like scientific research, or don’t like, like foreign aid (except of course if strong ties to their home country).
And when they say lower taxes, when pressed, they will describe how their property tax or income tax or capital gains tax or death tax is really bad “for the economy.” They want good schools and roads and infrastructure, but they want someone else to pay for it.
Calling themselves conservative gives them license to be as selfish as they want to be without having to admit that they don’t actually have any values.
Either “I hate poor people but I love weed” or “I’m lying because my actual views would scare people off”.
“I don’t hate women and minorities but I don’t see anything wrong with an economy built off of their exploitation.”
Euro perspective - When I hear fiscally conservative, that means supporting a governmental policy that is frugal with spending and responsible with public assets and finances.
This has several parts, here are some of the most important:
a) Keeping a balanced budget - the government should not be spending more than it is collecting from taxes and income. (A little debt in dire times is fine, but that should be payed off when possible)
b) Responsible management and long term planning - the planning horizon should be counted in decades
c) Focusing on core tasks: national security, infrastructure, healthcare, education etc.
d) Not raising taxes unless strictly necessary, lowering them if it is permissible according to the above.
Socially liberal => supports personal liberties
Now why does government debt even matter? Well, because debt is owed somewhere, and if it becomes large may mean that the government is beholden to other parties for the debt.
What party runs on the platform of fiscal irresponsibility?
Not raising taxes unless strictly necessary, lowering them if it is permissible according to the above.
The tax rate is never the issue. If the gov can push through a responsible plan for spending our consolidated resources so it costs less than we’d need to pay separately, then it’s a win. Fuckwit conservatives talk a about reducing taxes and conveniently omit how they’ll reduce costs to match. Hint: Here, it’s always food inspectors and anti-corruption.
As someone who has used the term before.
Social liberal: I think you should be able to do whatever you want in your personal life, even if it harms yourself. I’m willing to negotiate with harming consenting adults while recognizing the possibility, even likelihood, of an imbalance of power making it difficult to properly give consent, or for it to be recognized by the public at large, e.g., maybe Amazon workers aren’t really okay with peeing in bottles because they don’t have enough time or facilities for bathroom breaks, just because they accepted the job. Doing things that harm those you have guardianship over is not acceptable because they are not in a position to give consent.
Fiscal conservative: I want money in the public trust to be spent effectively. This doesn’t mean I want less taxes, I’m in fact okay with more. A city near me has 30% of its budget dedicated to police services, yet we have some of the highest violent crime in Canada. The simple fact is, a lot of crime is driven by poverty and lack of opportunity. So why are we paying to catch and jail poor people with no skills who are trying to survive and not paying for skills training, robust childhood education, and at least minimal supports so people don’t have to be desperate enough to risk their lives and mine so they can survive? It doesn’t make sense and there’s no indication it’s working. FYI, school meal programs tend to help the local economy to the tune of about $7 for every $1 you spend on them. That sounds terribly fiscally responsible to me…
100%. I want to loudly point out that you saying ‘jailing poor people not isn’t fiscally responsible and doesn’t benefit society, the money would be better spent giving people a better shot at success’ is a great example of social liberal (make society better) and fiscal conservative (don’t spend money on stupid things).
But if we didn’t criminalize poor people, how well we justify spending billions on privately owned for profit prisons!?! You didn’t think of the stock holders! /s
Nothing about what you describe has even the slightest thing to do with conservatism though, so I don’t know why you would describe that as being “fiscal conservative”.
Maybe not what it means currently in America. But in general it sounds fiscally conservative to me.
One of the definitions of conservative is cautious or restrained. How is not spending money in a risky way not conservative? How is making choices based on evidence from other experiences not conservative? How is not spending money and letting physical and social structures that are serving you well decay conservative?
I hear a closeted MAGA.
You need to get your hearing checked.
I don’t like paying taxes to fund public services, but I don’t care what consenting adults do in their own bedrooms
but it’s also not a deal breaker if the guy I vote for wants to dehumanize them
I’m someone who actually calls myself socially liberal but fiscally conservative, and that’s because my primary concern (in the terms of moral foundations theory) is the liberty/oppression axis. In other words, I think leaving people alone is a good thing, and while it’s not the only good thing and it needs to be balanced against other concerns, we should still be doing it more than we are now.
Two caveats:
-
I’m socially liberal because a free society requires tolerating even the people you hate. This is hard, and even many people who consider themselves tolerant because they simply don’t hate a particular group aren’t (and often don’t want to be) tolerant in this sense.
-
I’m economically conservative because the freedom to act without government interference even in an economic context has great inherent worth (but I’ll repeat here that I don’t value it to the exclusion of all else) but also because the free market usually does a better job than central planning at making everyone prosperous. I don’t care much about wealth inequality - a world in which I have two dollars and you have two million dollars is a better place than a world in which we both have just one dollar.
Edit: in practice I always end up voting for moderate Democrats at the national level, both because I think social issues are generally more important than economic issues and because neither party usually does what I would want regarding economic issues. However, I have more options at the state and local level.
I’m genuinely curious about the fiscally conservative bit. When I hear that phrase I always assume people mean “I don’t want to pay taxes” but my immediate next question becomes how do you believe societal level infrastructure is constructed and maintained. Things like roads, police, military. I’ve never seen a society with private infrastructure for those things. An immediate second question, assuming you are OK with a small level of taxation to accommodate the costs of the three things listed above would be, what other society level services would fall into the bucket of things that should be paid from taxation vs things that should be privatised. Things like disaster recovery services, judicial services, child welfare services, national security, border protection. I’m going to also assume you object to education and healthcare being a taxation funded expense? What about currently public buildings like libraries? Parks? Town Halls?
I’m not one of those few completely uncompromising libertarians who don’t want public roads - I actually think the government should be doing all the things you list, and I pay my taxes. I do prefer individualistic ways of doing things, but I’m pragmatic and there are many problems for which the collectivist solution is the only practical solution. When I say I’m fiscally conservative, I mean that I think society should be more libertarian than it is now, not that it should be absolutely libertarian.
How do you feel about anarchism and/or libertarian communism? (just trying to see how much you think that way because of a sympathy for capital or because of a rejection of the state)
As someone who shares the views of the parent comment, I think anarchism is the end-road, utopia progression of these beliefs.
I think that conservatives are right to be skeptical of big government. Concentrated power always corrupts without fail. Whether that’s big government, big corporations, big religions, that remains true.
I think some pragmatism is required especially for things such as emergency services and common defense because market forces are kind of like Darwin’s evolution. It selects for the best chance of making the number go up and doesn’t specifically select the best outcome for all participants.
Bonus Analysis: (own section because my post was getting too long)
Republicans, in my analysis, however aren’t really that concerned about big government. The Republican Party is a big organization that has been corrupted, they are more concerned about feigning concern to further their own wealth and power. And thus the turn toward fascism.
We used to have a better standard of living. We used to have less depression. We used to have more membership in civic organizations and churches. Our country used to be far more distributed and decentralized than it is today.
It’s not surprising to me that all of those factors decreased and hate and division increased while power and wealth has became more and more concentrated the last 30 years.
I agree with you on most points, thanks for your analysis/opinion!
What about a world where we both have $2,000?
Having $2,000 is better than having $2, but in practice I’m usually skeptical that plans to achieve an outcome like that will work out rather than failing and leaving both of us with $1. The manner in which the outcome would be achieved also matters - some of the plans seem to me like proposals to just steal the money and I object to that on moral rather than economic principles.
(I don’t mean to imply that people I disagree with think that stealing is OK, but rather that they and I don’t agree on the definition of stealing.)
It’s very interesting, I rarely see someone with whom I absolutely disagree with everything they just said, and whom I think their belief system will actually make all society worse and not better. But to put a clear example. It seems to me that you beliefs on the first caveat, are logically incompatible with the second. Your belief on the second caveat is antagonistic with your stated desires. A lack of government, or low scale of a government, without central planning, with a free market, with low restrictions and tons on inequality, is the prime condition that creates and fosters hate and intolerance. I read your comment and can’t help but to interpret it as “I hate poor people, and you should tolerate my hate because I’m very articulate when I express it”.
-
“I don’t actively hunt members of marginalized communities with one of my many obnoxiously customized firearms but I still have a weird kink for giving tax cuts to billionaires in exchange for a worsened quality of life because I have a 12 year old’s understanding of how the world works.”
“I’m a dumbass who’s too embarrassed to say I vote Republican.”
“My definition of socially liberal is I don’t think gay people belong in death camps, per se.”
I used to say this. And I believed it. It’s a lie people tell themselves because they’re voting for terrible things and don’t want to take credit for half of it.
“I kill the poor but I’m sad about it” gtfo
“I’m a liar, pretending to be a libertarian. Fund the police so they can shut down the protests for things I don’t like.”
“I’m not gay, but $20 is $20.”
“i vote MAGA, but im too much of a wuss to admit it out loud.”
