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Republicans are only fiscal conservatives when they're in the Opposition. Democrats are never fiscal conservatives.
So where does that leave us? The permanent bureaucracy is built by and for fiscal lunacy, and if you try to cut any part of the budget you're painted as being a hater of children, or minorities, or veterans, or national defense, or dozens of other special interests.
Good luck to anyone who cares to slice off one of the Hydra's heads.
To be a "fiscal conservative" means to attempt to improve the future, at the expense of grievous setback and suffering in the present. And whereas the future improvement is speculative and unclear, the present sacrifices are very clear. Not an attractive deal. And not something that most people would countenance, regardless of political stance.
This is the crux of why the U.S. (and many other Western countries) is headed for a train wreck that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park.
I don't know why I bother saying it. The people who get it already see it and don't need to be told. And the people who need to hear it the most will never listen.
Any system will fail, in ways we both can and cannot see. It's only the ability to self-correct that keeps an economy from destroying itself.
The sad fate of America will be when it one day realizes that everyone else realizes that we are all powerless to the Fed. Not sure who fired first, but between government backed entities and central banks....we're all being forced to centralize....and it's scary.
Yes, I agree with all of that.
Centralization of power is the proposed answer to every crisis we have. I don't think that's an accident.
It just didn't occur to me that you thought we might run into some kind of fiscal disaster.
I've thought it for a long time. You can't continually increase debt as a % of GDP without a day of reckoning.
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Originally Posted by homelessinseattle
Modern Monetary Theory seems to be working. Australia hasn't had a recession in 27 years. They just throw more money out there when the economy lags and the US says we can do it too.
Australia runs balanced budgets/surpluses in good times. They have a low debt burden. We can do it, too, but we won't.
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Originally Posted by homelessinseattle
I dont think it's right but its up to the banksters that seem to be running the show.
Yes, absolutely. The global banking cartel has been running the show for much longer than people realize. It's been obvious for the last decade, but it goes back much further. Heck, my grandfather talked about the banksters (didn't use that word) back in the 1950s and 1960s.
Keep in mind I'm relatively conservative. Keynes, and I'm pretty sure I read and or studied every word the guy ever published about economics, didn't support the idea of endless deficits, nor huge ongoing national debt.
No he didn't. But you missed my point. He was an economist, but lived in the world of theory, not how humans actually behave. Politicians (and humans more generally) want to avoid making the hard decisions and in many places will run up deficits in good times and bad. That's what's happened in the U.S. and a number of other countries (Japan, Greece, France, Italy...just to name a few).
This is the crux of why the U.S. (and many other Western countries) is headed for a train wreck that will make 2008 look like a walk in the park.
I don't know why I bother saying it. The people who get it already see it and don't need to be told. And the people who need to hear it the most will never listen.
Absolutely. It's easier and less scary to stick your head in the sand. There is a sort of cognitive dissonance that happens if you try to talk to these folks. Their brains won't allow any foreign information that would upset the apple cart of their happy little fantasy that all is well. It's a shame, because those are the folks who will be the least prepared when the **** hits the fan.
I'm a fiscal conservative and I'm also a Democrat because I think corporate welfare is a much bigger problem than individual welfare.
I don't mind having a social safety net - my gripe is people get caught in the net because one dollar over some set limit and the benefits *poof* disappear. Help needs to be on a sliding scale and more realistic.
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while at the same time increasing the benefits (freebies) to those who pay little or nothing
I hope someone will take a minute to list the corporations that pay zero taxes. If possible dig up the subsidies and overpayments.
As for medicare costs it was GWB who included the requirement that medicare not negotiate drug prices. Huge giveaway to big pharma. Now let's talk about agricultural subsidies and who benefits. How about overpriced military contracts.
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