In What Country is Small Government/Conservatism Working? (laws, employees, percent)

[60sfemi]

Originally Posted by MTAtech

STRAWMAN ARGUMENT ALERT:


According to who? What liberals today want to change the U.S. into a system like Soviet Russia? None.

Yeah, you know us liberals want to live exactly like those threatened by gulags on a daily basis for doing something outside our allowable chosen field. Where do these wingnuts come up with this stuff. Crazy on a stick! Haven't checked out this thread for a long time, thought it was possibly closed but I used the posters original question re: naming a successful small conservative government in use today and all my flaming Republican friends at the xmas party went in at least 5 different directions skirting the issue and bringing up everything from Obamacare to socialism yet not a single one could answer the question yet again. This is the best posting question ever. It has them totally stumped and flumoxed!

[60sfemi]

Originally Posted by A&M_Indie_08

I was mocking that idiot that I quoted

Maintaining that Libs want a USSR like USA is almost as stupid as saying that the right wants the US to be like Saudi Arabia

Although last nite at the neighborhood xmas party the only answer anyone could come up with for the OP question was Saudi Arabia. Too funny

[Fiddlehead]

Yes, it is funny how conservative posters are so doctrinaire, yet their ideas have never been successfully applied in the history of the world. Any decent country has a mixed economy. Rush Limbaughland is just a talk radio fantasy to help sell Snapple.

[BigJon3475]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

Yes, it is funny how conservative posters are so doctrinaire, yet their ideas have never been successfully applied in the history of the world. Any decent country has a mixed economy. Rush Limbaughland is just a talk radio fantasy to help sell Snapple.

Yeah, they've never been tried because "absolute power corrupts absolutely." You can have your kings, tyrants and despots that your system produces.

[MTAtech]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

Yes, it is funny how conservative posters are so doctrinaire, yet their ideas have never been successfully applied in the history of the world. Any decent country has a mixed economy. Rush Limbaughland is just a talk radio fantasy to help sell Snapple.

Paul Krugman (who the right hates) is all over this:

I’m not the first person to notice this, but whenever you read conservatives trying to critique what they think the other side believes, you find them assuming that their opponents must be mirror images of themselves. The right believes that less government spending is always good, regardless of circumstances, so it assumes that the other side must always favor more government spending. The right says that deficits are always evil (unless they’re caused by tax cuts), so they assume that the center-left must favor deficits in all conditions.
...
What seems beyond their intellectual range is the notion that other people might have subtler beliefs than their own. Keynesianism, in particular, is not about chanting “big government good”. It’s about viewing recessions through the lens of an economic model under which temporary increases in government spending can, under certain circumstances, help reduce unemployment. Indeed, not all recessions call for fiscal stimulus; it’s the special conditions of the liquidity trap that make it essential now — which is why the Bush deficits, run under non-liquidity trap conditions, say nothing at all about the desirability of deficits now.

[afoigrokerkok]

OP, how about you tell me how big government/liberalism is working so well in Europe right now?

[MTAtech]

Originally Posted by afoigrokerkok

OP, how about you tell me how big government/liberalism is working so well in Europe right now?

I couldn't have picked a better example of proving the liberal case. If you have been paying any attention to Europe you would know that the prevailing economic policies over the last few years have been conservative policies, namely austerity -- thinking that cutting government spending would somehow be expansionary. These European policies could be right out of John Boehner's handbook.

As Kevin O’Rourke, Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford, writes:

European summit left much to be desired. Once again, Europe’s national leaders showed themselves to be in denial about what underlies the eurozone’s economic, banking, and sovereign-debt crises, and thus hopelessly unable to resolve them.

One lesson that the world has learned since the financial crisis of 2008 is that a contractionary fiscal policy means what it says: contraction. Since 2010, a Europe-wide experiment has conclusively falsified the idea that fiscal contractions are expansionary. August 2011 saw the largest monthly decrease in eurozone industrial production since September 2009, German exports fell sharply in October, and now-casting.com is predicting declines in eurozone GDP for late 2011 and early 2012.

A second, related lesson is that it is difficult to cut nominal wages, and that they are certainly not flexible enough to eliminate unemployment. That is true even in a country as flexible, small, and open as Ireland, where unemployment increased last month to 14.5%, emigration notwithstanding, and where tax revenues in November ran 1.6% below target as a result. If the nineteenth-century “internal devaluation” strategy to promote growth by cutting domestic wages and prices is proving so difficult in Ireland, how does the EU expect it to work across the entire eurozone periphery?

Thus, using Europe policies as a model for doing what the GOP wants, namely, cutting government spending and reducing government employees in the middle of a severe economic downturn, has proven to be a disaster for Europe. What's the odds that the GOP would learn anything from the European experiment? I didn't think so.

[afoigrokerkok]

Originally Posted by MTAtech

I couldn't have picked a better example of proving the liberal case. If you have been paying any attention to Europe you would know that the prevailing economic policies over the last few years have been conservative policies, namely austerity -- thinking that cutting government spending would somehow be expansionary. These European policies could be right out of John Boehner's handbook.

How is having such extreme amounts of debt working out?

Perhaps that's why government spending has been cut? I'll be the first to admit that government spending decreases will temporarily harm the economy (in a similar manner to tax increases). They can be offset, however, by tax decreases. And long-term they will be very beneficial in reducing debt.

[MTAtech]

Originally Posted by afoigrokerkok

How is having such extreme amounts of debt working out?

Perhaps that's why government spending has been cut? I'll be the first to admit that government spending decreases will temporarily harm the economy (in a similar manner to tax increases). They can be offset, however, by tax decreases. And long-term they will be very beneficial in reducing debt.

Even the conservative WSJ (Dec. 9, 2011) contradicts that line of thinking:

So if public debt is your yardstick, then the Spaniards were paragons of virtue. They borrowed lightly despite the fact that their euro-zone membership gave them an all-you-can-eat buffet of financing at bargain-basement rates.

As Europe scrambles to find a solution to a debt crisis that’s threatening the world economy, it’s crucial to understand what actually happened in countries like Spain. Otherwise, policymakers will end up prescribing the wrong medicine, with disastrous results.

Spain was running surpluses before the economy fell of the cliff. As one economist commented about the Euro crisis, "it's the economy, stupid." (not directed at you)

Oh, and if spending on public social programs is the key then Sweden should be a basket case, which it isn't and enjoys low interest rates too.

[afoigrokerkok]

Originally Posted by MTAtech

Even the conservative WSJ (Dec. 9, 2011) contradicts that line of thinking:

I don't have time now, but I will read through both articles and look into this some more later and post comments back on this thread.