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I hate to be associated with extreme Liberals, just as a moderate Conservative would not want to be cast in with the ilk of Pat Robertson and company. I can see how such stigmas and stereotypes have been formed around Liberals and Conservatives and, frankly, I think the terms have had their definitions distorted.
An economist advising Congress suggested that the most immediately beneficial in the short term and with the fewest administrative obstacles to stimulating the economy would be to extend unemployment benefits and food stamps as opposed to a tax rebate, saying that a tax rebate might be insufficient, delayed, and thus ineffective. From a utilitarian view, the unemployment/food stamps plan might work, but would the stigma of being Liberal and socialist prevent Conservatives from getting on board with the proposal? Is this another pitfall to partisan politics?
An economist advising Congress suggested that the most immediately beneficial in the short term and with the fewest administrative obstacles to stimulating the economy would be to extend unemployment benefits and food stamps as opposed to a tax rebate, saying that a tax rebate might be insufficient, delayed, and thus ineffective. From a utilitarian view, the unemployment/food stamps plan might work, but would the stigma of being Liberal and socialist prevent Conservatives from getting on board with the proposal? Is this another pitfall to partisan politics?
I suppose that you're using 'utilitarian view' to mean 'practical view', but the facts are that simple, low-cost, technical steps don't bring the sort of front-page splashiness that politcos wish to have in order to affect people's confidence, impressions, and expectations. That question comes entirely apart from the one over whether you could actually squeeze the levels of pump-priming thought to be necessary at the moment through the fairly small-sized spigots of unemployment benefits and the food stamp program. This latter question also comes with one over whether it is politically possible to later reverse the unemployment and food stamp increases. If the package is meant as temporary relief, it's not actually unreasonable for it to be delivered through mechanisms that themselves are temporary...
low-cost, technical steps don't bring the sort of front-page splashiness that politcos wish to have in order to affect people's confidence, impressions, and expectations.
Do you think that something with a wider, psychological affect would be a better remedy? What is your personal opinion... what, if any, economic stimulus is necessary? And what affect will partisan politics have on the government reaching the best decision?
I've seen you post in the Washington D.C. forum, Saganista, so I'd love to hear your take on things.
I tend in many ways to be conservative, at least on social issues. I got to my present 'grumpy' state by years of owning rental property. That will turn a liberal into a conservative eventually, believe me.
Very briefly, and in a very general way, most liberal thought , to me, is 'idealistic'. It envisions a world in which the goal is niceness, inclusiveness, and freedom from oppression and all forms of judgement. It assumes all people are good, honest, and moral. It assumes that 'nice' treatment toward others will be returned in kind. It's an appealing view, it 'feels good', and it's the way I looked at life at one time.
Liberalism, though, ignores much. It has a hard time explaining how all this is going to be 'paid for'. Being non-judgemental, it also fails to 'ask' anything in return for its supposed benefits. Liberalism holds no one accountable--the 'goof offs' are just as worthy as the hard workers. Sounds good at first, but can get pretty discouraging for the 'hard workers', which can eventually cause them to go over to the ranks of the 'goof offs'..and so it goes.
Liberals arguing with conservatives ALWAYS calls to my mind eager, idealistic young teenagers arguing with grumpy, stuffy, middle-aged adults. BOTH have something to say--yet, to me, the adults are still 'paying the rent', and as such, have a more realistic outlook.
Someone once said "If you're 20 years old, and a conservative, that's sad....And if you're 50 years old, and a liberal, that's even sadder". The idea is, when you grow up, you get a 'stake' in society and begin to defend the status-quo. You see the REASON behind some of society's rules.
I also see a strong sense of "societal guilt" running through most western liberal thought. Western culture, or the 'white race', or the "Christian religion", it's felt, is responsible far almost ALL the evil that's befallen man--and thus, 'liberalism' permits white, Christian westerners to 'atone' for their evil, colonial, racist past.
This view, I think, is extremely one-sided, and in its own way, quite 'racist' in itself. It presupposes than no non-white, non-western culture has EVER 'hurt' anyone, (which is nonsense) and that even if they HAD, their non-western, non-whiteness, means that they really aren't "responsible" in the way that Westerners are---violence and oppression by Westerners is evil---when done by OTHERS, it's just 'part of their culture". Altogether this seems like a very condescending view toward others...nearly as harmful as open racism, in my view.
Sorry if I got 'long-winded'---just my own informal thoughts...but that's my basic gripe--while much conservative thinking is harshly and brutally uncaring, at least it seems to have an honesty that's lacking in liberal thinking, which seems hopelessly idealistic and fails to see the 'gritty reality' of the human condition.
Mostly, like others, I try to base my thinking in just common sense. I have no problem with "going liberal" on an issue, if it makes sense, as it often does. And I DO think we can give others some 'benefit of the doubt', as much as possible.
I've sometimes thought that the shift from liberalism to conservatism as many people age may be more of a function of self-interest than a sign of increasing wisdom... for instance, if you had lived much of your life as a renter (with an "adversarial relationship" with your landlord, rather than the other way around) it could have made you more liberal, rather than more conservative. If you're rich and pay more taxes then you'll be more anti-tax, if you're low-income and depend on SCHIP for your kids' healthcare then you're probably not going to be a supply-sider, right? Perhaps if you live for a very long time in a certain class it'll eventually lead to some resentment against the other (whether you're rich or poor) for seemingly "leeching off of you" (to the affluent, this "leeching" is tax money used for social programs, while the working class may see it as, at the risk of my sounding like a Marxist, surplus value extracted from their labor by employers.)
This only applies to economics, though... naturally even poor people probably (3 alliterations) become more socially conservative as they age as a result of decreasing wildness.
Yes, I think most people's political "beliefs" are a function of self-interest, not principle. Not a bad thing, just how it is.
I was a pretty hardcore liberal till I turned 25 and had my second baby.
Somehow, it just got hard for me to swallow some of the rhetoric surrounding "oppressed people of color" when it came from very financially secure white women... who were promoting policies and ideas that would actually harm MY children.
(But not theirs. Liberal white women tend to have enough financial security to insulate themselves from the fallout of things like expanded affirmative action, mass illegal immigration, etc. Go ahead and preach about White Privilege, but make sure your own kids can attend the Montessori school first. LOL!)
Anyway, my own conservatism reflects an outlook on what is best for my own family. Frankly, pondering what is best for everyone else's family is too much for me to take on at the moment.
If I could be convinced that increasing the government's role in my family's business was actually a benefit to us, that'd be one thing... but I've not seen any compelling arguments there.
Liberalism, though, ignores much. It has a hard time explaining how all this is going to be 'paid for'.
I would interpret this to mean that the Bush admin is employing Liberal economic policies?
Quote:
Originally Posted by macmeal
Someone once said "If you're 20 years old, and a conservative, that's sad....And if you're 50 years old, and a liberal, that's even sadder". The idea is, when you grow up, you get a 'stake' in society and begin to defend the status-quo. You see the REASON behind some of society's rules.
I was old enough to vote for Reagan's second term. I hated paying taxes and had the tax and spend ***** Democrat label pounded into my head. I voted for Reagan. So at 20 years old I was conservative. I even voted for Bush 1 the first time.
"Read my lips" pissed me off. Iran-contra, Reaganomics and the Recession of the early 90's disillusioned me. And I realized how much the Republicans favored the economic elite - which I am not. Still I couldn't vote for a Democrat. So I voted for Mickey Mouse as a write in instead of Bill or George Sr.
Things started looking better and I started to like Clinton. I voted for him in his 2nd term. Looking back, he really screwed us with the free trade. So many lost jobs.
At any rate, around 36, I became very liberal. I voted for Gore. But Bush won and I knew it would be a disaster as I live in Texas and saw what he did as Governor.
At 45, I find myself more in the middle, leaning left. Is that sad? Not in the least. Getting older doesn't mean you have to become a self-absorbed SOB. Although I'm not 50 yet so talk to me in 5 years
This only applies to economics, though... naturally even poor people probably (3 alliterations) become more socially conservative as they age as a result of decreasing wildness.
Decreasing wildness, or perhaps having witnessed so many "wild" people crash and burn and take others down with them -- which is the height of selfishness...
One can certainly craft temporary tax changes, and as far as simply changing the withholding tables goes, those can be fairly quickly implemented. But going that route spreads the economic impact over the balance of the tax year rather than concentrating it, and you can run into logistical issues with having to revise forms and with the general fact that people don't have to fully settle up on tax matters until whenever the next time April 15 rolls around. Just the fact, for example, that the AMT fix for this year got dragged out until the last days of the session means that AMT filers and preparers won't have access to the forms they need until February. You'd really prefer to avoid that sort of inefficiency and to have some lead time in making formal tax changes. By contrast, this current effort intends to have all instant bang for the buck, so using some special mechanism that doesn't involve or have impacts on the rest of the system does seem to make some sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eastern Roamer
Do you think that something with a wider, psychological affect would be a better remedy? What is your personal opinion... what, if any, economic stimulus is necessary? And what affect will partisan politics have on the government reaching the best decision?
Perceptions and psychology play an important role, probably a larger role than most people (and I would say, most economists) seem to suspect. From that standpoint, hoopla can be an important tool. And combined with the Fed rate cut, injecting substantial sudden liquidity into the economy makes a pretty strong statement. Personally, however, I think it's a little bit of a band-aid of overreaction, as was the freeze on mortgage resets. These aren't unhelpful measures, but they don't necessarily address the central problem, which is how to get credit markets back to functioning in the way that they need to function in order to support an optimal pace of economic activity. Credit is involved in virtually every aspect of the economy, so when you have problems there, you tend to have problems everywhere. One of the issues that's barely been discussed is that the secondary markets had operated as if there were an implied guaranty against failures of performance on the notes that underly asset-backed securities associated with various quasi-official agencies. That's now revealed to have been an illusion, meaning that you can't now go back to doing things the old way. As formalizing that guaranty is also now recognized as comprising a more sizable and therefore more frightening liability than many may have thought, it seems to me that the only obvious alternative new way is to re-regulate these markets. There needs to be the sort of oversight and regulation that can establish and assure transparency to secondary market buyers on the back end and to limit the effects that shall we say 'overly enthusiastic' underwriters can have on the front end. These aren't necessarily expensive steps, but they are complex and tedious sorts of undertakings that would require having honest, principled people on all sides of the table. This sort of thing has not been one of the Bush administration's strengths, so it may be that we just aren't going to go in this direction until a new one is in place. But, again in my mind, we'd better go there at some point or this is all going to turn out as having been a one-of-many situation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eastern Roamer
I've seen you post in the Washington D.C. forum, Saganista, so I'd love to hear your take on things.
Yes, the DC and NoVa forums were my C-D home for a long while. At first I didn't even realize that P&OC existed. But I've spent less time there lately. There is some sense of repetition and a couple of the wiser posters of a year or so ago have seemingly moved on. Still, I try to stop by. I've spent coming up now on four decades running aorund this area pretty intensively, so sometimes I have things to offer that might be useful to those who are about to come in from the outside. Plus, it's fun...
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