The quotes below from G2A Neither Left or Right is Popular seem important to me. And I thought the G2A Nolan diagram would be useful.
Meaning the right amount of freedom, taxes, regulations, etc. My argument is that there are very few and they look a lot like me... The folks on the Left think we are not Socialistic enough... The folks on the Right think we are not Capitalistic enough...
"I personally think both parties are unpopular because Americans are basically selfish and controlling in nature..." G2A
"And your principal objection to FREEDOM is, what?" Jerry
"Freedom is not FREE... It comes with many responsibilities to the society one lives within. It is truly the society that protects one's freedoms. And in a democratic society, we the people get to set the freedoms and the expectations.
Needless to say some people will feel free and some will feel excessively constrained within any society created in this way.
Please remember all the freedoms Conservatives strive to constrain:Frome the diagram below, assuming the citizen distribution numbers are kind of close to reality, and that our policies, laws, taxes, etc are currently somewhat in the middle of the diagram at this time. The logic being the Left and Right have been struggling at this game of "tug of war" for centuries. My question then is:
To name a few." G2A
- Women's rights to birth control and abortion
- LGBT rights to live as they wish and have their partnerships legal recognized
- Rights protecting one from another citizen's pollution
- Employees right to collective bargaining
How many Americans think the USA is "ideal"?
Meaning the right amount of freedom, taxes, regulations, etc. My argument is that there are very few and they look a lot like me... The folks on the Left think we are not Socialistic enough... The folks on the Right think we are not Capitalistic enough...
If this is true, how can our politicians be successful and Americans happier overall?
My conception of freedom includes freedom from want as mentioned by FDR.
ReplyDeleteAs for rating how close to ideal one finds our country I think John would prefer to change it more drastically than I would. I believe he has desire to cut spending to a greater degree than I would increase it.
Laurie,
ReplyDeleteYou really must be kidding... I want to take "Total Government Spending" from ~37% of GDP down to ~33.3%.
Where as you want to increase spending on social security, welfare, education, healthcare, etc. We are not even in the same ball park. :-)
Laurie, don't worry about John. I think somewhere around 12% would be far better. 16% if you add in State and Local.
ReplyDeleteAnd John, I read your post as saying that you are all in favor of Freedom, so long as you get to define it. Laurie is thinking exactly what I was thinking, except I would argue in the opposite direction from there. One's first responsibility, given the freedom, is to oneself, then to family, THEN to charity and "society."
"eventually you run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher
ReplyDeleteLaurie,
ReplyDeleteSee. It is the Jerry's of world you need to worry about. :-)
Jerry,
As soon as the Far Right Conservatives like yourself stop trying to be the morality police, and stop trying to legislate behavior control... your words will have more credibility.
Remember that there is a good reason both the DEMS and GOPers are below the middle freedom line. One wants to control money distribution and the other wants to control personal behavior.
That is unless you have suddenly changed your stand on LGBT, abortion, etc.
Now back to the topic of this post... With each of your Left & Right groups being so polarized against each others "success goal".
ReplyDeleteWhat can the politicians do to be "successful"?
Or will my "pendulum" just keep swinging back and forth faster and further year after year?
I mean given the far Right choices being made by the GOP and Trump's erratic behaviors, I am pretty sure it will take little for the DEMs to take back the Congress in 2018.
Then again as I have said before. The DEMs still may blow it by going far Left or in fighting.
So, you define "control" as wanting to protect innocent human life from murder, and "freedom" as the freedom to murder unborn children?
ReplyDeleteYou define "freedom" as allowing people to "marry whom they love" and "control" as not wanting to offer taxpayer benefits to anyone who claims them?
Think about it a bit. Doesn't government legislate behavior all the time? We have laws against rape, murder, misrepresentation, and spitting on the sidewalk. Most of them have to do with protecting us from others who would do us harm. Too many these days work to protect us from ourselves, INCLUDING those that would redistribute wealth. Your diagram is too linear or planar.
5% of 4 trillion is .2 trillion - which is the cut to the federal budget John is proposing
ReplyDeleteI used Hillary's proposals for a stand in of what I think we should do-
"Clinton’s ambitions are more moderate. She would increase taxes by roughly $1.5 trillion over the next decade, while spending an additional $1.65 trillion."
1.65 / 10 = .16 trillion per year - which is a smaller increase in magnitude than the .2 trillion cut John would prefer
I am more of a Hillary person than Bernie person in that I prefer smaller increases in federal spending mainly for healthcare, SS and education
lastly, if Hillary was president and the dems were controlling things we would be making a smaller increase to the deficit than what the GOP is giving us with their irresponsible tax cut.
Laurie, math aside, know that I am not being facetious about cutting federal spending at least 50%. In addition to solving the deficit, I believe it can be done WITHOUT harming much of anybody, phased in gradually, of course. Entitlements MUST be curbed or no amount of taxation will be enough. We have been promised roughly $100 Trillion more than the government is set to take in over the rest of the century. Now if you raised the Hillary taxes by 1.65 Trillion over ten years, every ten years, you come up about $87 Trillion short. It won't work.
ReplyDeleteSo I left you a new post to discuss cuts.
ReplyDeleteOn this one... With the Left and Right so far apart...
What can the politicians do to be "successful"?
Stop being politicians? A recent article by, I think, Victor Davis Hanson, calls the Democrats the "Resistance," and that they are being irrationally so. Disagree? When the Democrats oppose middle class tax cuts?
ReplyDeleteSorry... But lowering taxes without cutting spending is irresponsible.
ReplyDeleteAnd if they cut tax and spending then folks on the left will be unhappy with them.
So let's try again... What can the politicians do to be "successful"?
And please remember that it is highly likely the DEM voters are going to out in full force next year after 2 years of Trump. Then of course they will work to "undo Trump's legacy" of unpaid for tax cuts.
As the pendulum swings...
"Then of course they will work to "undo Trump's legacy" of unpaid for tax cuts."
ReplyDeleteTee-hee. It is to laugh. Democrats concerned about the deficit? They sure didn't seem to care when Obama went blithely along doubling the national debt. No, if they take power, taxes will go up, and spending will go up, and we will get to doomsday quicker. It's pretty difficult to paint either party, but particularly Democrats, as the part of fiscal sanity.
I don't think at this point you can make Americans happy. If you tell them the harsh truth, they're going to be pretty unhappy. If you let them find out for themselves, when the whole furshlugginer mess comes apart like a dime watch, they'll be unhappier still.
George W. Bush inherited an economy in surplus and left with over a trillion dollars in deficit -- and BREAKING: *also* doubled the national debt in eight years. Barack Obama, meanwhile, saw the deficit decline by over $850 billion dollars over a five-year span while he was in office.
ReplyDeleteSean,
ReplyDeleteIt does seem that Jerry is having a hard time with facts and data.
Here is another Graph that shows deficits decreasing when a DEM is POTUS.
ReplyDelete