Contributors

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Socially Liberal But Fiscally Conservative

I've always hated it when people say, "Well, I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative."

Really? How exactly are you fiscally conservative? Invariably the answer is that they think the government spends too much money. When pressed for details on where they would implement spending cuts and what that would mean to people and the economy, they get flustered.

This happens because they don't really know what the fuck they are talking about. They heard a bunch of people say the line and this is their (lazy) way of trying to sound relevant in a political conversation. There's no real problem on the first part. Most people are socially liberal these days. Check out this recent poll on abortion. Other than the 89 people running for the GOP nomination, who wants to be socially conservative?

But the fiscally conservative part is giant crock of shit. No one really is fiscally conservative...even conservatives!! They may talk a good game about cutting the budget but even your most hard core base member won't cut defense, medicare, or social security...AKA where most of our money is being spent. What they will cut is taxes to make it seem like the government will just have to make do with less money. The result of this is an increase in deficit and debt which is sort of like putting out fire with gasoline.

Here's a great piece Greta Chrstina about how crap this line is and how people that say it, really don't understand it.


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