vicarz | (no subject)

An editorial in the Post got me thinking about Bush's insanity. Now, I've always been skeptical that a tax-cut would somehow 'boost the economy.' Personally I find when I need to pull my finances together, I need to INCREASE income and DECREASE spending - the exact opposite of the Bush plan.

A couple of facts that show why this Bush plan fails even if you believe that cutting taxes does stimulate growth and help the economy:
1. Taxes are not being cut from the middle-class, they're being cut for businesses and investors
2. Most company profits are coming by cutting staff and domestic expenses
3. Many businesses are saving production costs by moving all the operations overseas, particularly to high-tech countries which have a large english speaking populations.
SO - this means that cutting investment taxes does stimulate grown - but not in the US. It stimulates growth overseas. By this view it makes more sense IF cutting taxes is to stimulate business and the economy, that to help the US economy that you would cut income taxes and allow the average bloke a chance to buy more stuff.

You see I don't mind conservatism. I am getting more and more in favor of cutting spending, good old fashioned fiscal conservatism. No wait, that's not entirely true. I think the rewards for monies spent on public transportation, environmentalism, and education are always worth the expenditures. I think that still fits the fiscally conservative paradigm as those expenditures are so infinitesimally small compared to interest on the national debt.

What Bush is doing is not conservative by any stretch of the imagination - and that's before you point out that whole war issue.

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I'm thinking like, Teddy Roosavelt, would probably not be all into shaping governmental policy to help make the billionaires make a few extra billion by doing things like invading Iraq, deregulating communications media, etc.

That's a point my mom likes to make as well - that republicans shouldn't be supporting this guy as he is not acting one thing like a conservative (fiscally).

I would have trouble characterizing Teddy Roosevelt as a fiscal conservative, especially for his time. Conservatism is, after all, about maintaining the status quo, and the status quo in his era was monopolies and trusts. Bush is, in some ways, a fiscal REACTIONARY, in that he is undertaking active measures to UNDO the changes in our economy that have taken place in the past 100 years, to whit, un-redistributing the wealth so it returns to he hands of a tiny elite.

Well, the problem there is that the Republicans 100 years ago were a totally different party, as were the Democrats. I wouldn't want most of the "real" Democrats from 1900, when the party still had a strong southern segregationist wing. The nature of the two parties had shifted dramatically by WWII, and especially by the Reagan years. We run the risk of ending up in a "no true Scotsman" argument if we don't recognize the transient nature of terminolgy.

Well it does seem to me that the neo-conservatives and fundamentalist christian Republican party of today is quite apt to invoke the long pedigree of the Republican Party. I mean they certainly like to talk about Lincoln. So I certainly agree with you about how the parties of today are similar only in name, and I think it is a very good argument to bring up with any misguided "conservative" I run into here and there.