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The Democratic party would do well if they rebranded as socially progressive and fiscally conservative.
by cj 7mo ago
The Democratic party would do well if they rebranded as socially progressive and fiscally conservative.
- Macha 7mo agoIs this not theoretically the libertarian party? (Of course in reality it’s often the Republican-lite party). It hasn’t proven to be a winning strategy
- InitialLastName 7mo agoThe Libertarian Party is solely focused on reducing the liabilities side of the balance sheet in the interest of reducing the income side by lowering taxes. Try showing up to to a libertarian convention with "give me some money to invest in a program that will benefit our whole society" and see how far you get.
- DANmode 7mo agoOur whole society should be benefiting any day now, yeah?
- cosmicgadget 7mo agoNo, democrats and libertarians differ on the role of government in preventing businesses from acting unethically, firearms regulation, and age of consent.
- trgn 7mo agothat electorate doesnt exist in two party system.
- mattmaroon 7mo agoIt can.
- trgn 7mo agohow so? Alupis explains the mechanism why not. In two party system, new electives are incentivized to achieve their program. Reducing spending hinders that, and loss of those voters who care about that betrayal doesn't really matter because they're a tiny group anyway, and realistically, where are they going to go, the other party? They have the same incentive, just for different program. That's the cycle.
- mattmaroon 7mo agoSure but the bigger debt gets, and the more negative impact it has on the population, the bigger that group gets. It’s not big enough yet but that doesn't mean it can’t be. We’ve seen such tipping points with other issues.
- trgn 7mo agoi like your optimism!
- mattmaroon 7mo agoOh I didn't say I was optimistic, just that it is possible. And it is inevitable but probably won't happen until much too late.
- Alupis 7mo agoAgreed, unfortunately. The amount of people that actually care about the national debt is near zero in reality, despite many stating otherwise. When their party of choice comes into power, it's always "spend, spend, spend" - how else do you do all the things you want to do while in power? Then the table turns and they pretend to care while the other party takes a turn. Round and round we go, deeper and deeper in debt, spending like a there's no tomorrow.
- mothballed 7mo agoThis is only possible because the taxation is obfuscated through debt or inflation, both of which effectively are a tax but a less obvious one allowing duping of the populace. We don't need a new party necessarily, just a constitutional amendment that the government can only spend money from direct tax proceeds, with no pre-emptive withholding.
- kevmo 7mo agoThat's basically Bernie Sanders modus operandus. Burlington was running budget surpluses when he was in charge. It's not hard, you just have to make rich people pay taxes. This is an enormously popular idea.
- cogman10 7mo agoEnormously popular for the electorate, not so much for the people that count, donors.
- dijit 7mo agoEnormously popular doesn’t mean right. You should tax behaviours you want to disincentivise. Taxing smoking, cars and sugar are great (but not always popular) ideas. Taxing second homes, property ownership for companies, foreign owned property, and so on is much more important than taxing unrealised wealth, inheritance or capital gains and income. Wealthy people find loopholes, and so you end up taxing the middle class and limiting social mobility with those initiatives. We should figure out what they do with their wealth that makes it worthwhile amassing so much, then tax that. EDIT: sorry, I should have echo’d the chamber instead of thinking about a situation critically.
- throwawaysleep 7mo agoI think we should want to disincentivize any person from having too much power and wealth is power.
- SimianSci 7mo agoI want to disincentivise people with wealth using it to corrupt systems of power into doing what they want. > Wealthy people find loopholes, and so you end up taxing the middle class and limiting social mobility with those initiatives. Sounds like we should get rid of these wealthy people then...
- dijit 7mo agoLet me know when you find a way that makes sense. I’m a socialist, but I have a brain. Anything you can think of to make wealthy people cease to exist is easily bypassed, so the best way is to find ways to tax behaviour instead. The point of money is how you use it, if you have a 50,000x tax on super yacts and private aircraft, then the ultra rich are forced to pay your tax or try skirting around it by using smaller boats or coalescing their private jets into a private airline. But if you tax stocks, then people will invest in other ways. If you tax individuals owning large property then they’ll move their property ownership into a company, if you tax inheritance then they’ll put the money into a fund instead which has debts that will be written off in time. All kinds of fancy tricky accounting. The other solution is to tax everyone on unrealised gains, which makes every home owner (including pensioners) suddenly liable for huge ongoing bills. Elon himself for example is pretty cash poor, but owns a lot of stock in a “high value” company meaning his wealth on paper is pretty extreme. He takes on debt (which has no income tax) and then pays it off with stocks, where it also avoids being taxed as its never realised. I think its a harder problem than you give it credit.
- lo_zamoyski 7mo agoCorrection: one party with two factions.
- gorgoiler 7mo agoWell said. It’s the game theoretic outcome of a system where vote splitting gives the other team a default win. Single choice voting sucks.
- CodingJeebus 7mo agoThis is basically how the Democratic party is trying to operate now and it's not working. They've been trying to cater to moderate Republicans who became disillusioned with Trump and it's gotten them very little in the last decade.
- tines 7mo agoI know gp said that they would "do well," but maybe the party should do what's right regardless of how much it's gotten them in the last decade.
- throwawaysleep 7mo agoIn politics, power is everything. You do not matter without power.
- CodingJeebus 7mo agoA party that has no power has no impact
- tines 7mo agoMaybe they have no power because they have no principles.
- 6stringmerc 7mo agoRebranding does not fix rot. See also: X, Meta, Blackwater…
- throwawaysleep 7mo agoFiscal conservatism only exists as an ideology when paired with hurting brown people. It does not exist as a meaningful political camp otherwise. There is a reason that fiscal conservatives spend all their time on food stamps, environmental regulations, and a few random research projects and not even examining any of the top four costs that make up the overwhelming bulk of US spending.
- projektfu 7mo agoTo be fair they usually want to reduce the benefit of Social Security and Medicare, because they're "unsustainable", while tax cuts and defecit spending is apparently sustainable.
- babypuncher 7mo agoFiscal conservatism is a lie, Republicans have consistently contributed far more to the debt than Democrats, at least during my lifetime.
- Retric 7mo agoI rarely hear Republicans actually call themselves fiscally conservative. It seems more like an abandoned stance than a lie at this point.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 7mo agoWell, you occasionally hear some chest thumping from Republicans about being “deficit hawks”. Fairly sure they all voted for the latest tax cuts.
- cosmicgadget 7mo agoBecause raising taxes was never part of their deficit reduction strategy. Not that it matters, being fiscally conservative was never an honestly held belief but simply a campaign slogan.
- babypuncher 7mo agoRaising taxes was never part of their deficit reduction strategy, sure. But we're talking about the fact that they cut taxes. You can't fix a deficit by reducing income.
- tastyface 7mo agoDid you somehow miss the marketing spiel (propaganda) for DOGE??
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- lowbloodsugar 7mo agoIf you look at national debt, the Democratic Party is the fiscally conservative party. Yet you believe the opposite. Propaganda works!
- jerlam 7mo agoIt would be an easy strategy to defeat - the two biggest Democratic states, California and New York, are close to the top in terms of cost of living. I know fiscally conservative doesn't mean "cheap to live" but most people see them as the same.
- themafia 7mo agoFiscally uncorrupted. We have a high cost of living but we also have the highest taxes. Up to 10% depending on where you live. In return for that we get next to nothing. Public money is spent poorly, with no oversight, and no accountability.
- spwa4 7mo agoIn a way it's just Maslow's pyramid, no? People who can't get housing, or good enough housing, don't care much about the image of the US abroad and may even support foreign aggression if they believe it'll help their situation. Only once you're very secure and comfy in your little corner does "your image abroad" even have any meaning at all.
- throwawaysleep 7mo agoExpensive places are where people care the most about that though.
- triceratops 7mo agoIsn't that what it already is?
- dmitrygr 7mo agoWould that not require them to ... support fiscally conservative actions, which would lose them a large part of their voting bloc?
- genthree 7mo agoIn recent history (last few decades) the scoreboard shows them already being more fiscally conservative than the only viable alternative.
- dmitrygr 7mo agoI understand that claim. I will not even argue against it. But, as you pointed out - there are two options only, so they must be evaluated against each other. Ds would need to go quite a bit further in the direction of being fiscally conservative to justify overlooking their other issues (in the eyes of R voters) in order to capture significant voter counts from the R side. "How tasty would the beer need to be to justify the burned rancid steak, to make this diner better than the other one?" -- basically
- _DeadFred_ 7mo agoThe Republican policy has been to starve the beast for 40 years. They are willing to bury the country in unsustainable levels of debt in order to force their agenda for government because they can't reach their goal electorally. They care more about that goal than the financial health of the nation or what the impacts of destroying the financial health is on all of us. They would rather intentionally make us too broke to function so that we can't afford government than have us rich but with a functional government. This has been their publicly stated policy for 40 years.
- SimianSci 7mo agoThe Republican party is wholly a party for the Rich and wealthy. All other claims to the contrary are attempts to deceive people that this is not the case.
- guelo 7mo agoThe media environment is so right wing (yes really) that Democrats don't get the credit for that kind of thing while Republicans don't get the blame for absolute ransacking of the country.
- mcphage 7mo ago> socially progressive and fiscally conservative How about “socially progressive and fiscally effective”?
- dietr1ch 7mo agoIn the current world a rock would do fine in an election, - Won't start a war - Won't speak like a 5yo kid - Won't run around and desert you
- wormius 7mo agoI'm basically at the point I'm voting for Vermin Supreme this time.
- disqard 7mo ago...as you should, because if you don't, the wrong lizard might be in charge!
- orwin 7mo ago30% of the people who voted in the last election fully agree with trump and his Iran war, his policies, and his pardons.