Today's GOP

[icenine]

Originally Posted by whell

I can't live my life being afraid of the future or things I can't control. And it increasingly appears that unsustainable government solutions should't assuage anyone's fears either.

I will take the New Deal over Paul Ryan anytime...the New Deal has been tested and effective believe it or not. It has been your world since you have been born. Paul Ryan? He is just pedestrian graduate of an overhyped MAC university. I would know...I graduated from Kent State

[BlueStreak]

Originally Posted by whell

I can't live my life being afraid of the future or things I can't control. And it increasingly appears that unsustainable government solutions should't assuage anyone's fears either.

Then you are going to have a very difficult life.

Dave

[beej]

I'd like to make a point here. Condemning Medicare as 'government solution' while supporting a tax structure that is extraordinarily favorable to the wealthy, by any measure a 'government solution', is simply hypocritical.

Moreover, Paul Ryan is no more a fiscal conservative than I'm the second coming of Eldridge Cleaver. A true fiscal conservative would not have supported George W. Bush's tax cuts while at the same time voting in favor of a two front war that was going to balloon the deficit. That's not fiscal conservatism by any measure. A true fiscal conservative would have insisted that the wars, assuming they were necessary, be paid for.

[whell]

Originally Posted by icenine

I will take the New Deal over Paul Ryan anytime...the New Deal has been tested and effective believe it or not. It has been your world since you have been born.

Except that the actuarial assumptions that supported New Deal programs such as Social Security are no longer valid, and haven't been for years.

[bobabode]

Originally Posted by whell

Except that the actuarial assumptions that supported New Deal programs such as Social Security are no longer valid, and haven't been for years.

Could you expand/expound on this?

[whell]

Originally Posted by beej

I'd like to make a point here. Condemning Medicare as 'government solution' while supporting a tax structure that is extraordinarily favorable to the wealthy, by any measure a 'government solution', is simply hypocritical.

Is that right? How do you figure that a tax structure where the wealthy have the greatest share of the total tax burden is somehow unfair to them?

[icenine]

Originally Posted by whell

Except that the actuarial assumptions that supported New Deal programs such as Social Security are no longer valid, and haven't been for years.

Does not make Social Security less real or less necessary....you have noticed not even Ryan will bring Social Security up as an issue to be debated. He has his sights set on his assumption that people like you will believe his plans about Medicare, and will be foolish enough to let him devolve it, so he can cut taxes for the people he really cares enough about, the people in Romney's financial circle. Oh and remember, Medicaid funds alot of elderly care for people in nursing homes. He is going after that too.
He is using the 55 and below argument as a smokescreen to end Medicare as we know it for our generation not granny. Go ahead cast a vote against yourself....you have only been paying taxes for Medicare for what? 30 years?
Why lowball yourself?

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by whell

Is that right? How do you figure that a tax structure where the wealthy have the greatest share of the total tax burden is somehow unfair to them?

The top 5% pay 40% of income taxes. The also earn 37% of all earnings. This "unfairness" is addressed by the Ryan budget which would reduce the rich's tax liability considerably, resulting in a budget that won't balance for several decades and would tax people like Romney at less than 1%. How exactly is that fiscally conservative?

[bhunter]

Originally Posted by finnbow

I was wondering what the conservatives on this board think of today's GOP (and its prominent politicians). I find my political leanings to correspond frequently to what once was the moderate wing of the GOP, but this faction of the party has disappeared or has been marginalized/disparaged as RINO's by the ever more reactionary GOP of today.

Do any of you conservatives here actually prefer today's GOP to the more moderate one of days past? If so, why?

I'm not enamored with either party. I dislike the collectivist attributes of the democrats and dislike the neo-religious attributes of the GOP. Interestingly, John Stossel recently said this:

I'm a libertarian in part because I see a false choice offered by the political left and right: government control of the economy -- or government control of our personal lives.

People on both sides think of themselves as freedom lovers. The left thinks government can lessen income inequality. The right thinks government can make Americans more virtuous. I say we're best off if neither side attempts to advance its agenda via government.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/st...im-libertarian

I concur with his position in that I prefer to be left alone and not bothered by the wants of either party. In essence, I want a small fiscally conservative government and one not concerned with the promotion of religious ideals together with a myriad of midsize businesses competing amongst themselves. Currently, I believe it's more expedient to keep the GOP out of the bedroom than the Democrats out of the wallet.

[ebacon]

We probably would all go for those ideals if they worked. But they don't anymore. They might work if we were all farmers or other manual laborers that woke up every day with something to do. But that's not the way it is anymore.

What we have now are machines that make stuff really fast. Management tries to predict how much stuff to make and if it doesn't sell then inventory piles up. At some point inventory piles up so much that management has to turn off the machines. People get laid off. At that point the taxes paid into unemployment get paid back to the workers to tide them over until demand comes back and management turns the machines back on.

It's not a bad system. In the auto industry the cycle used to be on a ten year cycle with about nine good years for every year that went to pot. That used to be called decent economic management since it used savings to smooth boom and bust cycles.

The modern right seems to say to workers, look man, management totally screwed the pooch on market forecasts. You are stupid for working for them and therefore should have done better. No soup for you. In the meantime management says hmmm, we should get a retainer bonus for sticking around to fix what we broke and oh, by the way, thanks workers for paying taxes to bail us out.

That kind of thought is a recipe for disaster, as in worker revolt.