Politics: Are the right becoming irrelevant?

If this was true Biden would not be their man it would be someone much more European and the Republicans would have taken Confederate statues down in 2000. In 2016 they would have publicly embarrassed Trump and said we would never pick you.

it's actuly the opposite of your statement. The right wing caters to the crazy people and the left wing tries to find people who are a compromise. Even Obama was a "compromise" or so they thought in 2008 because he had conservative views on the military.

What made Trump or even Bush good was that he was NOT going to make moderate people happy further closing off the echo chamber.

 

Trud

MeAgain has already covered your post but I’d like to point out that this seems like the same old right wing libertarian stance that has already been covered and for which there are many outstanding criticisms.

In its simplest terms it is – I don’t care as long as it doesn’t cost me anything.

And it is interesting that in the post you don’t actually address the questions posed you about tax.

When right wing libertarians say that ‘government should be kept out of the matter’ they most often mean they don’t want tax money been spent on it.

They don’t care about a person’s sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity but they are likely to oppose regulation (that would cost the state to enforce) and publically funded programmes aimed at helping people with discrimination.

I remember one right wing libertarian making a big thing about not been so bigoted but then admitting he’d support a store or restaurant owner who wanted to exclude black people or gays from their premises.

Right wing libertarians don’t care if people want to have an abortion or not, but they are likely to oppose publically funded programmes that are aimed at helping, in the process or with education and assistance aimed at reducing the number.

And in the same way they don’t care about gambling, drug use or prostitution, but are likely to oppose publically funded regulation of such concerns or programmes aimed at helping such people if it leads to addiction or who are only reduced to selling themselves due to poverty.

Then we get to self-defence – well numerous gun issue thread have shown that easy access to guns in a society if not prudently regulated is likely to be detrimental to that society (and if you want another gun thread please begin one BUT not here). I would say that some right wing libertarians have put forward that wide spread gun ownership could bee way of reducing the need for so many publically funded police officers.

When many right wingers and especially right wing libertarians say they want to reduce government they don’t wish to make a better society they mean they want to reduce the need for taxation spending so that tax cuts can be handed out to the already advantaged.

 

Well, my friend, it might be to keep government out of bankruptcy.
It appears that the state of California is facing a $54 billion budget deficit. About one third of the budget is not funded.

Has all of that spending really created a better society if we have a constant fiscal crisis, and cutbacks hanging over our heads?

 

Piney

The thing is that California has a history that involved neoliberal ideas on tax cuts that have hampered the state governments ability to act on its debt.

California’s recent budget problems resulted from the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. But the state’s difficulty in addressing them was as much a political crisis as a budget crisis. Since the passage of the notorious anti-tax Prop 13 in 1978, which capped property tax rates and made it nearly impossible to raise revenue through the legislature, California has been locked into a revenue structure that, outside of boom times, proves too small to finance the public services that residents desire. Several tax cuts during the late 1990s dot-com boom, and a huge $5.5 billion annual cut to the vehicle license fee passed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, only exacerbated this imbalance. The state also had to contend with multiple veto points that allowed the minority party to control the fiscal debate.

[edit] And from what I hear the state had a $21 billion surplus a year ago but the present problems are down to the pandemic – I’d have to point out here that virtually every country in the world is accumulating debt because of the pandemic.

 

Piney

Can I just ask - did you know about what I posted before you posted and if not has it changed your stance?

 

Yes, no funding of stupidities. Full detailed statements of tax receipts and expenditures, in real time. No gun restrictions but huge penalties for causing harm to others.

 

"California has been locked into a revenue structure that, outside of boom times, proves too small to finance the public services that residents desire. "

I'd say that's true of everywhere, always.

I desire for the state to deliver hot well-balanced takeout to my door daily.

I desire free dirt tracks with free dirt bikes and free fuel and maintenance to be at my disposal 24/7. A variety of the good ones, not just kids stuff.

I want them to pay for my housing, but yet still be mine to treat as I please, and have full privacy to do as I please, have land and no other dwelling within 1000'.

Oh, and I also desire a Tesla for each day of the week. My own charging stations, indoors, on my property, all gifted to me by the state, which then relinquishes all rights.

 

What the Constitution mandates.

 

Tud

So you are agreeing with my assessment of you as a don’t care right wing libertarian?

Who when they say they want to reduce government they don’t wish to make a better society they mean they want to reduce the need for taxation spending so that tax cuts can be handed out to the already advantaged?

.

What do you mean by ‘stupidities’?

Can you please explain?

And how is that a solution to ease of access to guns? It seems to be about dealing with the symptoms not the problem.

 

Trud

So honestly is that what you actually think of as public services?

No - you are just been silly and childish

Again I ask is this it - is this what the right wing are reduced to?

This is the calibre of their argument?

 

We all want a "better society". You "do-gooders" want to have controls on as much as possible and spend all kinds of money and effort on your pet projects which often are more virtue signaling and have more unanticipated consequences making the cure worse than the disease. Meanwhile us silly childish free thinkers would let nature take its course and try not to intervene. You're biased to throw money and time (other people's, primarily) at every little annoyance, while we're biased to entice people to make their own situations better, thereby creating a better society on the whole.

You're like the HOA, wanting to dictate everything residents can and can't do, punish them when they don't heel to your bidding, and take money from them to do the things you capriciously decide is better for everyone.

We're like a South American town in that it's your place, do what you like with it.

 

This is one of the major flaws in Social Darwinist thinking, humans don’t live in a state of nature, the world we inhabit, the rules and institutions we live by are artificial. You only need to give this a bit of though or look around to realise this fact.

I mean on the whole we don’t live outside or in caves we live in buildings often in cities, we don’t hunt for our food with our bare hands we go to the supermarket, we don’t just shit in the woods we have toilets and sewage systems, we don’t have to travel around using just our feet, we have cars and trains and planes.

And we talk to each other on the internet.

Unlike animals that do live naturally, we can’t just kill others because we want to, and we have laws, judges and police officers and prisons for those that do. We have constitutions and institutions of governance, regulations, judicial systems the monetary system all artificial societal constructs.

I could go on and on about why humans do not live ‘natural’ lives.

Thing is that humans have already, as you put it, intervened – a lot.

But what Social Darwinist mean when they say thinks like ‘let nature take its course and try not to intervene’ is that they want a system that favours the already advantaged and want to try and bamboozle people into believing it is ‘natural’.

But advantage and disadvantage is just a societal construct it’s not natural.

For example the laws of inheritance are not natural, there is no ‘natural selection’ in inheritance law. In the wild the old and weak lion at the head of the pride will be taken down by a younger stronger competitor, they don’t make a will and hand over the pride to a relative with the police and the courts there ready to protect the handing over of his property.

And the thing is the system been artificial can be manipulated to favour differing groups.

For example you can have tax cuts that favour the few or well-funded public services that help the majority.

But Social Darwinist based right wingers try to con people into believing that tax cuts are natural while public services are unnatural, which when looked at is just plain dumb.

 

Trud

But do you?

I mean that is the question

Right wing policies seem aimed to be good for the already advantaged and very good for the wealthy but they don’t seem that good for the majority of the people – so how can they be about creating a ‘better society’?

 

The right wing assumes anyone can have what they have. Things like privilege don't exist so any problems in your life are your own. The society is better in their opinion if everyone works. Many Republicans when running for office will say something like "I think everyone should be a millionaire and they will be if you vote for me".

They don't understand that money only has value when some don't have it. For them it's really that simple. If no one was lazy everyone would be rich and when they had money they will naturally decide they don't like taxes so really everyone is a Republican and the Democrats only exist because people are poor.

When there is any sort of social welfare or debate about the racist past of America they come undone. How dare you give those people advantages! So no I don't think they want a better society.