> Brian wrote: > Which makes me wonder, you hear people sometimes call themselves "socially > liberal, and fiscally conservative"....well....how are you going to pay for > all your liberal social programs?? >
Ahem - I can speak to that. Socially liberal means you believe in social liberties and local gov't. For example, legal prostitution, legal drugs, and autobahns legislated at the local level. The fiscal conservative part compliments that because you believe in a small federal gov't which means few federal laws and programs. There are cases, however, where an SLFC believes in gov't programs and there are cases where there's a public good that can't be accomplished due to a market failure. For example, Hybrid cars. Currently there are huge tax benefits to those buying the biggest SUVs. You can encourage Hybrid technology, which reduces dependency on foreign energy, by offering tax incentives there. So it's not a question of using specific tax income to pay for new programs, it's using fiscal policy to encourage mutually beneficial behavior that the market can't provide. Now a word about the neo-cons: as I've said ad nauseum, they're not fiscally conservative. What they do is take traditional liberal programs and add choices to them which usually adds costs (prescription drugs). They add a spin to it though - each bill is loaded with oodles of pork so you don't just get new spending for programs, you get tons of new pork. So Neo-cons are like liberal+, they spend for the programs but add a healthy chunk of pork to the table. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Purchase Studio MX from House of Fusion, a Macromedia Authorized Affiliate and support the CF community. http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=50 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:161792 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
