[WS:] That sound to me like a bunch of nonsense. The government in a goose that lays golden eggs - and nobody wants to kill such a goose. What conservatives want is exclusive access to the golden eggs - not killing the goose. So do the Democrats.
The name of the game is not "small government" - but "mediation of access to big government via political parties (patronage)" for which the parties can demand payments and other forms of support. Both Republicans and Democrats play that game, and their success crucially depends on their ability to deliver the "golden eggs." Thinking that the former somehow want to reduce the stakes in that game (i.e. reduce the size of government spending) strikes me as clueless.
Wojtek
On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 2:13 PM, Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 2:14 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > not that you are saying this but the concern about the tax burden on
> > the middle class - I don't get it. I'm making a decent living now. I
> > don't feel taxed hard at all. I was thinking about this earlier today
> > or yesterday, how these people I work with bitch about taxes. And when
> > I look at my income, how much fucking disposable income I have
> > compared to when I made a fraction of what I now make, I just get
> > pissed off at the fucking sheltered idiocy of these people.
>
> From Paul Krugman´s book "Fuzzy Math: a Guide to George Bush´s Tax Plan"
> (y2000)
>
> ============
> FIGHT THE FUTURE
>
> One of the reasons conservatives want tax cuts is, of course, that
> they believe that lower taxes will lead to economic growth. But the
> conservative case for tax cuts goes deeper; it rests on political
> economy as well as simple economics.
>
> A defining feature of the conservative agenda is the desire for
> "smaller government". Conservatives would like to see Lyndon Johnson's
> Great Society and maybe even Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal rolled
> back, and certainly would not like to see the United States become
> more of a welfare state, to become more like Sweden or Canada.
>
> One way to promote smaller governments is directly: you oppose
> proposals for new social programs and try to cut existing programs.
> But you can also work toward that goal indirectly, by making sure that
> future politicians find it hard to pay for social programs".(...) "So,
> an important reason why conservatives want to cut taxes is that they
> want to keep the federal government hungry; they don't want money
> readily available to finance new programs, or even to maintain old
> ones. And some conservatives are playing an even deeper game: they
> believe that they can create a self-reinforcing cycle of government
> downsizing."
>
> "Maybe the easiest way to understand this idea is to look at the
> contrast between politics in Canada and in the United States. Canada's
> government is much larger compared to the size of its economy compared
> to the United States: in 1997 government at all levels spent 42
> percent of GDP in Canada and 32 percent in the United States. This
> means that taxes in Canada are considerably higher, and social
> programs are considerably more generous. Yet in the United States
> voters and politicians routinely complain about "Big Government" while
> in Canada they don't. In terms of politics, Canada is far more
> "Europe" than the United States.
>
> Why is the political landscape south of the border so different? One
> answer has to be the great American distinction: race. Let's say it
> bluntly: in the United States the beneficiaries of social programs
> tend to be of a different color than the beneficiaries of tax cuts.
>
> ============================================================
>
> FC
>
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