This is absolutely not the case. When you break issues down, the average Republican voter supports a ton of Democratic policies, especially economic policies. They're willing to vote against their self-interest because they've been led to believe they're superior to other groups, namely racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ, non-Christians, but most importantly "college educated liberal elites." This feeling of superiority is a fucking drug, and it makes them ready to want whatever their leaders tell them to want rather than the other way around
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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Or sometimes it’s the other way around. I have friends who are fiscally conservative and socially liberal Republicans. They just ignore the racism and bigotry in favor of better financial options for their business. It’s loathsome.
I don't believe there is such a thing as being "fiscally conservative and socially liberal." Any time I hear someone say that, I assume they are full of shit and vote Republican, but don't want someone to think they're a POS.
What if you think gay people are okay but you still want the poors to starve?
I am going to assume that you can be okay with gay people and still be a POS.
They’re real alright. They’re the only NY Republicans I can tolerate conversing with. They’re all for race/sex/gender rights on an interpersonal level, but they just don’t care enough to use their vote to support them. They only seem to care about their own income at the polls.
But that's exactly the point the person you're replying to was making; Republicans are terrible for small businesses. So unless your friends are the Waltons, they're voting against themselves.
You know the single best thing we could do for small business and entrepreneurship?
I'll give you a hint. If you're going to run your own business as an adult, what's the first consideration? Particularly if you have kids. It usually involves your spouse and what they do for work.
Universal healthcare.
It's the biggest burden on entrepreneurship, so much so that you generally need a spouse to have benefits. And it's a huge burden on small and medium businesses.
The major groups against universal healthcare include large corporations, because it's another barrier to entry for competition, both in their market and for potential employees. Unions are against it because healthcare is one of the few things they've negotiated for. And of course the healthcare industry doesn't want the money sink to dry up.
Yep. Investing in our citizenry is the most fiscally responsible thing we could do.
There's nothing conservative about greed. Nothing at all. Just another Republican lie.
Absolutely. Tying healthcare to work is insane, and it definitely hits new businesses the hardest
Going further along the same lines, UBI plus removing the minimum wage would be jet fuel for businesses, especially small ones
People like to work. They'd do it even if all their needs were met already. It's not a hypothetical - people who have more than enough often keep going until age catches up with them. It gives social status and purpose, we're wired to create or to help others.
What people don't like is to be exploited or mistreated. Many people would happily work with little or no additional pay to build something as a group, so long as their conditions are good and they share in the success
The threat of poverty not only stifles innovation and societal progress, it's by far the largest stressor for most people. Removing it would make people less exploitable, but also make them healthier and more productive
UBI plus removing the minimum wage
There are more ways for this to go wrong than right.
It's not as simple as "cut a check and you're done" - this is assuming the UBI is enough for basic needs, and by that I mean decent housing, utilities (including Internet), healthy food, etc
Obviously, if you give everyone money tomorrow, companies would just squeeze everyone harder. Housing especially - done wrong it could just all go into the pockets of landlords
But I think it's a self reinforcing structure and a solid goal. If we limited the commodisation of housing and continued pushing the FTC in the current direction until it's regularly breaking up tech and financial giants who go too far, I think in a couple decades the playing field would have shifted enough that we wouldn't instantly backslide
I don't think it's the best end goal or ideal method to get there, but it seems like the most achievable one. It plays into the myths of capitalism, it still allows for obscene wealth, and it keeps the game going (hopefully) meaning it's a feasible step without tearing everything down and attempting to build a new system all at once
It’s true there isn’t much of a middle class anymore, but there are still many people in NY with a high 6-figure income that absolutely benefit financially from Republican economic policy.
When I made that kind of money, I absolutely paid less in taxes under Republicans. I still voted blue because I believe society has a responsibility to support its most vulnerable members, and I’m a huge advocate for civil rights.
But that's not "fiscally conservative", which is the way conservatives like to frame it. The policy they support is, "Put debt on my children so I can have a better lifestyle today."
Conservative fiscal policy has historically been about running up the debt.
The Democrat party is the party of fiscal conservative / socially liberal.
Exactly. Republicans say that tax cuts skewed towards the rich are "fiscally conservative".
If I told my spouse that I was going to take money out of our kids' college savings accounts and give it to us instead so we could go to Disneyland, she wouldn't respond "why that's awfully fiscally conservative of you there, jballs."
She'd call me a fucking idiot. Because Republicans are fucking idiots.
they're basically selling their votes.
Totally. I’ve know them since high school, so were very honest with each other. I call them sell outs and they call me a bleeding heart.
The Republican party isn't fiscally conservative, so that's a stupid-ass position to vote on.
They absolutely leave plenty of tax loopholes for larger enterprise and want to keep capital gains tax as low as possible. That’s all they seem to care about when I ask why they vote the way they do.
That's not fiscal responsibility. Cutting the federal income without cutting federal expenses is irresponsible bullshit that wins them popularity contests with the greedy, but it leaves huge messes to be cleaned up later. That's why we're $35 trillion dollars in debt. Fiscal responsibility is balancing the freaking budget. This is very basic stuff, and yet it's completely lost on millions of people.
They’ve said they’re fiscally conservative, meaning they support low taxation and limited redistribution through social programs. They’re referring to their own income, not the federal budget. It’s a selfish economic mindset in my opinion.
And it's not good for them, either. It's horribly short-sighted. When the middle class and poor have money, it's so much easier to make money. When all the money coalesces into very few hands, it gets harder to make money and everything grinds to a halt.
You can see this in things like free to play games. Chasing low amounts of money from a large amount of people isn't as good as chasing whales. The poors who don't spend money are there to entertain the whales. This model works because our economy is broken.
Democrats are better for the economy. Democrats are better fiscal conservatives. Democrats are better for the rich (measured in decades).
That’s absolutely correct, however in my experience it seems most people ignore or forgot what they learned in high school economics. Our society has such a poor memory that half the nation seems to have forgotten how bad Trump’s last presidency was.
They sure are when a Democrat is in charge, but the moment it's an R spend spend spend
It's easy to get what you want from your party when you want whatever they tell you to want...
I'm really curious about the viewpoint of whomever downvoted you
You think we don't have fascists on here?
I know we do, sometimes I'd actually rather them speak up instead of slither around
The thing is that the neo-conservatives don't get what they want - they instead change their stances depending on what the cult-figures want.
For instance, before Trump republicans were open to free-trade, if you were to ask them about it they'd be like "yeah free trade is very good we always supported it", but after Trump, asking the same question would result in "protectionism is so much better and we always supported it".
Almost as if they look at the elites for their opinions, rather than forming their own.
Has a real Orwellian vibe to it.
"The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."
So much about their existence is...
Fox news opinion fuckheads: they're literally the two minutes hate, their Goldstein just changes from month to month.
Lmao they absolutely do not.
Drain the swamp
Trump fills the swamp, swims in the swamp, fucks every alligator in the swamp.
Build a wall and make Mexico pay for it
Fucks up the wall, charges taxpayers.
Taxation is theft
Trump increases taxes on the middle class, lowers his own taxes.
They're just too fuckin brainwashed to notice who's actually fucking them. Talk to most Republicans for ten minutes and they want the things that progressive policy actually supports.
They've just been told that Mexicans and Muslims and black folks are what is standing between them and what they want. Definitely not the billionaires, they just want prosperity for everyone.
You realise that every one of those talking points is a red herring to help throw you off the actual Republican agenda.
Heritage Foundation and others working behind the scenes non-stop to rig every system and tear down support services and destroy safety nets. Milk the ever living lights out of everyone not in the upper-tiers. A new domestic economic slavery class.
That just adds to their argument?
It goes the other direction. Republican politicians tell their constituents what policies to support.
"The left" wants society formed by an idealized version of reality and elites want nothing to do with that.
"The right" desperately wants to be part of a tribe. They will bend whatever way the elite tribal leaders wind blows.
Not just their own party, they get half of what they want from the opposition party!
Maybe one day we'll experience it
Not until you American liberals stop getting all pissy about people pointing out that Democrat politicians are terrible reformers at best and blatant hypocrites at worst. "Democrats defend universal healthcare!" And they don't built a public healthcare system, instead sustaining the debt-based private healthcare that you all always complain about. "Democrats are forgiving college loans!" How about making public colleges competitive and granting ample public scholarships so that people don't have to go into debt to get an education? "Republicans are outlawing abortion!" Yeah, after Democrats did nothing to enshrine it in federal law, despite the opportunities they've had while they controlled both the presidency and Congress.
And you cannot even lay things clearly on the table either because the moment you denounce the farce for what it is, countless shills will come out of the woodworks to shout "Why are you supporting Republicans!?", despite me not having said at any point of this post how you should vote at all, and well intentioned fools on the side will buy that thought-terminating cliche and assume that the Democratic party must not be criticized, at the very same time they lament themselves of how far from good enough it is, that no one is reforming, and that the party doesn't listen to them. I guess they expect good things to materialize in front of them from nothing. Good luck with that.
In my view, it's mostly because the Democrats are a lot more diverse than most people think. They range from traditional conservatives to (relatively in America at least) stout progressives. The Republicans have the power of religion and a very uneducated voter base. People expect more from the Democrats since the Democrats represent a wider range of overall people and higher educated people than what the Republicans represent.
People want to be represented but the Democrats have too wide of a policy window to truly represent everyone so people complain that the Democrats aren't doing what they want because they realistically can't due to how wide they are on the political spectrum. The first past the post system only allows two parties to have a chance of winning. The Republicans represent the right wing extreme which are (usually, maybe not anymore after Trump) unified in what they want and will do.
It doesn't help that the Republicans constantly do their best to block whatever the Democrats do and then have the media pin the lack of getting shit done on the Democrats rather than the Republicans constantly fighting back everything the Democrats do. It also doesn't help that since the education system in America is barely the bare minimum, so many people are uneducated and unwilling or unable to learn what's really happening in the political space so they believe what their told from the people around them like their family, neighbors, or friends.
America is very polarized and all forms of media are just pouring gasoline on the fire. It'll be a hard issue to fix but what we need to do is get rid of the first past the post voting system and the electoral college and then the issues will slowly resolve themselves over the years.
They get what they want because they've been brainwashed by their propaganda to want that stuff.
Republican voters are just mindless idiots.
A cult
Of course what they want is terrible, but they're so brainwashed that they'll vote for these monsters regardless.
Its like the dems dont respect us, keep riding with Biden for that L
Four years of progressive policy.
Do you get all your news from Fox or something?
I swear to Christ, in 20 years we're gonna be talking about Biden in the exact same way we talk about Jimmy Carter.
We are incapable of recognizing a good thing until it's gone.
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