Are Republican Party policies the root cause of nearly all of our problems?

[HagridOfTheDeep]

How should I describe my relationship with trickle-down economics...? I'll put it like this: I believe in trickle-down hardship but not trickle-down wealth. In other words, I believe in the basic precepts of greed. And the way I see it, the Democrats are too oblivious to the fact that punishing the rich will only encourage them to squeeze more out of the middle class and the poor. On the flip side, the GOP is too oblivious to the fact that tax breaks and other special treats for the rich will only make them richer and widen the income gap.

So it's basically a wash. In good times I think the Democrats' strategy is the best of the two because the consequences are not as severe. During bad economic times, I think the Republicans' strategy is best because at least it won't hurt.

Anyway, if we're talking tax policy, I'm a big proponent of setting the rates at some fixed spot and leaving them there forever. Reagan's massive tax cuts were problematic because, as we've now seen, they've gotten the country used to a new normal that is not exactly sustainable. And raising them to where they probably should be would be politically untenable and catastrophic for people who did not plan accordingly (almost everyone).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The way the OP uses the word 'progress' reminds me a little of the movie Braveheart with its completely unelaborated concept of 'freedom'. As Beet said, the only way presenting 'progress' itself as inherently good and 'social conservatism' itself as inherently evil makes any sense at all is if one is both a believer of some stripe in the concept of permanent revolution and basically amoral about what the exact content of the revolution should be. This is why I haven't described my own political views as 'progressive' in years.

If you want to get at big banks, the best approach is not regulation, which the banks welcome because they can navigate it with their armies of lawyers and win special favors and carve outs. Instead, what you need is a smarter effective approach to regulation that discourages monopolies and also the risky behaviors, whilst incentivizing the competition and maintaining the necessary competativeness that will prevent things like the crash.

I can't really parse the second sentence of this paragraph. The following paragraph helps somewhat, but only somewhat. Would you mind expanding on it a little bit?

Basically regulate with a purpose. A goal to be achieved. You don't just regulate for achieve some false sense of control or security that will inevitably fail. Instead you regulate to preserve competition and prevent the monopolization, but not beyond what is necessary to do that. You keep it simple, you avoid the carve outs and exemptions and such forth that let Wall STree get off scott free even with the most stringent of regulations. You focus on preventing banks from becoming too big to fail, so big that their mistakes can tank a nation or the global economy. Then you can let a bank fail and let them eat the fruits of their stupidity and irresponsible behavior and not cause a Depression by doing it.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I think evidence shows that tax cuts are not some magic bullet like the blowhard talking heads suggest. An endless stream of wealth to be returned to the private sector that was being occupied by the government and its wasteful spending.

You do have diminishing returns and once your tax rates are already low, cutting them again is not going to yield much results. Cutting them from 90% to 70% or from 70% to 28% is a different story obviously.

[ElectionsGuy]

No. Politicians in general, with the mindset of creating more government to fix problems, is at the root of our problems.

[CountryClassSF]

No. Politicians in general, with the mindset of creating more government to fix problems, is at the root of our problems.

We have a winner ! ^

[dead0man]

If one truly believes the thread title (or the mirror of it) they have no business discussing politics in mixed company.  How could a political party that doesn't control the vast majority of the political power in a country be the root cause of nearly all it's problems?

[RFayette]

If one truly believes the thread title (or the mirror of it) they have no business discussing politics in mixed company.  How could a political party that doesn't control the vast majority of the political power in a country be the root cause of nearly all it's problems?

Basically, RR-997 is saying there is no debate.  Yes there is, and it's why we have these subfora!  I just am annoyed by how he just glibly dismissed social consevatism using the mantra of progress.  Progress to where?   That's an important issue!


This is why we can't just say things with no qualifiers.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If one truly believes the thread title (or the mirror of it) they have no business discussing politics in mixed company.  How could a political party that doesn't control the vast majority of the political power in a country be the root cause of nearly all it's problems?

Basically, RR-997 is saying there is no debate.  Yes there is, and it's why we have these subfora!  I just caws annoyed by how he just glibly dismissed social consevatism using the mantra of progress.  Progress to where?   That's an important issue!


This is why we can't just say things with no qualifiers.

Its kind of like the push to lay all the blame for Slavery at the feat of religion. Does the faith based, faith originated opposition to Slavery just vanish, or become illegimate simply because the churches in the South were hijacked along with every other institution, by the necessities of preserving a slave state? Of course not.

You have to differentiate between situational/relative conservatism and a conservatism based off of a ideology or a philosophy. RR1997 is making the classic sg0508 mistake here and is applying the relative conservative position in each of these fights and equating that with ideological conservatism. When you are not a social conservative it is the easiest thing in the world to just write it off and throw it under the bus rather then defend it or push back against all the criticism.

There are some ideas and some values that are worth defending against the constant push for change, and at some level social conservatism is a necesary force.

[CH86]

The GOP by maintaining a death-embrace of neoliberalism and globalism, both largely nonsensical pie in the sky philosophies, have effectively ruled out any possibility of a national revitalization under its leadership. Note that the democrats are also guilty of this to a lesser extent, and on the issue of national defense the GOP is actually the slightly better of the two parties most of the time. However due to the republicans pro-elite policies they take a major hit in my rating of them.

In reality only the reorganization of American society around a meritocratic elite, a civil-military education system and the training of successive cohorts of American men and women to regard advancement in service of the state and that the nation would have their back, would solve our problems. This would be a society where whole generations of young men and young women would learn from grade-school age to work together and to value being part of a society of friends and countrymen where they learn apart from traditional education, military, technical and emergency survival and civil defense skills. Only when the populace has embraced the virtues of being part of an "organic national community" would we be able to fix our country's problems with astonishing swiftness.

[MaxQue]

The GOP by maintaining a death-embrace of neoliberalism and globalism, both largely nonsensical pie in the sky philosophies, have effectively ruled out any possibility of a national revitalization under its leadership. Note that the democrats are also guilty of this to a lesser extent, and on the issue of national defense the GOP is actually the slightly better of the two parties most of the time. However due to the republicans pro-elite policies they take a major hit in my rating of them.

In reality only the reorganization of American society around a meritocratic elite, a civil-military education system and the training of successive cohorts of American men and women to regard advancement in service of the state and that the nation would have their back, would solve our problems. This would be a society where whole generations of young men and young women would learn from grade-school age to work together and to value being part of a society of friends and countrymen where they learn apart from traditional education, military, technical and emergency survival and civil defense skills. Only when the populace has embraced the virtues of being part of an "organic national community" would we be able to fix our country's problems with astonishing swiftness.

Oh, great, someone making the Tea Party sounding sane!

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

The GOP by maintaining a death-embrace of neoliberalism and globalism, both largely nonsensical pie in the sky philosophies, have effectively ruled out any possibility of a national revitalization under its leadership. Note that the democrats are also guilty of this to a lesser extent, and on the issue of national defense the GOP is actually the slightly better of the two parties most of the time. However due to the republicans pro-elite policies they take a major hit in my rating of them.

In reality only the reorganization of American society around a meritocratic elite, a civil-military education system and the training of successive cohorts of American men and women to regard advancement in service of the state and that the nation would have their back, would solve our problems. This would be a society where whole generations of young men and young women would learn from grade-school age to work together and to value being part of a society of friends and countrymen where they learn apart from traditional education, military, technical and emergency survival and civil defense skills. Only when the populace has embraced the virtues of being part of an "organic national community" would we be able to fix our country's problems with astonishing swiftness.

Fascism FTW!

[Associate Justice PiT]

     No, and it takes a pretty simplistic worldview to say yes. It's not hard to think of problems caused by Democratic Party policies, but that also isn't a game worth playing.

[Simfan34]

In reality only the reorganization of American society around a meritocratic elite, a civil-military education system and the training of successive cohorts of American men and women to regard advancement in service of the state and that the nation would have their back, would solve our problems. This would be a society where whole generations of young men and young women would learn from grade-school age to work together and to value being part of a society of friends and countrymen where they learn apart from traditional education, military, technical and emergency survival and civil defense skills. Only when the populace has embraced the virtues of being part of an "organic national community" would we be able to fix our country's problems with astonishing swiftness.

This is literally Simfan-ism. Literally. So I think this is a good idea.

[RFayette]

     No, and it takes a pretty simplistic worldview to say yes. It's not hard to think of problems caused by Democratic Party policies, but that also isn't a game worth playing.

Very true.  Plus, how we define a "problem" is also going to affect someone's answer to this question.  I believe the fact that 50 million abortions have occurred since Roe v. Wade is a pretty big problem, but I suspect RR1997 does not.  This paradigm difference would cause our political calculus to be different when weighing the two parties. 

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

In reality only the reorganization of American society around a meritocratic elite, a civil-military education system and the training of successive cohorts of American men and women to regard advancement in service of the state and that the nation would have their back, would solve our problems. This would be a society where whole generations of young men and young women would learn from grade-school age to work together and to value being part of a society of friends and countrymen where they learn apart from traditional education, military, technical and emergency survival and civil defense skills. Only when the populace has embraced the virtues of being part of an "organic national community" would we be able to fix our country's problems with astonishing swiftness.

This is literally Simfan-ism. Literally. So I think this is a good idea.

It's either non-euphemistic Simfan-ism or euphemistic fascism. I don't think that's a gamble you want to make.

[RINO Tom]

No.

[Antonio the Sixth]

They are the necessary cause (in that without them, most of these problems would probably have been solved far ago), but not the root cause.

[RR1997]

The results of this poll officially debunks the myth that Atlas is a left-wing forum.

[Simfan34]

In reality only the reorganization of American society around a meritocratic elite, a civil-military education system and the training of successive cohorts of American men and women to regard advancement in service of the state and that the nation would have their back, would solve our problems. This would be a society where whole generations of young men and young women would learn from grade-school age to work together and to value being part of a society of friends and countrymen where they learn apart from traditional education, military, technical and emergency survival and civil defense skills. Only when the populace has embraced the virtues of being part of an "organic national community" would we be able to fix our country's problems with astonishing swiftness.

This is literally Simfan-ism. Literally. So I think this is a good idea.

It's either non-euphemistic Simfan-ism or euphemistic fascism. I don't think that's a gamble you want to make.

Well without the racism, jingoism, mass political organization, leadership cult, enemy totem group, anti-traditionalism... when you take those things it's no longer fascism but rather something like an inoffensive traditionalist authoritarianism.

[Cory]

In reality only the reorganization of American society around a meritocratic elite, a civil-military education system and the training of successive cohorts of American men and women to regard advancement in service of the state and that the nation would have their back, would solve our problems. This would be a society where whole generations of young men and young women would learn from grade-school age to work together and to value being part of a society of friends and countrymen where they learn apart from traditional education, military, technical and emergency survival and civil defense skills. Only when the populace has embraced the virtues of being part of an "organic national community" would we be able to fix our country's problems with astonishing swiftness.

Beautiful. This makes perfect sense to me. This would solve almost all our problems but the usual types who have never worked a day in their lives will whine a complain about this based on some bourgeois concept of themselves as a Special Snowflake.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The prez, Obama was willing to work with the 114th GOP Congress on the Bowles and Simpson plan. But the GOP went back on their word, concerning closing tax loopholes.

Then, there is immigration, raising cap on social Security and min wage.

[Rockefeller GOP]

The results of this poll officially debunks the myth that Atlas is a left-wing forum.

No, just that a majority of us aren't hacks, radicals or dumba*ses.

[Maxwell]

The results of this poll officially debunks the myth that Atlas is a left-wing forum.

Someone is falling into forum groupthink.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I think American voters can distinguish between the activists of both parties.

Activist tea party has lead the democratic winning coalition of presidential and senate victories as of late.

[Higgs]

There is no conservatism anymore. It doesn't exist in government.  It's hard-left vs center-left.

I suggest you leave the Republican Party, left-leaning Repubs have decided our presidential nominees for quite some time now, and are not doing a good job.

Left-wing political correctness is what is hurting the country.

You suggest he leaves the party, are you kidding me? Please tell me how crap like this will help our party.