Why Do Conservatives Favour Small Government? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Traditional 'common sense' values and duty to the state.
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#14328968
It's not about whether the morality is 'traditional' or not, it's about whether it has a clearly defined structure in which people know what to expect, and whether ties of blood and proximity are upheld within a community.

Basically 'doing broadly what everyone else around you is doing', whatever that happens to be, is stable, it's just a question of whether 'what everyone else is doing' happens to cause productive outcomes.

Social conservatives often make the mistake of conflating stability with productivity. It is possible to create a completely stable society built on unproductive rubbish policies, and it is also possible to create a completely stable society build on very productive policies. Social conservatives have a bad habit of producing the former and then calling that 'victory'.

More recently in history though, they've just decided that they want to be led by business leaders, so they create a completely unstable society built atop the shifting sands of neoliberalism, and then clog up everyone's airwaves complaining about the consequences of that decision which they made.
#14329487
blackjack21 wrote:That's a failure of conservatism. Pushing women into the work force wasn't about equality. It was about being able to tax women. A woman who stays home and rears children cannot be taxed for her domestic labor. Give her a job and get her to hire a baby sitter; then, the government can tax both her AND the baby sitter. Government is a monopoly. Just like industrial monopolies or labor unions, they seek to maximize. In the case of industrial combines, it's profit. In the case of labor unions, it's wages. In the case of government, tax revenue.
Is there a shred of evidence for this?
#14349169
Pants-of-dog wrote:Conservatives only want "small gov't" when liberals want to help the poor, as Jesus did.


Liberals don't want to "help the poor, as Jesus did". They want to outsource that job to the Government, so they don't have to lift a finger themselves or bother to make a personal donation to charity. To them, other people's money is up for grabs, to make their own life easier, and ease their guilty conscience.
#14349177
Hirdmann wrote:Liberals don't want to "help the poor, as Jesus did". They want to outsource that job to the Government, so they don't have to lift a finger themselves or bother to make a personal donation to charity. To them, other people's money is up for grabs, to make their own life easier, and ease their guilty conscience.


Please do not quote my posts if you are not going to address the point I make. You can rag on liberals without using my words as an introduction.

Do you disagree that conservatives like a big gov't when it comes to defense, abortion, anti-gay legislation, drug prohibition, law and order, and even fighting action on climate change.
#14349224
Hirdmann wrote:I did. You misrepresented Jesus. I corrected your misrepresentation.


I claimed that Jesus told us to help the poor. Do you disagree?

I noticed you haven't actually challenged my claim about the actual topic.
#14349294
Cromwell wrote:
No, modern conservatism is just a mask for selfishness...

I, too, appreciate the conservatives of old (duty to the state, moral values, law and order etcetera) but they are long gone...


I agree with you Cromwell. Most modern conservative politicians are "vulgar conservatives" in that their primary goal is to serve the interests of the wealthy. You rarely see one-nation conservatism of the type that was once influential in Great Britain, just to use one example. These conservatives were more willing to support government intervention to alleviate the social problems caused by capitalism.
#14349297
[quote="Pants-of-dog"]
I claimed that Jesus told us to help the poor. Do you disagree?
/quote]

No, you claimed that liberals wanted to help the poor in the same way that Jesus did (as opposed to conservatives who supposedly do not want to help the poor), which I pointed out is wrong.
Jesus told US to help the poor. He didn't tell us: "Go make Caesar do it instead so you can lean back and do jack shite yourself".

Jesus gave US the responsibility, and we can't outsource that to anyone, certainly not the state.
#14349353
Pants-of-dog wrote:Do you disagree that conservatives like a big gov't when it comes to defense, abortion, anti-gay legislation, drug prohibition, law and order, and even fighting action on climate change.


Point taken on most of those but how did you add climate change to that list? Are you suggesting that the private money they spend promoting their beliefs equates to favoring big government? On climate change, conservatives are absolutely in favor of smaller government.
#14349397
That's because they favour 'smaller government' on all the issues where they don't want a government programme to exist. It's basically a fig-leaf that they use because it saves them the effort of having to actually explain their policy preferences in straight power concepts. "I support smaller government", is quicker and easier for them to say, than "this is the agenda contained in a 20 page booklet we just wrote".

Pakistan is like that as well. Throughout the 1980s, the Islamist-leaning parties actually used the 'smaller government' and 'less interference' narratives to cover up the fact that they actually wanted to prevent state institutions from competing with the (meagre) monopoly on welfare and social support that the land-owning Mullahs and Mosques in rural undeveloped areas of Pakistan had.

The net result is that Pakistan actually went backwards on every social indicator since that time, and Islamic fundamentalists were able to retrench themselves.

Much like the Americans, Pakistani conservatives supported 'small government' narratives when it suited their agenda to wheel it out, and supported 'intervention' when it suited their agenda to wheel that out.
#14349490
Hirdmann wrote:No, you claimed that liberals wanted to help the poor in the same way that Jesus did (as opposed to conservatives who supposedly do not want to help the poor), which I pointed out is wrong.
Jesus told US to help the poor. He didn't tell us: "Go make
Caesar do it instead so you can lean back and do jack shite yourself".

Jesus gave US the responsibility, and we can't outsource that to anyone, certainly not the state.


Please quote the text where Jesus told us not to use the state apparatus to help the poor. Thank you.

And please address my point that conservatives do not actually want small gov't.

Beal wrote: On climate change, conservatives are absolutely in favor of smaller government.


Not really. They want cheap gas which comes about due to gas subsidies. They want to drill even more in protected areas and more pipelines that require gov't intervention in terms of expropriation.
#14349603
Pants-of-dog wrote:Not really. They want cheap gas which comes about due to gas subsidies.


This statement is terribly misleading. The complex way the government taxes both people and corporations allows disingenuous people (present company excluded, I just think you've been duped by propaganda) to claim that energy companies are "subsidized" when in fact the opposite is true. Most of the "subsidies" people complain about are actually tax incentives that sound like "subsidies." But when you consider that virtually every single private entity in the country receives some sort of deduction, or accelerated depreciation, or special inventory valuation, then it becomes obvious that by that logic, everyone is subsidized. After just a casual glance at the US tax code, clearly the only reasonable way to judge whether or not an industry is truly subsidized is to look at the final result of all of these special rules and exceptions. What effective tax rates do companies in various industries actually pay?
For tax years 2007-2012, effective tax rates paid by S&P 500 companies, sorted by industry:
Utilities: 12%
Information Technology: 21%
Industrials: 24%
Telecom: 26%
Pharmaceuticals: 26%
Health Care: 28%
Consumer Products: 28%
Materials: 31%
*Financials: 33%
Retailers: 34%
Energy: 37%
*Insurance: 51%

*Note that insurance and financials were driven up considerably because of impacts of the financial crisis. The NYT notes, for example, that AIG paid $8B in taxes while losing $82B and Citigroup paid $20B in taxes while losing $24B. This phenomenon likely skewed the averages for these industries well above the norm.

Pants-of-dog wrote:They want to drill even more in protected areas and more pipelines that require gov't intervention in terms of expropriation.


When the government protected the land, it intervened. The activity of protecting the land is what contributed to "big government." The act of repealing part or all of that protection is not "big government." At best, it is the opposite of big government. At worst, depending on the situation, it may qualify as crony capitalism.

As for pipelines, if eminent domain is involved, I might be inclined to agree, though I suspect that this is not true for the vast majority of the roadblocks to Keystone.
#14349664
Beal wrote:This statement is terribly misleading.
... This phenomenon likely skewed the averages for these industries well above the norm.


First of all, we can call it whatever you want, tax breaks, subsidies, whatever. If you want to compare it to the same tax breaks/subsidies/whatever like education and health care, go ahead. When a family makes as much as Chevron does annually, they can also pay an effective tax rate that high.

Secondly, the fact that they get taxed later does not mean that they don't also get subsidies.

Thirdly, those are US figures. If we look at it globally, the subsidies add up to $1.9 trillion (2½ percent of global GDP or 8 percent of total government revenues)

b wrote:When the government protected the land, it intervened. The activity of protecting the land is what contributed to "big government." The act of repealing part or all of that protection is not "big government." At best, it is the opposite of big government. At worst, depending on the situation, it may qualify as crony capitalism.

As for pipelines, if eminent domain is involved, I might be inclined to agree, though I suspect that this is not true for the vast majority of the roadblocks to Keystone.


If we are going to focus on the US, as you seem to, then the whole issue of pipelines is about the gov't continuing to use indigenous territory that they aren't allowed to. If you don't think stealing all that land and handing it to settlers and oil companies is subsidy, then what is?
#14349708
Pants-of-dog wrote:Secondly, the fact that they get taxed later does not mean that they don't also get subsidies.


There are lots of different claims out there about how much oil companies receive in "energy subsidies." They vary wildly by methodology, but in general they include two different types of "subsidy." One is a subsidy that reduces the cost of petroleum products to buyers. (The largest of which provide assistance to the poor and subsidize farms, since farm equipment doesn't use the highway system.) We can discuss in further detail why calling those "energy subsidies" is beyond disingenuous, if you like. The other type of "subsidy" is indeed a tax break of one type or another, and as I already pointed out, everyone gets tax breaks. The fact is that energy companies get much smaller breaks than most others.

Pants-of-dog wrote:Thirdly, those are US figures. If we look at it globally, the subsidies add up to $1.9 trillion (2½ percent of global GDP or 8 percent of total government revenues)


...which is subject to my previous objections and also categorizes environmental degradation as a subsidy. I have three problems with this.

-First, any study meant to quantify the cost of environmental degradation is inherently suspect. It must rely on very large assumptions and will necessarily be highly subjective...and they tend to be produced by people with every motive to exaggerate the supposed costs.

-Second, if we are going to try to quantify the external, subjective costs of burning fossil fuels, why don't we also try to quantify the external, subjective benefits of burning fossil fuels? If those evil oil companies weren't pumping all that gunk out of the ground and refining it, how much more would everything else cost? How many future concert pianists and Einsteins would die of starvation? How many lives were saved by the plastics they produced? And how much are those lives worth, anyway? Can we quantify that? How many billions of people lived because we decided to burn fossil fuels?

-Third, you implied that subsidies equate to big government, but then as evidence that conservatives support big government, you provided a giant example of a "subsidy" that is quite certainly the opposite of big government, disproving your assumption. Even if failing to create carbon trading schemes qualifies as a "subsidy," it still doesn't qualify as big government.

Pants-of-dog wrote:If we are going to focus on the US, as you seem to


The thread specifically discusses US and UK conservatives...and I don't know of any controversial pipeline projects in the UK.

Pants-of-dog wrote:If you don't think stealing all that land and handing it to settlers and oil companies is subsidy, then what is?


Like I just got done writing, if you are referring to eminent domain, I agree, but also as I just got done writing, I don't believe that most of the roadblocks to Keystone (or most pipeline projects) have anything to do with eminent domain.
#14349720
Beal wrote:There are lots of different claims out there about how much oil companies receive in "energy subsidies." They vary wildly by methodology, but in general they include two different types of "subsidy." One is a subsidy that reduces the cost of petroleum products to buyers. (The largest of which provide assistance to the poor and subsidize farms, since farm equipment doesn't use the highway system.) We can discuss in further detail why calling those "energy subsidies" is beyond disingenuous, if you like. The other type of "subsidy" is indeed a tax break of one type or another, and as I already pointed out, everyone gets tax breaks. The fact is that energy companies get much smaller breaks than most others.


Like I already said, we can call it whatever you want, tax breaks, subsidies, whatever.

The gov't hands over large wads of cash to oil companies for farmers. Fine, it's still a subsidy.

None of this changes the fact that conservatives support gov't being big in the sense of intervening in the economy by giving money to fossil fuel companies.

b wrote:...which is subject to my previous objections and also categorizes environmental degradation as a subsidy. I have three problems with this.

-First, any study meant to quantify the cost of environmental degradation is inherently suspect. It must rely on very large assumptions and will necessarily be highly subjective...and they tend to be produced by people with every motive to exaggerate the supposed costs.


Your suspicions about bias are a good reason to suspect a problem, but they are not evidence of bias or a problem.

Those who support fossil fuel subsidies (i.e. conservatives) have every motive to play down the costs of environmental degradation. And someone has to clean up the mess. Why shouldn't the cost of clean up be taken into account?

-Second, if we are going to try to quantify the external, subjective costs of burning fossil fuels, why don't we also try to quantify the external, subjective benefits of burning fossil fuels? If those evil oil companies weren't pumping all that gunk out of the ground and refining it, how much more would everything else cost? How many future concert pianists and Einsteins would die of starvation? How many lives were saved by the plastics they produced? And how much are those lives worth, anyway? Can we quantify that? How many billions of people lived because we decided to burn fossil fuels?


I don't know. How many? If you have evidence, please put it forth.

-Third, you implied that subsidies equate to big government, but then as evidence that conservatives support big government, you provided a giant example of a "subsidy" that is quite certainly the opposite of big government, disproving your assumption. Even if failing to create carbon trading schemes qualifies as a "subsidy," it still doesn't qualify as big government.


I have no idea how showing how gov't giving fossil fuel companies money and tax breaks disproves anything I said.

b wrote:The thread specifically discusses US and UK conservatives...and I don't know of any controversial pipeline projects in the UK.



b wrote:Like I just got done writing, if you are referring to eminent domain, I agree, but also as I just got done writing, I don't believe that most of the roadblocks to Keystone (or most pipeline projects) have anything to do with eminent domain.


That's nice. While eminient domain is an issue, I am pointing out the huge gov't intervention where the gov't took a whole continent worth of land from the owners and gave it and its resources to private companies and individuals.

Do you agree that having gov't steal all the native land and give it to white people is a huge subsidy for the private economy of the USA?
#14350226
Pants-of-dog wrote:Like I already said, we can call it whatever you want, tax breaks, subsidies, whatever.


Except that some of those aren't subsidies, some of them aren't conservative policies, and the balance could only be called subsidies if we acknowledge that everyone, everywhere is "subsidized."

Pants-of-dog wrote:The gov't hands over large wads of cash to oil companies for farmers. Fine, it's still a subsidy.


To the farmers, perhaps, but even that is a stretch. Farmers don't pay excise taxes on fuel because those taxes are charged to pay for the highways that the farmers don't use. And then there is assitance to the poor. That one usually goes on the pile as a supposed oil subidy. While there are many problems with such logic, the most important is probably that conservatives don't promote this policy, liberals do.

Pants-of-Dog wrote:Your suspicions about bias are a good reason to suspect a problem, but they are not evidence of bias or a problem.


They call in to question the supposed size of these supposed subsidies.

Pants-of-Dog wrote:Those who support fossil fuel subsidies (i.e. conservatives) have every motive to play down the costs of environmental degradation. And someone has to clean up the mess. Why shouldn't the cost of clean up be taken into account?


This isn't about the costs of cleanup. It's about the supposed costs of things like global warming, or health problems due to smog..."costs" that couldn't even be quantified reliably in hindsight let alone predicted accurately. Not to mention these are costs that are only being estimated by one side of the policy debate.

Pants-of-Dog wrote:I don't know. How many? If you have evidence, please put it forth.


Hmmm, I estimate $2 trillion a year in the US only. Prove me wrong.

Pants-of-Dog wrote:I have no idea how showing how gov't giving fossil fuel companies money and tax breaks disproves anything I said.


Because you've expanded the definition of subsidies to the point where subsidies do not always equate to big government. Even if you want to claim that opposing new taxes and new regulations qualifies as support for a "subsidy," you still can't paint it as "big government." It is, in fact, the opposite of big government.

You were so desperate to find examples of supposed oil "subsidies" that you didn't notice you were defeating your own argument.

Pants-of-Dog wrote:That's nice. While eminient domain is an issue, I am pointing out the huge gov't intervention where the gov't took a whole continent worth of land from the owners and gave it and its resources to private companies and individuals.

Do you agree that having gov't steal all the native land and give it to white people is a huge subsidy for the private economy of the USA?


Yeah that Andrew Jackson is out of control. You better do something about him.
#14350282
Beal wrote:Except that some of those aren't subsidies, some of them aren't conservative policies, and the balance could only be called subsidies if we acknowledge that everyone, everywhere is "subsidized."


Sure.

b wrote:To the farmers, perhaps, but even that is a stretch. Farmers don't pay excise taxes on fuel because those taxes are charged to pay for the highways that the farmers don't use. And then there is assitance to the poor. That one usually goes on the pile as a supposed oil subidy. While there are many problems with such logic, the most important is probably that conservatives don't promote this policy, liberals do.


As long as we are clear that the subsidy allows the fossil fuel companies to make a profit that they otherwise would not, and reduces gas prices, which conservatives support.

b wrote:They call in to question the supposed size of these supposed subsidies.


Anything can be questioned. What matters is whether or not the question has any basis in fact.

b wrote:This isn't about the costs of cleanup. It's about the supposed costs of things like global warming, or health problems due to smog..."costs" that couldn't even be quantified reliably in hindsight let alone predicted accurately. Not to mention these are costs that are only being estimated by one side of the policy debate.


Actually, I don't see why it is so hard to quantify these costs. And since they result directly from fossil fuel use, there is no reason to ignore them.

b wrote:Hmmm, I estimate $2 trillion a year in the US only. Prove me wrong.


So, no evidence. Okay.

b wrote:Because you've expanded the definition of subsidies to the point where subsidies do not always equate to big government. Even if you want to claim that opposing new taxes and new regulations qualifies as support for a "subsidy," you still can't paint it as "big government." It is, in fact, the opposite of big government.

You were so desperate to find examples of supposed oil "subsidies" that you didn't notice you were defeating your own argument.


Sorry, I was using the conservative paradigm where any gov't intervention is considered big gov't. Subsidies are intervention.

b wrote:Yeah that Andrew Jackson is out of control. You better do something about him.


I am not talking about history. I am talking about right now. Or do you think that the gov't has somehow apologised and given all the land back since Jackson?
#14351002
Pants-of-dog wrote:As long as we are clear that the subsidy allows the fossil fuel companies to make a profit that they otherwise would not, and reduces gas prices, which conservatives support.


Gasoline excise taxes are designed to fund the highway system. Farmers don't use the highway system (with minor exception) when running their farm equipment, so they don't have to pay for the highways they aren't using. I fail to see how not charging someone for something they aren't using qualifies as a subsidy.

Pants-of-dog wrote:Sorry, I was using the conservative paradigm where any gov't intervention is considered big gov't. Subsidies are intervention.


The bolded part is where your argument fails. Let's break your argument down to bullet points.

1) Intervention = big government. Non-intervention = small government.
2) In the case of carbon "pollution," conservatives favor non-intervention.
3) In the case of carbon "pollution," non-intervention equates to subsidy.
4) All subsidies equate to big government.

1 and 2 together prove that in the case of regulating carbon, conservatives favor small government, yet you try to turn that around and also claim that in this same case, conservatives favor big government. That doesn't make sense. Obviously, if you are going to stretch the bounds of logic and call certain forms of non-intervention a "subsidy," then 4 is false, not all subsidies equate to big government.

You can't re-define subsidy to include items that are non-interventionist and yet still claim that all subsidies are interventionist.

Pants-Of-Dog wrote:I am not talking about history. I am talking about right now. Or do you think that the gov't has somehow apologised and given all the land back since Jackson?


I think that you are completely off in left field now. But even if we further dillute the definition of "subsidy" on this topic, you have come up with another example of a "subsidy" that does not equate to big government.
#14351140
Beal wrote:Gasoline excise taxes are designed to fund the highway system. Farmers don't use the highway system (with minor exception) when running their farm equipment, so they don't have to pay for the highways they aren't using. I fail to see how not charging someone for something they aren't using qualifies as a subsidy.


However, gasoline taxes do not actually cover highway work, so those of us who ride bikes (mostly liberals) are supporting another intervention that conservatives like: nice smooth highways to drive their Buicks on.

B wrote:The bolded part is where your argument fails. Let's break your argument down to bullet points.

1) Intervention = big government. Non-intervention = small government.
2) In the case of carbon "pollution," conservatives favor non-intervention.
3) In the case of carbon "pollution," non-intervention equates to subsidy.
4) All subsidies equate to big government.

1 and 2 together prove that in the case of regulating carbon, conservatives favor small government, yet you try to turn that around and also claim that in this same case, conservatives favor big government. That doesn't make sense. Obviously, if you are going to stretch the bounds of logic and call certain forms of non-intervention a "subsidy," then 4 is false, not all subsidies equate to big government.

You can't re-define subsidy to include items that are non-interventionist and yet still claim that all subsidies are interventionist.


The bolded part is where you are wrong.

In the case of pollution, "non-intervention" (or more correctly, not making the business accountable for its mess) equates to having someone else clean up the pollution. That money that the fossil fuel company would otherwise have to use to clean up is paid out of the taxpayer's wallet. Since the taxpayer has to pay for the business's mess, it is a subsidy because it is a redistribution of wealth from the taxpayer to the business.

B wrote:I think that you are completely off in left field now. But even if we further dillute the definition of "subsidy" on this topic, you have come up with another example of a "subsidy" that does not equate to big government.


If the gov't took away your land and gave it to someone related to the gov't, would you consider that a subsidy for that person who received the land? Up here in Canada, the gov't recently allowed a fracking company to work on land that the Mi'kmaq had never ceded to Canada. Do you see how this is a subsidy for the fracking company? Do conservatives support fracking?
#14352470
Pants-of-dog wrote:However, gasoline taxes do not actually cover highway work


In what way? Those funds are earmarked for the Highway Trust fund. Are you referring to the recent shortfalls or raiding of the fund in prior years?

Pants-of-Dog wrote:so those of us who ride bikes


...don't pay any fuel taxes at all.

Beal wrote:3) In the case of carbon "pollution," non-intervention equates to subsidy.


Pants-of-Dog wrote:The bolded part is where you are wrong.

In the case of pollution, "non-intervention" (or more correctly, not making the business accountable for its mess) equates to having someone else clean up the pollution. That money that the fossil fuel company would otherwise have to use to clean up is paid out of the taxpayer's wallet. Since the taxpayer has to pay for the business's mess, it is a subsidy because it is a redistribution of wealth from the taxpayer to the business.


You just told me I was wrong in characterizing your argument, then you restated exactly what I wrote. I acknowledge that you believe that in the cast of carbon "pollution," non-intervention equates to subsidy. What you refuse to acknowledge is that non-intervention, even if it is a subsidy, is the opposite of big government.

Big government = intervention.

You can't equate all subsidies to big government, then list an example of a subsidy that is obviously the opposite of big government in order to prove that someone who supports it is in favor of big government.

You have lost this point. You are just being obtuse.

Pants-of-Dog wrote:If the gov't took away your land and gave it to someone related to the gov't, would you consider that a subsidy for that person who received the land? Up here in Canada, the gov't recently allowed a fracking company to work on land that the Mi'kmaq had never ceded to Canada. Do you see how this is a subsidy for the fracking company? Do conservatives support fracking?


My point wasn't about whether it is a subsidy. My point is about whether it qualifies as big government. You are obviously incapable of discussing this rationally.

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