(04-17-2020 09:12 AM)b0ndsj0ns Wrote: A party who's fiscal ideology I agree with but social ideology I find morally repugnant and the other who's fiscal ideology I find morally repugnant but who I generally agree with on social ideology.
That's where I am right now. Two considerations. One, fiscal policy is far more important to me because I am not gay or a drug user or an illegal alien, so the social policies are more conceptual than real to me. But two, on the other hand, the R's really haven't done a very good job of advancing those fiscal policies that they claim to support.
I suppose I could be best described as a Main Street, strong economic growth, free-market capitalism with a safety net, strong defense, non-interventionist foreign policy, socially liberal pragmatic, more libertarian than anything else. Not the extreme anarchist libertarian, more of a pragmatic one, kind of a Milton Friedman classical liberal. There used to be a lot of those among the R's, and even a few D's that came close, but I look at Washington, and aside from a very few, like Rand, there's nobody even close to that. Amash has been, but I don't understand his last year or so.
Policy positions I support.
-People who work should live better than people who don't work.
--Bismarck universal private health care and a universal basic income (UBI) based on the Boortz-Linder prebate/prefund, paid for by a national consumption tax (the only way that the numbers work).
--Reform unemployment into workfare with assignment to jobs doing infrastructure work and other things that benefit society. Incorporate German
kurzarbeit to prevent or minimize worker layoffs during and economic downturn.
--Tiered minimum wage with reductions for those under 21 or lacking experience. With those changes, some sort of indexing would be reasonable. With the UBI and Bismarck, today's minimum wage would be a "living wage."
--Legalize marijuana and tax it, and decriminalize other drugs.
--Balance the federal budget and keep it balanced.
-Never fight a war that you don't intend to win.
--Spend more on combat and combat support functions of the military, but overall reduce defense spending by reducing or eliminating overhead and waste.
--Get out of the Middle East ASAP and don't ever get into another "limited" war. Let the world know that if you piss us off, we are coming at you with everything we have, and our rules of engagement will be gloves off.
-Treat your friends better than you treat your enemies.
--I would bring UK into NAFTA/USMCA as soon as possible. This could be a huge boon for UK, because they could become the waypoint between the EU and the USA, and in particular a huge boon for Irealand and NI, becuase they could become the interface between the EU and UK. Once you had UK, you would have two of the biggest Commonwealth economies, UK and Canada, and look to expand to the entire Commonwealth. The other idea that really interests me is that there has been some talk of a combined Commonwealth military force. That would be no worse than the 4th strongest military in the world, and probably the #2 navy. That is a force to which we could pass some of our current "world policeman" roles. Kind of a reverse of the Bretton Woods deal--we give you free access to our markets, and in return we get the same to yours and you pick up some of our global security duties. UK could help a lot in Europe, and India could be a match for China in the IO for starters, and India could replace China as our low-cost source for cheap consumer goods.
--If we got some assistance with our world-wide security chores, we could focus more on domestic defense--things like cybersecurity and terrorism. We could also work toward better relations with Latin America. I could see economic development there as a major prevention against illegal immigration and illegal drugs. I would reopen relations with Cuba; that's one (of the very few) issues where I agreed with Obama.
That got longer than I meant it to be. But that's pretty much where I am. I don't see either major party going there.
Quote:Right now both parties fiscally are the party of corporate interests, but the GOP seems to be shifting more towards peoples interests and the Dems even harder toward corporate interests.
That's the way it is always going to be as long as government is so heavily involved in picking winners and losers. The only way to get money out of politics is to get politics out of money--or, more particularly, out of the business of deciding who gets what money.
The really huge growth of government came under FDR. Think back, for many of his cabinet positions and czars, he picked leaders of US industry. That's not a coincidence. Those guys had the power, and they stacked the deck in favor of corporate America.