[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by tw2113

I consider myself socially liberal, fiscally conservative. I agree we need to have a lot of change happen, but I disagree with how we'd pay for it. I'd prefer we scaled back the foreign policy spending long before we should scale back the welfare spending. I wish we'd more effectively spend the taxes we already collect than just keep collecting more and waste it just as badly. I don't believe in "free college" or "free healthcare" and know that those get paid one way or another by taxpayers. We'd have a sticker shock at first, but over time, we'd grow used to paying for those types of things gradually and collectively.

yes, i hear you there-- in fact i'd be also fiscally conservative on paper (i definitely am in my private life, meaning, how i relate to money) but when i see it in practice i notice that with less government intervention monopolies tend to develop, i.e., the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, whereas with *some* strategic intervention the middle classes grow and the extremes are less extreme. in other words, government isn't the only oppressor-- corporate power could grow unfettered under a libertarian utopia, and that is the part that fills me with doubt about the libertarian program. though the ideals are admirable. a bit like communism i guess.

as an on-and-off business owner i do resent the burden that regulations place upon me, whereas employees have it all handed to them in a platter. this is a bad state of affairs that in my view gives incentive to job-seeking over entrepreneurship. so it actually benefits large corporations who have lawyers and accountants to deal with the regulations and taxation and an endless pool of applicants to compete for their scarce jobs and little competition from the bottom. it's the small business person who gets shafted-- not only competing with the large dinosaurs but also competing vs. the opportunity cost of "getting a job" working for a big corporate mommy/daddy. i.e., do i really need this fucking headache?

anyway i forget what i was gonna say but i try to be open minded and not overly partisan with these things. i was partisan "by contract" in favor of hillary because i truly feared the strumpet trumpet, and while rationally i still do, i have to get on with my life and live it, even in the toxic environment that has been created, like some bacteria from the bottom of the ocean that feeds on sulfur.

OTOH i have little faith in the antitrump protests because the left is an ineffectual bunch of undisciplined fools since the fall of bolshevism. i mean, i hated bolshevism, but you gotta respect that they were organized and disciplined and knew how to use their troops. the soft american liberal is none of that.

can't help to think if hillary had won the trumpites would be marching up and down mainstream with rifles on their shoulders, making second amendment claims about overthrowing tiranny, and truly scaring the beejeezus out of everyone else. so, in a way, this is better.