The Future of Democracy

[JairCrawford]

And this I think ties in with something I mentioned earlier, namely that according to polls, while the majority of Americans are now socially liberal, a significant majority still remains fiscally conservative. If the polls are accurate, then social spending is viewed positively by a minority in the US.

Maybe I’m still tainted by my European upbringing, but ‘socially liberal and fiscally conservative’ sounds like gibberish to me. Or maybe those things mean something different to USians.

Boru

I think that combination is largely a phenomenon here in the US. There is widespread nervousness about “too much socialism” here. At least, that’s how I interpret it. A lot of slippery slope fallacies about how “if the government ‘controls too much money’ then what next?”, that sort of thing. I also think people are skeptical here of any notion of taxing the rich. The government here has been making careers out of finding loopholes for the rich for so long, a lot of people here have the mindset that it’s futile to even try to make legislation that properly taxes the rich. I think a lot of people actually believe it can’t be done and that new loopholes will always be found, and are afraid the burden will inevitably fall on them, so they don’t even go there. They don’t even consider it.

Personally, that it’s gotten to that point to me is a very sad statement on our society, but that’s just how I see it.