A lot of conservatives- and I'm one of this group- would tell you they wouldn't mind paying taxes so much if it was going to something that they felt was doing some good for society.
I know several guys who are conservatives because they bust their butt working long hours, pay a lot in taxes, save and budget carefully, and barely get by while their neighbor is not working at all, driving a nicer car, spending frivolously and living a party life..... all on government aid. Liberals seem to have a blind spot for this or maybe just accept it as the cost of a safety net.... but for they guy working his butt off it feels really unfair and is rage inducing.
Yup. I ran into a very old friend I haven't seen in many years at McDs the other night. Not kidding, I was coming from pulling a long day at the office the day before an 18 hour "day" on a Saturday from 9A until 3A on Sunday morning to recable and reconfigure the entire office network in prep for a new VoIP phone system. I asked him how he had been doing and he said he went to work for a local RF engineering and installation company and absolutely loved it. As the conversation went on, somehow we ended up talking about some friends with medical issues and he shared that he had purposefully remained part-time at the new job because with multiple kids, he did the math and if he went full time, he wouldn't qualify for Medicaid for the large family and he'd lose a lot of money. He showed me his numbers and he was right. Hourly at part time status he did significantly better than salaried at full time. He even shared what his employer could do on price of the worst medical bennies.
I could guess at what happened at this small company (similar problems at mine) with their insurance rates after ObamaCare kicked in, or rant about various "partisan" things, but really I just felt sad. Here's a guy with a big family who'd happily work 40-50 hours a week and take reasonable but not stellar bennies and pay and be totally happy in the middle class, with enough time led over to also enjoy his family growing up, but we've allows politicians to totally screw up the system so badly that he makes much more (it wasn't a small number) working 30 hours a week and accepting government assisted healthcare. He has LOTS of free time for his kids now, and he can "take a big vacation" way WAY easier than I can, or anyone full time at my company, simply by budgeting a bit and sacrificing a little for a while to save up enough to simply not go into work for a few weeks.
We made all the incentives totally wrong for him in strange and twisted ways. His company loves having him and other part timers essentially on-call in a business that goes from feast to famine and back very quickly, and he only puts in partial days with some poor manager coordinating his every project because he's "just a part timer". He's a very sharp guy. Knows RF stuff. Knows IT stuff. Knows some telecom stuff. Happy as a clam to work half days on a regular basis and make more money than if he were full time and had to pay for his family's medical bennies.
I also am amazed at how we talk about regulation..... liberals always say more regulation is good, conservatives say it's bad. As if it was just on a sliding scale like how much salt to put on your potatoes. How about instead of more or less we just try to write good regulations that are fair and that don't drown the small business owner in paperwork and compliance? Corporations have whole offices just devoted to complying with regulations/legal matters. For me, I've just got my desk, the internet, my phone, and prayer that I don't get lost in the shuffle or crushed under the regulatory juggernaut.
If you've never had your livelihood or at the very least the question of whether you will have a lengthy/costly legal battle on your hands riding on a disinterested government employee on the phone reading the rule book the same as you do, let me tell you it's a "fun" experience. It's pretty hard to see anything government as a positive after having such experiences. these types of things, or fear of them are what drives conservatives like me. I have no faith in government playing fair with me, I don't trust them, and I don't have any faith that the politicians will put my well being above the will of their corporate donors. So, the less power they have the better I feel.
Liberals fear the boss who cuts everyone's pay and lengthens their hours or terminates them and outsourced their job to save a little money. Or the one who saves money by selling a dangerous product, or pollutes the river, and so on. I get it. Funny thing is we really have the same enemies, we just face different dangers from them and have different responses based on that.
Pretty well stated. I'd add that we really haven't gotten it clear in our collective beads who the real enemy is, and that's the non-servant total partisan hacks that run for offices. They simply aren't in it for serving others. They're in it for what they can get out of it for themselves. And they know we've completely lost control of the purse strings that they dig all of the "free money" out of. They love it when people don't think and only spout Party lines and ideals. They're not helping the average Joe nor are they interested. They're busy playing games with trillions of "borrowed" dollars and attending spiffy dinners with donors.
Trump said it flat out during that first debate. He bought every politician's favor on that stage. Politicians are cheap for him. Not so for the rest of us.
You mentioned "polluting the river". EPA just did that themselves here in CO. Think they'll sue themselves out of business? Imagine the public outcry if that had been Haliburton or any other "evil" corporation that pulled that stunt. There's national news on it, but it won't be anywhere near the brain-splitting whining and screaming that would have been heard from the left and the media if it had been a corporation that had spilled the mining crap in the Animas River.
Who watches the watchers? Oh. Some head cheese at EPA "apologized". Great. That'll keep it from happening again. Make that a corporate CEO and there'd be protestors being flown in from out of State to picket until he or she were fired. Nothing like that will happen to EPA. They're too big and ultimately funded by massive loans that no one else can get.
Well I take that back. The worst possible banks and auto manufacturers and a number of mainline airlines can get similar loans by screwing up royally.
Seems to be the MO now. Grow anything to an unsustainable size and then start pocketing the cash and screwing up royally and some politico you paid off for years with chump changes from the business will hand you unobtainable business loans to rescue you that no one else can get.
We are a case model of unintended consequences that we aren't interested in fixing. And who can blame us? Like the friend who'd rather work part time and have a life as well as Medicaid, we set up the incentives to trigger these events. And we all know the politicians are doing it. We just pretend only "the other kind" of politician is doing it.
Seen any government budgets go down significantly under any of the so-called fiscal conservatives? I haven't in my lifetime and would be shocked if they actually lived up to their principals. Just like I'd be shocked if a liberal really meant it when they said they'd stop after one more silly rule or regulation that needs another billion or ten in enforcers and bureaucrats to handle just the current new set of rules and regs.
No politician has an ounce of fiscal self-control. None whatsoever.
