Do "progressives" hate America, or are they just unable to see obvious outcomes of their policies?
On conservative blogs one often sees a question being debated that goes something like, Do Democrats/"progressives" push the policies they do because they hate America, or is it that they just can't foresee the results of obviously-bad policies?
I'm not trying to be sarcastic here. Most conservative bloggers do seem to be really, truly mystified as to the answer to that question. Example: If the government institutes a policy that makes it more expensive and risky to hire people, how can any rational person possibly be surprised when rational business people adjust to the new conditions by offering fewer jobs?
Yet I have yet to hear a single Democrat acknowledge that there's any link between those two things.
Similarly, if the government increases the benefits of not working, can anyone possibly be surprised to find more people deciding that not working beats working--even if he or she could earn, say, 30% more by finding a job? Because obviously, everyone values their free time, and if working eight hours a day only pays 30% more than being on welfare, the difference ends up amounting to just a couple of bucks an hour.
Who'd want to work eight hours a day for two or three bucks an hour? Almost no one. Yet I have yet to hear a single Democrat acknowledge that.
When government pays teenage girls for having kids out of wedlock, can any rational person be surprised that you get more kids born without benefit of marriage? Now I understand completely that the rationale for such programs was that the innocent child shouldn't suffer for a bad decision by his teenage mom--and I agree. And if Democrats would agree that having increasing numbers of "fatherless" kids is a negative thing for society, maybe we could devise some different way to protect the kids without incentivizing teenage girls to have more of them without being married. But I've never heard a single Democrat make the connection between subsidizing births by single girls and getting more of that outcome.
History teaches--repeatedly and at huge cost--that having a strong military reduces the chances of another nation attacking us, while cutting the military has the opposite effect. Yet Democrats seem not to have heard of that effect, and happily join Obozo in cutting military strength again and again. It's like they refuse to learn.
Or consider the federal government's spending in general: Virtually every conservative thinks spending a trillion dollars a year more than the government takes in is crazy. When Bush was in office Democrats wailed and moaned endlessly about a $250 Billion deficit, but starting one minute after Bush left office got selective amnesia and now don't have a critical word to say about trillion-dollar deficits.
Is that sane? Is that likely to improve the condition of our nation for more than, say, six months? But the Democrats' fix is to simply violate the law by refusing to pass a budget. (So far the Democrat-controlled senate has failed to pass a budget in all but one year of Obama's time in office.)
Is this good governance? Is this likely to help or harm our nation? And yet, they persist.
A lot of people have asked, "If Obama and the Dems were trying to destroy America, what would they have done differently?" I don't have an answer.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic here. Most conservative bloggers do seem to be really, truly mystified as to the answer to that question. Example: If the government institutes a policy that makes it more expensive and risky to hire people, how can any rational person possibly be surprised when rational business people adjust to the new conditions by offering fewer jobs?
Yet I have yet to hear a single Democrat acknowledge that there's any link between those two things.
Similarly, if the government increases the benefits of not working, can anyone possibly be surprised to find more people deciding that not working beats working--even if he or she could earn, say, 30% more by finding a job? Because obviously, everyone values their free time, and if working eight hours a day only pays 30% more than being on welfare, the difference ends up amounting to just a couple of bucks an hour.
Who'd want to work eight hours a day for two or three bucks an hour? Almost no one. Yet I have yet to hear a single Democrat acknowledge that.
When government pays teenage girls for having kids out of wedlock, can any rational person be surprised that you get more kids born without benefit of marriage? Now I understand completely that the rationale for such programs was that the innocent child shouldn't suffer for a bad decision by his teenage mom--and I agree. And if Democrats would agree that having increasing numbers of "fatherless" kids is a negative thing for society, maybe we could devise some different way to protect the kids without incentivizing teenage girls to have more of them without being married. But I've never heard a single Democrat make the connection between subsidizing births by single girls and getting more of that outcome.
History teaches--repeatedly and at huge cost--that having a strong military reduces the chances of another nation attacking us, while cutting the military has the opposite effect. Yet Democrats seem not to have heard of that effect, and happily join Obozo in cutting military strength again and again. It's like they refuse to learn.
Or consider the federal government's spending in general: Virtually every conservative thinks spending a trillion dollars a year more than the government takes in is crazy. When Bush was in office Democrats wailed and moaned endlessly about a $250 Billion deficit, but starting one minute after Bush left office got selective amnesia and now don't have a critical word to say about trillion-dollar deficits.
Is that sane? Is that likely to improve the condition of our nation for more than, say, six months? But the Democrats' fix is to simply violate the law by refusing to pass a budget. (So far the Democrat-controlled senate has failed to pass a budget in all but one year of Obama's time in office.)
Is this good governance? Is this likely to help or harm our nation? And yet, they persist.
A lot of people have asked, "If Obama and the Dems were trying to destroy America, what would they have done differently?" I don't have an answer.
posted by SF at
8:14 PM
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