So, Republican Or Democrat?

After the conventions, after the speeches, perhaps a general overview might be useful.

Please, look beyond the cadence and emotion, look underneath the rousing jargon; just moments after President Obama faulted Republicans for wanting to go back to "the same prescription they've had for the last thirty years", and then declaring "We're not going back, we're going forward", he announced that his solution "will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued" . . . that's going back 80 years!?

And it's going back to policies that have never worked. This common notion that liberals are all about boldly moving forward and conservatives are all about fearfully wanting to return to the past is simply not the factual matter of the case - they both subscribe to economic policies that have been around for a long time, the liberals are not presenting anything new and certainly not presenting something newer than what the conservatives favor.

Supply-side Economics was developed in the 1970s as a response to Keynesian Economics . . . Keynesian Economics had been around since The Great Depression, it's the course FDR followed that liberals assert ended The Great Depression and conservatives advance made The Great Depression last 10 years longer than it needed to (actually making it "The Great" rather than just a rescission/depression). By the 1970s the liberal's commitment to Keynesian Economics required the U.S. to come-up with a new economic term, 'stagflation' - the conservative alternative was dubbed "Supply-side Economics" . . . it was essentially government stepping back and trusting the free market system to work.

My point here is, if the liberals want to make the choice here about who's going back to old failed policies, they are going much farther back and their policies have been demonstrated as failed. The real issue here though is this; no one is mean and bad and stupid, no one party is interested to help others while the other party doesn't care, it's simply not about who's good & smart and who's bad & stupid - the real issue is what will actually work and help the most people.

The liberal's basic idea is that if the government stimulates the economy with tons of tax money all that tax money will promote spending and investing, etc, and the economy will grow - the conservative's basic idea is that if you don't hinder business & industry growth with high taxes and absurd regulations business & industry will naturally grow (hiring more people, producing more products, etc) and all that earned income money will promote spending and investing, etc, and the economy will grow . . . nobody is being evil, it's simply two different ideas.

The liberals have to make the issue about who is more morally upright, who cares more, who is for the average guy, etc, etc, because their actually policy of government stimulus has never worked anywhere any time. The idea of central planners simply is contrary to the economic system of free people. It's the conservative idea of the free market adjusting itself and rising everyone upward that built this country prior to FDR, and it's behind the economic boom under JFK, Reagan, and Clinton's 2nd term (under the oversight of Gingrich's Republican take over of Congress).

I think the evidence is pretty observable that big government fiddling in the marketplace introduces hardships for the middle and lower classes and that the free market system has invented the middle class and raised more people out of poverty than can be counted - but, either way, whatever you think is the better course, it's just a different understanding of economics, no one is being mean, it's not about good guys and bad guys . . . and that the liberals so consistently want to frame it as such, should cause us to wonder about the measurable functionality of their actual plan.

(I'm not a Ron Paul guy, I just thought it both a bit humorous photo under the circumstances, but more so, a bit troubling - the two party system that's become so assumed to be the way things have to be, the system George Washington warned us against, might just be the centerpiece of our difficulties . . . when our choice is between only two professional politicians propped-up by rival political parties, how can we ever expect to find an honest citizen servant of the people?)

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