Fiscal conservatism itself is basically a dog whistle anyway. They’ve never cared about deficits, otherwise they would’ve gotten the money in the places where there’s a lot of fat to cut, like the military. It’s about punishing the poor for being poor.
averyminya@beehaw.org 10 months ago
Yeah I fully agree. I hope my comment didn’t insinuate that I was promoting that idea. That was from 20 years ago - the puppet parade I mentioned was already in full effect even before then. These policies were put into place in places like the city of Richmond California to prop up a workforce just long enough for the war effort. Nearly immediately afterwards any semblance of national unity (or aid) vanished and the whole iron triangle suffered from it. And that’s just one example of course.
It was like the opposite of gentrification? Less violent than Tulsa but with a very similar lasting effect where a once prosperous community becomes a recovery zone for a century due to imposed issues the community should never have had to deal with.
By no means have I ever actually thought fiscal conservatism was valid, I had only just been learning about them in school at the time. As someone generally optimistic with a good teacher in the subject, it’s easy to see that the hope of fiscal conservatism immediately dies with action. As you said, there is plenty of money in the government and there are a plethora of policies in which we could self invest our resources. Hell, we don’t even need to take from our current budget - imagine if we exported more than we imported (where feasible). Instead we sell it off for a one time fee to a corporation - resource gone and any potential long term value decimated.
None of the actions touting fiscal conservatism as the reason ever align with actually fiscal policy, if non-systemically prejudiced policy even exists. Not 20 years ago. Not 60 years ago. And certainly not today.