Chuck
I don't know to much about US politics, However it is my impression that US political history seams to indicate that the American people don't really warm to Socialism and as such the two parties are right leaning but one more so than the other. Would that be a correct assessment or have I miss read it?? I can only judge other countries political systems through my understanding of Australian politics.
Regards David
David,
Your spot on, but you also have realize we're not about in anyway to go socialist anymore than what FDR, Johnson or Nixon (yes, I did say Nixon) did in the last century. Considering the magnitude of this financial crisis / crash / fiasco we're in, the only way to extract ourselves out of this mess will be through government spending, & I'd much rather see us grow our deficit at this point to keep jobs & put people back to work than suffer the consequences of another depression. Even if the new administration was given a blank check & opened the flood gates to new infrastructure, WPA, home loan restructuring, auto industry bailout, universal health care, etc... programs its important to understand that Ronald Reagan ran a higher national debt to GDP ratio than anything you would
EVER see today, & it certainly won't approach the record 125% we had at the end of WW2 that ushered in 30 years of economic growth. Of course, that doesn't change the path that we're headed on which isn't anything one party or the other can change. Kevin Philips work,
Wealth & Democracy & his new book,
Bad Money, should be required reading in American high school civics & economics courses.
The funniest part I find about all this rhetoric being thrown about is that if one looks back over the past century, you'll find higher economic & job growth under Democratic administrations than Republican, & yet all you hear about is taxes, taxes, taxes from the other side. Considering that all this talk about a "tax increase" is not an increase at all, but simply allowing the present Bush tax holiday to expire as it was meant in 2010 resulting in a net increase of 3% for those in the uppermost income bracket. Hardly something that will bankrupt those hardworking middle class tax payers who are supposedly going to be paying for this "new socialist agenda" that is purportedly coming at us.
Again, I'm a fiscally conservative, socially moderate Republican who wants to see us get back to what the party used to be like in the days of Eisenhower, Goldwater & GHW Bush. Its a damn shame those running the GOP can't see the benefits of that.
Chuck