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Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 494 - Unsustainable Liberal Policies.

Being Left-Wing Entails Self-Imposed Political Extinction-

Conservatives often exclaim that liberal policies are not sustainable. They are not solvent. They are socialist. They will bankrupt us. We can't afford them. We'll have to double or triple or quintuple taxes to pay for them. Etcetera. Etcetera.

All of that is true.

But liberals don't care about any of that. They even embrace some of those criticisms.

To really get the point across, liberals need to understand that their gargantuan government programs, paid for with ever-expanding tax rates and types, are politically unsustainable. I know it's hard for liberals to believe, because they look at polls showing how 55% support this program, or 60% support that program, or 80% support the idea that every child should have x, y, and z guaranteed. It's hard to believe, but people respond to big government. Policies matter. When people feel the burden of high taxes, they move themselves, their businesses, and their money to places where they'll be treated better.

Again, this is tough for liberals to digest. There's a real sense of moral superiority and concurrent denial from liberals about liberal ideas. Of course they're good. Of course they work.

Well, as Scott Hodge of the Tax Foundation said yesterday at an event here in Austin, liberals like to point to the necessity of taxes to pay for roads and education and other things people and businesses require. What they don't tell you is that if you raise taxes too high, your people will just use all of that wonderful transportation infrastructure to flee your state. And once you've spent your wad on education, if your taxes are too high and therefore there aren't plentiful good jobs, your people will feel no obligation to stay and repay the state for the free education. No, they'll pack up and move to Texas.

And speaking of packing and moving, get a load of these numbers (.pdf):

Note, as has been noted on this website time and time again, that the high in-migration states tend to be "red" states with low taxes. Meanwhile, the high out-migration states are more likely to be "blue" states with higher taxes. A million here, a million there, and soon you're looking at real numbers.

Okay, so states with liberal policies are losing people to states with conservative policies.

So what, says the liberal. If anything, that's good. People are bad for the environment, man. Save Mother Gaia. All that sort of thing.

Well, first, no civilization or culture can survive if it actively seeks to diminish its own population. Second, it's a bizarre contradiction: liberals set up these pyramid scheme entitlement programs that depend on ever-increasing numbers of people to support them, all while actively seeking to guarantee fewer people.

So, liberals still don't care. We've made some decent points, but all of that is just conservative mumbo-jumbo. They've heard it before.

Okay, this is what we're building up to, here (.pdf):

New York, alone, will lose 16 Congressional seats during this period. Those are going mostly to Georgia and Florida and Texas. From the extended Northeast, 36 seats will shift to states with pro-growth policies.

That's 72 seats worth of difference over this period of time. Those numbers also apply to the Electoral College.

Liberals might retort that they'll just infiltrate Texas and Georgia and Florida and turn those states into liberal havens, too. That way, people will stop moving there from their home base in New England or New York or New Jersey (or Michigan, or California). That's admitting defeat, though.

That is an admission that their policies are unattractive and unsuccessful. That's hard to admit.

And, ultimately, if people and jobs move to low tax states, which become high tax states through the hard work and dedication of unions and lobbyists and the establishment media, and people move to Utah or South Dakota-- or wherever is left-- to find refuge, we'll eventually run out of low tax states. People won't have anywhere to move, right? They'll be locked in to liberal policies, wherever they go within the United States.

Well-- and it's already happening-- people and businesses and capital will start packing up and heading to Ireland or Slovakia or Hong Freaking Kong, where taxes are low and capital/business is treated right.

All of this ought to point to one imperative notion about the world:

Those of us with conservative governments (like here in Texas) must seize this chance. We must DO something with our political power that will sustain our ideas and our political viability for the future. Being liberal-lite Republicans, in the same way that America and Europe often tried the "third way" between communism and capitalism during the Cold War, is not only a recipe for destroying the GOP brand within the base of the party, it's a recipe for economic failure, and a recipe for growing more Democrats.

Liberal policies are most rapidly unsustainable when there are handy conservative policies nearby, to where people and money and ideas and everything else can reasonably flee.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Poisonous Political Environment.

Posted by Will Franklin · 30 May 2008 11:51 AM

Comments

Posted by: Billll at May 31, 2008 08:48 AM

Posted by: rightwingprof at May 31, 2008 01:15 PM

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at May 31, 2008 05:30 PM