What does a "small government" look like?

I'm an anarchist. I've never liked minarchy, the nightwatchman state, or consequentialist libertarianism in general. Do conservatives even claim they want small government anymore?

Government coercion to me is no different to criminal coercion. Listen to your conscience, not the laws of others. Even the NAP - if you disagree with it, that's fine - pursue your ends as an individual, whatever they might be.

Politics is just bad ethics.

 

No more then 25% combined state local and federal.

Government should manage the commons, (clean air and water and mangement of government lands and property), enforce contracts and other legal rights, protect life and property (police and military). That is all it should do. The rest is better off with the private sector.

 

This is the kind of answer I'm looking for. Something honest.

What about health care?

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Yes, we were in a recession. We averted a double-dip recession thanks to Bernanke.

Your opinion doesn't make the facts untrue.

 

Nope. They will raise its cost. Charitable hospitals and insurance. Same system that made us the leader in medicine and care. The CDC can stay and outbreak prevention.

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Nonsense. That is what they tell you so they can get away with making people rich who didn't earn their money.

This couldn't possibly be directed at me. My facts make the right opinions true.

 

Socialized medicine is proven to be cheaper.

No recession?

If tea party birds would move out of the way, our government would be able to pass more stimulus.

 

Does it get most of its innovation from private economies? Does it have shortages? Cheaper doesn't equal better.

No double dip. The recession was caused by cheap money policies. What do you think financed those loans? Please answer.

Exactly, that is why I like them. Employment tanked during the stimulus. Free cash giveaway used to be called corruption. How much did you get from the stimulus? 80% went to big Obama bundlers, were you one of them?

You may think it is funny some people work for money and others get it handed to them in piles by the government but the people dont and they are becoming wise to the act.

 

Small government doesn't necessarily mean simple government or even radically different from what we have now... it can also mean smaller government. You are attempting to put an unreasonable burden of proof upon others here, unless you actually imagine that government could be fully set out in one forum post.

 

But remember, like its namesake, the elderly in Aynrandistan still expect their Social Security and Medicare.

 

BTW, since Reagan, "fiscal conservatism"...has been shown to be a hoax.

There's the CLAIMED desire of the public for smaller Federal Government....then there's their ACTUAL desire for services from the Federal Government.

Republicans, when they win, run on the former....govern on the latter. And that governance never sees cuts in entitlements or even cuts...at all.

In fact, the Great Hero Ronald Reagan showed the way. He ran in 1980 on "eliminating the Dept.s of Energy and Education".....instead, once in office? He not only kept those Departments, but created a BRAND NEW Cabinet-level Department, Veterans' Affairs. Even the Gingrich "Revolution" never saw Newt and the Boys go after the Big Ticket Items.....for they realized they did so at their political peril. Dubya burned through ALL his post-2004 re-election political clout on his "partial privatization of Social Security" scheme in 2005....and in 2006, Democrats re-took the Congress.

Of course...despite 30+ years of failure....the "fiscal conservatives" claim that "Next time...it'll work!"....the same thing they attack "lib'ruls for always saying when they fail."

 

In 2009, gosh I'm sorry, I thought we have been discussing the here and now and the size of gov't. That doesn't make your comments consistent either. You can't simultaneously claim things are good when it suits you, then invoke the 2009 recession when that suits you. Stick to one point in time.

We have been in many recessions with government both big and small, but you question beg, if Bernanke avoided a second recession, then why the hell didn't he avoid the first?

Ignore the bad, dubious claims of good, I present the liberal religion.

It's not an opinion, it's the logical endpoint of your thinking. If government printing cash and handing it out actually worked as you claim, economic policy would be solved forever more. All anyone has to do is print and spend their way to prosperity. Been tried, doesn't work.

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there is another branch of gov't called congress, they did not let him implement his full agenda

 

"The long of tooth should never look a gift horse up the arse." Johnny Galt

 

What's big government that's efficient, doesn't have overlapping regulations, isn't incompetent, and doesn't feed off the taxpayer for the sake of feeding off the taxpayer, look like? Because we sure as (*)(*)(*)(*) haven't seen that.

 

Oh aye the elderly do generally become more practical about things as they age -- especially if they do not have enough of a nest egg set aside to cover enough eventualities -- but that does not mean that they've altogether changed their minds regarding what is and is not over-all good for a nation and nor does it mean that they did not put a lifetime of economic investment into their social security and Medicare. It's not an entitlement IF you paid into it for all of your working life. It's only an entitlement if instead you spent all of your life doing sod all except stand around for a handout at the expense of people who worked for a living. Go figure.

 

none of you want to reply to my answer, and I feel like I'm the only one who tried to answer the OP question


There are several policies in the US I feel need to be changed that are examples of big government.... the NSA needs better boundaries, the TSA and DEA need to be abolished, our military spending needs to be cut, as does our overall military intervention across the globe, and we need to downsize our prison populous by getting rid of drug prohibition laws and anti-sex worker laws... in short, cut wasteful spending that doesn't benefit our citizens but takes away our freedom.. stop and frisk laws should not be allowed in the states under the law of the 4th Amendment

We (the US) used to be considered the most immigrant friendly country in the world, but now we are trailing countries like Germany, Australia, and Canada



U.S. Deports 46K Parents With Citizen Kids in Just Six Months

http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/11/shocking_data_on_parents_deported_with_citizen_children.html


if you cannot see our big government policies in the US then you are blind

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I should also mention we need to end the war on drugs and the war on terror... we're also one of the few first world countries to still practice capital punishment, we should end that as well

 

I think it is funny (in a pitiful way) that you only think cash payments are handouts. If government gives me 10K in cash welfare, you cry foul. On the other hand, if government spends 2M to build a road in front of the land I own, and that increases the value of my land by 100K, you have no problem with that. The poor guy gets a 10K cash payment, while the already rich landowner gets an additional 100K in increased land value, and you focus all your complaints on the poor person who is only getting 1/10th the handout. Go figure?

 

Further failure to understand the word "bankruptcy".

Botched that one too. There is no beauty contest out there, no panel of judges that can bestow or strip status as a reserve currency. Reserve currencies are simply those that are used by national governments as reserve assets, the things that their own currencies and economies are based on. Representing better than 60% of global holdings, US dollars are the most commonly used reserve currency in the world. At about 25%, euros are second, with the remainder being comprised of yen, pounds, and a few Swiss francs.

 

Kind of feeble, eh? Treasury auctions have nothing to do with QE. QE has nothing to do with Treasury. Happy to set the record straight for you. It's apparently easy for some to become confused.

Milton Friedman didn't think so.

No, it's an identity. You're welcome.

From what I've read here, it seems to me that whatever sort of science economics is, you don't really know much about it.

 

Nice job of using an unreliable source and then rounding it up. In actuality, the US has traditionaly sent a lower percentage of GDP through the public sector than nearly all other developed countries.

Wow! You want a second country when you already have a second planet??? One on which noise and static at the margin are taken to be fundamental? What a weird place!

 

Nice dodge. We are at 42% and getting their steadily. Our government takes 180% of what the communist party of china feels comfortable taking from their own economy. Amazing.


Your second post was just weird childish rantings we expect from the left.

 

Are you arguing de facto bankruptcy that Zimbabwe for example is going through isnt the same in effect as not paying the bills at all? Repudiation is not solvency. I think you are getting hung up on technicalities and ignoring the meat of the argument. Why not confront it instead of deflecting over terminology?

 

To Zimbabwe, it's all the same. I know what bankrupt means, I am using the expanded definition and not the strict legal.

I didn't botch anything, I never claimed there was a panel, so quit making things up. My point remains, if the dollar gets trashed, so will its reserve status because people will simply choose something else. If OPEC and others quit pricing in dollars there could be real negative consequences for us.

 

That's laughably stupid, the fed is buying long bonds, but that has NOTHING to do with the treasury.

another non-statement

no, its a definition. go read something.

seems to you? who cares?

 

and you use no source but yourself, LOL

yup, and the immature nature of that statement is exactly why I want away from you

 

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"I understand that the Republicans are actually for something they like to call 'small government.'
What has me stumped is how they can squeeze 45 senators and 233 congressmen into one itty-bitty vehicle!"​

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In the real world, our numbers and everyone else's since 2007 have been distorted into disutilty by the effects of the Great Bush Recession and steps taken everywhere to combat it. Those effects have of course begun to abate, but the notion that things are clean now or that they ever would be as reported by doofus right-wing propaganda outlets is ridiculous.