Heres the fun part. They never actually shrink the government. They just cut spending on social programs that improve people’s lives and put the money into the military and the police.
small government means less taxes and regulations, so small government for corporations. it's still big government for the people though.
meanwhile they say the other side is for big government when that's the side that's against government in your bedroom, government in your doctor's office, government up your genitals, government establishing and dictating religion, government asking papers at every turn, a god-king president being above the law, and on and on...
bullshit terms made by people who want to control you and give their buddies more money.
Hey can you explain this? I was recently looking into libertarian they seem to want a smaller gov. Does it just not at all shake out like that?
There's a book "a libertarian walks into a bear" that examines a real life attempt to do libertarianism. It ends badly, with bears and fires, and the town does markedly worse than the neighboring town that did normal government stuff.
Also, someone pitching "smaller government" is going to need to define what they actually mean and why that's a good thing. Gutting public education, for example, I think would be a very bad thing that someone might pursue in the interest of "smaller government"
Smaller government translates to more freedom for corporations to do what they want and less protection for middle and lower class. They’ll try to justify it by saying it’s best for everybody, but I think it ultimately just mirrors trickle down logic.
There are people who, disturbed by "big government" today and its tendency to curb the advantages they might gain if their competitiveness were allowed free flow, demand "less govern- ment." Alas, there is no such thing as less government, merely changes in government. If the libertarians had their way, the distant bureaucracy would vanish and the local bully would be in charge. Personally, I prefer the distant bureaucracy, which may not find me, over the local bully, who certainly will. And all historical precedent shows a change to localism to be for the worse.
—Isaac Asimov, Nice Guys Finish First, collected in The Sun Shines Bright, 1981
As anyone who has lived in a Rocky Mountain town can say, Distant bullies are pretty bad too.
But that's a sort of unique situation. Or it was until Reagan. See, the entire Rocky Mountain range is treated as a sort of internal colony.
Resources are extracted, but the people who own the companies doing the extraction all pretty much live on one of the coasts.
And then every store is also owned by someone who lives on one of the coasts.
This means that any real wealth produced in those states, quickly leaves those states.
A lot of towns in the area never really had a "down town" in the first place, and with the creation of Walmart and such, no one else gets a downtown either.
The answer of course is a bigger government. But it has to be free of corporate influence.
Which might just take a very big government. Like expanding the House and Supreme Court big.
Both are desperately needed.
mm not quite, businessmen bribe donate to politicians so that they can be above the law and profit off citizens anyway they want to.
Although what you said is true for businesses that sell to the military. That would look more like a businessman shoveling money into the government’s mouth (aka bribing to get government contracts) and then eating the government’s shit
politicians are not the government; people are the government. they give politicians money in exchange for larger tax cuts and subsidies. that's taking money from the government, not giving it any.
politicians are not the government
Wh- what? Show me a wikipedia page for a government official that doesn't have the word "politician" as part of their description.
people are the government
Maybe in an ideal democracy, but America (the country this comic is referring to by criticizing Reagan) is a republic
first of all, a government official? i didn't say government officials aren't politicians. i said the politicians aren't the government.
second of all, context clues:
we were talking about money here, so guess what, I was talking about money too. the government's money is your tax money. and money rich people give to the politicians doesn't go to the government, it goes to the politicians themselves, otherwise you couldn't buy a politician. billionaires and corporations don't give money to politicians so you can get more public services.
this isn't pedantry. you fail to understand basic concepts. you claimed bribing politicians is the same as shoveling money into the government's mouth, when it's the exact opposite. paying taxes is giving government money. bribing politicians so you can get subsidies and tax cuts is sucking money from the government. if you can't tell the difference, which is like night and day, that's not on me.
The donate and lobby so they can be above the law AND receive barrel of cash subsidies from the government
Whilst some money needs to be taken out of politics around lobbying and other stuff, small government is mostly an attack on that Government.
It's anti-patriotism disguised as patriotism. Seeks to weaken the state, the nation, the people by depriving them of services and government owned revenue steams via privatization and theft of state assets by private industry.
I've yet to see a small government conservative shrink the volume of government spending or the size of it's workforce.
They mostly just replace teachers and safety inspectors and public sector engineers with cops and consultants and cronies.
They're also only "small" when it comes to big corps wanting to do something exploitive, not for citizens rights
Its only function is to redirect money to private companies with relationships with small government officials.
I believe it is a bonus square that someone has deftly edited onto the original comic to save us all the trouble of loading up the author's website.
