DBP
waterworld, thanks. You’re helping move this thing forward. Definitely. But we’re still coming from widely different positions.
I can see that folks here aren’t ready for the Socratic approach yet, so I’ll have to drop that for now. I do want to keep it in the toolbox for later though . . .
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By drilling down a little bit on this, I think the Lefties will be able to make some headway on understanding where the Righties are coming from. I think we need to uncover some deeper understanding of how the two sides view national economic policy.
Lefties tend to view economics like this: We want this economic OUTCOME, so we direct government to take these STEPS to achieve it.
Example: We want to expand the get people shopping again, so we have the Fed lower interest rates.
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Righties, on the other hand, tend to view economic policy as something that should reflect government as a whole.
Which in turn should reflect society as a whole.
Which in turn, should reflect their own personal values.
Righties tend to have a more cautious approach to spending money, and they want government policy to reflect that.
(That’s what I was trying to arrive at with wakeflood, but I was having trouble leading that particular horse to water.)
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There are good arguments to made on both sides, I think. But there’s not much hope for people to come to agreement on this until both sides can at least understand where the other side is coming from.
That’s why we’ve got gridlock so bad right now. It’s not just that people aren’t listening to each other. Hell, they’re not even speaking the same language.
Yet.