eyelessgame | (no subject)

(no subject)

"Dad? What's the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? Seriously. I know you said 'there have to be some babies dropped on their heads, otherwise there wouldn't be any Republicans', but what is the difference between them?"

Well, okay. To be serious and fair about it, I think you can boil down the difference in economic theory between Democrats and Republicans to this: Democrats care more about the median, and Republicans care more about the mean.

(Obviously they all care about both, and they all want both to go up.) That is, a Republican considers something a good policy if it increases the average amount of money a person makes, while a Democrat considers something a good policy if it increases the amount of money an average person makes.

He thought about that for a while. "Then we're Democrats, right? Good."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It depends on which Republicans and which Democrats. I don't think on the whole big Republican backers care a lot about the mean or the median. They care about maintaining the prerogatives of the very rich, ensuring the continuation of the cynical version of the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rules. They're rich enough so that less material wealth is not much of an issue, so long as everyone else is also poorer and dependent on them.

Obviously, that doesn't describe most Republican voters. But I think it does drive Republican policy.

I think there's a lot of that -- if you gauge the amount of effort put on each of the republican priorities (see my response to Ross below) most of what they do is based on maintaining prerogatives of the rich. But they sell these policies mostly on the theory of low taxation and lax regulation permits Ye Magick Of Ye Marketplace (tm) to increase GDP, which supposedly trickles down to be good for everybody eventually.

I'd put things in non-economic terms:

Republicans think that the best response to facing life's difficulties is to try to conserve and protect what you already have.

Democrats think that the best response to facing life's difficulties is to try to progress forward to improve things for everyone.

It's not just about money.

Well, that's generic conservative/progressive theory, which arguably is an important distinction as well. But in practicality, at least over the past 1-2 decades, I don't see the two parties as really embodying either of these: the Democrats are forced mostly to attempt to conserve/protect what we have, and the Republicans are doing a lot more changing...

Another possible formulation: the social contract necessarily involves giving up some personal freedom (compared to what you would experience if you were completely by yourself) in exchange for receiving certain benefits from society at large.

Republicans are concerned with minimizing the amount of personal freedom that must be given up. Democrats are concerned with maximizing the benefit you gain by living in society.

(I speak here of Platonic ideal versions of the parties. The actual behavior of both parties is often at odds with their espoused ideals *cough*Patriot Act*cough*.)

That may be true in the economic realm, but as social conservatives, Repubs definitely want to restrict some freedoms that Dems may be looser on -- like reproductive freedom and access to medical marijuana.

I would argue that there are (at least) two factions in the Republican party: a more-or-less libertarian faction (small government, fiscal conservatism, maximum personal liberty consistent with orderly society) and a strongly authoritarian faction (moral society enforced through legislation.) These factions don't necessarily have a lot in common, and are even theoretically opposed on some issues, but they both end up under the aegis of the Republican party.

It certainly breaks down that way, in terms of there being groups where one or the other -- fiscal conservatism or social control -- is their primary goal. But are the fiscal conservatives really small-l libertarians, given how willing they are to sell social freedoms off to get the votes of the religious right?

Well, I did say "more or less" :)

I suspect that they're willing to sacrifice a handful of freedoms that they personally wouldn't use much -- gay marriage and abortion, say -- in exchange for the political clout to get more of their main agenda through. Of course, their "main agenda" has gotten pretty much stepped on for most of the Bush administration, which is one of the reasons why a lot of Republicans are pretty unhappy with the current regime.

I say there are five. Everything the Republican party does is done for some combination of the five power groups, typically about 2 of the 5; so long as progress is made on at least one front that each group cares about, each group puts up with the things they don't like about the others:

war against Muslims - neocons, theocons
general defense spending, war for oil - big business, neocons
low taxes - big business, libertarians
destroying safety net/public education - racists, libertarians, some theocons
undermining government regulation - big business, libertarians
law-and-order - neocons, racists, some theocons
anti-immigration - neocons, racists
pro-gun - libertarians, racists
anti-abortion, anti-teh-gay - theocons (and racists, who tend as a group to be homophobic and sexually controlling in addition to being racist)
appointing judges that enforce this sort of state - everybody

I considered that, but I thought I'd try a little better to describe actual Republican economic policy, which monomaniacally is based on lowering taxes. The economic justification that Republicans themselves give for lowering taxes is that it will increase GDP. I take them at their word that this is the intended goal of their policies.

Other than economic issues, national Republican candidates and national Republican policies are solely concerned with the following priorities: catching the terrorists in your telephones, preventing a women from controlling her own uterus, locking presumed lawbreakers up for ever-increasing lengths of time, reducing the availability of public education, removing the ability of government to function, and preventing gay people from being married. In the last decade I have seen exactly zero Republican initiatives that even pretend to be in the direction of "minimizing the amount of personal freedom that must be given up".

Oh, they're there. You are most likely freer to let your factory pollute the local environment under a Republican administration, for instance. You're freer to hire only people whose skin tones you find pleasingly aesthetic. You're freer to express to your more female employees how much you appreciate their excellent racks. You're freer to point out to your illegal immigrant workers that you can have them deported with a phone call. The list goes on...

I would disagree with your definition, unless by "a person" you mean "that specific Republican". And even then there are a large number of Republicans who are sufficiently involved in the class war that they will be very happy with any policy that kills the poor, even at a cost to themselves.

And even then the definition doesn't include the neo-Taliban, who are perfectly happy to give money to their party master so long as they get to punish infidels.

These are certainly reasonable descriptions of the non-virulent parts of the parties. Unfortunately, the virulent part of the Republican party (the Dominionists, the authoritarians, etc.) apparently constitutes roughly 20% of voters in recent elections.

Yah, it's interesting. I don't actually know the subdivisions of the Democratic party that well (none of our "power groups" seem to have any actual power -- minorities? poor? unions? still waiting...) but the Republican party breaks down along five groups: Big Business, Endless Warriors, theocrats, racists, and libertarians, in descending order of influence. This was a fascinating primary because each group had their own candidate, and each candidate was unappealing to at least two other groups.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only