So...in last night's group of essays, I covered my reactions to Jean Jacque Rousseau and Karl Marx when I read them for a political philosophy class back in 2009. And....when I really dissect my beliefs, despite calling myself a "moderate conservative" at the time, it's quite clear my economic views were closer toward establishment liberalism. Like, I always had this pro labor and anti elite aspect to my politics. I never trusted the wealthy to look after the best interests of the people, I always recognized they screwed people over, and I quite frankly only voted conservative because I literally didn't believe liberal ideas could work. I mean, stuff we already had, like social security, minimum wage laws, etc., I could get behind. I mean, I was a structural functionalist, we tried those ideas and they worked. But I was very anti welfare (outside of like social security), and I opposed any efforts to shift America even further left. This was because, at the center of my ideology, I understood that what made capitalism work was its incentive structure. The profit motive was what motivated people to work. When you take that away, there's no longer any motivation in the system. If you made people too economically comfortable not working, they wouldnt work. if you taxed people too much, they would stop trying to excel. So...for me, it was like "yeah, it sucks, but we kind of need society to be like this to function."
What changed for me? Well, first of all, after the Tea Party took over and I saw them scream about the budget deficit and arguing we need to cut spending in the middle of a recession, while also proposing tax cuts for the wealthy, the ruse fell apart. When my dad was laid off and told that they did it so the company could keep its record profits, I understood that trickle down was a scam. When I analyzed republican tax plans like Herman Cain's 999 plan and the fairtax, I understood the net benefit of this plan was rich people. We normal people pay MORE in taxes, wealthy people pay less. I understood that in an economy with no jobs, where the rich have no money, cutting taxes on the rich while also cutting safety nets was literally psychotic, and I realized conservative ideals are just bad at their core and abandoned that belief system.
And then as I built up my views under a more humanistic approach, I continued to look for solutions for the economic mess we were in, only for UBI to fit the bill. And like many people, I was skeptical at first. Like, come on, we're gonna raise taxes to the tune of $3 billion to fund a guaranteed safety net for everyone? No one would work, and we'd lose all motivation. But being scientifically minded, I was willing to look for evidence, and evidence, UBI supporters had. There are countless studies showing that at least up to the poverty line, work incentives are minimal. The fact is, UBI isn't enough to give everyone a GOOD life, it's just enough for the bare minimum, and most would still be motivated to work. We'd see SOME reduction in work ethic, like, maybe 10-15% in terms of hours worked AT MOST, but all in all, it was sustainable. Quite frankly, I would need to look at studies of those who won the lottery to find a significant work reduction, and even those guys only dropped out at like a 50% rate despite having to the tune of say, 3-8x the poverty line worth of income a year. Think the "$1000 a week for life" kind of people. And then the tax rates. Sure, if we taxed at like 100%, we'd see a reduction of work ethic, but at like 50%, which is where most tax schemes with UBI would end up? Not really. With rates studied between 30% and 70%, yeah, the 70% stopped working more than 30%, but still, it was relatively sustainable in that curve. If we looked at international studies on tax rates and what's sustainable, the maximum sustainable rate is somewhere around 70%. So with that said, we can say motivation if a spectrum, and that we can move up to social democracy level taxation with a poverty line level UBI, and still have a functioning capitalist economy.
So...why don't we do that? Why don't the left push for that? At first, I thought it was simply because the pressure from the Reagan revolution forced them to the center. And they just needed to rediscover their voice and convictions. The great recession was the greatest economic crisis since the great depression, and it was clear what we're doing wasn't working, and it was clear trickle down economics were a scam. If we wanted to retake the narrative from the right, the 2010s were the time to do it.
So imagine when 2008's sloppy seconds came back and insisted it was her turn, and how we can't have nice things. Clinton was perfectly amenable to me in 2008. Seriously, given Bill clinton's approach to the national debt, and Hillary's opposition to the Iraq War, I liked Clinton better than McCain. Because she WAS a moderate, I knew it, and I understood despite my conservative beliefs, that I could be comfortable with a moderate liberal president. I just was told by Fox News that Obama was a literal communist and thought that that was too much.
But then Obama governed like I expected Clinton to, and I found him far more reasonable than the republicans, who were very quickly radicalizing. And given my evolving views at the time, yeah, I became pro Obama in 2012, and in his second term, I shifted further left to where I am now. So yeah, by 2016, I wasn't interested in Clinton. If anything, I found her views to be far too moderate, closer to my own 2008 views. I mean, you got this moderate christian who was wishy washy on abortion, gay marriage, and who supported minimum wage laws and the economic status quo but was otherwise quite fiscally conservative, and it's like...this is me in 2008. And I had long since evolved since then.
I mean, it's quite clear college was a transitory time for me, and while most of the ideological shifts explicitly happened in 2011-2013 or so, with 2012 being the big focal point for me, I was moderating from like 2006 onward. Because my Biblical Christian worldview was shattered back in my freshman year in college, and while I maintained some level of my Christian and conservative views in the following years, my worldview was conflicted and I didn't really have a consistent, coherent worldview.
Quite frankly, moderate democrats have exactly that worldview. They are trying to constantly compromise with the right. They don't have solid convictions. They got these weird liberal Christian beliefs, and they basically let the right's worldview serve as an ideological anchor while walking it back a bit from the edge of extremism. But here's the thing, as an ex conservative and ex Christian, this isn't a good place to be. Because such an ideological zone is a storm of cognitive dissonance. It appeals to virtually no one. Remember, I voted for McCain. Did Obama need my moderate vote to win elections? Hillary was the more "moderate" candidate. She was the conventionally "electable" one. Did that fricking matter? No. Obama won in a landslide, and the whole electability narrative was repudiated for me. It isn't the more moderate, candidate who wins elections, it's the one who fires people up and excites them. "Hope, change, yes we can!" That's what did it. Not "well we need to be moderate, so we can win moderates, because moderation is good, for some reason." That's McCain 2008, that's Romney 2012, it's an enthusiasm killer. Because you're alienating your own side and not doing a darned thing to win over voters from the other side. But now we're in our weird McCain/Romney esque desert running people like HRC, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris.
Really. I guess I'm rambling now. I really just got on to say that, yeah, 2009 me was a fricking centrist lib and didn't even know it. Conservative me, was economically a very moderate liberal. I was pro minimum wage laws, pro unions, I was just super pro work ethic and anti welfare. Which is basically a moderate lib anyway. I mean, no wonder I liked Obama once he governed a bit, right? My views were always closer to that than the republicans on economic issues. I was just a brainwashed idiot voting against my own interests. But thankfully, i grew out of that at a relatively young age, and now I have logically consistent beliefs that actually stand for something. And now I look at centrist dems like...ew you're like old me, the one I called conservative, actual progressives should be so much further left.
I mean, let's face it, these centrist libs have conservative convictions, they just recognize that they shouldn't just go so far right they lose touch with reality. And yeah. Again, my views are just cut from a different cloth now, and as such, I despise that old belief system.
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