{"id":84,"date":"2017-06-21T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/wordpress\/almostclassical\/?p=84"},"modified":"2023-11-25T22:33:13","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T04:33:13","slug":"trump-and-brownback-and-the-gop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/2017\/06\/21\/trump-and-brownback-and-the-gop\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Brownback and the GOP"},"content":{"rendered":"

If socialists and statists wanted to damage limited government and republicanism they could not have chosen better men as Manchurians than Donald Trump<\/a> and Sam Brownback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump is the poster child for crony capitalism and everything against the ideals of a free and open society you could imagine. Open: as in trade, borders, tolerance, speech….<\/p>\n

Brownback apparently never completed a serious economics course and certainly never read Adam Smith<\/a>, Hayek<\/a>, or Milton Friedman<\/a>. His knowledge of economics is superficial and based on slogans, not reason. You balance budgets with mildly progressive taxes that recognize the commons must be funded or the middle-class<\/strong>\u00a0will revolt. (Smith noted all rebellions in English politics are from the monied classes, not the bottom.)<\/p>\n

Low taxes are ideal. As low as the community will tolerate, ideally. Low and fair, rewarding hard work. But you cannot cut taxes without a plan to determine what should be funded and why.<\/p>\n

In my ideal world, only first-responders and a handful of other priorities are funded through taxes. As little as possible, but enough that people don’t revolt. You prove some things can be and should be privatized.<\/p>\n

Basically, as even Keynes wrote, you balance the budget first in a stable economy, and then decide which path to take from there (more or less welfare). You only go into debt for emergencies. Keynes argued debts should be short-term.<\/p>\n

The Republicans did this to themselves. Every step of the way. Every time they embraced ignorant talking heads and pundits with no economic, philosophical, historical, or scientific perspectives.<\/p>\n

Read Hayek’s\u00a0Road to Serfdom<\/a><\/em>. Curiously, the GOP is heading right into this anti-democratic, anti-republican abyss led by a Tweeting billionaire with an Ivy League degree and no actual interest in knowledge.<\/p>\n

Hayek noted… liberalism doesn’t need to be democratic. It needs to be educated and moral.<\/p>\n

No wonder young people believe socialism must be better <\/em><\/strong><\/a>in various polls. Keep this up, GOP, and you\u2019ll elect someone to the left of Bernie Sanders<\/a> next time. This won\u2019t end well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If socialists and statists wanted to damage limited government and republicanism they could not have chosen better men as Manchurians than Donald Trump and Sam…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1533,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"iawp_total_views":4,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,36,8,30],"tags":[323,80,379,370,391,130,29],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-econ","category-history","category-politics","category-taxes","tag-adam-smith","tag-trump","tag-hayek","tag-keynes","tag-milton-friedman","tag-political-parties","tag-republicans","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2024\/03\/AC_Banner_Gray_1200x630.png?fit=1200%2C630&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfivL7-1m","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1435,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/1435"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tameri.com\/almostclassical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}