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The fundamental problem facing fiscal conservatives is that practically speaking balancing the budget necessitates cutting (or at least curtailing the growth of) entitlements and raising taxes. Doing the latter is apparently unthinkable and doing the former in a way that is consequential is electoral suicide (at least absent a bipartisan agreement to tell elder voters to shove it, which, uh, lol). There's only so far delusional claims about efficiency improvements and tax cuts paying for themselves can take you.
Sidebar: Trump brought up his desire to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal again, if you want another reason why a lot of allies are feeling antsy about their relationship with the US.
To be fair, this has always been a weakness of democratic systems. They don’t care what the correct answer to a given problem is, they care what people want. If you ask a bunch of kids what they want for dinner, you’re getting pizza, burgers, fried foods, and some sort of fries or macaroni, you won’t be getting vegetables, lean meats, fruits, vegetables, or whole grains. Of course the stuff kids won’t choose turn out to be the correct choices.
The correct answer to a budget is to make it balance and not load it down with giveaways — especially to people who are not productive in any way. The correct answer to war is “only go to war if you can’t avoid it, and if you’re defending someone else, then at the very least you should benefit from involvement.” The correct answer on immigration is strict control, selection for high value immigrants from capable countries and cultures, and only in a small number. I don’t think most of these answers would win at the ballot box. That doesn’t make it not correct, it means there’s a weakness for plebiscite in making decisions like that.
That's certainly the traditional critique, but I'm not sure it holds up. And by not sure I mean I'm sure it doesn't. The US' finances are unusually messy for a wealthy developed country. The US has a debt-to-GDP ratio of approximately 120%. Pretty bad, though our northern adversary and former overlord both hover around 100%, so maybe it's just an Anglosphere thing. Or maybe not, since Australia's is ~50%.
Conversely, the 'give-away' heavy democracies of Europe (e.g. the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Belgium) broadly have better public finances than the US in terms of both debt and deficit (some actually run a modest surplus from time to time). This despite generally weaker economies and lower per capita income. American conservatives like to attribute this to (lack of) military spending, but they're mostly wrong. The primary driver of the difference is taxation - the US spends like a high-tax country, but has relatively low taxes. This is not a general failing of democracy, it is an peculiarity of American politics.
I don't have any theories as to the deep rooted cause of this, but in a proximate sense, I think this is fairly straightforwardly explained by the fact that the US doesn't actually have any fiscal conservatives. The Democrats are, broadly, fiscally liberal. They want to raise taxes and redistribute the money or spend it on public services (but will happily settle for the latter without the former). The Republicans, however, are not fiscally conservative. They are merely anti-taxation. They might like to cut welfare spending and public services, but when push comes to shove they always prioritize cutting taxes over balancing the budget or paying down the deficit.
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The fundamental problem of fiscal conservatives is that they aren't that dominant including on the right. Trump is not a fiscal conservative. I don't see the energy in the republicans not to cut taxes, and I don't think they are only doing it for electoral purposes, while otherwise they would want to do it.
That this is the case, doesn't mean that on its own merits cutting woke programs isn't worth it, just cause it isn't part of a consistent fiscal conservative plan.
Can Trump and the republicans be criticized from a fiscal conservative point of view? Yes, they can since they are adding significantly to the deficit. Of course the fact that Democrats have their own plans for green new agenda and so on, doesn't mean that both Democrats and Republicans can't be both bad, if deficits do in fact matter.
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I actually think his Panama Canal position is reasonable. There was a dumb contract signed by Carter that gave away the Canal subject to certain conditions. Panama violated those conditions. So why shouldn’t the Canal return to US control?
Greenland should be bought.
It seems the key ports went from being owned by a Hong Kong firm to being owned by Blackrock. My guess is that Larry Fink and Li Ka-Shing have an equally mercenary attitude to both the CCP and the GOP.
As you might expect, really. Isn't Li Ka-Shing rather on the outs with the Party at the moment?
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They gave material control to PRC
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Turns out you can claim a 50 year old treaty had different words and your supporters won't look at it!
Trump et al. now claim China controls the canal, because Landbridge and Hutchison, Chinese companies, have port concessions nearby. It's some Art of the Deal crap to message incoherently and obscure your actual goal for theoretical leverage. The US charged cost for transit, but the Panamanians regularly increase transit costs (a free market between using it and going around). That was ok, until the LNG boom, where even though LNG exports (to Japan, Korea...) through the canal are limited because of wait times (only 60% go through, the rest opt to go around), they compose almost half of canal revenue. (Tanker transit costs about $600k.) This feels like US industry is being unjustly charged.
The Neutrality Treaty specifies "just, reasonable, equitable" tolls. Although the US Navy always paid, the administration recently wanted Navy ships exempted. (N.b. US Navy ships don't have to wait in line.) Brzezinski convinced everyone to support the treaty by stating the US could simply take the canal back if Panama closed it. Trump's trying to equivocate charging market rates with closing the canal.
Personally, I think ceding control was a bad move (just like opposing the Suez intervention in 57) but this has all the finesse and trustworthiness of a sleazy carny. Simply announce that the US is open to expansion, allow Greenland, Panama or sections thereof to join the United States as new territories (if both sides desire). Simply announce that the US wants lower transit fees and higher throughput at the same time (logically, how could this happen considering the maintenance and construction burden?) and negotiate from that. But no, the administration does not respect its own electorate nor its peers and regularly lies to them (whether out of malice or ADHD, who can know?)
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At least the Republicans didn’t applaud!
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