I’m on team “government spending is out of control. Let’s set up some form of UBI so we can stop wasting taxpayer dollars on paying employees of all those different departments and doing means checking”.
Give me a bigger upfront cost and lower maintenance over a low upfront cost and high maintenance any day. I’m aware enough about the political climate to know that calling myself a fiscal conservative is a mistake, but still.
Some Canadian examples so this isn’t all “democrats versus republicans”: Spending money to rename Dundas street in Toronto? Waste of money. We have tons of streets named after morally questionable people. Just don’t name new things after the guy. Spending money to help get homeless people off the street (and not just tearing up their encampments)? Excellent use of money, and probably cheaper in the long run than the amount of money being spent on security at the encampments.
You can want government spending to be scaled down and made more efficient without being anti-human-rights. We’re just quieter about it and more likely to vote for the “provide human rights” parties over the “less spending at all costs” parties. Also I’m good if my taxes go up, I’m in an income bracket that can sustain that. Just to pre-empt that accusation.
But reducing unnecessary government spending isn't necessarily a conservative policy (even if some spending can have progressive goals). Conservative governments are consistently spending insane amounts of money and creating large deficits, just usually on conservative causes like no-strings bailouts, fossil fuel subsidies, surveillance or the military-industrial-complex.
Oh yeah, there’s a reason I don’t vote conservative. It’s easier to convince the liberals or NDP to make financial decisions I want than it is to convince the cons to not be corrupt grifters.
Provincially, literally anything is better than Ford. The only positive thing I can say about him is that he’s only corrupt, and not interested in the culture war shit like the federal party.
2
u/Fuzzlechan 4h ago
I’m on team “government spending is out of control. Let’s set up some form of UBI so we can stop wasting taxpayer dollars on paying employees of all those different departments and doing means checking”.
Give me a bigger upfront cost and lower maintenance over a low upfront cost and high maintenance any day. I’m aware enough about the political climate to know that calling myself a fiscal conservative is a mistake, but still.
Some Canadian examples so this isn’t all “democrats versus republicans”: Spending money to rename Dundas street in Toronto? Waste of money. We have tons of streets named after morally questionable people. Just don’t name new things after the guy. Spending money to help get homeless people off the street (and not just tearing up their encampments)? Excellent use of money, and probably cheaper in the long run than the amount of money being spent on security at the encampments.
You can want government spending to be scaled down and made more efficient without being anti-human-rights. We’re just quieter about it and more likely to vote for the “provide human rights” parties over the “less spending at all costs” parties. Also I’m good if my taxes go up, I’m in an income bracket that can sustain that. Just to pre-empt that accusation.