This Week in Off-Topic: I'm Done with Fiscal Politics

Hey, you, why don't you fucking pass a budget then get to making sure homosexuals get equal rights, okay? Photo Credit: Mediaite

I used to be a hardcore libertarian. Well, I still do lean that way. I don't think government should be able to spend money willy-nilly on things, but I've softened my stance over the years in terms of where the government should cut back on its frivolous money-throwing. I've also changed in that I've become a lot less evangelical about what I think about fiscal politics. While money is probably the sorest talking point in politics, I feel like it's become very much a diversionary tactic over the real issues, those being concerned with rights, the mongering of war, legality of substances, and all those other things that people tend to use as prop issues while pretending to fight over what brand of modified capitalism is best.

To me, politics should be far less about right and left and should squarely be about right and wrong. When I look at an issue like gay marriage, there's no right or left there. Either you're for letting same-sex couples marry and have the same rights afforded to consenting adults of different sex unions, or you're wrong. But how to allocate money? Well, that's tricky.

For example, I'm married to an employee of the Federal Government who is in danger of losing one day a week, without pay, due to the furlough brought on by this sequester plan. Basically, we're going to get boned out of 22 days of her wages because Congress couldn't do its job. They didn't come up with a budget plan over bullshit posturing (especially on the GOP side), so who suffers? Not them. Congress' approval rating has never been lower, but that never translates into any change because if you go into each district where these Congresspeople and Senators come from, their local approval ratings and chances for reelection normally are pretty high. It's easy to set up a straw man when you don't have voting power over the people in office, and there's a reason why it's such a shocker when an incumbent sitting officeholder gets deposed, ESPECIALLY when that person has been in office for more than a couple of terms. Hell will freeze over before Nancy Pelosi gets defeated in election and relinquish their seat due to anything else but resignation/not pursuing reelection at all. The same could have been said for Ron Paul, who only relinquished his seat in the House due to retirement. Of course, the biggest kick in the genital area isn't so much that they're there for life if they want to, but that they can vote themselves a raise, even a simple cost of living raise, whenever they want. To put that in perspective, my wife hasn't gotten a cost of living increase for the last two years, and who the fuck knows if anyone in the private sector is guaranteed any increase in wage.

To me, the act of not coming up with a budget, especially given the circumstances, is a matter of right or wrong. The fact that Congress can theoretically face no repercussion for not doing its job is absolutely wrong, and it's infuriating. Now, to me, how they come up with that budget? That's a matter of right and left, and it's not one that I really even want to concern myself with anymore. I've gotten to the point where I don't care if they pass a budget that's completely anarcho-libertarian or full on Marxist. I'm done with thinking that there's a right or a wrong economic model for a society.

The counterargument is that "Well, communism doesn't work! People have a right to their property, so socialism is awful!" Well, yeah, I do agree with property rights. And yeah, communism doesn't really work on a large scale when you consider that a free society needs to guarantee basic human rights too. Soviet Russia wasn't a true communist country though. It was a dictatorship under the guise of communism. Same with China right now. True communism means there are no leaders. Similarly with socialism, government being so micromanagerial can cause problems. However, who wants to argue that unfettered capitalism is great too? We've seen problems in America with that system throughout our history, whether it be awful working conditions letting the titans of industry in the late 1800s/early 1900s get filthy rich off exploiting cheaper-than-fair labor. We've seen it in the last 15 years when deregulation led to the housing bubble and all the shit that came with it when it burst. On a large scale, no form of government or financial model is going to work perfectly. We have to work with what we've got.

And that's why the only ideal that is worth fighting for is one that encompasses the guarantee of basic human rights to everyone. If you can't guarantee freedom of speech, religion, assembly, self-defense, fair trial, entrance of contracts, and all that other fine stuff that is theoretically guaranteed to us in the Constitution, then you've failed. But in how we get there, whether through pure capitalism, pure socialism, or some mixture in between, I don't care. As long as it works and can guarantee that what I pay into the government is actually being used in a way that isn't totally awful.

Life is all about making compromises. You need to figure out what you're willing to compromise on and what you absolutely can't allow. As it turns out, I can compromise on my money. I'm way over arguing over the merits of regulation, deregulation, capitalism, socialism, or whatever fiscal cliffs that Congress is shooting at us as a boogeyman.