this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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[–] pixxelkick@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I classify myself as Fiscally Conservative.

However, I follow that up very quickly with the fact that investing in health, education, science, and affordable housing is net profit and any true fiscal conservative would want to direct as much of our money as needed into these programs, because penny for penny the returns on such investments are huge

A homeless person ending up in a hospital bed or dying costs us substantially more money than housing them, and once they get treated, fed, upskilled, and a roof over their head they very often proceed to turn into another taxpaying citizen which in turn converts red numbers into green numbers.

Anyone who just looks at the numbers can clearly see its basically just free money for taxpayers, you'd have to either be a complete idiot to not invest in it... or purposefully hateful and want people to suffer

I assume most "conservative" people are the latter, they genuinely cant wrap their head around the fact that making marginalized groups suffer costs taxpayers a lot of money

Police cost money, city cleanup costs money, hospitals and doctors cost money, handling corpses costs money, and of course you lose all the opportunity cost of -1 fellow taxpayer.

"Conservatives" tend to just not grok the fact that a large chunk of homeless people could easily be more taxpayers, but they just would rather demonize them and spend more money hurting them, thinking somehow that will magically make the issue go away, and ignore the fact it makes it worse, its so dumb.

Same goes for things like allowing abortion, at its core abortion rights inherently save such enormous magnitudes of money long term, and net profit. Forcing mothers to conceive doesnt fuckin help anyone and instead just costs us huge amounts of money, all just to inflict suffering on others. It's hateful and petty and extremely wasteful.

Same goes for trans rights, the most cost effective and safest way to treat trans folks is just provide them with medical intervention to align their body with their gender. It's by far the most cost effective solution, but for some fuckin reason "conservatives" would rather people suffer than save money

"Conservatives" straight up would rather spend billions of dollars hurting people than actually save money. Very stupid, and I hate how when I talk about actually being truly fiscally conservative, I get associated with such idiots.

[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

any true fiscal conservative would want to direct as much of our money as needed into these programs

You simply aren't a fiscal conservative. All your points are directly against fiscal conservatism.

From the wiki, which sums it up nicely:

In American political theory, fiscal conservatism or economic conservatism is a political and economic philosophy regarding fiscal policy and fiscal responsibility with an ideological basis in capitalism, individualism, limited government, and laissez-faire economics. Fiscal conservatives advocate tax cuts, reduced government spending, free markets, deregulation, privatization, free trade, and minimal government debt. Fiscal conservatism follows the same philosophical outlook as classical liberalism. This concept is derived from economic liberalism.

[–] pixxelkick@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

fiscal responsibility

Thats the important part

Who would you say is more fiscally conservative, a person who wisely invests their money in the future, or a person who wastes it all on bricks to throw at their neighbours windows.

The latter is what current "Conservative" parties are.

Fiscal Conservativism is about wisely investing your money and avoiding wasting it on stupid shit.

Conservative parties rely on "lalala I cant hear you" tactics. Theyre the sort of person who gets a small weird lump and ignores it and then 15 years later die to cancer they could've gotten treated a decade ago.

Thats not fiscally conservative, thats just being fucking stupid. Sometimes you do need to spend money on basic human needs because it net benefits everyone, even on pure paper number balancing.

Im conservative in the "hey we can save a lot of money if we do x/y/z" sort of way, like a person who clips out a bunch of coupons and ends up getting 90% off on their groceries.

Thats also being conservative, you are conserving your resources wisely by allocating them in ways that pay back well.

And turns out... those ways coincidentally are pro human rights.

[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

No, it's not the important part. Everyone believes in financial responsibility. Literally every coherent ideology. The only people who don't are those who are outright stealing from the public purse, kleptocrats and the like. The important part is how financial conservatives go about their ideas of financial responsibility.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You identify with the term fiscal conservative, but in practice, everything you advocate is straight up liberal. It proves the point that the term is meaningless. Everyone wants to spend efficiently, it’s just the priorities that distinguish conservative from liberal.

[–] pixxelkick@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I hold that liberal goes beyond that, starting to spend extra money and tax extra when the returns are no longer as good and instead it's less about literally saving money and more about quality of life

Fiscal conservative is "once the returns aren't as good, stop there"

Whereas liberal goes "nah even if the returns start to suck, it's better to further tax to even further help people purely for ethical reasons"

Liberal mindset is ethics > money

Fiscal conservative is money > ethics

Current "conservative" policy though is power > inflicting suffering > money > ethics

Which I respect and I'd love to get us towards, but tbh we gotta convince people to get past step 1 first of realizing spending money to actively hurt people, surprisingly, isn't a good fiscal policy (which somehow genuinely confuses so many people, it's crazy)

We are still at the stage where too many people think that spending money inflicting active harm is genuinely a good idea and a good use of taxpayer dollars

They think paying cops to go around kicking indigenous teens in the head is truly a solid Fiscal policy. Truly.

They think paying money to fund bombs being dropped on children is good Fiscal policy.

They think paying money to poison our water, destroy our ecosystems, and pollute the oceans is good Fiscal Policy

Getting past that part is step one

Literally just convincing these people to stop stabbing themselves is step 1.

Maybe later we can talk about convincing them to help others after we get them to stop hurting others...

[–] Arkouda@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nope.

A Conservative is a Conservative, and voting for a bigot makes one a bigot. If you actually believed a word of that salad you would vote Liberal, and if you had any sense you would give the NDP or Greens a vote instead.

[–] pixxelkick@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

you would vote Liberal

I do, because despite its name our liberal party is conservative lol

The NDP are Liberal, the Liberals are Conservative, and the Conservatives are fucking batshit insane fascists.

[–] scott_anon_21@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

And that for me friends is a wrap. You have summed it up beautifully. For me. High five.