Common Values

[Franconicus]

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent trip to Washington has a lot of people talking about "common values" among conservatives. But a US conservative is a different species from a European conservative."
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/inte...395120,00.html

What C:V: do the US and Europe share?
Do we see the change of relationships. From allied nations tied together by C.V. to independantly acting national states?

[Fragony]

Common value would be more responsibility for the people instead of an all controlling godzilla of a government. Keep taxes low, government interference to a minimum. Difference is the hammering on religion I guess.

[Franconicus]

Common value would be more responsibility for the people instead of an all controlling godzilla of a government. Keep taxes low, government interference to a minimum. Difference is the hammering on religion I guess.

Well, not really! For Germany - as well as for other Western European countries - minimum government is not a common value. People expect from the government:
- protection against crime
- good infrastructure (roads, schools ...)
- social security (health care, pensions ...)
- social balance
Of cause everybody wants to pay less taxes, but only very few, esp. the rich ones, do really want to have minimum interferrence.
The social net is very important especially in Germany. It is a common value, a civilizing achievement of the post war age which is an important part of the German identity. So some parties want to keep it, others want to reform it, but no one wants to abolish it.
With the tasks of government like written above we could also have a socialist government or even fascism. Fortunatelly there are more basic values:
- democracy
- human rights
- refusal of war as a political mean (each kind of war with the exception of self defense)
- free market

[Sjakihata]

The most common value is money

[Vladimir]

Well, not really! For Germany - as well as for other Western European countries - minimum government is not a common value. People expect from the government:
- protection against crime
- good infrastructure (roads, schools ...)

I suspect the above are part of "minimum" government for both countries.

[A.Saturnus]

Common value would be more responsibility for the people instead of an all controlling godzilla of a government. Keep taxes low, government interference to a minimum. Difference is the hammering on religion I guess.

Not really. German conservatives only occationally mention such things as "small government".

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Any German politicos who regularly mention (or do more than mention) small government?

[Franconicus]

That is right; it shows that small government is just a notion, not a value.

[Watchman]

AFAIK European conservatives on the average aren't "state-hostile" the way American ones are. In most places that tends to be left to the economic liberals, who usually have a different party.

Having more than two practically relevant parties is useful that way. Not everyone has a system that allows them, of course - just look at the Brits.

Far as I know by Euro standards American "conservatives" are weird - they combine a reactionary social agenda with fiscal hyper-liberalism and a palpable hatred of centralized adminstration.

[Vladimir]

Far as I know by Euro standards American "conservatives" are weird - they combine a reactionary social agenda with fiscal hyper-liberalism and a palpable hatred of centralized adminstration.

I guess I'll have to stop calling myself a conservative then.

[Fragony]

Not really. German conservatives only occationally mention such things as "small government".

I said less government interference, there is a difference. Haven't heard the term 'smaller government' here either, only from our very own Mozart Geert Wilders

[Watchman]

Hey, far as I can tell our locals Leftists on the average combine progressive ("liberal") social agenda with a conservative economic one - since they want to keep the already extant welafare mechanism and not disband it in the name of liberalism.

This sort of mixing-up is among the chief reasons I prefer terms like Left and Right which most people can easily identify with to "liberal" and "conservative" which can get muddy real fast.

[rory_20_uk]

Generally those that wish for fiscal liberalism are those that are trying to get out of paying as much tax as possible.

Personally I find I hit a dichotomy of philosophy with that one:

As a Doctor I treat patients. A large section are druggies, fatties, smokers and alcoholics. Of these the alcoholics and druggies are merely sucking money out of the country - it's £500 for an ambulance ride to A&E on average. Then there's the bed, the staff's time and then the drugs to (temporarily) bring them round. Some of these I see about 4 times a week, often by ambulance. Why the hell am I paying taxes to this? And of course I am only choosing one issue that I can directly view.

Then there's the Uber Rich. City types who get paid millions for... erm, moving numbers round a spreadsheet. Ah! They work long hours for high stress work - NEWSFLASH!! They aren't the only ones - and they work in very nice buildings for this. In America especially taxes are being abolished for these unsung heroes who apparently are suffering under the yoke of taxes. Hmmm...

So, am I truely advocating an increasing tax, but where the money is only spent on "deserving" causes? And who chooses these? Me? Do we then get into the situation where the time and money spent making sure that the money is well spent leads to the type of inefficiency in... werll, in Whitehall now you come to mention it!!!

government needs to be large enough to reign in the sharks that exist, and protect those that are genuinely in need. But so often governments grow with the QUANGO bloat that can rarely be reduced - how do you get the beaurocray to reduce itself???

[Don Corleone]

Ah, Rory, there's the rub, no? If all of our tax dollars were well spent, we'd have no issue, would we? If we truly were making certain a grandma wasn't reduced to eating catfood, and that a 3 month old baby was getting formula courtesy of the supplemental check her mother was receiving, we might grumble, but we'd pay, no?

But what about paying for grandpa's viagra? What about when mom decides to use the check for crack or to expand her satellite TV coverage? Or worse, what about when only 10 cents on the dollar is actually making it through Congress or Parliment to the people it's supposed to be helping?

As for the fat cats you're looking to soak, forget about them. They're smart enough to create tax shelters faster than legislators can close them, so if you make the taxes on them too punititive, ironically, raising their taxes actually decreases the total revenue... before you even account for economic impacts. Tax burden relief always has been and always will be an issue for the middle class. The poor don't qualify for paying them and the rich have their own ways of getting out of them.

[rory_20_uk]

Yeah, the UK learnt that in the 1970's - as taxes went up they just left the country! Only way to get the buggers is to close all the tax havens down at once, but as you say the best accountants work for teh richest people - not to mention the richest people are either in power or paid for them to be there...

Leaving people to starve whilst also being cruel has the downside that those with nothing to loose might resort to taking their money rather than waiting to be given it - and if the worst you can do is provide accommodation and food, then why not?

Yes, we could do what used to happen in the UK - death penalty was extended to (I think) stealing a loaf of bread, but that is not really that good a society.

Charities? the Church? Well, they are ideas we've not tried recently, and I'd imagine they'd probably do a better job! Unemployment would go up quite a bit after whitehall's welfare department was axed in its entirety.

[Vladimir]

But what about paying for grandpa's viagra? What about when mom decides to use the check for crack or to expand her satellite TV coverage? Or worse, what about when only 10 cents on the dollar is actually making it through Congress or Parliment to the people it's supposed to be helping?

This is probably what bothers me most about (at least our) state of welfare. Even if you don't agree with the program I'm sure that you want the money spend providing its intended function.

One of the more "reactionary" reasons for small government types was mentioned as well. It's easy to create these social programs because they have a huge emotional appeal but woe to the politician who tries to "cut" them. It's so hard to reduce social spending in a democratic government. Social Security has been around since the '30's during a time where you'd be more likely to die than receive benefits. In all that time the minimum age has only been increased by two years while life expectancy has exploded. Too often social programs are vote buying schemes.

[Don Corleone]

I do not believe even the most ardent of libertarians would advocate watching somebody starve while they blow a few extra thousand at the roulette wheel. It's not a question of whether or not there are deserving, needy people people out there. It's a question of:

1) Who's really deserving and who's just lazy? Welfare creates a whole new class of people that feel entitled to support, just for being alive. In the US, since the benefits are tied to the number of children, this has the unfortunate side affect that women actually have extra kids, just to increase their benefits. Obviously, this doesn't reflect the case of every aid recipient. But who's who and how do you tell?

2) I cannot stress enough... even though I'm adamantly opposed to this sort of thing, I don't think I'd mind my tax dollars going to Robert Maplethorpe exhibits (I'm not opposed to the exhibits themselves, but I don't believe the government should be funding them) or cable television for incarcerated felons... If I knew every dollar earmarked for these projects was actually going to the predestined target, it would be much easier to bear. But it doesn't work like that. Everybody along the way gets their cut: the lawmaker, the lobbyists that got the law passed, the agency dealing out the funds, the whole shebang.

3) Finally, at the end of the day, if you just give poor people money, are you really helping them or just soothing your own conscience? Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach him to fish, and he eats for the rest of his life, no? But government policies never work like that.

Anyway, I think encouraging charitable giving (like soup kitchens and the like) is the way to go. Churches, secular groups, whomever... charities are almost always run more efficiently and serve the needs of their target group better than the government.

[rory_20_uk]

oh, but they do! There are people starving every day. As I type this people die. They may be a long way away, and I don't personally see them, but they are still going to die. And gambling is big business - and so people are indirectly choosing to have a flutter than help their fellow man.

Charities cut out so much rubbish: they know who they serve, and why they do it. Policy reports are not required.

Although I agree that there are many giverment sponsored things I disagree with, allowing the masses to spend money where they want is going to be a disaster, as they will be making desicions that they are woefully unprepared to make - many can't keep their own finances in check, so how are they going to cope with the UK's? Suddenly the most base aspects of society are given even more money, whereas areas that are "boring" aren't - research may not be exciting to many, but it still should be done.

Needy vs the lazy? Same with "the chinese are nicking my job" - no, they are prepared to work longer for less - if you work those hours for that money, you'd keep your job. But of course there's the welfare system to help them out (after all alcohol and cigarettes are ecpensive!)