From a facebook discussion:
Okay, so many Libertarian "arguments" being thrown my way that I'm not going to hit every one specifically, but rather address the whole shebang in brief.'Nuff said.
"Big government or small government" is an absurd way to look at things. We live in a big world, with big industries, a big economy, big numbers of people. We NECESSARILY need government to be big. Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Fife can't get it done in the modern world.
And that's that. Big government, whether you like it or not, is how it HAS to be. "Shrinking government" so you can "drown it in a bathtub" is a stupid joke, as is Grover Norquist. Anybody who believes this stupid joke is entirely ignorant of economics. I mean, sure, lots of people who believe this THINK they understand economics, but they don't. This is all a big fairy tale, folk wisdom repeated endlessly, like Goebbels' theory on propaganda, until it becomes "truth."
But it's wrong no matter how often it's repeated. Demonstrably wrong: since the Reagan era, economists have had plenty of time to study how this stuff works in the real world, and they've found that a lot of the ideas taken for granted by Libertarians, indeed, by the entire neoliberal establishment, which includes Democrats as well as Republicans, even Obama, are just wrong. Cutting taxes for the rich does NOT stimulate the economy. Markets are NOT self-regulating, and so on. The whole Libertarian edifice is built on a foundation of what amounts to believing in the Easter Bunny.
People are fools to believe these fantasies.
Now we can argue about what the government spends money on. That's an honest discussion, and it's what people actually mean when they talk about "Big Government." That's what we SHOULD be talking about.
But I, personally, no longer take this "Big Government" shit seriously. It's a joke. And trying to get me to behave as though it's something I should take seriously is just insulting. I will not join you in your Easter Bunny fantasies. I'm only interested in what happens in the real world.
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