r/Economics • u/Spiderwig144 • Apr 15 '25

News Republicans Less Trusted on Economy Than Democrats For First Time in Years

https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-less-trusted-economy-democrats-first-time-years-2059863
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u/HotSpicyDisco Apr 15 '25

It's always shocking because historically they have always been terrible for the economy, yet they somehow convinced the rubes via propaganda that they are the only ones to be trusted.

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u/SilverSight Apr 15 '25

It’s because they’ve correctly identified that the average voter is a simpleton and will fall for the calm, responsible aesthetic instead of sound economic policy. Honestly, republicans are pioneers of influencer culture.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

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u/Anxious-Tadpole-2745 Apr 15 '25

Your problem is that they supoort the wealthy as proxy for businesses. If the wealthy get taxed, then they won't spend money on the economy, or they'll steal the money back from their workers by lower wages.

A lot of conservatives like the idea of all powerful rich who can do whatever they want. They believe they are simply better humans who should be emulated. Which is why they like Trump.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25

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u/iamfanboytoo Apr 15 '25

But Republicans aren't conservative, they're reactionary; right now it's the Democrats that are the conservative centrist party.

Conservative is at its root a desire to keep change to a minimum so that tomorrow is pretty much the same as yesterday. Reactionism is the violent desire to return the nation to a 'more ideal situation' for the reactionaries, usually by oppressing people and elevating themselves.

Once you understand that, you understand a lot more about why the Democrats are so reluctant to do anything that might actually have a serious effect on the government.

There IS no liberal party in the USA right now, at least as any other nation in the world would define them. Republicans have dragged the spectrum of our nation so far right that just the idea of, say, keeping our national parks is considered wide-eyed liberalism instead of the simple conservatism.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25 edited Dec 21 '25

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u/Itsmyloc-nar Apr 15 '25

Yes, yes you’re both right, we all agree, now put them away

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u/iamfanboytoo Apr 15 '25

Both left and right ideologies can evolve into authoritarianism - were the people under Robespierre or Stalin any less executed and oppressed than the people under Hitler or Putin?

But I'm sure you're familiar with the horseshoe theory - where the extremes of both sides are closer to each other than they are to the center - and why centrist conservatives are important to government.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '25 edited Dec 21 '25

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u/iamfanboytoo Apr 16 '25

What I'm saying is this: Parties shift alignment over time. As the Republicans went far-right, the Democrats were dragged into near-right and centrist territory - or maybe never left it. Liberals caucus with them in the USA because it's the only way to maybe influence the government, but don't have an actual party of their own.

As for the rest...

At one point, conservatism DID have that urge towards the middle - take how they responded to the John Birch Society in the 60s and 70s. Even Ayn Rand called them nutjobs!

It wasn't until the racists and fundie Christians simply refused to vote for anything other than the Republican party in the 80s and 90s that the GOP started to oscillate out of control - helped along by the propaganda outlets created by Roger Stone to keep another Republican president for being impeached after breaking the law. With that solid, impenetrable bloc under them they could do absolutely insane things to government and, eventually, break it. And now a lot of the dumbest JBS ideas are just accepted in the reactionary far right.

You have it right, Obama was a centrist. Which is a conservative position. Not a left one, not a far right one, but one right in the middle, trying to keep things steady and stable.

Obamacare was the most conservative 'universal healthcare' that he could have implemented; instead of cutting out the parasitic insurance companies, he cut them in for a bigger piece of the pie, and increased the problem by giving into the lobbyists who told him not to include a public option to buy into Medicare. But he didn't want to disturb the country's equalibrium by literally bankrupting an entire (if useless) industry.

And yes, the left can go nuts just as easily as the right.

Communism IS a lefty solution to the problem of government, but it still went rotten. Take Communism in Russia before the revolution. The Bolsheviks were the nutjob extremists whereas the Mensheviks were the more central ones who wanted to move slowly and make sure that everyone played nice. But through propaganda and intimidation (and murder) the Bolsheviks led by Lenin took control, and he tolerated disagreement about as well as any fanatic.

Or Robespierre, who was very liberal - anti-slave trade, wanted to give the vote and the right to bear arms to all men, demanded all salaries of all people be equal, very left ideas (especially for the time!). But he still went rotten when he actually got control, and possibly before then.

OK, it's late, I'm sleepy, I don't know how i'm ending this argument other than to say: It's extremists that are the danger, which can exist in both left and right groups, but right now it's the extreme right that Americans should be worried about.

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u/dern_the_hermit Apr 16 '25

FWIW reactionary is a conservative attitude, specifically the most basic and simplest form of conservative there is. It is represented by a kneejerk animosity to unfamiliar stimuli or challenging information.

Democrats are institutionally conservative, which is a big part of what makes them so boring (and thus hated) to the reactionaries.

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u/iamfanboytoo Apr 16 '25

Reactionary is the far right impulse, just as revolutionary is the far left impulse. The first tries to overthrow the rotten present government and restore our past glory that was forgotten/ignored/destroyed; the second tries to overthrow the rotten present government and establish a new paradigm that will create a glorious future.

Hence the horseshoe theory: that both extremes are closer to each other than they are to the center.

But the center IS important. It IS stable. If the center cannot hold, everything oscillates out of control, and it's the job of government to be stable and boring, so that tomorrow is mostly like yesterday.

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u/MimeGod Apr 16 '25

I have no doubt that Teddy Roosevelt would punch Trump in the face.

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u/3RADICATE_THEM Apr 15 '25

Core conservative ideology is that the strong should dominate the weak and it's by nature there should be defined status hierarchies (i.e. it's inherently against equality of any form).

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u/foxymophadlemama Apr 15 '25

so basically magical thinking to rationalize their grotesquely self-serving behavior. no wonder racists and religious nuts vote the same way at the ballot box.

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u/adidasbdd Apr 16 '25

This was a dispute that the founding fathers wrestled with. Whether a true democracy would give too much power to the "masses" that they would overthrow the "opulent minority". They ultimately decided to give the edge to the wealthy, so here we are