A lot of people like to excuse their support for horrible policies by claiming that they’re ‘socially liberal but fiscally conservative’. These people are either ignoramuses, disingenuous assholes, or both, because fiscal conservatism is a) economically disastrous and b) has the same practical effects as all conservative policies, to wit that it extends the power and privilege of those who have it, and increases the marginalization of the already marginalized.
The fundamental problem with fiscal conservatism in an economic sense is that it makes economic policy out to be a morality play, where everyone gets solely what they deserve, assigning deserts according to the (extremely dodgy) moral accounting of capitalists. However, as the tagline says, deserve has nothing to do with anything in matters of policy; what anyone deserves or doesn’t deserve has no bearing whatsoever on the best way to administer an economy, or indeed a culture.
Here at Just Deserts, I will be looking at the economic effects of fiscal conservatism in all its forms, and pointing out why it’s factually wrong, and what policies would work better. I will largely ignore matters of ethics, morality, and even justice, except tangentially. There are many excellent writers blogging on those topics, and I see no need to duplicate their efforts.
I will tend to focus on the U.S., both because I live here and because the U.S. is an exemplar of the failure of ‘fiscally conservative’ policies.
I will also sometimes post about my assorted personal interests, because I can’t be bothered to set up a separate blog for them. If you’re not interested, feel free to ignore those posts.
Just Deserts 