Saturday, September 29, 2012

Red Blue Divide



There was a question posted on Yahoo along the line of "What would happen if the country divided along the lines of Red and Blue?".  In other words, what if the Republicans and Democrats simply parted ways based on counties that voted Red and Blue.

Some named Tmess2 posted the following:

You would have no government regulations of banks to assure that your deposits were safe.
You would have no funding for education so within a generation your industries R and D would be non-existent.
You would have no regulation over investments so no outsiders would want to invest in your country's industries.
You would spend twice as much on the military as the rest of the world, meaning that you could not live within your means (currently 80% of non-social security taxes goes to military spending in the US)
Your workers (90% of the population) would barely earn living wages causing your economy to crash into a massive recession (though the handful of people running companies that manufactured for exports would be living high on the hog).
Women would be trapped in an abusive marriage.
Roads and bridges would crumble (none of that pesky reliance on government to keep things working).
Sounds like a good country. Last I heard, it was called the Russian Federation. 


This is a very interesting and revealing summary of what presumably Lefty-Democrat type thinks would happen in a Republican nation.

Mostly this reveals that they assume that government is the only mechanism by which rules are enforced and people can live together. 

Let's take a look at these assumptions:

You would have no government regulations of banks to assure that your deposits were safe.  Government regulations do not make banks safe.  Sound banking practices and the profit motive is what keeps your deposits safe.  All the regulations in the world cannot protect you from stupid lending policies like giving mortgages to people that cannot pay them back, even if that lending was required by the regulators.  In fact, government regulations create additional risk by creating a moral hazard for the bankers. In an unregulated bank, the bankers lose everything if the bank fails.  In our current markets, banks simply get bailed out.  Our current system is a mess because of regulations, not due to the lack of them.

You would have no funding for education so within a generation your industries R and D would be non-existent.
So apparently no one learned anything and there was no R&D prior to the creation of the Department of Education?   This is nonsense.  Of course there would be money for education. People spend it now in the form of taxes, but the money is laundered through layers of government and inefficiency before it gets to the schools.  The current bloated bureaucracies that pass for education systems in this country do a terrible job of educating our children.  The value we get for our education dollars is near zero.  Funding in the Republican zone would be much more direct.  People pay for their own schools, with vouchers to subsidize the truly needy.   The Chicago schools cannot fire teachers until they show up drunk five times, or get caught selling drugs three times(!).  You tell me, whose educational system is going to suck?

You would have no regulation over investments so no outsiders would want to invest in your country's industries.
Investors do not make investments based on the regulatory environment.  They invest where they thing that they can make the most money. Republicans are not anarchists, there would be some laws regarding fraud, etc.  But the vast majority of the rules and regulations would be swept away in favor of a system where the markets regulated themselves.  This would create a much more dynamic market with some spectacular crashes and frauds like Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff, and Enron.  Oh, wait, we have those now!  Regulations do not prevent these events.  Regulations simply create opportunities for politicians to shake down companies for campaign contributions.

You would spend twice as much on the military as the rest of the world, meaning that you could not live within your means (currently 80% of non-social security taxes goes to military spending in the US)  The defense of the country is one of the duties of the government, so, yes, we would spend money on this.  Interestingly, we would also have most of the trained soldiers and military installations.  Presumably the Democrat republic would spend less on defense.  It would not take long before the costs of not defending yourself would become apparent.

Your workers (90% of the population) would barely earn living wages causing your economy to crash into a massive recession (though the handful of people running companies that manufactured for exports would be living high on the hog).
This is a completely unsupported assertion. The Republican zone would include virtually all the farmland in the US, plus a fair amount of the modern manufacturing plants in the south. The Red zone would also be energy independent and have very low levels of social pathology such as the inner city slums. The Democrat zone would have to import food and energy, it would have high union wages that would make its products uncompetitive, and it would be saddled with millions of people in the dependent classes that have never worked or learned a skill.  It is the Democrat economy that would come to a crashing halt, not the Republican one.

Women would be trapped in an abusive marriage.
What??  This is pure drivel with no factual basis.  I am not even sure how you come to this conclusion, but let's look at some indicators for where the abuse might actually lie.  In every dimension of life (charity donations in time and money, coaching, scouting, volunteering, happiness) Republican score higher than Democrats.  This is fact.  I think it is a stretch to assume that the happy, charitable, community oriented side is the one trapping people in abusive marriages.

Roads and bridges would crumble (none of that pesky reliance on government to keep things working).
Again, it sounds like you have the Republicans confused with the anarchists. We do not believe in no roads and bridges.  We do believe in making them efficiently and linking the costs of them to the use of them through tolls, etc.   I think it is very safe to assume that the opposite would be the case.  Look at the condition of the infrastructure in the Democrat controlled cities and tell me that is the Republican side that would lack for roads and bridges.

I think is it pretty clear which group of people needs the other.  Democrats and their dependent looter-moocher supporters would no be able to exist without the productive power of the people with jobs and the protection afforded by the military. 

Look at the cities that have been ruled by the Democratic party for a long time. Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington DC.   They are all economic and social basket cases.  Asserting the idea that Republicans would be the ones to suffer in a separation deal is absurd.

A separation would not last long.  Within the short time the Democrat side would come crawling back, demanding that we start paying for everything again.




 


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