What is a Liberal, and What is a Conservative?

That is part of the reason why the national debt is still ballooning ( and this the fault of both parties).Actually, spending tends to go up under Republican administrations. It's a myth that democrats run up the deficits.Here's a site which show the difference on many, many economic measures between Reagan and Clinton:RVC--Graphs...and now a graph showing that, in the business cycle, the expansions are larger and the contractions are smaller under Democratic administrations, and the expansions are smaller and the contractions are larger under Republican administrations.

when you do so, also look at the difference in the safety nets (how much and how long) for the people. perhaps people in america complain because they are being screwed by the system. also look at the difference in relative pay between top and bottom and amount of vacation time. the US does the least for its workers.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

However, schraf, during both those Administrations, the Congress was controlled by the opposite party. So, are you saying that our best bet economically is to keep a democratic president with a republican congress?the Simple fact is that the deficit has increased because of both parties over the last 30 years. Frankly, neither has a lick of financial responsiblity.

19 expansion data points with high democratic control, 34 with lack of democratic control.....about equal contraction data points for both....This message has been edited by Darwin Storm, 09-01-2004 10:00 PM

I already addressed this. Do you know anyone that goes in to the bass and says "I've been thinking what a great job I've been doing, and I want to take a pay cut for it" hmmm? You have the "freedom to do that too ... you also have the "freedom" to walk off a ten story building, but something usually intervenes, like self preservation.Yes there are many options, the problem with your type of thinking is that they are not equivalent options: that is what makes your argument false.yes you can look. IF there are no jobs equivalent to what you are doing then what oh great seer of economics?it seems you don't get it (surprised look of shock on face).suppply side economics is failed thinking.the numbers of people living in poverty has increased every year of shrubs administration: how does that happen with only 6% unemployment?the numbers of families needing two incomes has increased because jobs pay less, and more jobs have less benefits so the families end up paying or passing.unemployment is a false indicator, but if it makes you feel good keep telling yourself it is okay.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I don't think you are reading that right

I was going by the democratic control line,,

If feeling that workers are slaves works for you, continue to do so. As for poverty, of course it has increase, as has unemployment, since we are still in a recession and have been in one for the last 4 years.However, there are several intersting concepts you bring up. First off, I would agree that the cost of living has gone up. Part of this is that earning has gone down, which is an issue. However, family spending has gone up dramatically, which means it takes more money to meet the higher expense standards. The other shift we see in the last 50 years has been the vast increase in the labor market as women have joined men in the workplace. This also has had a impact, if you look at the growth rate of the total labor force.
BTW, what would you advocate as a potential solution to these problems?

then make it free to anyone who signs up for it and cut your costs.When you say the governement spends too much, how do you draw this conclusion: do you evaluate the budget as published to see where it goes and then look for areas that can be reduced? or do you take someone's word for it? Personally I think the biggest problem is the pork barrel politics run by whichever party is in power: make it unconstitutional to have anything not directly related to the cause for the bill to be included.(Seems I remember that Al Gore as VP brought down a lot of government spending. )

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

And I've explained why this just isn't so, explained the reasoning, and given you an example. None of which I should really have had to do for something so self-obvious.If none of that is going to convince you, then you don't understand what a "bias" means. How is that bias? Liberals are left. If the test pegged liberals as liberals, then the test is accurate, not biased. Right. It's not going to do us much good to argue about questions that aren't on the test, now is it? And such questions certainly don't substantiate your argument. Um, yes, Prophex, that's what results in extreme positions being identified as moderate by a biased test.But I don't believe any of the questions do that. There were plenty of questions where I detected the conservative bias; but I felt no squeamishness or inhumanity in answering "disagree." The questions are loaded, yes - that's to provoke a response. The test then measures your response.The results of the test, so far, suggest that the test is relatively fair, not biased. If the test was biased we could detect it in the score.

The so-far accurate scores resulting from the test are the evidence. The test does not appear to be biased.

I look at the fact that our debt has swollen over 5 trillian since the 70's. I look at the fact that what progress we made in the late 90's has evaporated. I look at the fact that the debt interest eats nearly 30 percent of our budget.....

Maybe you're a liberal? Neither this question nor any like it appeared on the test. What's the purpose of this? Yes, it's possible to construct a biased question.Look, suppose that the test consisted just of this question. The majority - possible everybody - of takers will answer "no". "No" may be the "liberal" answer, in reality, but the test will report that everyone who answers "no" will be a moderate, because almost everybody answered "no".Get it, yet?

Well, it was a combonation of Cliinton and congress. I don't think Gore passed any bills or signed them, except for a few tie breakers . : )

Right. Which would make the coerced answer the moderate answer (because everybody answered it that way) and the other answer would peg you way, way out in the fringe.New example. Let's pretend the first test is unbiased and is a perfect determinant of whether you're liberal, moderate, or conservative:1) I am a liberal. Yes - maybe - No."Yes" means you're a liberal, "maybe" means you're a moderate, and "no" means you're conservative, and lets further pretend the test is perfect, somehow. This test will score you with perfect accuracy.Now, lets pretend that we have a second test:1) Only idiots are conservatives, and I'm not an idiot. Yes - maybe - no.As you can see, this is much like the first question, but there's obviously an added element of coercion. Lets say that all the people who would have picked "maybe" in the first test are going to choose "yes" in the second, and even most of the people who picked "no" in the first test are going to pick "yes" or "maybe" in this one. Only arch, arch conservatives are going to pick "no" in this second test.Once we normalize the results, it means that people who picked "yes" or "maybe" are going to appear moderate - they form the hump of the bell curve that becomes the zero point - and all the arch-conservatives are going to appear a lot less conservative than they really are, because they've been moved closer to the "moderate" point.The second test is biased in favor of liberals, and clearly, it makes liberals look like moderates - like the majority, like the average. Which is what I've been saying all along.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-01-2004 11:10 PM