Differences between liberalism and conservatism

Rockdale TX

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Differences between liberalism and conservatism LIBERAL: This is disheartening. Something should be done! CONSERVATIVE: True, this is unfortunate. But it’s just the way of the world. There will always be poor and hungry people. It’s not my fault that they’re poor. What do you want me to do? There are churches and other charities for things like that. LIBERAL: Yes, but just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean we have to accept it. Churches and charities are too dependent on voluntary contributions. There will always be a lot of people who won’t receive such assistance. What if the government took a small portion of everyone’s income and established programs that ensured everyone who needed help got it? CONSERVATIVE: If you do that, you’ll encourage people to stop working and you’ll end up making poverty worse. We need to encourage these people to work so they can take care of themselves. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. What we need to do is to grow the economy. That will help people who are motivated enough to work. LIBERAL: That’s true. But what do we do about the people who are hungry here and now in the meantime? I’m all for growing the economy. I’m all for teaching people how to fish, but how do we ensure that in a wealthy society as our own, no one is left to die? CONSERVATIVE: Societies aren’t wealthy. Some individuals are wealthy. What you're advocating is wealth confiscation by the state because you personally feel bad about the situation of some poor people. I understand that you want to help them. Feel free to give away a portion of your income. But what does that have to do with me? LIBERAL: What it has to do with you is that no wealth is created in isolation. However ingenious and entrepreneurial you are, you benefited from the infrastructure and institutions built by society as a whole. This is why we all pitch in, in the form of taxes, to build the infrastructure and institutions of tomorrow, so that we may enable more people to continue to be successful. If we don’t do that, if we don’t invest in programs that help the population as a whole, only the children of the rich will be successful. This will lead to the creation of an aristocracy of wealth and to a waste of talent for people who had the misfortune of not choosing the right parents. CONSERVATIVE: I worked hard for my wealth. It’s unfair for me to be penalized in order to help people who didn’t work as hard as I did. A natural aristocracy of merit is not a bad thing. It encourages everyone who is ambitious to work as hard as they can. The kind of program you support leads to a lot of waste, since they give people an incentive to stay home and do nothing. Why should I work hard and see my hard-earned money used to subsidize people who are going to sit around and do nothing? LIBERAL: There may be some people who are going to use these benefits as a reason to never look for a job, but overall, if we adopt the policies I’m advocating, we can maximize the number of deserving poors we get to help. CONSERVATIVE: Your policies may help more poor people, but there are also going to be a lot more people who are going to cheat their way into qualifying for these programs. If we’re going to have such programs, it’s better to limit eligibility, so that we know for sure that every single beneficiary is a deserving poor. That’s ONE fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives. The former want to maximize the benefits of the welfare state; the latter want to minimize its adverse consequences, or even shrink it.