On Wed, Nov 08, 2000 at 11:17:11AM +0000, Ken Brown wrote:
were ever going to get to be a chat show host. Thatcher was (& is) almost universally hated, even by those who voted for her.
Thatcher was respected rather than liked. Britain in the 1970s was a global joke, laid ruin by decades of socialist misrule. Fixing that was unlikely to win her many friends. But she partially succeeded and changed Britain and even her opposition from extreme socialists to more moderate, but still dangerous, social democrats. The work isn't, alas, over and leftist ideas remain as givens in English society supported by the state ran schools and television stations.
Maybe that is why most of your states voted dam near 50-50 for each candidate. Same policies on most things that count, and where they differ nobody believes them anyway. (Is Bush really saying, as his Tory acolytes over here in Britain are, that you can cut taxes *and* increase pubic spending? Does anyone take that seriously enough to factor it in
I think you mean "public". Actually this is possible if cutting taxes leads to more tax being collected. If tax cuts lead to increased economic activity then a smaller piece of a larger pie can be larger than the original piece. This is the famous "Laffer curve". If you take "rolling back the state" as a goal than this is an argument for cutting taxes to zero.
Certainly that is how Labour got in in UK. Everyone hated the Tories. Labour promised - in writing - to carry on Tory policies on most things (they even adopted the Tory budget for 2 years). So the only issue was that Labour looked like the nice guys. Landslide.
I don't think everyone hated the Tories (Conservative party). They had been in power for 18 years and I think people simply thought "give the other guys a ago". Since then Labour, although they had swung to the right, have increased indirect tax and introduced anti-crypto laws in the shape of RIP. The population is starting to wake up and Labour is looking increasingly vunerable due to popular protests on the amount of tax on fuel. Many conservatives, like John Redwood, have spoken against RIP. -- 1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk abandon the search for truth; settle for a good fantasy.