Make a Case

More thoughts from a "recovering libertarian"...

Several friends here criticize any economic system that isn't founded on massive tax cuts, which strikes me as "socialism for the satisfied" -- ie, we want all the costliest parts of our budget but don't want to have to pay for it.

President Bush, though he was a bigger spender than "true" conservatives would have liked, did model true conservatism in how he believed that tax cuts for high-earners would create jobs throughout the economy. What happened? Why did deficits bet bigger, and why did job growth rise more slowly than the overall population growth?

What are the signs, during his presidency or other recent ones, that classical principles of conservative economics actually work? And I'd hope that you would use successes of GOP presidencies as your proof, rather than failures under Dems.

I bring all this up because I'm thinking of a line from Machiavelli, about how many idealists imagine utopias that have never existed and never will exist, because people don't work the way that idealists expect.