Conservative vs Progressive legislative accomplishments

[Starlight]

Continuing a derail from another thread...

.....
Very well, let's phrase it as a challenge:

1. I challenge you to come up with things that progressives post-WWII have enacted (as progressives because they wanted to, rather than due to political pressure from conservatives) at the federal level that were popular among progressives at the time, but which turned out to be bad to a sufficient extent that today a large majority of people (progressives included) would not agree with those policies and be against them.

2. I challenge you to do the same for conservatives and good policies. Tell me some things the conservatives have enacted (or progressive policies they cancelled/undid) that today would have widespread acceptance/praise across the board.

My contention is that those two categories of "progressives doing things that turned out bad" and "conservatives doing things that turned out good" are almost entirely empty or perhaps even entirely empty. Whereas the categories of "progressives doing things that turned out well" and "conservatives doing things that turned out badly" are very large categories containing many things (as are the in-betweens of "progressives/conservatives doing things that turned out average").

.....

Conservatism: I think we can credit conservativism for a significant amount of the focus on protecting freedom of speech. There is a strong tendency, in the left, to attempt to isolate and shut down language that is deemed inappropriate, as it pushes forward greater awareness of ways in which our language NEEDS to change. It is unfortunate that the right is doing this protecting in the context of defending the right to speak of some very hateful people, but that is the true exercise of a country's commitment to freedom of expression. It is easy to listen to something you agree with or have no opinion on. But to truly defend freedom of speech, you have to defend the right of the person who is standing up and saying the most vile things you can imagine. Contend with them - dispute what they say - but do not prohibit their right to say it.

The US Constitution protects free speech with the First Amendment. Can you identify any law that conservatives have enacted federally that goes beyond the first amendment in protecting free speech rights? Can you demonstrate that any such laws have stood the test of time and, in hindsight, have become endorsed across the political spectrum?

I get that conservatives have, in the past couple of years, taken to whining in forums like this about speakers on college campus being protested/dis-invited to speak at an event on campus. I consider their whining dumb and snowflake-ish, and it definitely doesn't count as a federal legislative accomplishment that has stood the test of time on par with Progressive accomplishments like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

If you think Greatest Conservative Achievement of the Post-WWII era is... talking about something the first amendment already provides protection from, then perhaps you would agree with my original superlative statement that you took such issue with: That US conservatives seem to have contributed no great policy accomplishments that have bipartisan-acknowledged value today - that US conservatism has, from the perspective of hindsight, been pretty much nothing but a failure.

Progressives: I find, in general, that progressives rush to implement government programs without considering the "Cobra Effect," often creating programs without adequate protections against co-dependence, outright fraud, a sense of entitlement, or creating a poverty "trap." Where the right seems to constantly harp on the abuses of these programs, essentially denying that there actually ARE people in need, I find the left does the reverse: focusing on the people in need and ignoring/denying (or protecting against) the abuses.

Here's a graph that applies to my country:


Here's a UK version:


I suspect that US data would be similar, though I'm not seeing a graph for it come up... maybe I'm searching for it wrong?

Anyway, people focusing on welfare fraud are making mountains out of molehills and molehills out of mountains. Funnily enough, the poor who are being given a tiny amount can't steal remotely as much from the government as what the rich and mega-rich can steal through tax evasion. The kinds of monetary figures are orders of magnitudes different in size - for every cunning poor person who manages to dupe the government out of $50k in benefits, there's likely a rich person who's managing to evade $50m in taxes.

I grant that the concern you express about the possible negative effects of progressive programs is a totally valid concern to have. And I am totally 100% for all reasonable measures that can be taken to fight against fraud, corruption, inefficiencies in the system, and negative side-effects (I'm that personality type who can't see a system without immediately trying to think of ways of optimizing it).

I note, though, that sometimes people come up with... dumb / malicious... ways of fighting 'abuse' of the system - the big recent example was drug-testing welfare recipients. It turned out that poor people didn't actually do drugs all that much (not as much as richer people) because they didn't have the money to, and furthermore that drug-testing the welfare recipients cost an awful lot and barely saved any money at all through the very few people that it threw off welfare for positive tests.

Compare to, last time I looked at the subject, each additional $1 of funding the US IRS put into their tax-evasion-detection department they found and recovered $12 worth of evaded taxes. Obviously you'd want to put more money into tax-evasion-detection until you were getting down to $1 recovered per $1 spent if you actually wanted to optimize the governments' finances and cut out fraud and abuse as much as effectively possible - or put in even more money if you loved 'law and order' and wanted to fight crime for the sake of fighting it. Unsurprisingly (to me) the Republican congress, insisted on cutting funding to that IRS enforcement unit to make sure their donors could evade taxes without being caught.

So when people come and tell me they're really really concerned about benefit fraud... I tend to think they need to get a grip on reality and understand the real scale of the different issues.

And again, this general concern you might have doesn't seem to specifically tie into one particular law passed federally by progressives... If the One Great Failure of progressive legislation has been that sometimes there have been some arguably bad side effects occasionally, that doesn't exactly seem devastating to the Progressive record. Again, perhaps you want to now agree with my superlative statement that you originally took issue with, that no major Progressive piece of legislation in the post-WWII era has failed the test of time and become an agreed-upon failure?

[NorrinRadd]

Whoever you quoted said this: "... often creating programs without adequate protections against co-dependence, outright fraud, a sense of entitlement, or creating a poverty 'trap.'"

AFAICT, your graphics only address the "outright fraud" aspect, which is NOT the main thing that concerns most conservatives. Even some honest progressives lament the reality of the unintended consequence of a "dependency class" that exists as a result of progressive policies.

[Cow Poke]

...If the One Great Failure of progressive legislation has been that sometimes there have been some arguably bad side effects occasionally...

I'm gonna save this for when I need a good chuckle.

[Starlight]

I'm gonna save this for when I need a good chuckle.

But you're not going to provide a single example of progressive legislation actually failing miserably, or conservative legislation actually achieving widespread acclaim...?

[Cow Poke]

But you're not going to provide a single example of progressive legislation actually failing miserably, or conservative legislation actually achieving widespread acclaim...?

Yes.

[lilpixieofterror]

But you're not going to provide a single example of progressive legislation actually failing miserably, or conservative legislation actually achieving widespread acclaim...?

[Darth Executor]

But you're not going to provide a single example of progressive legislation actually failing miserably, or conservative legislation actually achieving widespread acclaim...?

Private property seems to have achieved widespread acclaim.

[Starlight]

Private property seems to have achieved widespread acclaim.

Which post-WWII US federal law introduced that?

[Darth Executor]

Which post-WWII US federal law introduced that?

How about the collapsing tax rate for starters.

[shunyadragon]

Whoever you quoted said this: "... often creating programs without adequate protections against co-dependence, outright fraud, a sense of entitlement, or creating a poverty 'trap.'"

AFAICT, your graphics only address the "outright fraud" aspect, which is NOT the main thing that concerns most conservatives. Even some honest progressives lament the reality of the unintended consequence of a "dependency class" that exists as a result of progressive policies.

I lament the industrial megalomaniacs that control our country and have bleed the middle class into the intended consequence of a "dependency class." Trump represents this class giving them the greatest Christmas Tax gift of the millennia.