• chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    People change. The old stereotype is that people tend to be very liberal in high school and college but become very conservative with a mortgage and a couple of kids. I don’t know how often that actually plays out but it makes sense.

    When you don’t have anything it’s easy to demand a lot of things from the government. When you have money you want to do everything you can to hold onto it and that means not paying taxes. It flips around again when people are super rich though: then they don’t mind paying taxes (because their effective tax rate is very low). It’s the middle class who get screwed the most.

    • Railing5132@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      My dad, after a discussion in my young adult years turned political: “if you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you don’t have a heart. If you’re not conservative when you’re an adult, you don’t have a brain.”

      Well, dad, I have made it to adulthood with brilliant children and great relationships with them to boot. I’m still a screaming liberal and you’re still a racist that is gargling the balls of a wannabe dictator.

    • Fatticus@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Have a mortgage and a kid, more left now than I ever was in my past. While recognizing that not everyone wants those things, my living standard really should be the baseline and I don’t mind paying taxes to make it easier for others to achieve it. It does piss me off that most of my taxes go to a military I don’t approve of though.

      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I’m in Canada so I have the opposite reaction re: the military. Our military is a joke and if the US ever walked away from NATO we would be totally screwed.

        Our government has been run by the Liberals since 2015. All they’ve done is destroyed the jobs market and put housing out of reach for ordinary people. Not a fan!

        I think if you want to be a socialist you need to acknowledge that sometimes the government will be grossly incompetent and/or corrupt. Frankly, this experience is what has pulled me to the right. I simply don’t have trust in unaccountable institutions anymore.

        Having said that, I think most of the damage to our society has been done by incompetent municipal governments which aren’t part of our party system anyway. They’ve squandered billions of dollars, been grifted by scam artist developers, and destroyed our communities with idiotic urban planning ideas that make livable neighbourhoods illegal.

        • Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 months ago

          I think if you want to be a socialist you need to acknowledge that sometimes the government will be grossly incompetent and/or corrupt. Frankly, this experience is what has pulled me to the right. I simply don’t have trust in unaccountable institutions anymore.

          You watched liberals do liberalism, blamed it on socialists and moved to the right? What on earth are you thinking?

          • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            They campaigned on the left and have been a minority government working in a coalition with the socialist NDP for the past several years.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      As someone middle class I’d really like a functioning government more than the amount I’m taxed.

      Also republicans don’t lower my taxes, they raise them and decrease funding for the poor then go on a rant about divorce needing to be banned

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I dunno, I’m the opposite, though without the kids I grew up in Christian cult hell but broke free as a teenager. Now at 45, looking back, the older I’ve grown the more socialist I’ve become.