Fareed Zakaria Rips Conservative Movement in Time Magazine Article

[no_hypocrisy]

CNN host Fareed Zakaria, also the editor-at-large for Time magazine, derides today's conservative movement as out-of-touch and too abstract in a scathing Time article "How Today's Conservatism Lost Touch With Reality." He argues, "Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past."

-snip-

Then he attacks the notion that lower taxes and spending will lead to economic growth, a favorite talking point of liberals today. "What is the evidence that tax cuts are the best path to revive the U.S. economy?" he asks.

Reaganomics would be a good starting point, although Zakaria makes no effort to address that conservative argument. He instead credits the economic growth of the 80's and 90's to government investing in education and infrastructure.

He also claims that Republicans are MIA when it comes to providing substantial ideas for improving health care in America. "When considering health care, for example, Republicans confidently assert that their ideas will lower costs, when we simply do not have much evidence for this."

-more-

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2011/06/17/fareed-zakaria-rips-conservative-movement-time-magazine-piece

[SlimJimmy]

1. This also just in ... the sun rises in the East. (nt)

;-)

[pampango]

2. "The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. ...

"The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts but is simply a theoretical assertion. The rich countries that are in the best shape right now, with strong growth and low unemployment, are ones like Germany and Denmark, neither one characterized by low taxes."

Meanwhile, across the globe, the world's fastest-growing economy, China, has managed to use government involvement to create growth and jobs for three decades. From Singapore to South Korea to Germany to Canada, evidence abounds that some strategic actions by the government can act as catalysts for free-market growth.

Many Republican businessmen have told me that the Obama Administration is the most hostile to business in 50 years. Really? More than that of Richard Nixon, who presided over tax rates that reached 70%, regulations that spanned whole industries, and who actually instituted price and wage controls?

Today conservatives shy away from the sensible ideas of the Bowles-Simpson commission on deficit reduction because those ideas are too deeply rooted in, well, reality. Does anyone think we are really going to get federal spending to the level it was at under Calvin Coolidge, as Paul Ryan's plan assumes? Does anyone think we will deport 11 million people?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2077943,00.html

[BeyondGeography]

3. It was always bullshit; unpaid-for susbsidies of the rich

A massively unproductive allocation of resources, leading nowhere but down.

But, better late than never, even though Fareed occupies a lonely outpost of the MSM.