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A big reason people vote conservative that nobody talks about (much).

The reason: having to deal with government. Having to deal with the sheer amount of bureaucratic nonsense and pettifogging overregulation in our day-to-day lives.

Note this is not the same thing as wanting tax cuts. This is usually how liberals (with a hand-wave) dismiss conservative voters’ concerns about government regulation- ‘they are just greedy and want to pay less tax’. No. They are sick and tired of the mind boggling, time wasting, pointless bureaucracy, which is so maddening as it is unneeded. In fact, where I am (Australia), taxes aren’t particularly high, but oh my god how we are overregulated.

Why don’t conservatives talk more about this reason? Its massive. I can count at least a dozen people in my circle who’ve been thoroughly converted from voting for anything that involves big government. And there are many more out there.

Obviously many non-conservative voters are bureaucrats themselves, and just don’t understand how much they are resented, and how pointless most of their huffy-shouldered clipboard ‘work’ is.

The opposition to Obamacare is instructive. Firstly, despite what the media says, this opposition is from the ground up. It is not directed from the top, by evil insurance companies etc etc, it is driven by ordinary Americans who have a deep set hatred of government bureaucracy. A look at the massive, genuinely grassroots, rallies against it would immediately show you that. (Now let me say firstly I think national healthcare is probably a good idea, and its one of the few areas where the free market fails and government should run it. But I find it equally curious how we dismiss without explanation people’s extreme and well founded distaste of government as some sort of delusion).

Finally, I am not opposed to sensible regulations that stop me polluting the rivers, injuring workers etc etc. I am against the mountain of pointless rules and regulations, of useless commissioners and public servants that blight our lives with rubbish.

It’s time we talked more about this issue.

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The big budget con

The Victorian state budget is out, and as predicted, it’s a massive waste-a-thon.  Billions being spent to (a) keep our useless closed-shop bureaucrats in jobs (so they’ll keep voting labor) while (b) handing out various useless focus group tested virtue signalling bullshit payments to sectional interests.

Naturally, our spoon fed press gallery are in delight, as they’ve been given ‘announceables’ and ‘exclusives’ and they can run the big myth that this is somehow a necessary stimulus rather than being a bloated public sector salary-athon waste.

As usual, people are misunderstanding the Andrews govt, thinking its somehow a ‘progressive’ one, when in fact it’s a far right gang of vicious privatizers, who’ve flogged off the monopoly port, the titles office, handed our road system to Transurban for nothing (and recently caved in pathetically on the tunnel costs overruns) and are about to flog off Vicroads licensing.

The recent rubbish ‘public housing’ announcement promising billions was the usual media managed ‘exclusive’ spoonfed announceable, it will involve flogging off public housing sites on the promise to make 1% of the units built public (and none will be built anyway). (Its necessary to sell off all public housing in order to save it).

Dan Andrews knows that all he has to do is fund a few cheap virtue signalling ‘awareness raising’ ads on TV, noisily appoint some indigenous females and apologize for things that didn’t really happen, and the ABC/Fairfax/SBS press gallery collective will lap it all up as conclusive proof he’s ‘progressive’ when in fact, in the real world, he’s just a privatizing fraudster giving everything away to his rich property developer mates and donors.  (Anything to avoid journalists actually having to analyze or write about policies!).

Anyway, it’s all too late to do anything about this crap.  We’re stuck with the debt for the next hundred years.