Writing self-congratulatory posts about trips booked with miles is great and all, but one risks becoming complacent and boring.
It’s that time of year, you know, When the crazies get together in Washington to exchange bile and bluster. I’m speaking of course about CPAC, the conservative political action committee convention.
And the only people who have more fun than the red-blooded largely white, movement conservatives who attend the conference, are the liberals like me who watch them from afar as they make unforced error after unforced error.
And I’m not even talking about the clownish Trumps, or the McCarthyesque Cruzes.
No, even the mainstream Paul Ryans do a great job of delivering speeches so comically out touch with reality that were they to have been delivered in the 1950s to a Waspy Mad Men advertisers convention, they would have seemed stilted and detached even then.
Paul Krugman had a really nice summary of Ryan’s speech, To which I can simply add nothing more.
But it occurs to me that the times really have changed.
Though I was too young to understand it at the time, by all accounts the late 70s were a time when liberalism was really on the rocks.
There was no FDR core philosophy anymore. There was only a loose collection of aggrieved groups who did not care much about each other’s struggles.
By all accounts the civil rights activists did not care too much about the feminists, who did not care too much about the autoworkers, who did not care too much about the homosexuals, who did not care too much about migrant farmworkers, and so on and so on.
And this disharmony was set against the background of an aging, caucasian dominated, baby boom generation that felt increasingly alienated by the chaos.
And into the breach stepped Reagan and his revolution and the dominant conservative ideology that has held sway for the past 30+ years.
But the ground has slowly shifted. We are a more diverse country now and our values reflect this. There is a growing consensus for marriage equality, equal pay, multiculturalism, a higher minimum wage, and the liberalization of drug laws.
And against this new reality Conservatism now just seems so small and feckless. The righties are now the ones playing the identity politics game of the liberals of the 70s. But the identity that they cling to is that of a shrinking minority of white privilege, and of fundamentalist religious intolerance.
Their speeches can only ring true only to their benefactors such as the Koch brothers (who’s fortune was inherited ((not earned)) from their beloved father who made his fortune cutting petroleum deals with Joseph Stalin.)
Americans for(The Ongoing)Prosperity(Of Petrochemical Trust Fund Babies)
The lack of empathy displayed when Paul Ryan argues against The value of school lunch programs is as staggering as it is obvious. And as a leftist ideologue I humbly request that CPAC holds a conference from this point forward twice a year, not once.
But now it is surely the time for me to dismount my high horse and to tie this back to the price of tea in China.
Because of course conservatism and liberalism are but two ends of a single spectrum.
And just as there is such a thing as too much taxes, there is such a thing as too little.
And just as there is such a thing as too much civil liberty, there is such a thing as too little.
And just is there such a thing as too big of a military budget, there such a thing as too little.
And just as there such a thing as too much regulation, there is such a thing as too little.
And the same is true in personal finance.
Perhaps the most important lessons of successful personal financial planning are conservative ones.
The concept of personal responsibility is said to be a conservative core ideal. And that is at the heart of saving more and of investing more and of spending less and of not being dependent on others.
(Here, the conservatives seem to often confuse personal responsibility with lecturing others on personal responsibility. As in defending tax expenditures that benefit themselves while decrying the character eroding “cost” of school lunch programs that benefit poor kids.)
But if personal responsibility is a conservative ideal, then we should all strive to be more conservative in our own finances and spending.
And what of taxes?
In our personal finances we would be foolish not to take advantage of legal strategies to reduce our own tax burden.
And hatred of taxes seems to be the single thread that binds all factions of conservatism together. (Clarification; I don’t hate taxes, but I sure love avoiding them.)
But the conservatives certainly do not have a monopoly on the early retirement philosophy.
Focusing on efficiency and sustainability are crucial in order to kick up our own savings percentages. And these ideas are anathema to modern day conservatives and catnip to liberals. (How did the Koch brothers inherited fortune come about again?)
And the decoupling of affordable healthcare insurance from employment will be a big step forward for early retirees, and one that has been widely reviled (though it was invented) by conservatives.
So there you have it.
Much as the country must swing back-and-forth from conservativism to liberalism in order to maintain it’s equipoise, so too must the early retiree pick and choose his ideology carefully when making financial decisions.
Which is not to say one should ever vote for one of these anti-science, close minded, homophobic, plutocratic, Republicans. No, that would surely be one step too far.***
*** Half joking here. And as evidence of my even mindedness, I am quite interested in republican congressman Dave Camp’s tax reform proposal that has drawn significant heat from both sides.
(And I also have a healthy admiration for John Huntsman, and Colin Powell, Republicans both.)
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