Vote for social or economical reason?

salm · Post by **salm** » 2004-09-23 05:29am

in elections you sometimes have to chose between either voting for a candidate that will probably be more of a benefit to your countries economics and a candidate that suits your social views better.

both candidts tend to be similar, as in non of them is going to totally fuck up the economics and non of them is going to turn your nation into a dictatorship.

personally i vote for social reasons. i´m quite sure that with the CDU (conservatives) germany would be better of financially and perhaps have less unemployment, but i don´t like their views on e.g. gay marriage, abortion nor their views on dealing with foreigners.
the SPD (liberal) are probably bad for economics, as one can see (we have ca. 10 % unemployment) but their views on the topics i critisized in the CDU are a better.
hence i vote SPD.

what is more important to you? economic improvement or social improvement? please give reasons.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2004-09-23 06:08am

I vote for social reasons, an economy can recover far easier than a society.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2004-09-23 11:29am

I've usually voted for economic reasons, in the past, when there's been a marked difference between the two.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2004-09-23 11:33am

social. the job market always goes up and down, but social setbacks are even more difficult to recover from. especially idiots that like to restrict or take away rights of various minority and subgroups or promote special agendas.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2004-09-23 12:12pm

Mostly social, there really is only so much a single person can do in 4 years, and an economy can recover from it.

Social issues on the other hand....

JME2 · Post by **JME2** » 2004-09-23 12:29pm

Social; We've taken a large step backward socially and this must be rectified as soon as possible.

theski · Post by **theski** » 2004-09-23 12:47pm

JME2 wrote:Social; We've taken a large step backward socially and this must be rectified as soon as possible.

and do you blame the people or the Government for that??

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2004-09-23 12:50pm

theski wrote:
JME2 wrote:Social; We've taken a large step backward socially and this must be rectified as soon as possible.
and do you blame the people or the Government for that??

Both, to different extents. People are easily led with logical fallacies; government is really good at feeding the people a line of bullshit when Madness, oops, 'Elections' come.

JME2 · Post by **JME2** » 2004-09-23 12:51pm

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:
theski wrote:
JME2 wrote:Social; We've taken a large step backward socially and this must be rectified as soon as possible.
and do you blame the people or the Government for that??
Both, to different extents. People are easily led with logical fallacies; government is really good at feeding the people a line of bullshit when Madness, oops, 'Elections' come.

Agreed.

Andrew J. · Post by **Andrew J.** » 2004-09-23 02:41pm

Social. It's only money, right?

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2004-09-23 03:11pm

Social. The president, at the end of the day, doesn't have a big effect on the economy. He can nudge it a little, one way or the other, but the economy has its cycles.

Society is a far different beast. With our system, if a fuck-up manages to get through, it takes a long time to correct it. While I think that, as a whole, society has progressed overall, there are still people who want to throw a lever in that progression, and they must be kept out of the system.

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2004-09-23 07:59pm

Social. Money means nothing if you're dead or not allowed to earn any because of repression.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-09-23 10:14pm

As long as the social candidate isn't going to totally fuck the economic system, I'll vote social.

AniThyng · Post by **AniThyng** » 2004-09-23 10:39pm

economic.

assuming that the social conditions are fairly unrepressive (e.g. i am not living in a totalitarian dictatorship which a oppressively powerful secret police that would have you shot for merely living out of tune) anything at or above a middle class income will allow me to do pretty much all i want in private.

under the radar, so to speak.

The_Nice_Guy · Post by **The_Nice_Guy** » 2004-09-24 01:33am

Economic. Economics trumps all, and is not as easy to recover from as people here have commented, especially if you look at places with long histories of economic repression that are still recovering, like Russia and Latin America. And once economic dependence sets in amongst a nation's populace, it's very difficult to break them out of it.

Economic improvement is the first step towards achieving stability in a country, before embarking on any social liberalization, because nobody gives a damn about social freedom when the belly is empty. A quick look at most of the East Asian economies and their developmental politics indicates this, although it can be argued that the homogenity of culture(largely) made social restrictions a rather moot point.

Another possible factor to consider is that socially 'deviant' behavior only becomes more prevalent when a society is affluent enough, or in other words, economically developed enough, which in turn assumes a certain level of economic freedom. Sex, drugs, and freedom of religion etc are generally more popular in developed societies where people have the resources and education to pursue those interests.

To take the extremes:

If you have social freedom but not economic freedom, it probably indicates you are housed, fed, and clothed at the direction of the state. There's very little to prevent the state from coming in and taking those social freedoms away, which is granted at the state's sufferance. In other words, it's not social freedom, it's social permission. You are allowed to do almost anything you want, but would you have the resources to do them in the first place? Of course, some things don't require much in the way of resources.

On the other hand, if you have economic freedom, but no social freedom, you can use your wealth to apply pressure to governments to force back social restrictions, or be a politician yourself. And if you're rich enough, hiding socially 'unacceptable' behavior just becomes a matter of greasing the right hands.

To put it as a crude analogy: The powers on top are your parents. The socially liberal but economically restrictive parent takes 90% of your pay, but you can do anything you want with the remaining 10%, which sadly isn't much. The socially restrictive parent but economically liberal parent takes only 10% of your pay, but does not allow you to indulge in sex, drugs, and other uhm... experiments. That doesn't mean you can't sneak out and indulge in them with your money.

An example is this is Hong Kong. One of the reasons China doesn't dare roll the Hong Kong people over with tanks is because it's their golden goose. The specter of productive people getting fed up with overly restrictive social policies and immigrating to Australia, Canada, and the US serves as a serious check on any plan to impose tight social/political restrictions.

But for Germany, a developed nation, it depends on how much more benefit you can obtain from further economic liberalization, as compared to the quality of life by maintaining looser social policies. The way I see it, 10% unemployment is pretty bad, and the SDP might just muck it up even further, and if it gets any worse, any talk of social freedom is useless when you don't have the resources to enjoy that freedom.

Work on getting richer first, then apply that wealth into political leverage when the time is right to socially liberalise. Politicians require funding for election campaigns, after all.

TWG

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Vote for social or economical reason?

Do you vote for social or economic reasons?

Vote for social or economical reason?