I realize I should've been a tad more specific when I said conservatives. I meant wealthy conservatives. As for middle class conservatives, well, the middle class has routinely gotten screwed for the last forty years, no d matter who was in charge. They are in the political doughnut hole. It's why there's fewer and fewer of them, with the majority experiencing downward mobility.

Of course, government spending and government control of the economy are the real problems, and middle class conservatives know this too - so they also object to any tax increases because they (justly) want to "starve the beast".

No, the real problem is that the super rich just keep getting super richer ⚠️ ↗; the 'gov't is too big for its britches' argument, while it sounds down-homey and appeals to people who do nor fully understand how gov't works, is a red herring. The old cliche about penises applies to gov't: it ain't the size but how you use it.

What may not be so clear is the way the politically-connected wealthy avoid paying even their fare share of taxes and subvert the regulatory climate to benefit themselves at the expense of small business. Even the Social Security system benefits the upper classes, who are more likely to live long enough to collect the benefits than the lower classes that pay a larger percentage of their income into that Ponzi scheme.

Ponzi scheme? The problem here isn't that the social security system is inherently unfair (it has problems, I'll grant, but nothing that can't be fixed); theoretically wealthier people should pay more into the system, so I don't have a problem with them getting benefits from it if they pay their fair share. The problem is that the whole system is basically rigged to benefit the rich. There are just enough cushions in place for very poor to keep them from revolting; and the middle class are fed a line of crap by the rich that soothes them, simultaneously laying the blame for the middle class's increasing problems at the feet of those pesky liberals, who, goshdarnit, keep tying the hands of businessmen and forcing them to fuck the little guy over. No, they don't really want to rape the poor; it's just, you know, they can't afford their gold-lined, Olympic-sized swimming pools and diamond-encrusted skull paperweights if they have to pay high taxes. And we can't have that, now can we? As for the wealthier living longer, well that could be fixed if we'd gotten the universal health care system we should've had.

It is also noteworthy that many prominent Liberals are very wealthy. They know how to game the system, and they are smart enough to know that that is exactly what they are doing - exploiting the working class to their own advantage, and getting the suckers to beg for it. They play the good cop to the Conservative bad cop in Washington.

And there are plenty of them who still support paying higher taxes ⚠️ ↗ and using their money responsibly. Look, I'm not against having money. I'm just against assholes who think having money means they have no responsibility to the less fortunate and/or who pursue vast wealth for no other reason than to possess it. Yes, there are rich hypocrites who pass themselves off as fiscal liberals, but like a real girl lover, you know a real liberal by their actions, not by what they claim.