what we're gonna talk about in this
video is how various political
ideologies can affect folks views on
economics and when we're talking about
economics and government policy around
economics there's two fundamental types
there's fiscal policy which we will
focus mainly on in this video which is
the idea of how much does the government
tax and how much does the government
spend and this is fundamentally in
control of the US Congress then you also
have monetary policy and these are ideas
around interest rates and the money
supply in service of keeping the economy
strong without having inflation run amok
and this is controlled in the United
States by the US Federal Reserve System
now if you were to put the various
ideologies on a spectrum it might look
something like this and I put liberal
ideology on the left because it's often
associated with a left-leaning ideology
and I put conservatives on the right
because it's often described as a
right-leaning ideology libertarians are
interesting because if we're talking
about economics they have a lot more in
common with conservatives than they do
with liberals but if we were talking
about social issues it would be the
other way around
libertarians would have a lot more in
common with liberals than conservatives
on social issues in general libertarians
want less government intervention on
either dimension on economics or social
issues but now let's focus on the entire
spectrum so if we were to think about
liberals what's your sense of how a
liberal might think about say fiscal
policy taxation and government spending
generally speaking liberals favor a
larger government and this larger
government happens through higher taxes
higher taxes and higher government
spending and more government programs
higher spending and the reason why they
tend to favor a larger government is
they will invoke ideas of a safety net
that in a wealthy society everyone
should be provided for on some level
they might invoke ideas of fairness they
also believe that a larger government is
out there to protect the citizenry from
being taken advantage of and so they'll
also favor more regulation now
conservatives would take the opposite
stance they tend to favor smaller
government smaller government and it
would be in the form of lower taxes
lower taxes lower spending lower
spending and less government regulation
less regulation and they'll make the
argument that the less that the
government gets in the way the more that
the economy can actually thrive the more
that business can do well the more
competitive our country will be in which
case everyone will be better off and so
they're often associated as being
pro-business
but many conservatives would argue that
by being pro-business it's actually
helping more individuals now an idea
that often gets associated with liberals
is one of Keynesian economics now John
Maynard Keynes was an early twentieth
century economist who argued that a
government could use fiscal policy in
order to stimulate the economy
so Keynes argued that during recessions
the government could even run deficits
in order to stimulate the economy that
even deficits were not bad by lowering
taxes because lower taxes would put more
money in individuals and businesses
pockets and increasing spending so
higher government spending higher
government spending
now although Keynes is most associated
with a liberal ideology especially
because it was practiced during the
depression by FDR some would argue that
it might have helped come out of the
depression it turns out that most
mainstream liberals and conservatives do
practice some form of Keynesian
economics liberals tend to stress the
higher government spending if we're in a
recession the government should spend
more to stimulate the economy to put
more money in folks pockets so that
there's more consumer spending which
could drive the economy can
services try to favor the lower taxes
you will see conservative government
officials say hey we want to lower taxes
to stimulate the economy fundamentally
that is a Keynesian point of view
therefore we focusing on the lower taxes
angle of it in either case if your
spending is higher than your taxes both
sides would run a deficit in order to
stimulate the economy
sometimes the Conservatives are
associated with the idea of supply-side
economics and this is the idea and this
goes back to being pro-business and even
lower taxes that hey if more people have
more money in their pockets especially
those who invest or those who are
starting businesses or businesses
themselves that they can then expand
their capacity they could go and hire
more people and that this would be good
for everyone
now what about libertarians well on
economic policy you could view them as
even more conservative than
conservatives they would favor the
smallest possible government smallest
smallest possible possible government
many libertarians would argue that the
government should only be there to
protect property rights to have a common
self-defense to have some basic public
safety and outside of that the
government should get out of the way and
people would be best off and Liberty
libertarians would even argue that the
whole idea of a federal reserve system
that's actively controlling monetary
policy is a bad idea so I'll leave you
there this gives you a big picture of
how political ideology connects to folks
views on economics