In recent years, many people have identified themselves as “Socially Liberal fiscally conservative” to the ire of both the Left and the Right. However, many people are confused by what it actually means, so what does it mean?

They are certainly among the strangest types of people, an oxymoron if you will. They are considered both a certain type of right-leaning liberal and a type of left-leaning conservative.

For the most part, it is a rarity for public office holders to claim that they are “Socially Liberal Fiscally conservative”. However, this does not mean that public office holders don’t have these views…

What Does “Socially Liberal Fiscally Conservative” Mean?

It’s highly likely that people have held socially liberal fiscally conservative viewpoints since the beginning of democracies in Ancient Athens. Even if those socially liberal viewpoints aren’t liberal by modern standards.

Politicians since the early 1900’s have held these views, and this has been reflected in many of their policies. This was especially common as the Gilded Age came to an end in the early 1900’s.

With that being sad, the term is only relatively new, only being coined in the last forty years or so.

Essentially, people who hold this viewpoint often hold socially liberal views, for example, they are pro-choice, pro-legalization of marijuana, pro-same sex marriage etc.

However, when it comes to the economy, they are much more fiscally conservative. They believe that the government should do whatever it takes to stimulate the economy.

Simply put, people who identify as “Socially liberal fiscally conservative” hold conservative economic views, but liberal social views.

Views

People who identify as “Socially liberal fiscally conservative” have a mixture of views, pertaining to both society as a whole as for the economy. These views also make them crucial swing votes during elections.

In the West at least, winning these people has been the reason why the party has won the election. Swing states are particularly full of these people.

Economics

As the name implies, people who identify as “Socially liberal fiscally conservative” generally tend to hold fiscally conservative views when it comes to the economy.

Government

As with other fiscal conservatives, they have a great deal of views in regards to the government, both in terms of its size and how it should operate and fund itself.

For starters, they believe that a government should only be as big as it needs to be, in order to function. This means that the “Have a meeting to plan a meeting to plan a meeting” culture needs to disappear.

On top of this, government agencies and regulators need to only have as many staff as it realistically needs. If a job can be done by 10 people, you can get rid of the other 20, if you will.

The government should also adhere to personal liberties. Unless someone has committed a crime or has done something to warrant the attention of the government, the government should leave the citizens alone too.

Due to this, they believe that taxes on both private citizens and corporations can be lowered. This is because the government no longer has an excuse to fund unnecessary government institutions.

This will incentivize businesses and people to spend more money, which will in turn help the economy. This will raise everybody’s wages, regardless of profession and everybody (in theory) should have higher standards of living.

Capitalism

Despite their liberal social views occasionally influencing their fiscal views (albeit rarely), they are overwhelming supporters of capitalism. They have seen things like socialism be implemented, and fail dramatically.

As such, as with other fiscal conservatives, they believe that a capitalist system is the only system we should consider. And this is something that politicians on both sides of the spectrum should agree on.

With this, they believe that the government should promote capitalism at all costs, both in schools and during people’s careers. This should be through the main syllabus and through extra-curricular activities.

They also believe that in times of adversity, during a recession or something similar, that the government should step in to help businesses. This could be through numerous means, with most not really caring how it is done.

However, their liberal social views do influence one main area of their fiscal views: Corporatocracies. They believe that the government should step in, if a corporation gets too big, and break it up into smaller companies.

This is in order to satisfy their liberal social views and help the employees rather than the shareholders. These separate companies may still be owned by the same people, however, they should be barred from merging with one another.

Social

As the name should probably imply, people who identify as “Socially liberal fiscally conservative” generally tend to hold socially liberal views when it comes to society as a whole, rather than socially conservative views.

Welfare

Despite lobbying for lower taxes and reduced government, they tend to believe in a strong central welfare system. This welfare system should be able to care for and provide everything a citizen needs.

They tend to believe that unemployment benefits should be enough to support the unemployed person and their family for a short while. However, redundancies need to be in place to prevent generational welfare dependency.

Most agree that paid maternity leave should be longer than it is currently. On top of this, they often believe that the various pay grades should go down much slower than they do currently, and the percentage should be increased too.

For the most part, they believe that children benefits and tax credits need to be implemented on a grander scale. They believe that more people need to be able to access to them, as well as the programs offering more money.

The overwhelming majority of them believe we are indeed in a housing crisis. The government has left the private sector to sort this long enough, all to no avail. So, now the government needs to intervene.

As they see it, there are several ways that the government could go about doing it: forcefully taking newly-completed houses from building companies (or buying them from them) or building their own.

However, it needs to be done quickly.

Socio-Cultural Issues

On top of believing in the welfare state, they also believe in several social issues currently plaguing most of the Western world. For the most part, it is these beliefs that draw the ire of both conservatives and liberals.

For the most part, they are overwhelmingly supportive of gay rights. They believe that we should be free to love whomever we choose, regardless of gender. This has birthed a subsect of conservatism called gay conservatives.

As with their support for gay rights, they support the legalization of abortion. If their country has already legalized it, they believe that it should be made available to more people. This has similarly birthed pro-choice conservatives.

Stem cells are at the forefront of medical science, yet conservatives oppose them for ethical reasons. However, they believe that if used solely for medical purposes, stem cell research and therapies should be legalized and expanded.

We are currently in a drug crisis, especially with opioids. Unlike their conservative counterparts, they don’t believe that we should criminalize drug use. Instead, we should legalize it.

In its place, we should make it a public health problem. They believe that this will help people to come out of the shadows about their drug use and seek help, something they aren’t doing at the moment for fear of prison.

How Does it Differ Around The World?

Rather surprisingly, the beliefs are held by people all over the world, whether they live in the UK, US, Australia, Israel and/or South Africa. There are several political parties with these views in each country as well!

For the most part, their views are the same regardless of what country they come from, both in terms of their fiscal and social views. You could take one of these people from the UK, Australia and Israel, and their ideologies would be mostly the same.

However, their ideologies do vary from country to country, for both their fiscal and social views, with it more often than not, being the latter.

In some countries, issues like abortion, gay-marriage and universal healthcare have been decided on for years. Places like the UK, for instance, legalized abortion almost 20 years ago, and had universal healthcare since the 1940’s.

As such, these issues aren’t really views these people have to defend or lobby for. Instead, they want to see them expanded far beyond what they are already, whereas their American counterparts want them implemented.

Occasionally, their economic (fiscal) views are somewhat different, mostly to do with taxes on the rich and on corporations. Some want them gone, or significantly lowered, whilst others only want them lowered a little.

Issues

As alluded to earlier, both liberals and conservatives have their issues with people who identify as “Socially liberal fiscally conservative”. Both side of the political spectrum dislike them for completely different, yet similar reasons.

Liberals

During each election cycle, liberal media outlets, be it liberal magazines, blogs or newspapers, always call upon these people to vote for the liberal party. Often to varying degrees of success.

Often, they talk about one thing: “They care about people but not enough to see them cared for on a systemic level.” This isn’t a sentiment taken from just one outlet, but numerous outlets across the world.

And you’d be surprised how many times they use that exact phrasing, even if they aren’t owned by the same media company. It’s a lot.

From what I have seen and heard, that’s their main issue with them. They believe that the government should make things available to the people that aren’t necessarily now, or expand current programs to help people.

However, when it comes to helping these same people financially, they turn their backs. To many liberals, this is unforgivable, as they show that they want to help people through legislation, yet won’t part with their money to help them!

Worse than that, they often side with most other conservatives when it comes to liberals trying to fund these goals. They often just say “No!” which, to many liberals seems to have no rhyme or reason.

Conservatives

During each election cycle, conservative media outlets, be it conservative magazines, blogs or newspapers, always call upon these people to vote for the conservative party. Often to varying degrees of success.

Despite voting for their country’s conservative party an overwhelming amount of time, often placing them in power, many conservatives, mostly social conservatives, vehemently dislike these people.

As you can probably imagine, this is due to their lobbying for liberal social reforms within the conservative party. In certain areas, many conservative politicians feel pressured to raise these issues for debate, even if they don’t personally believe them.

Often, these politicians claim that it is for the benefit of the party. They claim whatever the issue is, is the reason why these people won’t vote for them, so if they do it, they’ll ensure votes for the next election!

Regardless, many conservatives still see it as their party becoming more liberal, which is the complete opposite of what their party stands for. For many of them, they don’t want these people to vote for them because of one issue.

Instead, they’d rather lose those votes than their ideals. After all, many of them stand by their conservative values, and don’t want them to be a slightly different version of the liberals’ values.

Prominent “Socially Liberal Fiscally Conservative” People

Throughout the years, there have been numerous people who either identify as “Socially liberal fiscally conservative” or held views that could be described as such.

You could make the case that several current and former office holders identify/identified as “Socially liberal fiscally conservative”. The most prominent of these, include:

• Ludwig Mises
• John Maynard Keynes
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• David Cameron
• John F. Kennedy
• Theresa May
• Alexander Rüstow
• Lyndon B. Johnson
• Friedrich Naumann 
• David Lloyd George

What does “Socially liberal fiscally conservative” mean to you? Tell me in the comments!