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I think this is a bad model. You can find people who think like this, but it's a specific case of a broader disagreement over the actual mutability of outcomes.
(American) Conservatives adhere to a kind of socio-economic Calvinism and think outcomes are fixed, so we should be preoccupied with punishing bad behavior so they can't ruin it for everyone else. This is important for the conservative world view because without it they're just the latest round of elites explaining why it's god's will that they're rich and you're poor.
Progressives believe outcomes are changeable (as do most people left of center, though their specific analysis varies) and often think focusing on punishment for bad behavior is a distraction or outright impediment to improving outcomes. This is important to the progressive world view because without it they're just pissing straight up.
Americans in general have a lot of strange political and economic juxtapositions.
Take the protests that were happening in France not too long ago, with Macron and compare him with Trump's activities. If you look back to when Trump was elected, almost no western liberal would've disagreed that he was a disaster for the US, and that someone like Macron was a success for France. But if you come up to today, the exact 'opposite' had been proven true.
The roots of people's anger with Macron going far back, had to do with him wanting to implement some pretty sound macroeconomic reforms. One thing he wanted to do was increase the diesel tax, which would e reduced their budget deficit and helped lower CO2 emissions. Their fiscal position would've been stronger, and that would've increased international confidence and investment in France so the bottom half of the population could benefit. But the population naturally didn't want to tolerate short-term pain for long-term gain, so it didn't happen.
If you look at Trump, he had the trust and confidence of the bottom 50%. When he attacked the establishment, he was venting the anger of that half of the population that felt ignored and cast by the wayside. So when he got elected, it had a cathartic effect on the bottom half of the population, in a way you didn't experience those protests in DC. The average incomes of Americans has stagnated over the course of the last 40 years, and quite noticeably. We bviously have a right to be angry, but the problem with our society is that we too strongly emphasize the principle of liberty over addressing social and economic inequalities.
The problem with western liberalism is that we tend to believe that as long as elections are held and people can vote freely and equally, that that 'alone' is sufficient for our stability and prosperity, and it isn't. The government also needs an active and responsible hand in raising the quality and standard of living of it's citizens. And believing in the former above stated fiction, it means that we internalize our own economic woes and failings, and attribute them to our own personal incompetence and not broader social conditions.
Trump's policies of running larger deficits in relatively good times was destined to bring pain later on, as everybody who paid attention could foresee, while Macron could've ameliorated some economic woes, if only the population would've remained patient with him. But they didn't. Liberals messed up where Trump was concerned, by focusing too much on 'the man'. If liberals wanted to regain the trust of voters, that involves taking a stance against the status quo that blocks meaningful reform from taking place.
That's because t's easy to lie, mislead, or just be overly optimistic about long term gains. On the other hand, it's hard to be wrong about the short term pain.
Right, and, making transportation more expensive is going to have economic ripple effects that are hard to predict.
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