Posted on 06/03/2011 7:45:44 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Perhaps this will feel a little counterintuitive after seeing today’s jobless numbers, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Gallup’s latest poll on soak-the-rich tax policies show that Americans are less open to redistributionism than at the peak of the pre-Great Recession economy, with a plurality rejecting “heavy taxes on the rich”:
Americans break into two roughly evenly matched camps on the question of whether the government should enact heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth in the U.S. Forty-seven percent believe the government should redistribute wealth in this way, while 49% disagree, similar to views Gallup found four years ago.
Republicans and Democrats have sharply different reactions to the government’s taking such an active role in equalizing economic outcomes. Seven in 10 Democrats believe the government should levy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth, while an equal proportion of Republicans believe it should not. The slight majority of independents oppose this policy.
The question also provokes different reactions from men compared with women, whites vs. nonwhites, and upper-income vs. lower-income Americans. Consistent with their more Democratic political orientation, women, nonwhites, and lower-income adults are all more supportive than their counterparts of government redistribution of wealth via taxes.
The “slight majority” of which Gallup speaks is a ten-point margin among independents, 53/43. Interestingly, even though a majority claims that the distribution of wealth in America needs to be more evenly distributed (57/35), a plurality of 42% believe that we have “the right amount” of rich people. Maybe we just need to redistribute within the wealthy class? That’s near a 20-year low of 40% in 2007, but the percentage who believe we have too many rich people dropped six points from 37% in 2007 to 31% today.
Redistributionist policies will always appeal to those who see themselves as outsiders to economic success. One might expect that the terrible economy of the last three years would have boosted the popularity of Barack Obama’s populist agenda, but it seems the opposite has occurred. Americans know that job creation comes from private investors taking risks with their wealth in order to create even more wealth, and not from government confiscation of wealth to create new bureaucracies that create nothing but red tape. We have spent the last two years watching what happens when government takes wealth out of the economy, and the results — chronically high unemployment, bad housing markets, and a falling dollar that brings high fuel and food prices — are no longer dim reminders of the 1970s, but our current environment.
47% are reds we are screwed
I'd love to change the world"
Ten Years After - "I'd Love to Change the World"
This is what free enterprise is all about?
Work your arse off for 20-30 years building your wealth just to have to hand it all over to the govt?
Why bother??
What's that about pursuit of happiness? I can't hear it being drowned out by "Tax the rich!"
The govt is the only one who ultimately has a pursuit of happiness in this country any more.
How about we let anyone who earns a dollar keep it.
Why do so many people feel entitled to the money that others have earned?
Soak the rich may not be as popular but freeloading is more popular than ever. Gimme, gimme, gimme and have someone else pay for it. That is the America way these days. If you gave people a choice between taking their government handouts and raising taxes on the rich, I know what the answer would be.
Tax the rich, feed the poor
Till there are no rich no more
They aren't interested in helping the needy, so much as bringing the well off down. Destruction.
Gandhi was more interested in "social justice" than helping the needy. He was OK with leaving people in poverty as long as his philosophical goals were achieved.
Mark
A tithe for Jesus, a tithe for Caesar, and the rest is MINE!
Aanyone who thinks it’s a good idea to take money from those that worked hard and made all the right choices to make something of themselves and give it to those who just want to sit around and watch TV while tossing back a few brews, who at every step made the wrong decisions, need to get their heads examined.
The rich can split. The parasites will be left w/zilch, unless they feed upon the middle class and then the working poor.
You choose to go out partying, while others study.
You choose to “experiment” with drugs while others don't
You choose to take up smoking or drinking while other don't
You choose to have premarital sex while others abstain
You choose to drop out of school and not attend college
You choose to “hook-up” with the “bad boy” instead of the nice guy that wanted to marry you.
And as a result you end up unemployed or underemployed raising a kid/kids by yourself trying to get-by from day to day while supporting a drug addiction and/or a alcohol or smoking habit.
Then you have the audacity to DEMAND that those who didn't CHOOSE to make all those mistakes, who's lives turned out just fine based on their decisions pay to support you?!?
Give me a brake, you made your bed, now lay in it!
This is one song from my youth (earlier than me, but I still listened to it) that sent me down the conservative path. I used to always ask, what're they gonna do when there are no more rich to tax?
And how is it that, at least anecdotal evidence is that many of the “poor” are getting enough to eat? Many of them seem to drive nice vehicles, and have the “bling” if you know what I mean. Yet they are officially poor.
Maybe they are poor because they spend all the money they have on cars and bling and all that. But that begs the question as to how desperately poor are they, if they get enough to eat, have a place to live, and apparently don’t have to work for a living to have the things they have?
And there’s anecdotal evidence that some people are cheating on Social Security disability. Otherwise able bodied people somehow become officially disabled, and then collect benefits.
There’s a collective entitlement mentality which has taken root among critical masses in this country. And that’s as dangerous to our future as terrorist attacks or other dangers. The entitlement mentality has merged with a “baby mama” culture to produce a generation of people who won’t be productive citizens in their future.
That makes me their slave.
If the advocates of soaking the rich want to know what the rich look like, they need to head to the bathroom mirror.
Thanks Hojczyk.
What’s striking in that poll is the polarity.
71% of Democrats are FOR wealth distribution.
69% of Republicans oppose it (who in hell are the other 31% ??)
Females and Minorities also support it at much higher levels than do white males.
We are in our 60’s, have meager incomes, but our assets amount to over $200,000.......I’m afraid this administration considers us the rich. Many of our relatives and friends have similar situations. Are we going to be taxed to death?
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