Almost Two Thirds Choose Liberty Over Security
To illustrate what I was trying to tell hardheaded Tgirsch in the comments of this post, this Rasmussen poll revealed that “62% of voters would prefer fewer government services with lower taxes.”
Yes, believe it or not, almost two thirds of the country still value liberty over the security of the nanny state. Sadly, the GOP has drifted away from conservatism and toward modern liberalism. Not a good move, obviously.
HT: Ben Cunningham.
Neal Boortz is a little more cynical.
I’m not buying the poll. America today is an America of big government. This is the America of “what has the government done for me today.”
I would like to think – and in fact used to think — that most Americans are truly Libertarian at heart. But then when you dangle in front of them these fancy entitlement programs and wealth envy rhetoric, they are like fat kids at MacDonald’s … you can’t resist temptation, because it all looks so darn good.
See, the problem is that this doesn’t do anything to contradict what I’ve been saying all along. Americans say they want “smaller government” because in the abstract, they think they do. But when you get down to the specifics, that all evaporates. Ask those same people if they want deep cuts to Medicare and Social Security, and the answer goes in the opposite direction, probably by similar margins.
One thing Americans do favor, however, is fiscal responsibility, in the “let’s not take on massive debt” sense. Given a choice between a balanced budget or lower taxes, they pick a balanced budget by almost a two-to-one ratio. They also pick increased spending on education and health care as more important even than balancing the budget. See Questions 7a and 7b.
The above in short form, the people who want “smaller government” are mainly the ones who haven’t really stopped and thought about what that actually means.
To clarify a bit further, I suspect virtually everyone would like to see less spending in this area of government or that. What I mean is that there’s very little agreement, and certainly no consensus, as to what those areas would be. You’d be pretty hard-pressed to find values of X where anywhere near 50% of Americans would say “I want the government to spend less money on X,” especially where X is a substantial part of the budget.
And I may be hard-headed, but at least I can do basic arithmetic.
You could be right, even though you don’t really cite a study or anything. But still, you, along with your new buddy Neal Boortz, could be right.
There is a flip side to that though. Ask a working person if they support progressive taxation. Well let me start over. Explain to them in layman’s terms what progressive taxation is and then ask them if they support it. Almost all will answer, in that class envy tone that the Democrat Party feeds off of, that “yeah the rich ought to pay a higher percentage.” Then ask them if they will volunteer for overtime. Some will say “Nah, the government gets most of that anyway”. Of course the reason they have more deducted is because they go into a higher bracket when they make that much. Basically they are all for progressive taxation in word, but admit, unknowingly of course, that it takes away their incentive to work harder.
Some will say “Nah, the government gets most of that anyway”. Of course the reason they have more deducted is because they go into a higher bracket when they make that much.
Except that it doesn’t actually work that way. There is no tax bracket where, after jumping into the next bracket, you wind up with less take home money, in absolute dollars, than if you’d stayed in the lower bracket. It’s mathematically impossible. The scenario simply doesn’t exist. I defy you to show me where it’s the case. It’s a grand urban myth, on par with the mythical family farmer’s son who lost everything because of the estate tax. (Worse, actually, because the latter was at least hypothetically possible in exactly the right circumstances, even if there’s no documented example of it ever actually happening.)
There are certain narrow circumstances in which an hourly worker’s paycheck won’t be much larger despite a lot of overtime, because some payroll systems do simplistic math when calculating tax deductions such that it assumes that every check will be the size of this check, and withholds (too much) accordingly. But even in that case, the worker still gets that money back in the form of a tax refund at the end of the year.
And while we’re on the subject of progressive taxation, try asking the question in reverse: If they had to take a 50% pay cut starting tomorrow, do they think they should still be taxed at the same rate at which they’re taxed today. Betcha $1 the answer is an overwhelming “no.”
Okay then, chalk it up to “some payroll systems do simplistic math when calculating tax deductions such that it assumes that every check will be the size of this check, and withholds (too much) accordingly.”
You are right that they will get it back in the refund at the end of the year, and I have explained that to people, but is it so hard for you to believe that a person that doesn’t understand what progressive taxation means, may not understand that either? Dang you’re argumentative.
All I’m saying is that your example didn’t prove what you were trying to prove — you were trying to establish that people don’t support progressive taxation in practice, and your example proves no such thing. In fact, the only reason they ever come anywhere close to opposing it is because they’ve mistakenly bought into the anti-tax crowd’s misrepresentations of how it actually works.