A COLLECTIVE SHRUG WHY WE DON'T LOVE BIG GOV'T

NY Post ^ | July 11, 2009 | Michael Barone

[Scanian]

THE financial system col lapsed. Housing prices cra tered. Unemployment is at a record high for the last quarter-century. The Democratic president has a solidly positive job rating.

Yet we Americans haven't suddenly become collectivists. The economic distress of the 1930s led Americans to favor less reliance on markets and more on government. The economic distress of the 1970s led us to favor less reliance on government and more on markets.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect, as many political liberals have predicted, that the economic distress of the late 2000s will produce a shift in the '30s direction. But it doesn't seem to have happened yet.

Or so the polling evidence tells us. Last month's Washington Post-ABC poll reported that Americans favor smaller government with fewer services to larger government with more services by 54 percent to 41 percent -- a slight uptick since 2004. The percentage of independents favoring small government rose to 61 percent from 52 percent in 2008.

The June NBC-Wall Street Journal poll reported that, even amid recession, 58 percent worry more about keeping the budget deficit down versus 35 percent worried more about boosting the economy. A similar question in the June CBS-New York Times poll showed a 52 percent to 41 percent split.

Other polls show a resistance to specific Democratic proposals.

[Vaduz]

Resistance to specific Democratic proposals because past proposals always fail to help the U.S.

[heye2monn]

Those “anti-government” polls are misleading. The usually astute Barone ignores how politics really works.

Sure Americans tell pollsters they don’t want bigger government and more taxes. They realize that government is too big.

But when they get into the voting booth, Ameicans usually vote for free lunch — free retirement, free education, free houses. They vote for the candidates bringing home the bacon, whether it’s pork for the district or free health care for all (except rich taxpayers who foot the bill). Even when the voters finally choose a genuine conservative budget cutter like Ronald Reagan, they don’t let him cut too much once he gets into office.

Voters tell pollsters they are virtuous and budget conscious but they go out and vote the opposite.

[Vaduz]

You may be right however I think the people know obama has crossed the line on free goods list because many are out of work.

[flowerplough]

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’”

— Robert A. Heinlein (To Sail Beyond the Sunset)