Posted on 04/15/2011 2:31:53 PM PDT by jazusamo
Complete title: Gallup: Today’s Democrats Twice as Likely as Depression-Era Americans to Favor Redistributing Wealth
(CNSNews.com) - Democrats in America today are twice as likely as Americans in the Great Depression era to favor imposing heavy taxes on the rich as a means of redistributing wealth, according to data published today by the Gallup poll.
A Gallup poll conducted April 7-11, in the lead-up to the annual deadline for filing federal tax returns, showed that 71 percent of Democrats believe the government should use heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth. In 1939, after ten years of the Great Depression, only 35 percent of all Americans believed government should do that.
In the April 11-17 survey, Gallup asked more than 1,000 American adults: “People feel differently about how far a government should go. Here is a phrase which some people believe in and some don’t. Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?”
71 percent of Democrats told Gallup the government should impose heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth and 26 percent said the government should not. By contrast, only 28 percent of Republicans said the government should impose heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth, while 69 percent said the government should not.
Overall, in the April 7-11 Gallup survey, 47 percent of Americans said government should impose heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth while 49 percent said the government should not.
According to Gallup, back in March 1939, after a decade of the Great Depression, the Roper poll conducted a survey for Fortune Magazine asking the same question. At that time, only 35 percent of Americans believed government should impose heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth while 54 percent said government should not.
Although public support for taxing the rich to redistribute wealth is higher today than it was in 1939, it is a bit lower than it was at the beginning of the Obama presidency.
When Gallup asked the question in a survey conducted March 27-29, 2009, two months after Obama’s inauguration, 50 percent said they favored heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth while 46 percent said they did not.
On Wednesday, Obama delivered a speech outlining his plan for dealing with the national debt and calling for higher taxes on wealthier Americans. The Gallup survey on taxing the rich was completed two days before the president’s speech.
During the 1930’s, many of America’s elite thought both Mussolini and Hitler were on the right path and had solved many of the economic problems that faced the rest of the world. That is in addition to American supporters of Russia’s form of communism.
In other words, socialism was widely viewed with favor in 1930’s America. Many of those elite went to work in the government, some in our State Dept, and a few worked their way close to FDR.
Even with the patriotic impact and trend reversing influence of the war years, what this poll suggests is that admirers of socialism have doubled their ranks in the past 80 years.
Some would say that is not a promising trend. Perhaps even more would point to the popular vote in the last presidential election and argue we are near the tipping point.
Great poll and initially stunning, not surprising at all.
You may have a point, but I suspect the results also reflect those public school products of all races that are yet in their 20’s.
I just wrote in another thread that the political bosses and their pocket politicians should move to China to stay. That includes those who control the Democrat contingent of their de facto political party. All who are active in contemporary politics are big spending socialists, who either get their incomes directly from government or depend on their government regulations against new business anywhere outside of “main street” (e.g., zoning against any small manufacturing outside of towns—only one of many parts of their effort).
“Back in those days, tar and feathers were still an appropriate adornment for socialists.”
No. In fact, the VP of the United States, selected by FDR, was an avowed communist. Henry Wallace.
But it lines up nicely with the 45 or so percent that receive government benefits. Politicians turned us into 2 nations. They’re criminals.
When I was on FB I posted:
Definition of a Liberal....a person who is envious of those who earn more.
For some reason a lot of relatives got angry with me over that.
But it is going to be funny when the wealth is redistributed and they end up being paid less because they were making more than the average worker.
Not suprised about Dems 71% but the 28 % of Repubs is damn scary!
How I wish that I had coined this line! And many of them now are Republicans too!
I think though Henry Wallace later repented of his communist sympathies, but Harry Dexter White and Harry Hopkins never did. I could be wrong.
Eh, it’s largely cultural. I’m sure an examination of the cross tabs and the demographics would reveal no surprises as to who wants money from somebody else.
Maybe there is some difference in numbers between the Dems of the 30s and the Dems of today, although this story doesn't specifically claim that, since it only says that 35% of the population as a whole believed in government wealth redistribution in 1939 without giving a specific percentage of Dems back then who agreed.
There certainly were a lot of 'Rats in the 30s who were saying very similar things on the subject as the Obamatons are now. The most prominent among them was none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt's economic policies embodied taxing the rich (maximum income tax rate was raised to 79%) and everyone else (new and raised federal excise taxes on multiple items), while engaging in unprecedented government spending programs. Even Roosevelt's rhetoric provoked class warfare, just as Obama's. And by 1939, Roosevelt's policies had not quite gotten the country out of the Great Depression, which was in its tenth year, and seventh under Roosevelt's watch.
” Thank you, Public Education!”
Bingo!
DNC: “ We are all Marxists now! “
” The comparison shows the difference between todays socialist free ride Dems and conservative dems of the 30’s who are about gone. “
Indeed!
Democrats on the national level have been controlled by socialists since the 1890’s when the Bryanite nutters took control from the Cleveland Bourbons.
Wilson was a socialist. FD Roosevelt was a socialist. Truman was a socialist. None were tarred and feathered, all of them should have been.
In 1930 the top income tax rate was 25%. In 1940 it was over 80%, FDR and the rat congress were clearly comfortable with outright robbery of the wealthy.
The democrats have been more socially liberal and treasonous in their foreign policy since the 30’s but they were on the economic far left long before that.
Actual conservative democrats, that was mostly a southern phenomenon in the 20th century.
I think VP John Garner was conservative, he’d have been the last one in national office.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!
Thanks Impy.
Yes, Cactus Jack Garner was a Conservative, although he still hailed from the region of Texas where Democrat voter fraud was rampant (which would later assist liberal LBJ to his “victory” over Tory Coke Stevenson). Since Garner was first elected in 1902, that district today has still yet to send a Republican to Congress (Rubén Hinojosa occupies it).
Not quite, but true in general. You can't call John W. Davis, their 1924 presidential candidate, a leftist at all. There were no major differences between Davis, a lawyer originally from West Virginia who had relocated to New York, and Calvin Coolidge, who defeated him in the election. There was a recent book about that election titled "The High Tide of American Conservatism" with good reason. Davis, BTW, as his last major public act, represented the Topeka Board of Education against Brown before the SCOTUS in the famous school desegregation case.
Their unsuccessful 1920 candidate, James Cox, went on to develop a media empire which still survives in his family today. Though his heirs may be on the left, it wouldn't be fair to put the founder in that category.
As for William Jennings Bryan, he may have been left for his time on economic issues, but he'd surely be considered a Christian conservative on social issues. Recall it was Bryan who assisted the prosecution in opposing the teaching of Darwinism in the Scopes trial.
I’ve actually visited Garner’s house in Uvalde, when I we en route to Del Rio. Yes, I deserve a cookie for that achievement.
Did you tell them you’re a Republican ? :-P
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