Poll: Americans Want Free Stuff, Paid for by Others

Says Politico: “The American public overwhelmingly favors raising taxes on the rich as a way to pay down the deficit, while opposing a hike in the Medicare eligibility age or eliminating tax deductions, according to a poll released Wednesday.”

For Medicare and Social Security to remain solvent, the U.S. government would have to invest over $220 trillion right now, and get a roughly five percent rate of return. Medicare alone accounts for easily 80% of that. And the American public won’t tolerate even a two-year extension of the retirement age.

Meanwhile, they think successful people owe them money. Someone who earns, say, $300K per year does so not because of political connections or cronyism. Those people earn in the millions. The $300K guy is the person who worked his tail off over many years of serving the public in some valuable way. And complete strangers think they have the right to a portion of his life. Of five days of this guy’s labor, these people feel entitled to at least two of them. A total stranger to them. He owes them at least 40% of his life.

(Incidentally, add up the sales taxes people pay every day, plus the extra-high taxes for parking and hotels, plus state income taxes, plus property taxes, plus gas taxes, plus all the taxes you see listed on your cable bill, and on and on, and your tax payment winds up a lot higher than whatever federal income tax rate happens to hit you.)

weedface

hehe look at these suckers Tom, but but the poor will die! i always get a kick trying to convert these socialist pricks

http://www.gamespot.com/forums/topic/29323461/-poll-americans-want-free-stuff-paid-for-by-others?page=0
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=4941417 Ed O’Donnell

“Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” – Frederic Bastiat
Jimbo

Yet when it comes to themselves and the services they receive they don’t want any hikes. They don’t even support raising the retirement age only by two years? That’s it! Just only two years! Raising the retirement age isn’t even the solution. It’s just kicking the can further down the road.

We’re in biiiiig trouble.
Anonymous

R U Reddy for Freddie???
Dang, that Bastiat cat had it figgered out a loong time ago.
http://www.facebook.com/ken.brown.182 Ken Brown

Tom, can’t we make the case that raising taxes on the wealthy, rich, corporations, etc. simply pass it on down to the consumer as overhead in most cases and that affects the little guy the most. If so, we need to articulate this to the masses so they can quit digging their own grave.
vox

Absolutely Ed. What the fall of man has presaged is the idea that those who are oppressed should, if they get the opportunity, take up the political machinery to oppress the oppressors, rather than end the universal plunder root and branch.

The benevolence of many who have prospered reflects voluntary dealings that have enriched mankind, and if the state did not stand in the way, private charity and neighborly behavior would flourish.
It saddens me when people blame religion for all of mankind’s troubles, particularly Catholicism. It is the human corruption of these great ideals that has brought on our troubles; certainly not The Ten Commandments.
nometa

I think libertarians are absolutely right about many things. Their understanding of economic growth, the ABCT etc. sound absolutely logical.
But this is the thing I hate about libertarians and the reason I could never ever call myself a libertarian: Their complete lack of empathy. They say: “The rich worked hard for their income, so nobody should take anything from them!” As if the rich just worked harder than everyone else… The rich are only lucky to have the intelligence, the ideas etc. that enabled them their career – and great from them! But it should be clear for every human with a tiny weeny bit empathy that these lucky people should give some share to those who were born less intelligent, less assertive, who have addictions, diseases, etc… (and don’t tell me it’s their own fault, nobody wants to be like that)
But that’s the old American-Dream-propaganda: “If you want, you can become anything!” Well, for most people, that is not true, and it’s extremely presumptuous to assert the poor just don’t want to get out of there misery.
I’m absolutely pro capitalism and less government, but I detest those libertarians who look down on the poor as parasites and would rather let the poor die before take a nickel from those who wouldn’t even realize something is missing and give it to them. They clearly put property over people. They just don’t care about people, just about their property. It’s a cold ideology – the property-ideology.