Public Opinion Strategies Poll: MOVE TOWARD SOCIALISM?

[redleghunter]

From Public Opinion Strategies Poll:

Public Opinion Strategies just completed a national telephone poll of 800 registered voters. The survey was conducted February 16-20 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1% in 95 out of 100 cases.

1. More than 40% of Americans agree “the country would be better off if our political and economic systems were more socialist…”

• While a majority of voters disagree with this notion (51%), fully 45% of voters agree that: “The country would be better off if our political and economic systems were more socialist, including taxing the wealthy to pay for social programs, nationalizing health care so that it’s government-run and redistributing wealth.”

• The partisan gap on this question is more like a chasm. Democrats agree with the notion that the country would be better off if our political and economic systems were more socialist by a whopping 77%-19% margin, while Republicans (14%-83%) and Independents (37%-56%) strongly disagree.

• Potential Democratic primary voters are even stronger in their agreement with this statement. “Strong” Democrats (representing 22% of the electorate) agree with the statement by 80%-17%, with a majority (54%) strongly agreeing.

• Voter intensity is on the “disagree” side – 23% of voters strongly agree with this statement while 41% strongly disagree.

• There is a wide generational divide on this question, with younger voters (under age 45) agreeing with the statement by a 53%-40% margin, and older voters disagreeing by 60%-38%.

• Significant majorities of key 2020 swing voter groups like white suburban women (40% agree/57% disagree), voters in key ’20 Presidential states (42% agree/54% disagree) and suburban voters (41% agree/56% disagree) all disagree with this statement.
​

More at link: https://pos.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/National-POS-poll-Socialism.pdf

Note: it looks like the divide in Independent voters (swing voters) is not in favor of a Socialist shift.

 

[Halbhh]

Funny since none of us seem to know precisely what "socialism" means *precisely* (in actual factual programs.... does it mean Social Security???) -- so it gets to mean different things to different people.

Thus voters merely responded I think to something kinda like...vaguely...do we need to do even more social support for Americans like reduce college tuition costs or improve Health Care affordability by Medicare For All....

OR...is the amount we already have good enough?

What if the question was instead "do we need to roll back 'socialism' in America?" That would have been interesting. Would it mean the end of public libraries in some minds?

The end of Social Security?

 

[FenderTL5]

What if the question was instead "do we need to roll back 'socialism' in America?" That would have been interesting. Would it mean the end of public libraries in some minds?

The end of Social Security?

the end of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines? ...Police, fire... no more public roads... that list can go on.

 

[Sabertooth]

Socially-enhanced capitalism includes concepts like GMI [Guaranteed Minimum Income].

The next level of socialism is UBI [Universal Basic income].

Laissez-faire capitalism is only serviceable when the number of people who need jobs is less than or equal to the number of jobs available. When the former is true, you are in a Seller's Market economy.

When there are more job seekers than there are jobs, you are in a Buyer's Market economy. There isn't a job for every seeker and it becomes necessary for a degree of socialism to take up the slack. GMI has lower operating costs than UBI does.

Economies alternate between Buyer's & Seller's markets. Because of this, there will always be a need for a minimum socialistic support system.

 

[redleghunter]

the end of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines? ...Police, fire... no more public roads... that list can go on.

Providing for the common defense is Constitutional.

 

[Gigimo]

There is a wide generational divide on this question, with younger voters (under age 45) agreeing with the statement by a 53%-40% margin, and older voters disagreeing by 60%-38%.

You do remember what Churchill said?

 

[The Barbarian]

You do remember what Churchill said?

"At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point." —Churchill By Himself, page 100

And for a dissenting view:

"So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Conservative activist Paul Weyrich Remarks to the Religious Roundtable (August 1980)

 

[Percivale]

Socialism is a term we should boycott, since it doesn’t have a meaning but it is divisive.

 

[Gigimo]

"At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point." —Churchill By Himself, page 100

And for a dissenting view:

"So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Conservative activist Paul Weyrich Remarks to the Religious Roundtable (August 1980)

Not even close to what I was thinking.

 

[The Barbarian]

Not even close to what I was thinking.

Too bad; I think Churchill had it right.

 

[Halbhh]

From Public Opinion Strategies Poll:

Public Opinion Strategies just completed a national telephone poll of 800 registered voters. The survey was conducted February 16-20 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1% in 95 out of 100 cases.

1. More than 40% of Americans agree “the country would be better off if our political and economic systems were more socialist…”

• While a majority of voters disagree with this notion (51%), fully 45% of voters agree that: “The country would be better off if our political and economic systems were more socialist, including taxing the wealthy to pay for social programs, nationalizing health care so that it’s government-run and redistributing wealth.”

• The partisan gap on this question is more like a chasm. Democrats agree with the notion that the country would be better off if our political and economic systems were more socialist by a whopping 77%-19% margin, while Republicans (14%-83%) and Independents (37%-56%) strongly disagree.

• Potential Democratic primary voters are even stronger in their agreement with this statement. “Strong” Democrats (representing 22% of the electorate) agree with the statement by 80%-17%, with a majority (54%) strongly agreeing.

• Voter intensity is on the “disagree” side – 23% of voters strongly agree with this statement while 41% strongly disagree.

• There is a wide generational divide on this question, with younger voters (under age 45) agreeing with the statement by a 53%-40% margin, and older voters disagreeing by 60%-38%.

• Significant majorities of key 2020 swing voter groups like white suburban women (40% agree/57% disagree), voters in key ’20 Presidential states (42% agree/54% disagree) and suburban voters (41% agree/56% disagree) all disagree with this statement.
​

More at link: https://pos.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/National-POS-poll-Socialism.pdf

Note: it looks like the divide in Independent voters (swing voters) is not in favor of a Socialist shift.

The interesting actual programs of the New Deal -- not only what people have heard:

The term Green New Deal might remind Americans of high-school history class. What was the original New Deal about, again? Most kids are taught that it was a decidedly left-wing project to end the Great Depression, a series of big-spending government programs such as the Public Works Administration, with its schools and stadiums. That impression colors the debate over the Democrats’ important new proposal: Conservatives warn of catastrophic federal debts while liberals insist that top-down investment was and is crucial to managing disaster.

But the high-school narrative is not quite right. It leaves out the parts of the New Deal that encouraged private investment.
Roosevelt's New Deal Wasn't All Government Spending - The Atlantic

 

[redleghunter]

The interesting actual programs of the New Deal -- not only what people have heard:

The term Green New Deal might remind Americans of high-school history class. What was the original New Deal about, again? Most kids are taught that it was a decidedly left-wing project to end the Great Depression, a series of big-spending government programs such as the Public Works Administration, with its schools and stadiums. That impression colors the debate over the Democrats’ important new proposal: Conservatives warn of catastrophic federal debts while liberals insist that top-down investment was and is crucial to managing disaster.

But the high-school narrative is not quite right. It leaves out the parts of the New Deal that encouraged private investment.
Roosevelt's New Deal Wasn't All Government Spending - The Atlantic

I remember two themes for AP American history credit test. It was the Turner thesis or the difference between New Deal 1 and New Deal 2. The second was the more socialist driven.

 

[The Barbarian]

The important thing to remember was that Roosevelt was a Keynsian. The idea was that you could get out of a depression by spending money for wages (which would quickly be spent and returned to the economy) and increasing the national debt.

But he was never really very happy with it. So his first try was tentative. The second was more ambitious and it worked. But he was very aware that Keynes pointed out the necessarily temporary nature of such programs. And by 1937, he was cutting back on them. The result was an immediate economic downturn. He reluctantly continued his former course up to about 1940, when the recovery was on steadier feet.

This was Reagan's major failure; he intended to make it a permanent policy. And he was ideologically unwilling to hand out the spending to people who would use it for rent and groceries, which meant that the people who got the spending, tended to save it. Dick Cheney explained the Reagan idea by saying Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. They do.

 

[Halbhh]

The important thing to remember was that Roosevelt was a Keynsian. The idea was that you could get out of a depression by spending money for wages (which would quickly be spent and returned to the economy) and increasing the national debt.

But he was never really very happy with it. So his first try was tentative. The second was more ambitious and it worked. But he was very aware that Keynes pointed out the necessarily temporary nature of such programs. And by 1937, he was cutting back on them. The result was an immediate economic downturn. He reluctantly continued his former course up to about 1940, when the recovery was on steadier feet.

This was Reagan's major failure; he intended to make it a permanent policy. And he was ideologically unwilling to hand out the spending to people who would use it for rent and groceries, which meant that the people who got the spending, tended to save it. Dick Cheney explained the Reagan idea by saying Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. They do.

Seems like the broad brush overall picture I read was that after the 1938 recession after government spending reductions demonstrated that the malaise/overhang (hangover) wasn't really gone, what really ended the Great Depression decisively and conlusively was the all-out spending of WWII. (I got this I think from one of the blogs of academic economists (hard to remember which as I read hundreds of entires on a variety of blogs), so it's 'broad brush' only in that it's the big-picture summary.)

The signficance of that is that it's not at all clear the malaise would have ended so totally at once without that WWII spending and especially the many new types of jobs the new technologies opened up, along with the GI bill, etc., not to mention the international competition (which mostly would always be Germany and Japan foremost) was decimated.

 

[Halbhh]

So, in large part, the economy operates not according to some ideology, but more like a plant (one metaphor that comes to me atm) -- it's needing a variety of things to flourish, not just 1 or 2. It's doing best with quite a few things together anlogous to sun, water, nutrional soil, good bacteria on the roots, not too much wind damage in storms, etc. A lot of things together. To me as I think of it, notable for us as shown repeatedly by expeirence are oil prices (when gasoline goes up a lot that cuts consumer spending on many optional goods and services), credit, weather ( both systems), freedom, 'animal spirits' (aka confidence or 'consumer confidence' or 'expectations'), and big new government spending in excess of taxation such as Obama did in 2010, and Trump now, is like a shot of cheap fetilizer (which isn't as lasting as organic compost, but works quick and fades out), and more. While 'freedom' is my shorthand for free-market capitalism -- sort of anlogous to a plant having room to grow where other objects/plants haven't blocked the sunlight.

 

[Halbhh]

I remember two themes for AP American history credit test. It was the Turner thesis or the difference between New Deal 1 and New Deal 2. The second was the more socialist driven.

If you read over the article, getting details of how the administration was often jump starting the free market private economy, one interesting case near the middle of the article (though not as crucial as the banking thing for private home loans earlier) is the details of rural electrification. That clever guy figured out how to jump start the free market for that, gaining the big advantages of private effort, groups wanting to control costs and make things work to best efficiency, etc., the virtures of private enterprise.

 

[FenderTL5]

The interesting actual programs of the New Deal -- not only what people have heard:

The term Green New Deal might remind Americans of high-school history class. What was the original New Deal about, again? Most kids are taught that it was a decidedly left-wing project to end the Great Depression, a series of big-spending government programs such as the Public Works Administration, with its schools and stadiums. That impression colors the debate over the Democrats’ important new proposal: Conservatives warn of catastrophic federal debts while liberals insist that top-down investment was and is crucial to managing disaster.

But the high-school narrative is not quite right. It leaves out the parts of the New Deal that encouraged private investment.
Roosevelt's New Deal Wasn't All Government Spending - The Atlantic

I'd have to go back and re-read... or read deeper, I merely scanned through; the Green New Deal also calls for private investment, does it not?
I seem to recall that the shift toward renewable energy from fossil fuels is private investment, likely spurred by government dollars.. not unlike the tax-payer subsidies that still exist in the fossil-fuel industry. Again, iirc, it's a shift of taxpayer money from fossil fuels toward renewables in the private sector.

 

[Halbhh]

I'd have to go back and re-read... or read deeper, I merely scanned through; the Green New Deal also calls for private investment, does it not?
I seem to recall that the shift toward renewable energy from fossil fuels is private investment, likely spurred by government dollars.. not unlike the tax-payer subsidies that still exist in the fossil-fuel industry. Again, iirc, it's a shift of taxpayer money from fossil fuels toward renewables in the private sector.

Exactly.

A practical thing to remember if you discuss this with someone that believes in free market capitalism in a more...mystical...way, is that often they don't have much broad factual detail, but have only facts they were given in something like opinion pieces. So they lack information, and it matters because: when a person is using an abstract idea: free-market-always from just idea/ideology they usually won't know of oil and gas and coal subsidies, and it would be best to instead tell them very precisely what the precise subsidy is, how it works, because otherwise the idea based view would only think something akin to 'that's not the right ideology so it must be a propaganda 'fact'' (if we just refer to 'subsidies' without specifying them with precise program names and nuetral details about how they work in practice, the net amount of the subsidy, etc.).

Here is one summary that has details, and so many details shows part of the diffuculty of commuicating, since most people don't want 23 pieces of information:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/6/16428458/us-energy-coal-oil-subsidies

 

[Yekcidmij]

The important thing to remember was that Roosevelt was a Keynsian. The idea was that you could get out of a depression by spending money for wages (which would quickly be spent and returned to the economy) and increasing the national debt.

One of Keynes' ideas was that the gov't should run countercyclical fiscal policy to smooth out business cycles. So, yes, when the economy is down, gov't should cut taxes and/or raise spending to stimulate. However, when the economy is booming, the government should cut spending and raise taxes. Nobody ever does the latter though. The temptation for politicians of any party is to do just the opposite - stimulate while it's booming or "tighten your belts" when the economy sours. I think an analogy would be to think of the government as an investor in the aggregate economy. So as an investor you buy low (when the economy is down gov't spends money to "buy" the economy) and sell high (when the economy is up gov't raises cash thus "selling" the economy).

Keynesian models are difficult to maintain though and I'm not sure there are many "true" Keynesians left. Everyone has moved on to more accurate models: neo-Keynesian, post-Keynesian, RBC's, neo-classical... Keynesian models have problems, a couple of big ones being that they don't account for microfoundations (behavior of economic agents) and are subject to the Lucas Critique (Lucas critique - Wikipedia).

 

[The Barbarian]

One of Keynes' ideas was that the gov't should run countercyclical fiscal policy to smooth out business cycles. So, yes, when the economy is down, gov't should cut taxes and/or raise spending to stimulate. However, when the economy is booming, the government should cut spending and raise taxes. Nobody ever does the latter though.

Pretty much.

The temptation for politicians of any party is to do just the opposite - stimulate while it's booming or "tighten your belts" when the economy sours. I think an analogy would be to think of the government as an investor in the aggregate economy. So as an investor you buy low (when the economy is down gov't spends money to "buy" the economy) and sell high (when the economy is up gov't raises cash thus "selling" the economy).

Yep.

Keynesian models are difficult to maintain though and I'm not sure there are many "true" Keynesians left. Everyone has moved on to more accurate models: neo-Keynesian, post-Keynesian, RBC's, neo-classical... Keynesian models have problems, a couple of big ones being that they don't account for microfoundations (behavior of economic agents) and are subject to the Lucas Critique (Lucas critique - Wikipedia).

That suggests the biggest reason; it's impossible for government, even with perfect information, to fine-tune economies. If you can have an economy anywhere near a free-market condition (with no one person or group making a significant effect on the market by themselves) that's still the most effective way to allocate goods and services.