Alan: Americans say they want spending cuts but have no clue how politically repugnant and personally painful such cuts would be.
Talk is cheap.
(Hence the popularity of American "talk radio.")
Couple cheap talk with America's unique blend of stupidity and ignorance and it is evident why we have such difficulty navigating the transition from agriculture-cum-rust-belt-industry to a high-tech, information/research society.
The United States is blessed with a significant cadre of accomplished scientists and scholars
but we are, at bottom, a nation of anti-intellectual yahoos.
Talk is cheap.
(Hence the popularity of American "talk radio.")
Couple cheap talk with America's unique blend of stupidity and ignorance and it is evident why we have such difficulty navigating the transition from agriculture-cum-rust-belt-industry to a high-tech, information/research society.
The United States is blessed with a significant cadre of accomplished scientists and scholars
but we are, at bottom, a nation of anti-intellectual yahoos.
***
Pollsters have long noted Americans’ tendency to be in favor of abstract “spending cuts,” only to balk when asked to note which specific areas they’d target. But the NBC/WSJ survey makes this contradiction starkly apparent. And it explains the bind lawmakers find themselves in when it comes to spending issues.
More than 60 percent of federal spending goes to defense, social security and Medicare. Economists generally agree that you can’t have meaningful spending reduction without addressing these three areas. But Americans are divided on how they feel about congressional candidates who support defense cuts: 42 percent say they’d be more likely to vote for such a candidate, but 38 percent say they’d be less likely. And cuts to social security and Medicare are at the bottom of the list: only 17 percent say they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports such cuts.
