Government distrust has been on the rise since the 60's.Most people understand that thier government is corrupt but they just realy dont care.The handful of people who do care cant realy generate the where-with-all to do anything substantive about it.And everybody who distrusts the government does so for different reasons.A liberal might distrust the government because of the military industrial complex while the conservative might distrust the government because of a percieved shift towards socialism.The article mentions hyper partisanship...two groups of loud idiots screaming at eachother.What I have come to is simply that they are all bad.

We need to take chimpanzees and let them loose in every state in the country and whoever they choose becomes a candidate for office....no exceptions...not like jury duty where you can slither out of it...you get picked you run for office.Whoever wins the election after that serves one term and then out.Simple and to the point and whatever we get will do better than what we get now.

 

You mean aside from the government treating it like a piggybank rather than a savings programs for the citizens?

I actually know quite a few veterans for whom that answer would a most emphatic, "YES!" The VA is not the best example of what a government run health care system would be capable of, and if you think it is then excuse me while I go running in horror. At its best it is a mediocre program that tries to provide the best care it can, while often being burdened with workers who honestly don't give a shit and bureaucratic redtape that makes something as simple as a paperwork transfer into months long affairs. I know it gets held up a lot as a proof that the government can be "cost efficient" with health care, but if anything it just goes to show that the cost efficiency and health care don't go together. Well, not effective health care, at any rate.

 

That is only true for a Republican politician.

 

Sociologists have studied personality types and found...no joke...that the personality types of sucsessful used car salesmen, politicians and serial killers are the most closely related of all the different types.

 

An assertion like that needs to be documented. I like politicians if they are Democrats. :excited:

 

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-...2-Serial-killers-and-politicians-share-traits

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/06/politicians-and-serial-killers.html

http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/F98B5FE9-92E8-49F6-8405-EB29E724D91C/

Those were just the first three that came up on Google.There are actual university studies that confirm the assertion but Im to lazy to dig for them.

 

That is not shocking. I'd be shocked if it wasn't at least that high and I'm a little bit annoyed that it's not higher.

No, what shocks me is that you and a few others still cling to this idea that it's a 'dumocrat' or a Republican issue, as if one is better than the other. Until you stop letting ideologues control your thinking, nothing will ever get better.

 

Ronald Reagan made the same discovery. That is a lesson Republicans need to keep learning again and again.

 

As opposed to most Democrats who have learned that the gullible voters actually believe that there is a bottomless pit of money. The lack of fiscal responsibility is not a virtue.

 

Yes, the conservatives created this environment of mistrust. For example. President Nixon and the Watergate scandal, George Bush and the Iraq War, and now the conservatives that have been protesting Obama since the day he entered office. Oh well, you can buy a conservative books, send him to college, and he still can't think for himself.

 

I don't think anyone believes there is a bottomless pit of money. We just happen to be the richest country in the world and have a lot more than other countries. The conservatives want the country to be tight and not tax them so that they can keep all their money to themselves.

 

I have to agree with you, Shake. The other day I hung out with people of the Coffee Party movement who's point is to work the issues with the current government in a fiscally responsible way. Many tea partiers assumed that the movement is of the democrats. Many are, however, there are some republicans in the movement as well. They just think the tea party is being unreasonable by villifying the current government.

 

Just looking at the chart..(I like charts) 1964 the the Distrust turned up...
Assassination of JFK..went on up...assassination of Bobby
JFK would have not had us in Viet Nam BanG Bang
Bobby would have had normal relations with Cuba ..Bang Bang

Mistrust first peaked and turned down after Jim Carter took office but he could not get his arms around the inflation problem brought on by Viet Nam and The LBJ Great Society.

Of course Nixon did not help "I am Not a Crook" with Ford pardoning him just added to it....Ford did some good thing to regain trust but this country was so divided at the time with the Viet War hangover and drug problem.

Older Generation and Younger were at war with each other.

Everyone loved Reagan even if he slept most of the time and he did stop the inflation problem....

Clinton Years speak for themselves on the chart as well ass Bush...

Veit Nam years some of our darkest history and how it divided this nation...Iraq....is looking that way but we have hidden much of the war....
or it seems most Americans just don't give shit about it one way or the other Apathy..

 

This is exactly the kind of thinking that will guarantee that we will no longer be the richest country. By 2012 more people will not pay federal income taxes than those who do. By 2015 our interest on the public debt will consume over 50% of the income tax revenues.

In the meantime, new entitlement programs are being implemented and old ones are being retreaded.

 

And why would that guarantee that we will no longer be the richest country, considering that we lag far behind other western industrial nations in terms of tax rates? What do those countries know that we (or you, actually) don't know?

http://www.truthout.org/happy-tax-day-are-americans-getting-our-moneys-worth58616

 

I'm not sure of the methodology of this poll, either. If Pew called me up and asked me if I trusted "government", I'd probably say no too. Half of government doesn't believe government can do anything. This poll could easily reflect partisanship.

I am sick of seeing knee-jerk conservative jingo. No one on the right in this thread has had an original thought except for TG - and he's, as usual, factually incorrect. How does "government getting larger" zero sum with "less liberty"? I'm a helluva lot more free where the government demands I get paid time-and-a-half for working over 40 hours. I'm a helluva lot more free as a result of my robust public education. What spending do you want cut? You gonna balance the budget by cutting NASA and the National Endowment of the Arts? Entitlement cuts kill grandma.

The first federal income tax after the 16th Amendment passed in 1913 only taxed people who made more than $5,000. Every single wage earner pays income tax; that income tax is specifically applied to entitlement spending, our largest sector of spending. In fact, FICA taxes are regressively capped - you only pay on the first $120k of income - protecting the rich. If you make more than the cap, taxes aren't withheld from your pay after the point in the year where you've earned more than $120k. This is the opposite of how a progressive income tax is support to work.

A progressive income tax is critical to breaking down income inequality. Our leaders way back when realized that when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, power is concentrated in their hands, as well. They realized that an oligarchy is bad for democracy. The reason workers' wages have been stagnant since the 70s while the boss makes $400 for every $1 his worker earns today is because we've been chopping away at the highest tax brackets for 60 years. If you like getting ass-fucked, vote like TG.

I wanna know specifics!

1. When does "more government" tradeoff with "less liberty"?
2. What spending do you want to cut?

 

The fact is, in return for their taxes, Europeans are receiving a generous support system for families and individuals for which Americans must pay exorbitantly, out-of-pocket, if we are to receive it at all. That includes quality health care for every single person, the average cost of which is about half of what Americans pay, even as various studies show that Europeans achieve healthier results.

But that's not all. In return for their taxes, Europeans also are receiving affordable child care, a decent retirement pension, free or inexpensive university education, job retraining, paid sick leave, paid parental leave, ample vacations, affordable housing, senior care, efficient mass transportation and more. In order to receive the same level of benefits as Europeans, most Americans fork out a ton of money in out-of-pocket payments, in addition to our taxes.

For example, while 47 million Americans don't have any health insurance at all, many who do are paying escalating premiums and deductibles. Indeed, Anthem Blue Cross announced that its premiums will increase by up to 40 percent. But all Europeans receive health care in return for a modest amount deducted from their paychecks.

Friends have told me they are saving nearly a hundred thousand dollars for their children's college education, and most young Americans graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. But European children attend for free or nearly so (depending on the country). Childcare in the US costs over $12,000 annually for a family with two children, but in Europe it costs about one-sixth that amount, and the quality is far superior. Millions of Americans are stuffing as much as possible into their IRAs and 401(k)s because Social Security provides only about half the retirement income needed. But the more generous European retirement system provides about 75-85 percent (depending on the country) of retirement income.

 

Higher taxes may not be as bad as they seem.

Forbes Bruce Bartlett, 04.10.09

The truth is that the U.S. is a relatively low-tax country no matter how you slice the data...

One may wonder how working people manage to pay so much in taxes in other countries. The answer is that they get a lot back from the government in other ways. For example, most other countries have a broad system of family allowances that come in the form of cash payments to virtually all families regardless of income...

Another way that workers in other countries benefit is in having almost all of their basic health care expenses covered by the government...

The point is that one can't look just at the taxes people pay here or elsewhere without looking at what they get in return. It doesn't automatically follow that the places with the lowest taxes are the best places to live and work. This is obvious when we think about where to buy a house. We always look at the quality of local schools as a major factor and are willing to pay higher property taxes in return for good schools. The same is true at the national level as well. Higher taxes may pay for services that people value and thus are not as burdensome as they might appear at first glance.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/09/tea-party-taxes-opinions-columnists-bartlett.html

 

SOCIALISM

What is so bad about socialism?