Re:Scarcity Truthers
by rayiner on Thursday May 12, 2022 @03:11PM
(#31358869)
> While Medicare for All itself is only polling at 55%, with most Republican voters (62%) opposing it, a public option is polling at a whopping 68% support, including 55% support among Republican voters [0].
Polling like that (do you want this free stuff?) is meaningless. Look at polls that ask how many people support taking action on climate change, versus ones that ask what people are willing to pay in higher utility bills for such action. People want change, but only if it costs less than $10/month: https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-...
Americans support universal healthcare--right up until you propose to pay for it the same way everyone else pays for it, with payroll taxes on middle class people.
> And yet, neither party is willing to implement it (a public system would significantly reduce Healthcare costs for the entire economy - remember that the USA has by far the largest expenditure on health-care out of any country on Earth, while doing relatively bad among rich countries at outcomes).
And here is where the abstract choice rubber hits the political reality road. After the Obamacare experience, very few people believe that they'll get more from a government program while paying less. Also, people are broadly in disagreement about why healthcare costs more in the U.S. and what drives our outcomes.
> For wars, the occupation of Afghanistan has been opposed by the public for at least 10 years before Biden withdrawing, with strong support from voters of both parties, as seen in both Obama, Trump and Biden winning with a platform of ending the war, but without any concrete action from the first two
> (if anything, Obama intensified the war, ordering even more illegal drone strikes on civilians than George Bush, and even publically admitting to assassinating an American citizen on "suspicion of terrorism").
Polling like that (do you want this free stuff?) is meaningless. Look at polls that ask how many people support taking action on climate change, versus ones that ask what people are willing to pay in higher utility bills for such action. People want change, but only if it costs less than $10/month: https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-...
Even millenials, who skew liberal, generally would prefer smaller government if bigger government meant higher taxes: https://reason.com/2014/07/10/millennials-prefer-small-gover....
Americans support universal healthcare--right up until you propose to pay for it the same way everyone else pays for it, with payroll taxes on middle class people.
> And yet, neither party is willing to implement it (a public system would significantly reduce Healthcare costs for the entire economy - remember that the USA has by far the largest expenditure on health-care out of any country on Earth, while doing relatively bad among rich countries at outcomes).
And here is where the abstract choice rubber hits the political reality road. After the Obamacare experience, very few people believe that they'll get more from a government program while paying less. Also, people are broadly in disagreement about why healthcare costs more in the U.S. and what drives our outcomes.
> For wars, the occupation of Afghanistan has been opposed by the public for at least 10 years before Biden withdrawing, with strong support from voters of both parties, as seen in both Obama, Trump and Biden winning with a platform of ending the war, but without any concrete action from the first two
Obama won because he was willing to recognize the war as a mistake, but that isn't the same thing as believing we should pull out. Opposition to ending the war didn't reach a decisive majority until 2012: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/world/asia/support-for-af.... And by the end of Obama's term, we were down to 1/3 of what they had been at the start of Obama's term: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-41014263. Even then, the majority of Americans disapproved of the execution of Biden's pull out: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-give-biden-low-ma...
> (if anything, Obama intensified the war, ordering even more illegal drone strikes on civilians than George Bush, and even publically admitting to assassinating an American citizen on "suspicion of terrorism").
Virtually nobody cares about that.