Half the respondents of a new poll say taxing the richest Americans by at least 50 percent is a great idea, while more than a third consider Twitter a fad that will likely fade.
Those are among the findings of a new “60 Minutes”-Vanity Fair Poll released Sunday.
Nearly half of the respondents chose Wal-Mart as the institution that best symbolizes America today, leaving in the dust runners-up Google, Microsoft, the NFL, and the banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs.
Dining out was chosen most often by respondents as a luxury they hate sacrificing in these tough economic times. And 5 percent thought the best way to fight obesity among patrons of fast-food chains is to equip each restaurant with scales for them to weigh themselves.
A politician taking bribes is considered by far the greater sin (chosen by 37 percent of the respondents) when stacked against extramarital affairs (just 2 percent).
Check out the poll itself on a variety of topics and vote.
#137
> USA is rich enough
> to have significant
> levels of liberty
> WHILE providing
> reasonable healthcare,
> food, housing, education
> to all.
First liberty is not a function of wealth. Second, the USA is broke. If you are broke, you don’t go out and spend a bunch of money on fancy health insurance.
#141–Thomas:
First liberty is not a function of wealth. /// Totally dependent on how the issue is phrased.
Second, the USA is broke. /// Again, very definitional.
If you are broke, you don’t go out and spend a bunch of money on fancy health insurance. /// The whole point of health care REFORM is to make it cheaper in its totality. Its casually related that at the same time, universal coverage can also be achieved.
#142
> First liberty is
> not a function
> of wealth. ///
> Totally dependent
> on how the issue
> is phrased.
Your original statement:
> USA is rich enough
> to have significant
> levels of liberty
Given how you phrased it, my statement still stands.
> Second, the
> USA is broke.
> /// Again, very
> definitional
Are you Bill Clinton? Are we going to go down the road of pedantic arguments about the meaning of “is”. We owe more than we make. We are broke. Any money we do have should be used to pay down the debt.
> The whole point
> of health care REFORM
> is to make it cheaper
> in its totality.
There are different types of reform. Adjusting legislation has no direct effect on the government’s cash flow. Putting in a government managed health care system does.
At the end of the day, what the left is proposing is going to cost more even if in the short term (say 10 years). Accept it. The problem is that they then want to raise taxes to pay for it. If anyone actually believed that the additional tax revenue (assuming that tax revenue goes up which it may not) would actually be used to pay for this and only this plan, many might be on board for that. Yet, that isn’t what is going to happen. What is going to happen is what happened with the porkulus bill where only 10-20 cents on every dollar actually went to stimulus.
Let me ask this in closing, suppose we raise taxes to pay for this reform and suppose costs do go down. Are those taxes then going to be repealed? Unlikely.