Deficit hawks ignore the R-word
By Harold Meyerson
WashPost
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Of all the gaps between elite and mass opinion in America today, perhaps the greatest is this: The elites don't really believe we're still in recession. Or maybe, they just don't care.
How else to explain the continual harping on the deficit by editorialists, centrist think tanks and the like when the nation is still enmeshed in the most serious economic downturn since the 1930s? How else to understand the growing opposition to the jobs bills Congress is set to vote on this week, particularly when nobody has identified any future engine of American economic growth save countercyclical public investment?
It's not that the American people aren't concerned about the deficit. But in poll after poll, they make clear that their No. 1 concern is jobs. Forty-seven percent of respondents to a Fox News poll this month, for instance, said they were concerned with the economy and jobs, while just 15 percent acknowledged concern over the deficit and spending. Eighty-one percent of respondents to a Pew Research Center poll from this month thought it "very important" for Congress to address the jobs situation -- more than for any other topic. "There is no significant difference across party lines," Pew reported.
Beneath these numbers lies broad public anxiety over job loss and downward mobility. A Gallup survey from April showed that 21 percent of Americans feared they would lose their jobs or be laid off in the next 12 months, and that the percentage of respondents who believed they would find a job as good as the one they would lose if laid off had declined from 70 percent in 2001 to 64 percent in 2007 to just 42 percent last month.
(More here.)
WashPost
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Of all the gaps between elite and mass opinion in America today, perhaps the greatest is this: The elites don't really believe we're still in recession. Or maybe, they just don't care.
How else to explain the continual harping on the deficit by editorialists, centrist think tanks and the like when the nation is still enmeshed in the most serious economic downturn since the 1930s? How else to understand the growing opposition to the jobs bills Congress is set to vote on this week, particularly when nobody has identified any future engine of American economic growth save countercyclical public investment?
It's not that the American people aren't concerned about the deficit. But in poll after poll, they make clear that their No. 1 concern is jobs. Forty-seven percent of respondents to a Fox News poll this month, for instance, said they were concerned with the economy and jobs, while just 15 percent acknowledged concern over the deficit and spending. Eighty-one percent of respondents to a Pew Research Center poll from this month thought it "very important" for Congress to address the jobs situation -- more than for any other topic. "There is no significant difference across party lines," Pew reported.
Beneath these numbers lies broad public anxiety over job loss and downward mobility. A Gallup survey from April showed that 21 percent of Americans feared they would lose their jobs or be laid off in the next 12 months, and that the percentage of respondents who believed they would find a job as good as the one they would lose if laid off had declined from 70 percent in 2001 to 64 percent in 2007 to just 42 percent last month.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home