Right to Opine

The most recent NY Times/CBS poll shows what many of us have feared for a while (and the last presidential election confirmed): Americans are confused, self-contradictory, and clueless. Consider:

Mr. Obama has considerable support for his proposal to end tax cuts for those households earning $250,000 a year and more: 72 percent of respondents approved of doing so as a way to address the deficit.

[…]

Given the choice of cutting military, Social Security or Medicare spending as a way to reduce the overall budget, 45 percent chose military cuts, compared with those to Social Security (17 percent) or Medicare (21 percent.)

Sorry folks, that’s not going to solve the deficit problem. You could tax everyone in that bracket at 100% and you still wouldn’t put a dent in our deficit. There just aren’t enough folks making that kind of dough to make a difference. And even if you shut every branch of the military completely down, we wouldn’t break even. Not even close.

55 percent of poll respondents said they would rather have fewer services from a smaller government than more services from a bigger one, as opposed to 33 percent who said the opposite, a continuation of a trend in Times/CBS polls.

[…]

Twice as many respondents said they would prefer cuts in spending on federal programs that benefit people like them as said they would favor a rise in taxes to pay for such programs.

Yet more than 6 in 10 of those surveyed said they believed Medicare was worth the costs. And when asked specifically about Medicare, respondents said they would rather see higher taxes than see a reduction in its available medical services if they had to choose between the two.

Yep. Americans want it all. Fewer services from a smaller government. Spending cuts instead of higher taxes. More Medicare (as it grows rapidly) and higher taxes. Which is it? You really can’t have it all.

The opposition by Tea Party supporters to raising the level of debt the nation can legally carry was shared by nearly two-thirds of poll respondents, including nearly half of Democrats…

OK, so in a nutshell, we’re going to cut spending but we can’t touch the biggest fiscal boondoggles (Social Security, Medicare, & Medicaid) on the ledger. We’re going to raise taxes, but only on the “rich” (tell that to a two-income family in CA who makes $250K but pays more than $500K for a small home on top of exhorbitant state income taxes; no, wait—they deserve it for repeatedly electing the craziest state government in the union). We can’t increase our debt limit but at the same time we can’t cut the entitlement programs that make up the bulk of federal spending.

Basically we want everything but we don’t want to actually pay for it. We’ve become the perfect credit card society. This can’t last long, folks.