Disparate Favorability
Post #1174
Public opinion polls can be used in order to check for the favorability of a public policy — in order to discover if a majority of the public favor the political policies which have been implemented. While the credibility of institutions in general has become progressively worse (worse each year) for 10 years, some polls may still be true.
In 1935, George Gallup made public opinion polls popular:
By 1939, Americans had a laundry list of what they hated/disliked about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or about his New Deal legislation (bottom right):
The thing that they disliked the most was the federal job creation program (WPA: Works Progress Administration), which had been putting unemployed people to work on infrastructure projects such as on building roads and bridges. In the 1930s, people understood that you cannot create net jobs by government employment.
They understood that every federal job created would simultaneously reduce the total number of possible jobs in the private sector — because taxes to pay for federal jobs to be created must be taken out of the pockets of potential private investors and potential business owners. Federal spending was the second-worst thing for them.
The federal government, under the New Deal, had been spending up to 9.7% of GDP, and the American people in the Gallup Poll of 1939 — being for the free enterprise system and against Big Government — felt like 9.7% of GDP is just way too much money for the federal government to be spending:
On the left side of the image below, you can see that most of the people looked at the 9% of GDP being spent by the federal government and thought that there should be a 10% cut in it, almost across the board (taking federal spending down to just 8% of GDP):
People in America were not Socialists, and they have not ever been Socialists. This is reflected in a more recent public poll regarding a socialized medicine plan (Affordable Care Act) which was rammed through Congress in 2010, and it occurred in that first month after the open enrollment in the plan had begun in October 2013:
With just 33% public approval, the Obama administration did not learn from the 1939 Gallup Poll that Americans are not Socialists (and the rising trend after that coincides with progressively lost credibility). Contrast that 33% public approval for Obama’s signature legislation against a recent poll regarding some policies backed by Trump:
That’s almost twice the public approval for policies backed by Trump than for the signature legislation backed by Obama back in 2013. Most Americans are not Socialists, but we’ve been railroaded by leaders implementing socialism against the public will. The blow-back from that is represented by the popularity of Trump.
Reference
[federal spending] — U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Federal Government Current Expenditures [AFEXPND], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AFEXPND
[GDP] — U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Gross Domestic Product [GDPA], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPA
[majority of U.S. public never approved of Affordable Care Act during Obama’s entire term as the U.S. President] — https://www.kff.org/interactive/kff-health-tracking-poll-the-publics-views-on-the-aca/#?response=Favorable--Unfavorable
[Robert Malone’s Friday Funnies showing big Trump support] —