US views on fairness of taxes
One side has no point.
I have mentioned from time to time the repeated Gallup polls showing strong support for tax progressivity. this is not a new phenomenon, Gallup started asking the questions in 1992.
I tend to give an almost worthless link to pollingreport.com but I have finally looked up a decent link
There is little support for RomneyRage at lower income lucky duckies who don’t pay enough
In dramatic contrast, most US adults feel that upper income people are paying too little
No new information in this post, but the topic is uh topical and the graphs are nice.
I gather you posted this as it relates to Romney’s 47% pay no taxes so forget about them comment?
As I relisten to that tape, I think I get it. I think people are over thinking his position. Sure, he has little to no means to make a judgement regarding such people’s life do to his almost total lack of experience with their lives. However, as the substanceless character he is, his comment is perfectly logical.
How can you win votes from people who pay no income tax when the only thing you are offering is a cut in income taxes? Romney gets that. He knows you can’t. Thus, I believe his owning the statements while qualifying that he could have said it in a better way. He’s correct, he could have.
Still, saying it in a better way does not change the fact that you can not win votes by offering to take away what people already don’t have.
How do you say this in a better way?
Romney characterizes the 47% as those who are “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it… [the people whom we] will never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives…”
Change gov’t to someone, and that passage describes slaves.
Romney is not the first, nor will he be the last, to describe lower classes as irresponsible. Romney just has a higher threshold for lower class.
Ahh but Romney can win the votes of many people who pay no income tax. Many such people plan to vote for him right now (and probably will anyway never knowing he insulted them). His identification of Obama’s roughly 47% base and the $47% of families who don’t pay income tax demonstrates utter innumeracy.
Look I can see why Republicans are scared. If the 47% who don’t pay income tax knew that they don’t, then Republicans would be in deep trouble. But most of them don’t know. So the Republicans keep telling them about the 47% fact.
This is not bright. To go to the joke Democracy is 2 lions and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner, current 1%er Republicans are the lamb who keeps saying I sure hope neither of you suggests on voting on what’s for dinner.
1%er Democrats (like my mom and dad) don’t feel that paying a bit more in taxes is like being eaten so they don’t fit in the fable
well, i think you mostly said what i was going to say, and i hope i’m wrong.
romney can not only get away with saying “47% of the people are shiftless moochers,” he can prosper by saying it.
it is easy for people who have a job to believe that half the country is on welfare and are the reason their taxes are so high… even if they are not paying taxes (SS is not a tax).
what counts is not what is true, but what people believe, and if it makes them mad enough to vote for the guy who is lying to them.
Robert and Coberly,
Yes, I agree. The polling/surveys show that to many people do not believe they are of the 47% that Romney is talking about. But Romney was not talking to those people. He was talking to his own. He was talking strategy along with justification as to why he could care less.