A new
survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press indicates that Americans have not much changed their minds in the past year regarding the terms "socialism" and "capitalism":
The American public’s take on capitalism remains mixed, with just slightly more saying they have a positive (50%) than a negative (40%) reaction to the term. That’s largely unchanged from a 52% to 37% balance of opinion in April 2010.
Socialism is a negative for most Americans, but certainly not all. Six-in-ten (60%) say they have a negative reaction to the word; 31% have a positive reaction. Those numbers are little changed from when the question was last asked in April 2010. ...
Both of the ideological descriptions used most frequently in American politics—conservative and liberal—receive more positive than negative reactions from the American public. But the positives for conservative (62%) are higher than for liberal (50%). This gap mainly reflects the balance of what people call themselves; more people consistently call themselves conservative than liberal in public opinion polling. Those who think of themselves as politically “moderate” give similarly positive assessments to both words.
As many Democratic strategists have argued, the term progressive receives a far more positive reaction from the American public than the term liberal (67% vs 50%), though the difference is primarily among Republicans.
The term capitalism elicits more positive (50%) than negative (40%) reactions from the American public, but not by much. And while Americans of different incomes and ideological perspectives offer different opinions on capitalism, the divides are not as wide as on other terms measured.
Given that we are daily immersed in a media bath of pro-capitalist propaganda punctuated with relentless jabs against socialism, it's amazing the latter term still gets a positive rating from nearly a third of the population.
As on so many other issues, both economic and not, there is a distinct difference in the views of white Americans and people of color. For instance, 55 percent of whites see "capitalism" positively, but only 41 percent of blacks do and only 32 percent of Hispanics do. The views regarding "socialism" are similarly skewed by race, and even more sharply: Just 24 percent of whites view "socialisim" positively, but 55 percent of blacks and 44 percent of Hispanics do.
Among the other findings in the poll was a sharp generational difference regarding the term "libertarian." While 38 percent of respondents overall saw it as positive, 50 percent of young Americans (18-29) viewed it that way. The older a respondent was, the less likely s/he was to view the term positively. In the 65+ demographic, only 25 percent did so.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009:
NBC Nightly news reports on the alarming trend of people trying to scrape through tough economic times by cutting back on the medications they need:
As far back as October, the Kaiser Health Foundation found that almost half the people in the country had somebody in their family who was skimping on medical care to save money:
Nearly half (47%) of the public reports someone in their family skipping pills, postponing or cutting back on medical care they said they needed in the past year due to the cost of care. For example, just over one-third say they or a family member put off or postponed needed care and three in ten say they skipped a recommended test or treatment – increases of seven percentage points from last April’s tracking poll which asks the same question.
We're now a year into the Bush Recession, and numbers like this are going to get even worse. It's a clear demonstration of the downside of allowing drug manufacturers to charge ever-higher sums for medicine, and it's just another reason why the Obama team is correct to make health care an important component of their stimulus plan.
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