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So, what lessons did we learn? And what does the future hold?
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Amid the all the hand-wringing, or wailing jeremiads, or triumphant op-eds
out there, *I’ll offer in this election post-mortem some perspectives that
you...
4 days ago
2 comments:
As a matter of interest, a new poll of British attitudes to pay is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11350383
It seems that high pay is unpopular - to those who don't receive it...
I wonder what the results of a similar US survey would be?
Tony, I don't think most people have any idea how much highly paid executives make. So they guess an amount that seems like wealth to them, which is inevitably far too low.
Then again, this poll asked how much they SHOULD make. For a question like that, I hope they took the median answer, and not the average (but the article doesn't go into that). After all, you're bound to have some protest replies.
I don't know how a similar poll would do here, but in general, we Americans seem to be far more accepting of extremes of both wealth and poverty. Well, in America, capitalism is holier than Jesus. Really.
There's a hot new fad in religion here which preaches that God WANTS you to be wealthy. (You wonder if these people have ever read the Bible.) So you just have to believe and you'll inevitably make those millions yourself. It also follows that those with the most money must be the most favored by God, the "best people" pretty much by definition.
One big debate here now is on raising taxes for those making more than $250,000 per year (just up to the income tax rates of a decade ago, before Bush slashed them). With all the ranting about the budget deficit, you'd think that this would be a no-brainer. But people are strange. In America, taxes are ALWAYS bad, no matter what. Well, we've been taught for decades that you can get whatever you want, without paying for it.
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