60% Favor Giving People Choice on Private Investment Accounts for SS

[adios]

A recent poll conducted for FoxNews by Opinion Dynamics (John Gorman Opinion Dynamics pollster is a Democrat btw):

30. Do you favor or oppose giving individuals the choice to invest a portion of their Social Security contributions in stocks or mutual funds?
SCALE: 1. Favor giving choice 2. Oppose giving choice 3. (Not sure)
Favor Oppose (NS)
29-30 Mar 05 60% 28 12
Age under 30 76% 16 9
30-45 65% 24 10
46-55 54% 33 13
Age under 55 64% 26 11
Over age 55 56% 31 14


Poll on Social Security

[Matty]

http://www.pollingreport.com/social.htm

The sense is that Republicans are going to table their SS plans soon and start engaging in negotiations with Democrats to fix it.

[fluxrad]

What's with you and your polls?

I think back in the day, the vast majority of americans favored putting Japanese immigrants in internment camps.

My point: people a [censored] sheep. Show me a poll where 60% of Americans can point to Iraq on a map or even begin to tell you how Social Security works and maybe I'll start to give "the public" some [censored] credit.

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
My point: people a [censored] sheep. Show me a poll where 60% of Americans can point to Iraq on a map or even begin to tell you how Social Security works and maybe I'll start to give "the public" some [censored] credit.


[/ QUOTE ]

By this logic, elections are even worse than polls! Do you support a radical change in how we govern? Should we replace elections with some other standard?

Polls can be meaningful. Are they perfect? No. Do they often constitute the best empirical evidence of the public's will (even if we think disagree with that will/find it woefully ignorant)? Yes. Does the fact that polls constitute the best evidence always mean leaders should always act on that evidence? No. But polls are meaningful, even if we have a disrepect for the knowledge levels of the respondents.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
What's with you and your polls?

[/ QUOTE ]

They're not my polls. I assume your asking why I recently posted the two polls. One reason is that the polls that have been posted on this forum have been used to try and support a position a particular person has on a subject and on these volatile issues it depends on what the question specifically is as to what the results actually mean. The second and related reason is that polls can be used to spin any issue.

[ QUOTE ]
My point: people a [censored] sheep.

[/ QUOTE ]

A tad bit arrogant don't you think?

[ QUOTE ]
Show me a poll where 60% of Americans can point to Iraq on a map or even begin to tell you how Social Security works and maybe I'll start to give "the public" some [censored] credit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Honestly, why should anyone care about what your criteria is for giving the public credit?

[fluxrad]

[ QUOTE ]
By this logic, elections are even worse than polls!

[/ QUOTE ]

No. The one thing the public is relatively good at is picking someone smarter than they are to lead. To wit, our founders specifically picked a representative government because they knew that direct democracy was impossible and, more importantly, that the populace was too unthinking to govern itself (hence the electoral college, as just one example).

However, you're completely right in the fact that sometimes this results in a complete [censored] douchebag being elected to office. Robert Byrd, Rick Santorum, and Orrin Hatch are just a few examples.

[adios]

Notice that the Opinion Dynamics poll is the only poll that asked if people should be allowed to have a choice regarding where their money goes. Presumably people could favor one choice over another by a large margin that supports the status quo and still support people having a choice between the status quo and new accounts by a large margin. This is more or less what is being proposed regarding private accounts, people would get a choice.

[jakethebake]

Democrats are dumb, so obviously a Democrat pollster would mess up the poll, so the results are meaningless.

[fluxrad]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My point: people a [censored] sheep.

[/ QUOTE ]

A tad bit arrogant don't you think?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. Like I said, "polls" shows ~80% of young americans can't find Iraq on a map. They also show almost as few can find New Jersey on a map. They showed support for Japanese internment, slavery, and that 2/3rds of Americans didn't support the revolution. Today...they show that Americans' opinion of whether or not we should be in Iraq is tied ever-so-tightly to how well we're doing there (the latest shows 60% think we should withdraw immediately).

It's not arrogance that leads me to believe the American people have little ability to lead themselves. It's a deep understanding of history and collective intelligence.

[ QUOTE ]
Honestly, why should anyone care about what your criteria is for giving the public credit?

[/ QUOTE ]

Why should anyone care about you posting the results of a poll in the middle of a poker "politics" forum?

[DVaut1]

[ QUOTE ]
It's a deep understanding of history and collective intelligence.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a genuine question and not sarcasm. I'm not above sarcasm, but this really is a genuine question. How can you claim to have a deep understanding of 'collective intelligence'?