Economic Left/Right: -7.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.31
It's interesting how people are largely to the left... but also interesting how people are often surprised by that. Two items it reminds me of:
1) I heard about a poll the other day... Americans were asked how much richer the top 20% of society should be than the rest... how much of the wealth of the country they should control. Interestingly the responses were centered on about 33% of the country's wealth... and this was true both for self-described liberals and self-described conservatives. I reflected on that and the fact that the actual real world statistic is the upper 20% have 85% of the wealth. That would suggest that in an ideal world envisioned by both right and left - that the wealth is too unequally distributed. Let's say that again - the right and left agree on this. Of course, when it gets to actual policy, while the left favors progressive taxation and social programs the right favors tax breaks for the wealthy individuals and businesses and less social programs. Strange. For some on the right I think that they envision, through trickle-down economics (a.k.a. voodoo economics), that giving to the rich will help the poor more than giving to the poor will do... but then I imagine that many on the right simply, incorrectly, feel that the rich already have less than 33% of the wealth of the country and are trying to correct the situation... to balance the situation towards their ideal.
2) Another poll a year or more ago asked people a number of policy questions and also directly asked them how liberal or conservative they felt they were. Well, first of all, just like the pundits keep telling us, people on average described themselves as center-right - slightly conservative. But then, when you analyze the actual policy positions (pro-choice, pro-public education, pro-progressive tax, pro-government oversight of corporations, etc.) people came out on average left of center... liberal even.
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Another Friday Night Live Gunboat game!
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