Scary: 34% Of Americans Don’t Think It’s Possible To Live Without Government Help
Any guesses as to which Presidential candidate got this demographic’s vote?
George Lakoff, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, recently stated that “the moral mission of government is simple: no one can earn a living in America or live an American life without protection and empowerment by the government.”
Thirty-four percent (34%) of voters nationwide agree with Lakoff’s assertion while 46% disagree in a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty percent (20%) are not sure.
Half (51%) of Democrats agree with the professor while Republicans and unaffiliated voters strongly disagree. Republicans reject Lakoff’s statement by a 3-to-1 margin, unaffiliateds by a 2-to-1 margin.
Stop for a moment and consider what Lakoff’s statement means. Essentially, it means that none of us is responsible for our own success. We haven’t earned anything. We’ve just been giving things. And unfairly too, to hear the liberals tell it. Which is why they’re always on about redistributing wealth from one group of people to another.
Now, Lakoff’s statement is a little slippery because it is true in some regards. Government protection does facilitate success and prosperity to some degree in that fire departments and police officers and infrastructure like roads and bridges all serve to make going about our daily business easier. But in that capacity government is in a support role. The government isn’t doing our business for us by building and maintaining roads. The government is just making it easier to get to work and conduct our business. Which is why infrastructure is a perfectly acceptable role of government.
Where there’s a divergence, for me and most on the center-right I’d imagine, is when it comes to the government doing things like telling us who we can and can’t hire. What products we can and cannot purchase. What countries we can and cannot trade with. What benefits and entitlements certain demographics get.
Liberals tend to believe that the government should care for us. Should be some father figure who will provide and entertain and make everything ok. The problem, of course, is that there are no angels in the world who we can trust with that kind of power. That’s why socialism has never worked. Because in order to have government take care of every single aspect of day-to-day life requires a level of authority and power that is inherently corrupting.
That’s why our founding fathers created our Republic where the power of government is (or was) distributed to the masses. Gerald Ford, though no paragon of limited government himself, once said that the government that’s big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything away. And science fiction author Robert Heinlein wrote: “The purpose of government shouldn’t be to do good, but simply to refrain from doing evil.”
We shouldn’t want government to take care of us, because we might not always like the people doing the caring. And/or the way they’re doing it.
“the moral mission of government is simple: no one can earn a living in America or live an American life without protection and empowerment by the government.”
“Essentially, it means that none of us is responsible for our own success.”
I don’t see the connection. To me, the first statement is saying that without the government, we wouldn’t be able to live our lives as they are right now, to make a living. That is a very far cry from not being responsible for our own success. Protection and empowerment by the government does not mean the government lives our lives for us. It means that they allow us to live our lives as we choose, by providing the things we depend on every day: roads, police, fire department, etc.
Without government, we couldn’t live our lives, and I agree 100% with that statement.
Without interdependence? We did this back when the pioneers went west. We did this when the pilgrims landed. We did this during the depression. We the people can work.
Many who make their living off others refuse to work and rely on others to give them a living. This survey reveals that people who identify themselves as Republicans are mostly those who are not afraid to work while those who identify themselves as Democrats are the ones who want others to give them a living.
There are legitamate things for government to do: the roads, the borders, the military, but to try to keep all pain away from the people, will just hemorrhage all of our money until we are a third world country (or even fourth) – at least we won’t have people trying to sneak in anymore. see gowwow.com
Really?? If any thing, I’m shocked by how low the number is. We could not sustain our way of life with out the government. Please people, go look at third world countries where the government does not give a damn about its ppl or simply doesn’t have the resources to help. Our large protective government is one of the greatest things we have. It is made that way because of the oversight our founding fathers gave us through free speech and voting. We all hate paying our taxes, but next time you do, just imagine if our government collapsed tommorow; chaos? lawlessness? Eventually totalarism?
Government does not create jobs, or educate anyone, or start any kind of business. Government is killing all three of these things.
Government assistance is like a contagious desease or a addictive drug. One you get it, it’s hard to get rid of.
Jason: The amount of wasteful social spending(not the spending for the truly needy and disabled) is immense; it’s probably on the order of 50% of all govt spending.
“It’s asinine to believe that anything more than a fraction of a percent of your taxes go to support welfare recipients and the disabled. You wouldn’t notice the difference if we were gone.
Jason on March 9, 2009 at 02:02 am”
Really? Then go away, and good riddance.
Obama may not be burying Reaganomics, but he’s trying, using the rubble from digging up the Roman fall – Tax the rich to death and pour the money over the welfare class until the empire couldn’t even protect itself from illegal immegrants sneeking across the border — hmm-Both major parties are guilty of this. see gowwow.com
Well isn’t the “War on Terror” the government taking care of us?
The fact is we are entirely dependent on the government. We exist in a system funded on debt. The income from our exports is only about 15 percent of our expenditures. Common sense would tell you that we’d go broke this way. Sadly, the deficit spending our government does (and, by necessity, the borrowing from other nations and printing excess money) is the only thing keeping us functioning. We seem to be unable to help ourselves by buying American goods and acting in our own best interests, so the government is forced to clean up our mess. So, yes, I’d have to agree with that statement.
It’s asinine to believe that anything more than a fraction of a percent of your taxes go to support welfare recipients and the disabled. You wouldn’t notice the difference if we were gone.
I have to agree with your statement for the most part, and it is sad to see 34% of people be unable to live off of welfare but the best way to get these people off it is, and I know you’ll throw a shitfit about it, to increase welfare temporarily.
No food stamps cash assistance etc, but free specialist education. I know this was mostly already provided by public schools and far too many drop out and regret it later as they find themselves on welfare, but this is key.
This woman down the street for example, she lives on social security disability and child support from her ex-husband for her 3 children. She makes 1200 a month from the SS, sounds like a lot but is hardly enough to get by especially since her ex works road construction in michigan, meaning no work during the winter.
She has considered going back to work but who hires an older woman who hasn’t worked in 17+ years? Even McDonald’s wouldn’t hire her. If they did she would make minimum wage and be shifted for light hours for the first two months, which of course means she would have to increase her welfare at first and even after that she has would at best make 800 a month and still have to pay for a baby-sitter lowering the quality of life for all involved. If however a cheaper schooling option was available to help her get a career then she would be able to cut off all of her welfare benefits.
(She does have a high-school degree, the only thing working against her really is a lack of recent experience)
The welfare states are down south. The same people who wanted to secede form the union, we should have let them, they add nothing to our country.Their screwed up neo-con/CONfederate ideas wouldn’t work economically now, any more than they did in 1865, which is why they got their asses kicked so badly.
Notice also this demographic is heavily linkled to education.The states with the lowest education levels vote Confederate, I mena Republican. Want to know what it would be like if their church ran our country? We already did that too, it was called “the dark ages”
Actually, we owe it all to the productive sector, which pays the vast bulk of taxes, upon which the govt drones are totally dependent. We pay for roads through our gasoline taxes; we pay for utilities through our bills and taxes. The various private markets provide us with our food, and we pay taxes to support national defense.
Taxpayers pay for everything, and the private sector provides the taxpayers.
Govt is a parasite on the achievers.
Just thought I’d add this little piece of fact: George Lakoff is a professor of linguistics (I actually had a class with him back in college) and one of the interesting things about linguists is that they tend to be very very good with their words. What I mean is that linguists like Lakoff (and Noam Chomsky)can be very good at making statements that have confusing and/or contradictory meanings, and the interpretation of them will depend largely on your point of view. To wit: Lakoff’s statement is “the moral mission of government is simple: no one can earn a living in America or live an American life without protection and empowerment by the government.” But that sentence is confusing. Is he saying that government’s mission is to make it so that no one can earn a living without government? Or does he believe that no one can live an “American life” without the intervention of government?
I think he just likes to throw out statements like that to stir the pot and see what happens.
I believe that the core role of government is limited to protection of the life, liberty, and property of each citizen. I see even most or all of the so-called “infrastructure” functions of roads, trash pickup, utilities, etc. as better provided by the competitive free market.
Its probably closer to 50%…After all…Only the deadbeats in America voted for this worthless bastard…and there are more deadbeats than real americans voting now.
Money is a fake placeholder of value; it is of no value behind the idea it represents.
There are legitamate things for government to do: the roads, the borders, the military, but to try to keep all pain away from the people, will just hemorrhage all of our money until we are a third world country (or even fourth) – at least we won’t have people trying to sneak in anymore. see gowwow.com
“Bob”? I’ll type this real slow so you can read it. Government does not create jobs. Government does not create anything. Sad little whiners such as you screech that all is the government’s and people should just give up. Well, fuck you. Now, go cash your welfare check and get stoned, we have work to do.
To be honest, I’m not sure what the purpose of the federal government is. Long ago, it was the republican ideology that local governments should do the heavy lifting for most services. Oddly enough 80% of my tax dollars go to the federal govt, and I don’t see any real direct benefit. Police? State taxes. Fire? County taxes. Schools? Real estate taxes.
Ok… so what am I getting from the federal govt? It seems to me that they are giving money to the banks and insurers (some of them foreign). You are telling me that they shouldn’t pay for my anti-biotics, but they should pay citi-group – who will then in turn start handing out debit cards to thousands of employees?
IF ANYTHING, the federal govt is there to keep me alive. The British really aren’t a threat anymore, and good luck stopping terrorists (Israel hasn’t had any luck) … It seems they are throwing there money at everyone except me (the average guy). Screw Citigroup, AIG, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. If they took the same amount of money on all these endeavors, no one would go hungry or die of lack of medical treatment for a decade.
Its all about priorities. What is more important? Stock portfolios or people staying alive? If you don’t think you should have to pay for either, then maybe you should think about whether we need a federal govt.
The Mongol hordes come to mind. Thanks for playing.
I’ve asked you people before to name me one tribe, village, town, city, state or country in history that made any progress without the unifying influence and assistance of leadership. That leadership is government.
You think you want a free-for-all, but like Potato, you all go crying to the government when you find yourselves in need. Seen it a hundred times.
You’re callous assholes until you find yourselves in need.
It’s one thing to have a difference of opinion, it’s another to be insulting about it. Claiming the higher ground as you have tried to do doesn’t make it so.
I don’t know what empowerment means, but you conservatives must agree with the protection portion. Or else why do we have a military?
The problem with this professor’s statement is that it is so vague as to be meaningless. It means whatever you want it to. It can mean anything from needing a military to needing welfare.
I don’t think the answer is surprising. I think 99% of those people who said yes are probably thinking about the military/police. They are saying it’s not possible to live without military protection; and that’s probably fairly reasonable. The question is too vague.
“Liberals tend to believe that the government should care for us.”
Bloggers tend to invent false generalizations to get page hits.
Rather than responding to most of the comments here, I must say that I think this statement is a two edged sword. I agree that part of the role of government is to assist in making it easier for us to commerce with each other and to provide the protection, military and policing, that is necessary from having others trample our rights.
The idea that the government empowers us is the part I question.
If by empower Lakoff meant that the government is supposed to provide us with entitlement programs, I would have to disagree. For it seems with the current system in place, which starts with compulsary education, that it rewards the lack of effort more than it rewards those who contribute more. because of this American society is quickly turning into the heaps of people that feel they are entitled to get more for doing less.
On the other hand if Lakoff is trying to say that by providing us with the infrastructure to participate in the protection of our country and the means to make getting to commerce easier, then I would have to agree. By providing roads to travel on and the feeling of security of having a defense system, the people feel empowered to exchange money for goods and services. This allows the people to thrive and, in my opinion, is the service that government is meant to have.
But this is not currently the role our government has. So I fear that Lakoff probably meant the former. With that idea I must admit that one third our nation agreeing with that viewpoint is a scary thought.
So Ghengis Khan did not lead them…?
I mean sure they survived prior to that but until he came along they didn’t prosper…
It’s amazing how taking a statement out of context and reading into it can create such a sensation. There is no mention of welfare in the statement. The words “protection” and “empowerment” do not mean welfare.
Is it possible that by protection Lakoff meant that the government helps keep hungry peasants from attacking food shippments or selling drugs to your kids? And that by empowerment he meant the creation of jobs, access to education, and ablity to start any business you’d like?
This poll really only shows the difference in perception of what these words mean to different segments of society.
In a related poll, unemployed conservatives like Potato who were asked the same question while waiting in line for their welfare at the unemployment office also agreed.
I keep hearing people say this crap. Lets look at some facts, OK.
Hey Ed, welcome to the progressive tax system. You know the one that wants to soak the “rich” and redistribute wealth, unless you or your state are the rich getting soaked. Only a democrat would complain that the policy they support and trumpet as fair work exactly as planned.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/1397.html
By the way, those white republicans, they aren’t responsible for the poverty in the South.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/February04/Features/Anatomy.htm
Notice, high white populations are in Kentucky(Southern), West Virginia(Northern) and Ohio(Northern)
You are right, being poor is heavily linked to education and single motherhood. I don’t think those poor down in the plantation belt are voting for Republicans, they are black. I’m sure I’ll be called a racist for pointing that out. Even though facts do not know race.
I don’t need government for anything!!!
Years ago when I was young, I had $80, 2 boxes of cloths, and a phone number for a job opening in the southern part of the state. I drove there for the interveiw and got the job. For the next 3 1/2 weeks I slept in my car, took baths in the lake, washed up and shaved at gas stations, and ate very little. Finally got some pay checks and got a small apt.
I did all of this so I would’nt be on welfare.
I don’t need the government for anything. And lastly I don’t need the socialist government taxing the hell out of me, and giving my hard earned money to some lazy ass so he dose’nt have to work. I’m doing fine now and government did’nt help me get to where I am.
Changing the rules in the middle of the game?
Curious. Another blogroach dropping.
as interesting as all these left vs right discussions are I think most people missed the meaning of the statement. Let’s rephrase
the moral mission of government is simple:
means: ‘the goal of government should be that’
no one can earn a living in America or live an American life without protection and empowerment by the government.”
means: ‘everyone earning a living or living in America should receive protection and empowerment’
‘the goal of government should be that everyone earning a living or living in America should receive protection and empowerment’
in my personal opinion:
If you live in america and make nothing even due to your own laziness, you should still be afforded the public police protection from violence.
I do not want to pay your rent.
My first opinion validates the statement to a certain extent (so I think logically I would have to agree), but as far as a global government moral imperative this statement is weak and poorly defined. Setting the imperative in the negative seems to imply that the government’s goal is to prevent people from living/earning in the US without protection, which doesn’t make much sense to me.
Everyone who said something like ‘you’ve enjoyed the benefits of public school so you must agree’ or ‘you drive to work on public roads’ misunterdstood. Those statement reflect the way things ARE. The original postulation is only regarding the way things SHOULD BE.
You all want to have your cake and eat it too. It’s ok for government to give me what I need but if I don’t need it then F everyone who does. Imagine our country without a government, every man for himself. No laws, no taxes. I know you all have this dream that everyone would be happy and we would all just get along and share all of the wealth because that’s what people do. But in reality, police would be privately owned and you would have to pay the cops to save your life. What would the greedy people be capable of doing? They would own everything, then instead of a government ran by the people, you have a private corporation owning everything and making all the rules. Yea, sounds like paradise to me.
No. They are talking government assistance, in the form of financial, medical, housing. Not military, police, roads, harbors, bridges, and tunnels.
But keep spinning those leftarded talking points, we are laughing our asses off at you morons.
Oh Look! Mickey-Stem has a new graphic! Who taught you how to use the graphics posting tool?
“”Liberals tend to believe that the government should care for us.”
Bloggers tend to invent false generalizations to get page hits.
Jason on March 9, 2009 at 06:29 am”
It is clear that your “blog” is a failure, else you would not still be here crying, jason.
Oh Please, come off of it. The idea that we cannot live without the “help” of the government in the form of rule of law is at the very heart of Hobbes, Locke, and Voltaire’s writings. It is also quite well understood by 99.9% of Republicans, all of whom are stalwart supporters of the government institutions such as police, military, etc. Who do you think was responsible for breaking up labor unions??? Government. Who gave them the teeth to do it? Citizens and their tax dollars.
Government is not a “liberal” or “conservative” thing. Its just that whenever one side or the other is out of power, they criticize gov’t. Thats pretty standard and reflects how utterly spineless most people are, how they repeat whatever is fed to them by their leaders.
The thing that most slightly educated ppl relaize is that without some form of higher authority (be it government in the form of secular republic or government in the form of organized religion, which is what they have in fundamentalist Muslim countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia) its essentially just an anarchist free-for-all.
Written by a product of non-public schools who feels guilty for being lucky enough to be born into wealth and, as a result, takes positions sympathetic to ppl at the bottom who, as far as I can tell, face serious hurdles (primary social) to making it up the economic ladder.
Wow that is pretty scary dude. I mean really.
RT
http://www.privacy.at.tc
yeah, I would have to agree that I wouldn’t be able to live without the government’s help. At least, live in acceptable conditions.
Roads are really nice, for instance…
Well, just make the best out of it. Enjoy while it lasts….
Tim Laser
BTW, there % of Americans who think its impossible to live without government help are wrong. This is evidenced by the thousands of people worldwide who do scrape by without government help. For example:
- Indians in the Amazon jungle
- Tribes in remote parts of Afghanistan
- Tribal Africans in the Kalahari desert
BTW, what is scary is not such an innocuous poll as the pone you cite, but rather the yellow journalism form attention whores and bloodsuckers in the blogosphere and mainstream press.
“Scary: 34% Of Americans Don’t Think It’s Possible To Live Without Government Help
Stop for a moment and consider what Lakoff’s statement means. Essentially, it means that none of us is responsible for our own success. ”
No it doesn’t. You just said that. This is a strawman argument if ever there was one.
Most Americans dont get how the highways, police depts, and mail system would run, or who would direct the Military/Secret Service soundly without Government body.
What the fuck is this, the Ron Paul fanclub? The government is supposed to support the public good. If you insist that there is NO SUCH THING as the public good, then, what the hell does it mean to be part of a COUNTRY, then? If you’re just an indiviudal and dont care about the other 300 million Americans (approx) and don’t use water, roads, police dept, mail, etc, then ya, congratulations you earned every ounce of your dysfunctional little life and don’t need to pay taxes. Bravo.
Dino and his Saturday morning drug hangover. LOL!!! What a fucking loser!!!
So there’s absolutely no moral responsibility to those who are held down by the system of inequality that greatly multiplied during the Reagan years? Of course, as a conservative, it’s very easy to say, “Yes, anyone can do it, it’s so easy to just ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ a la Horatio Alger.” Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. There are people for whom it is physically and mentally impossible to realize the so-called American Dream because they have been repressed by the inequality of the American institution. It is those people who need help and deserve it, not because they’re too lazy to work (which it always seems funny that by lazy conservatives really mean black) but because racism and inequality are so deeply ingrained in society that without government assistance they become yet another number adding to the statistic of poverty.
But yes, fuck those people; I mean who cares about the poor when I’ve got a car, a job, a home that hasn’t foreclosed because I wasn’t lied to about my mortgage. Oh right, those predatory lenders went after those on the cusp and LIED to them, telling them they could afford a home. How is it their fault that they need government assistance when some greedy (and most likely conservative free-marketer) took their money and put them in the shithole they currently reside in?
And another leftard toddles through, spewing the usual socialist blahblah. We are so impressed.
Hey, Lik? How many of the above commenters are, in fact, the same? Just curious.
i believe police and public schools fall under that category.
First, the caveat, I only read the first couple sentences. But then my stupid meter got stuck in Full and I had to move on.
People, you are really something. On one hand you trumpet and trumpet and trumpet over and over again how this is the greatest country evah! Then, in you second breath (through the mouth, we have to go slow) you dismiss this country and all it has given you.
Let’s put down the stupid sauce for a minute, shall we?
I have an idea. This idea is grand and great. Now, I want to turn this idea into an industry.
Where should I do this? If the US government has nothing at all to do with fostering and enabling success, then all of you bozos should take your grand ideas to Belize. Or some other place with “less government”. It is one thing to have a debate. It is something completely different to not even get a point.
OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE.
Get off your lazy … and do something. Quit sitting in your living room crying about the boogie man.
It is time for the people to take back control of the future of this country. The infrastructure and current government tactics are not working. Do not believe all that you see and hear because it is all someone else’s opinion
There is no such thing as a free market. All markets are built on a substrate of government. Where would you be without a stable currency? Where would you be without customers? You can’t have a gathering of people devoid of government.
Its kinda funny to read everyone’s comments and realize, we are just repeating history with the recession. The war is why its happening, war is only profitable to a few, not many. You blame Obama, when he has only been in office less then 2 months. From what i’ve seen, Bush and McCain pushed for the last bail out. Its better to Trickle up, not trickle down. The US is turning into a third world country over night, and we may have a powerful army, but we are out numbered (in bodies). Oh and look at how much a CEO makes compared to the standard worker over the last 30 years, you will cry!
Wrong! Our money is a medium of exchange, and as such, it gives the possessor access to all the goods and services produced by our economy. It represents the total output of our country.
SA: You have it backwards; the govt is totally dependent upon the productive members of society, who pay for everything. The illusion totalitarians like Obama want to create is that we are dependent upon govt, but it’s really the other way around.
National defense is the govt doing the job we pay them to do.
My thought is that if you drive to work on roads, use electricity provided by the grid, drink water from the faucet, don’t use a septic tank, and are allowed to spend the majority of your time not growing food or standing watch, then yeah, you rely on that mean old guvmint for your way of life.
As Matt said, the statement is very hard to interpret. I would argue that the preface, “the moral mission of government is simple”, is key. Without it, the statement is exactly what most I think most poll respondents and commentators have taken it as: a statement that people are enabled and receive everything they have through the government. But the meaning shifts significantly when you include the preface. “The moral mission of government is simple” means that the subsequent statement is the mantra under which government SHOULD operate.
His claim is not that the government is the sole source of the American Life; his claim is that a government that BELIEVES it is the sole source of the American Life is the one that will do the most good, operate the most efficiently, and facilitate the most private development and production because what’s best for the people is by definition the best for the government.
In other words, the best government is one that, in economic terms, is a purely rational and selfish actor whose needs and desires are the best everything of its citizens, economy, and land.
Of course, we can and will argue endlessly about whether that ideal government would favor the light hand of oversight and gentle facilitation or the heavy hand of intervention and direct control.
That is the 34% who should get nothing from government OR charity. They can support themselves or fuckoff and die. No 3rd choice in that quiz.
Smelly, smelly blogroach dropping.
What’d you eat?
I was tempted to ask the “Human?” question with a simple “no” but I did not think that would work
Conservative: If you give a man a fish, you feed him for one night. If you teach a man to fish, he feeds himself every night.
Liberal: If you give a man a fish, he owes you once. If you teach a man to fish, he won’t need you any more.
REALISTS: If you give a man a fish you feed him for one day if you teach a man to fish he is in jail the next day because its literally illegal to “fish” in this country without government permission especially on “public” land.
I do not think obama is bad. I just think he is not doing anything different that Bush did except the DESTINATION of the money spending is changing. Otherwise it seems like status quo.
True. Savages most closely resemble the contemporary conservative movement.
It’s not surprising, considering most Americans have been indoctrinated in government schools.
Lack of leadership is the problem today. We have a president who has WEAK leadership skills. Look no further than his failed stock market. He has earned the dubious title of worst economic leader in 90 years. Toss in his WEAK appointment of Timmy The Tax Cheat Geitner as Secretary Of Treasury and you have a train wreck of magnitude never seen before in this country.
The carnage to be wrought by this continuing unabated by direct opposition is far worse than anything Obama is doing. If the libs aren’t given a chance to utterly and completely embarrass themselves with their power hunger, greed, and self-absorption every so often, they still slide their agenda by in the mass media and culture. People need to wake up before their psychic self-defense finally kicks in at the last second because that’s when a rolling cascading indignance takes hold and then you get things like the French Revolution.
Which do we prefer? A slap to the head warning now as to how bad these people are for humanity, or total chaos collapse into turmoil later when the damage is much worse?
As long as we resist Obama and refuse to fall to this sort of sheep-like thinking, we can undo nearly anything BO does and make us of it to reverse this more than disturbing trend.
Only Dino is brain dead enough to think that EMPLOYED NETWORK PROFESSIONALS need welfare as opposed to paying the tax burden that funds welfare, much less that welfare payments are picked up at the unemployment office.
And only Dino (well, maybe Buzz the racist or a few others) can fail so damn miserably to carry out anything like a simple put down.
What else should I expect from someone who gets his economics education from whichever issues of Playgirl that has the fewest pages stuck together?