Reply #108: A reply from NORC - and evidence you are misreading the stats. [View All]

Again you read into the numbers what you want to see. You assume conservatives are for spending less, liberals for spending more - therefore all those people who said we spend "too little" must be liberals. What you miss is that most people think we're spending too little (they just disagree how we ought to spend the money).

Those numbers are interesting (though I find it hard to believe that "too little" "about right" , "too much" and "don't know" are all up substantially from '93. You suppose maybe they interviewed more people? Or you misread the numbers?

Well this ( http://web.bryant.edu/~gcarter/home/Pearson%20Issue%20of%20the%20Month/november%202000/election.htm ) website breaks it down by party.

Democrats Republicans
Too Much 4.3% 10.0%
About Right 31.2% 39.1%
Too Little 64.5% 50.9%

This is an example of what I talked about with "capitalism" and a couple others. You mislabel a position as "liberal" or "conservative" when the questions are not phrased for that. Ask this question "would you support a 3% increase in payroll taxes to insure long-term safety of Social Security or would prefer raising the reitrement age to 'x'?" and you can make that call if it's still 2-1.

Notice on the same page that almost a plurality of DEMOCRATS say we "spend too much" on welfare. and both parties say we spend too little on public Health (you read the non party-affiliated numbers as proving they must all be liberals).

This was from the 1998 survey, so it may not match your numbers.