Anxiety over today's crisis clusters -- including aging and failing public infrastructures (roads, bridges, civil aviation, the electrical grid and the Internet); sustainability (energy costs, climate change, transportation); and, community viability (the interrelated downward spiral of housing and credit markets with its attendant effects on employment and the tax base) -- is showing up in a pair of new public opinion polls. But they are not pointing in the same direction.
On one hand, a Rasmussen poll found that 61 percent of respondents preferred a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes rather than a more active government with more services and higher taxes.
On the other hand, respondents to contemporary TIME/Rockefeller Foundation poll looked to "Big Government to solve the biggest problems of our time." Specifically, they are looking to government for policies and programs that create jobs -including public-work projects (82%), new measures to improve energy efficiency (84%), and initiatives to provide more access to quality health care (77%). The Rockefeller poll also indicates the younger the respondent, the more they expect of government in getting through the current troubles.
These two polls may not be fully reconcilable except to say that Americans see a vital role for government. They value it when the need it, and they need it now ... and they want it to be effective (cheap and small). There is latent transformational potential in all of this through government modernization.
On one hand, a Rasmussen poll found that 61 percent of respondents preferred a smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes rather than a more active government with more services and higher taxes.
On the other hand, respondents to contemporary TIME/Rockefeller Foundation poll looked to "Big Government to solve the biggest problems of our time." Specifically, they are looking to government for policies and programs that create jobs -including public-work projects (82%), new measures to improve energy efficiency (84%), and initiatives to provide more access to quality health care (77%). The Rockefeller poll also indicates the younger the respondent, the more they expect of government in getting through the current troubles.
These two polls may not be fully reconcilable except to say that Americans see a vital role for government. They value it when the need it, and they need it now ... and they want it to be effective (cheap and small). There is latent transformational potential in all of this through government modernization.
Leave a comment