A Year Later, Many Say Economic Reforms are Lacking
Email6:30 p.m. update:
In addition to the skepticism about financial reforms I describe below, our poll finds broad personal damage from the past year’s economic crisis – a landscape of financial woe and psychological stress alike.
A remarkable 47 percent of Americans say someone in their household has taken a pay cut, been laid off or lost a job in the past year. Sixty-five percent say they’ve been hurt financially by the economic meltdown. Fifty-five percent say the current economic situation is a cause of stress in their lives – including one in three who calls it “serious” stress.
More on the poll in the morning…
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There’s a push in public opinion behind President Obama’s renewed call today for stricter regulation of the financial industry: A year after the economic meltdown began, many Americans say efforts to avoid future crises have been insufficient.
The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that just under half of Americans, 49 percent, express confidence the federal government is putting measures in place that will make another financial crisis less likely in the future. And a mere 10 percent are “very” confident this is happening.
Industry self-regulation fares even worse: Forty-one percent say they’re confident the nation’s financial institutions themselves will change their business practices to make another meltdown less likely. Fifty-eight percent, instead, think not.
There is naturally, partisanship in these views, with Democrats far more sanguine than Republicans and independents alike. Seventy-one percent of Democrats, for instance, think the government is taking steps to make the country less vulnerable. Just 41 percent of independents and 36 percent of Republicans agree.
Winning over Republicans is probably an insurmountable challenge to the president. But the shortfall on independents, the keystone of presidential politics, is a problem for him.
We covered related views in this morning’s political/health care poll analysis, including a dramatic drop since spring in the president’s advantage over the Republicans in Congress in trust to handle the economy. And we’ll have more, selected results on damage from the economic crisis this evening, with our full report tomorrow morning.
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Here’s a thumbnail of what it takes, in my view, for a society to be prosperous:
1) An inventive / innovative class; people have to want to invent things and processes;
2) Cross-culturalization, where multiple inventors get together and compare their inventions, and newer \ better inventions are created;
3) Seaports or trade route intersections;
4) Business flowing from invention / innovation;
5) Decent Jobs flowing from business, so people can take care of their families with pride;
6) A reasonably decent life flowing from more people having jobs; and
7) Education encouraging the repeat of the process
Either some force in society sets this in motion, governs the process, and maintains it, or it does not. If you leave it to chance, you might be on top for a while but you will not be on top indefinitely. But that is a cost of freedom, when you do not direct people what to do with their lives.
My suspicion is that China will be the next world power because they tell more people what to do, and they are more controlling. More free? Of course not. But more planning, organization, consistency, and coordination take place under their model. We in the U.S. use the “herding cats” model, and there are benefits and costs associated with it.
We’ve needed more inventors for years, and few in our country have paid attention to that issue.
Posted by: Reggie Greene / The Logistician | September 29, 2009, 7:41 pm 7:41 pm