[MememyselfandIJK]

You mean when the government takes cash out of your pocket to give it back in the form of good or services that the government determines that you need?

Last time I checked, people need basic things like healthcare no mater who or where they are. If the government can provide it better and more fairly that capitalism (and it can) then who is stopping it?

When it isn't giving you someone else's cash, instead. But you are right, it doesn't take into account how much people pay in taxes versus how much they receive in services. But it might not be as skewed as you think, the US tax burden is more heavily weighted toward the top than other nations. According to the Washington Post a few years ago, in the US the top 10% made 33% of the income and paid 45% of the taxes, compared to, say, the UK where the top 10% earned 32% of the income and paid 39% of the taxes.

That chart is from the mid-2000s. Income inequality has rose since then and the wealthy only have about 20% (I think) of their income taxed. Even if it was like that then how is it fair that celebrities who contribute noting valuable to society lavish in mansions while the poor struggle to even find a home or food?

AFAIK, only one Communist country is under embargo. And neither explain what's happening in Venezuela.

• Cuba is still suffering from the effects of embargo and renormalizing trade will be a long uphill battle for the nation
• DPRK's humanitarian crisis is being worsened by the embargos and it is only strengthening their resolve to build nukes (plus they have everything they need, evidenced by a recent attempt to sell spare material)
• The consensus is that Venezuela is not socialist. Their economy is still driven by private forces with a tad bit of government intervention

You probably shouldn't stop at the top five, here's the rest of the top ten:

6. United States
7. Canada
8. Australia
9. Netherlands
10. Germany

So for median income the United States beats out all but Luxembourg and the Nordic countries. And that's the US average, not by state. Note that this doesn't take into account taxes and government payouts, I'll have to see if I can figure that out when I have some time.

Those nations (especially the US) are wealthier than the Nordics, why don't they top median income? As for the taxes, see my point about social welfare programs -- they have been undeniably successful in Europe.

[Doug64]

Last time I checked, people need basic things like healthcare no mater who or where they are. If the government can provide it better and more fairly that capitalism (and it can) then who is stopping it?

So let people determine what type and how much they want for themselves.

That chart is from the mid-2000s. Income inequality has rose since then and the wealthy only have about 20% (I think) of their income taxed. Even if it was like that then how is it fair that celebrities who contribute noting valuable to society lavish in mansions while the poor struggle to even find a home or food?

It's fair because people are willing to pay those celebrities that much for the value they add to their lives.

• Cuba is still suffering from the effects of embargo and renormalizing trade will be a long uphill battle for the nation
• DPRK's humanitarian crisis is being worsened by the embargos and it is only strengthening their resolve to build nukes (plus they have everything they need, evidenced by a recent attempt to sell spare material)
• The consensus is that Venezuela is not socialist. Their economy is still driven by private forces with a tad bit of government intervention

I'll admit that I forgot North Korea, so yeah, make that two out of five still-extant Communist countries under embargo (of varying effectiveness). But that still doesn't explain the poor economic performance of the remaining Communist countries. As for Venezuela being mostly capitalist, here's what that "tad bit of government intervention" has done for it:

Since Hugo Chávez's "socialist revolution" half-dismantled its PDVSA oil giant corporation in 2002 by firing most of its 20,000-strong dissident professional human capital, and imposed stringent currency controls in 2003 in an attempt to prevent capital flight,[20] there has been a steady decline in oil production and exports and a series of stern currency devaluations, disrupting the economy.[21] Further yet, price controls, expropriation of numerous farmlands and various industries, among other disputable government policies including a near-total freeze on any access to foreign currency at reasonable "official" exchange rates, have resulted in severe shortages in Venezuela and steep price rises of all common goods, including food, water, household products, spare parts, tools and medical supplies; forcing many manufacturers to either cut production or close down, with many ultimately abandoning the country, as has been the case with several technological firms and most automobile makers.[22] In 2015, Venezuela had over 100% inflation – the highest in the world and the highest in the country's history at that time.[23] The rate increased to nearly 500% by the end of 2016[6][24] with Venezuela spiraling into hyperinflation[25] while the population poverty rate was between 76%[26] to 80%[7] according to independent sources.

Those nations (especially the US) are wealthier than the Nordics, why don't they top median income? As for the taxes, see my point about social welfare programs -- they have been undeniably successful in Europe.

So here's what I was able to come up with for median incomes. The national numbers are the OECD's Median Disposable Income -- median personal income adjusted for taxes and social benefits -- for all the nations for which the OECD make a determination, then adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity. These are from 2009, since that's the latest PPP adjustment figures I could find. The state numbers are the states' individual median incomes adjusted by Cost of Living.



You'll notice that other than Norway and Luxembourg, all the European Union nations fall below the US.

[Vlerchan]

@Doug64: Does failing to adjust for PPP cause much disruption to the results? I ask only because in 2009 most of the OECD was in recession and since it didn't affect all countries equally those statistics might fail to reflect the true fundamentals of some economies (though probably not enough for the Nordics to close the 4000 or so income gap with the United States).

I think, adjusting for what I can recall for the severity of the downturn across the Nordics in my head, your point remains intact, but I figure it's worth looking at if you took any sort of note of them.

May I point out that the chart does not account for when states take money out of the system and return it in the form of non-monetary goods and services such as healthcare?

Government spending is accounted for in GDP measures.

Also I suggest arranging by median, not mean.

I suggest we look at both. The capacities of a state to generate wealth is surely important considering most people agree that it has objectives above and beyond maximizing the consumption of middle-class people - which is what median income effectively measures.

To conclude, nations are usually poor due to economic exploitation in the past or present that prevented proper development (Africa, India) or economic barring due to the aftermath of the cold war (DPRK, Cuba).

I have no idea why some people insist on taking away the agency of the Global South when it comes to economic development. I agree, for sure, that Western Imperialism had disastrous consequences for the Global South, and those consequences still persists in their national accounts, but it's rather clear that states which followed good economic policies can prosper. These policies tended to be those which balanced (non-financial) economic liberalization with robust institutional reforms.

Culture may be a factor but it is a relatively small one.

There's a large literature connecting cultural-capital endowments, esp. as it relates to institutional and technological knowledge transmission, and long-run economic growth (for a review, see: Spolaore and Wazriarg (2013)). It is also quite likely that cultural-individualism also specifically affects growth.

If you have an issue with macro-evidence, Eugster et al. (2017) finds that in Switzerland, Romance language speakers take 7 weeks (22 percent) longer to find work than their German speaking counterparts, is one of the clearest papers finding that culture does affect economic outcomes.

As can be seen, aside from Luxembourg (which is insanely rich anyways) the "socialist" (really more welfare-based) Nordic states are all top 5.

Without a clear counterfactual, you're failing to demonstrate anything of note. For example, underpinning this relationship it might rather be that large endowments of social capital (cultural factors) underpin both having a strong welfare state and having a strong economy. That this is what actually underpins it has been suggested by the Swedes themselves.

Bjorn Lyrvall, Sweden’s ambassador, says he is flattered by the attention, but some Scandinavians are slightly irritated by Mr Sanders’s praise. According to Daniel Schatz, a visiting fellow at Columbia University, his country’s economic success is due to its sound institutions and social cohesion, rather than the welfare state so admired by Mr Sanders. During the heyday of Swedish socialism and big government, Sweden’s economic growth actually fell from second in the world in 1970 to the second-lowest in the OECD in 1990. The country recovered only after it decentralised, deregulated its economy and lowered its punishing tax rates.

http://www.economist.com/news/united-st ... tral-lands

Findings of one free-market think tank also suggest that the poverty rate among Swedish-Americans living in America is lower than that of Swedes living in Sweden - and the mean Swedish-American income is substantially higher (ibid.). So, for those reasons and more, I see no merit in that listing.

If the government can provide it better and more fairly that capitalism (and it can) then who is stopping it?

It's worth noting before I am dragged into this discussion that I feel a single-payer system is superior to private insurance markets, when it comes to healthcare.

[Doug64]

@Doug64: Does failing to adjust for PPP cause much disruption to the results? I ask only because in 2009 most of the OECD was in recession and since it didn't affect all countries equally those statistics might fail to reflect the true fundamentals of some economies (though probably not enough for the Nordics to close the 4000 or so income gap with the United States).

I think, adjusting for what I can recall for the severity of the downturn across the Nordics in my head, your point remains intact, but I figure it's worth looking at if you took any sort of note of them.

Not adjusting for PPP/CoL can make a serious difference. Without the CoL Hawaii, for instance, goes from last to near the top. But I can jump ahead a few years on the MDI and assume that cost of living won't have changed too much in that short a time frame.

[MememyselfandIJK]

So let people determine what type and how much they want for themselves.

Personally, I do not believe that people have the right to starve. There needs to be a baseline much higher than what there is now before we can let people adjust.

I'll admit that I forgot North Korea, so yeah, make that two out of five still-extant Communist countries under embargo (of varying effectiveness).

What country were you thinking of then?

But that still doesn't explain the poor economic performance of the remaining Communist countries. As for Venezuela being mostly capitalist, here's what that "tad bit of government intervention" has done for it

The failure of government intervention is more due to the instability of the government then the notion of regulation. And for the last time, Venezuela is hardly socialist.

So here's what I was able to come up with for median incomes. The national numbers are the OECD's Median Disposable Income -- median personal income adjusted for taxes and social benefits -- for all the nations for which the OECD make a determination, then adjusted by Purchasing Power Parity. These are from 2009, since that's the latest PPP adjustment figures I could find. The state numbers are the states' individual median incomes adjusted by Cost of Living.

May I point out that Norway is still above the US and many other wealthy capitalist nations? Besides, the chart is 8 years old and things have changed quite a bit since then. For example, the other Nordics have rose above the US and the US has rose in position as well due to attempting to start to implement social welfare policies under Obama.

Government spending is accounted for in GDP measures.

If I am correct the chart was mean income, not GDP per capita.

I suggest we look at both. The capacities of a state to generate wealth is surely important considering most people agree that it has objectives above and beyond maximizing the consumption of middle-class people - which is what median income effectively measures.

I disagree with using median income because in Western nations there is a small but disproportionately wealthy class that skews the mean. When there are extreme outliers median tends to be a much more representative measure of central tendency.

I have no idea why some people insist on taking away the agency of the Global South when it comes to economic development. I agree, for sure, that Western Imperialism had disastrous consequences for the Global South, and those consequences still persists in their national accounts, but it's rather clear that states which followed good economic policies can prosper. These policies tended to be those which balanced (non-financial) economic liberalization with robust institutional reforms.

In the modern world, the biggest disadvantage to communism is that the West refuses to respect you. This is a far larger downfall than any economic stunting that is claimed to come with communism because nations that are excluded from the world stage simply face short, harsh existences, no matter what their economy is. If capitalism is so successful, then why is the Middle East or Africa so unstable/poor. Imperialism is one answer, but a better, more current answer is that countries fight over resources such as oil or diamonds that can be used to oil (haha) the gears of Capitalism.

Findings of one free-market think tank also suggest that the poverty rate among Swedish-Americans living in America is lower than that of Swedes living in Sweden - and the mean Swedish-American income is substantially higher (ibid.). So, for those reasons and more, I see no merit in that listing.

The 1990s was when Sweden started their reform program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model). Furthermore, nowhere does the article state anything about poverty rates. It states that:

Swedish-Americans are better off even than their cousins at home: their average income is 50% higher than theirs

However the cost of many essentials (Childcare, food, utility, rent) are slashed often by far more than what is equivalent (And mind that the climate forces Sweden to import some things like food): https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Sweden. It is only less essentials that are increased in price (restraint visits, some forms of transportation, sports and leisure).

I realize that I didn't hit all of your points, but I will come back to those (already spent quite a bit of time )

[Doug64]

I think, adjusting for what I can recall for the severity of the downturn across the Nordics in my head, your point remains intact, but I figure it's worth looking at if you took any sort of note of them.

Here's the updated chart, with the MDI as close to current as possible -- a few 2014, most of the rest 2013, and assuming that the PPP hasn't changed enough to make a major difference. There have been some shifts in the rankings after a few years of economic recovery -- Norway has jumped ahead of all the US states, but the US overall have jumped to 3rd.

Personally, I do not believe that people have the right to starve. There needs to be a baseline much higher than what there is now before we can let people adjust.

But we aren't talking about starvation, are we?

The failure of government intervention is more due to the instability of the government then the notion of regulation. And for the last time, Venezuela is hardly socialist.

You can keep spinning it however you like, you can't avoid the fact that Chavez and his followers/heirs set out to create a socialist paradise and instead have created the usual socialist dystopia.

May I point out that Norway is still above the US and many other wealthy capitalist nations? Besides, the chart is 8 years old and things have changed quite a bit since then. For example, the other Nordics have rose above the US and the US has rose in position as well due to attempting to start to implement social welfare policies under Obama.

The updated chart as close to today as possible, and Luxembourg and Norway are the only nations doing better than the US. As for the rest of the Nordic countries, if they were US states they would be ranked 28th (Iceland), 39th (Sweden), 43nd (Denmark), and 52nd (Finland) out of 54. The only states worse than Finland are California and Hawaii.

And I'd say that Obama has slowed down the recovery, not improved it -- you don't improve economic performance by imposing command economy strictures on a significant segment portion of your national economy while trying to drive up energy costs on the rest. Now if only the Republicans can push through the economy-boosting tax reform they've promised ...

[Vlerchan]

May I point out that Norway is still above the US and many other wealthy capitalist nations?

Norway has considerable natural energy reserves. It's an outlier for that reason.

If I am correct the chart was mean income, not GDP per capita.

It was GDP pc PPP, though mean income and GDP per capita are the same thing.

I disagree with using median income because in Western nations there is a small but disproportionately wealthy class that skews the mean. When there are extreme outliers median tends to be a much more representative measure of central tendency.

I am not disputing this is the case.

I am disputing your implicit claim that mean income doesn't tell us anything useful about an economy - which it does, it's capacity to create wealth.

If capitalism is so successful, then why is the Middle East or Africa so unstable/poor. Imperialism is one answer, but a better, more current answer is that countries fight over resources such as oil or diamonds that can be used to oil (haha) the gears of Capitalism.

In the case of the Middle East it's bad institutions: a historical record of there being quite limited checks on executive power, and considerable Western meddling in the near-present (ditto North Africa). With respect to (sub-Saharan) Africa, it's been a mixture of bad institutions: a historical record which lacks political centralization, broader legacies of imperialism (the trans-Atlantic slave trade, in particular, but slavery as an endemic, in general) and a host of bad policies pursued in the post-Independence era. Nevertheless, where good policies have been pursued we see vast improvements in economic conditions, Pinkovskiy and Sala-I-Martin (2014) note that Africa has performed immensely well in the last decade. Because as the World Bank suggest,

The commodities boom may be over, but sub-Saharan Africa is still experiencing growth, a remarkable fact considering that the continent is a net exporter of primary commodities. By adopting sound macroeconomic policies over the past two decades and sector reforms, many African economies have already shown that they can sustain a trajectory of economic growth and beat the “resource curse.”

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/opinio ... estination

So again, the determinism here is unwarranted.

---

Note also that countries in Africa, such as Ghana (Ahiakpor 1985), Tanzania (Staphenhurst and Kpundeh 1999: pp. 153 - 157, esp. 155), etc., who adopted a economic program which rejected markets in favor of state planning performed particularly poorly during the 20th century without the help of embargoes.

The 1990s was when Sweden started their reform program (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model).

Yes, and the claim I am making is that reform process involved a significant shift rightwards. Lower top marginal rates of income taxation, lower income taxation across the board - reallocation of this burden towards indirect measures, significantly reduced corporation taxation, fiscal rules limiting the running of deficits and the generation of the national debt, breaking up national monopolies, stricter competition laws, significant deregulation, etc. It's welfare system required free markets to keep it afloat.

Furthermore, nowhere does the article state anything about poverty rates [...]

The poverty rate of Americans with Swedish ancestry is only 6.7%, half the national average.

supra.

The OECD states that Sweden's poverty rate is 8 percent.

However the cost of many essentials (Childcare, food, utility, rent) are slashed often by far more than what is equivalent (And mind that the climate forces Sweden to import some things like food): https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/c ... ry2=Sweden. It is only less essentials that are increased in price (restraint visits, some forms of transportation, sports and leisure).

Most people want to consume beyond the bare essentials and the median American can consume more-so beyond for the same level of income. The average Swedish-American can consume close to 60 percent more than the average Swede living in Sweden, combining both our statistics. That's considerable.

[Doug64]

Here's this week's round-up of polls. Anyone that wants to check out any possible links over the next week can go to the link to the left. (Anyone wanting more details on a particular poll, just ask):

Most of the major news came from abroad this week, as Donald Trump made his first foreign trip as president and England suffered the deadliest terror attack on its soil since 2005.

The radical Islamic State group (ISIS) took credit for the slaughter of innocents earlier this week at a concert in Manchester, England, and 69% of U.S. voters say that ISIS must be completely destroyed to end its terrorist attacks. Eighty-seven percent (87%) consider ISIS a serious threat to the United States, but just 40% see a need for the United States to formally declare war on the radical organization.

Even prior to the Manchester attack, 53% of Americans said the United States and the international community should do more to help Europe win its war with radical Islamic terrorism.

Most Americans think it’s likely a terrorist attack comparable to the Manchester bombing will happen in the United States, but they're not afraid to attend big events.

Just before the Manchester bombing, President Trump made a speech in Saudi Arabia calling for the Muslim-majority world to lead the fight against terrorism. Seventy percent (70%) say the Saudis have not been aggressive enough in fighting terrorism, and just 21% consider Saudi Arabia to be an ally of the United States. Most voters see it as somewhere in between an ally and an enemy.

President Trump followed up his Saudi Arabian stop with a visit to Israel, and voters tend to think the U.S. relationship with Israel is more important to stability in the Middle East than the relationship with Saudi Arabia is.

The next stop for the president was the Vatican, where he and his family met with Pope Francis. While the meeting was met with mixed emotions, voters still generally believe the United States has a friend in the pope.

Trump then headed to Brussels for the NATO summit, and support for the organization is up as voters continue to see a need for the alliance more than 60 years after it was formed.

It’s no secret that the president has had a troubled relationship with most traditional media outlets, and 54% of voters think he is more to blame for that tension. Forty-one percent (41%) think the media is more to blame. Just 29% think it’s possible for Trump to mend his relationship with his media opponents.

President Trump's recent decision to fire FBI Director James Comey sparked a media firestorm, but voters are divided as to whether questions about the move are genuine or political in nature.

In other surveys last week:

-- Thirty-four percent (34%) think the country is heading in the right direction for the week ending May 18.

-- Former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner has pleaded guilty to texting sexually explicit material to an underage girl, and voters strongly believe he should be put in prison for it.

-- Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst sentenced to 35 years in prison for releasing classified government documents to the website WikiLeaks, was released from prison earlier this month after President Obama commuted her sentence as one of his final presidential actions. But few voters view Manning favorably and most disagree with Obama’s parting decision.

-- In the wake of the international WannaCry cyberattacks last week, Americans are more concerned than ever about the safety of the country’s online economic systems.

-- President Trump campaigned on the promise to "Make America Great Again" but voters tend to think he's more concerned with what's best for himself rather than the country. Voters are more likely to say his predecessor put the country first.

[Doug64]

So I am really late! Busy weekend, and I forgot, sorry. Here's this week's round-up of polls. Anyone that wants to check out any possible links over the next week can go to the link to the left. (Anyone wanting more details on a particular poll, just ask):

President Trump continues to enact the agenda he promised voters, stunning the Washington, D.C. establishment and a media used to politicians who change their tune once they’re in office.

Late this week, the president announced that the United States is withdrawing from the anti-global warming Paris Climate Agreement, saying the measure is bad for the U.S. economy. President Obama signed the agreement in 2015, but it was largely a symbolic gesture since he never submitted it to the Senate for ratification, knowing it was unlikely to be approved.

Only 30% of voters support Trump’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from the agreement. Sixty percent (60%) think he should submit the Paris treaty to the Senate for an up-or-down vote.

While voters have long said global warming is a serious problem, most also have been reluctant to spend any of their own money to do anything about it. Only 25% think the scientific debate over global warming is over.

The president recently returned from his first foreign trip where he told our reticent allies in the Middle East and Europe that they need to do more for their own defense, but now an unprecedented number of voters appear to believe the United States should listen to its allies instead.

Trump continues to be the target of a hostile media, fed in large part by leaks and anonymous sources. Most voters still think the leaking of classified information to the media is an act of treason.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) said in February that the leakers should be prosecuted.

Still, the media coverage is taking its toll as the president’s daily job approval rating remains in the low to mid-40s. He earned a monthly job approval rating of 45% in May, down two points from the month before.

Just 37% of voters now think the country is headed in the right direction. A year ago, at this time, though, only 28% felt that way.

Voters saw a brighter future shortly after Trump’s election, but now most once again think the nation's best days have come and gone.

Following the latest radical Islamic terrorist mass killing in Europe, 75% of voters here say Islamic religious leaders need to do more to emphasize the peaceful beliefs of their faith.

Despite ongoing historical revisionism and attacks on people and events of the past, most Americans continue to believe they should be proud of this nation’s history.

Four Confederate monuments were removed from New Orleans earlier this month following complaints that they celebrate racism, and now the city of Baltimore plans to follow suit. But most voters oppose taking away remnants of the past even if they are unpopular with some.

Interestingly, 37% of Americans don’t even know when the Civil War took place.

But then most voters continue to give low marks to the public schools and don’t think today’s high school graduates are ready for college or the workforce. Most also have long believed that most school textbooks are more concerned with being politically correct than with accurately providing information.

In other surveys last week:

-- In the wake of the shakeup at the Fox News channel, the long-time cable news leader has lost fans and fallen behind CNN.

-- More Americans than ever now honor Memorial Day, the federal holiday that recognizes military personnel who have given their lives for our country.

[Doug64]

I'm on time this week! If only just. Here's this week's round-up of polls. Anyone that wants to check out any possible links over the next week can go to the link to the left. (Anyone wanting more details on a particular poll, just ask):

President Trump wanted Americans to focus on his plans to improve the nation’s infrastructure, but former FBI Director James Comey stole the show in Washington this week.

Comey testified on Thursday before a Senate panel about his interactions with President Trump, who recently fired him. Voters put slightly more trust in Comey than they do the president.

Voters aren’t overly impressed with Comey’s performance as FBI director, but just over half disagree with the president’s decision to fire him.

Voters are almost evenly divided over whether the questions raised about Comey’s firing are due mostly to concern that the law may have been broken or are just partisan politics.

Great Britain suffered another attack at the hands of the radical Islamic State (ISIS) in London last weekend, just days after the terrorist organization claimed credit for the massacre at a concert in Manchester. Most Americans think it’s likely a terrorist attack comparable to the Manchester bombing will happen in the United States, but they're not afraid to attend big events.

President Trump took the London attack as another opportunity to stress the importance of the travel ban on Muslim-majority countries. Half of voters still favor the president’s temporary travel ban and see it as an anti-terrorist measure, not religious discrimination. Voters also think the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to uphold the ban.

Trump recently pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement in part because of his concern about its potential impact on the U.S. economy. Voters tend to agree the accord would have led to increased energy costs, and most remain unwilling to pay much, if anything, more to fight global warming.

Confidence in race relations in America remains down, and there isn’t much hope for the future.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of all Americans believe we talk about race too much, while 33% say Americans don't talk about it enough. Black adults are more likely than others to say Americans need to talk more about racial issues.

For the last three months, the overall Consumer Confidence Index has been falling from its three-year high, but June’s four-point jump to 116.7 (the second highest rating in this index’s history) suggests there’s hope on the horizon.

In other surveys this week:

-- Trump is the first U.S. president to hand out his personal cellphone number to several other world leaders, but most voters don’t think he should break from the norm.

-- Thirty-three percent (33%) of voters think the country is heading in the right direction for the week ending June 1.

-- It’s been a rough few years to be a police officer, with high-profile police shootings and riots dominating the news. But despite the negative press, Americans still value the police.

-- Apple announced this week that their newest iPhone operating system, iOS 11, will have a “Do Not Disturb for Driving” mode that will stop users from receiving text messages while behind the wheel. Americans already think distracted driving is a big problem and are on board with this new technology.

-- Is there life after death? Americans sure think so.

-- Americans still watch a lot of television, but they’re doing more of it through streaming services these days.

-- Despite living in a digital age, Americans still appreciate time with a good book—and they prefer that book be printed on paper rather than on a touchscreen.

[Hong Wu]

A new Rasmussen poll has Trump at 50% approval rating, possibly he got a bump from all of the recent testimonies that have supported a conclusion that there is no Russian thing. I haven't checked the dates of the poll, though.

What I have idly wondered about is what kind of American is not effected by this good economy? Numerous statistics are at their best since 2007, some haven't been this good since 1970. This is also surely a factor in whatever Trump's real approval rating is; I wouldn't trust the polls much on this for obvious reasons.

[Beren]

What I have idly wondered about is what kind of American is not effected by this good economy?

That kind of American that knows that Trump has hardly anything to do with it. Believe it or not it's still the legacy of the Obama era. I also wonder whether Trump has done anything for the economy as president, but even if he has it takes more time to have any effects.

[Drlee]

Rasmussen is simply a propaganda arm of the republican party. This should be pretty obvious. They deliberately skew data to favor republican positions. Look at this obvious example:

Trump recently pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement in part because of his concern about its potential impact on the U.S. economy. Voters tend to agree the accord would have led to increased energy costs, and most remain unwilling to pay much, if anything, more to fight global warming.

So what is the truth. Two separate polls that I have read, from reputable polling companies such as Harris, show that voters are opposed to withdrawing from Paris by an overwhelming majority...70% in one poll, oppose our pulling out. But Rasmussen wants to make this about "energy costs" thereby deliberately misrepresenting the position of the American people.

Rasmussen polls are worthless unless you want to be fed what you want to hear.

[Zagadka]

[Zag Note: Guys, can we please keep this a reference page instead of debating every publication? There is a whole forum for that you can post a new thread on. ]

[Drlee]

WHAT? Come on guy. This is a political forum. We debate politics. This is all about politics. What exactly is a "reference page".

I think I need to follow Godstud and be done with this. The MODS have simply gotten out of control. Frightened about something I guess.

[Doug64]

A new Rasmussen poll has Trump at 50% approval rating, possibly he got a bump from all of the recent testimonies that have supported a conclusion that there is no Russian thing. I haven't checked the dates of the poll, though.

Rasmussen's approval numbers are a three-day rolling average of likely voters, updated every weekday. That 50% number was released Friday, 6-16, for polls taken the evenings of Tuesday through Thursday. You can go HERE for a couple of interactive graphs going back to Trump's swearing in.

WHAT? Come on guy. This is a political forum. We debate politics. This is all about politics. What exactly is a "reference page".

A reference page is a page where facts/data are gathered in one place so you can find them more easily when needed. I don't mind reactions here myself, so long as they focus on what US residents/likely voters (depending on the poll) think and why we might think the way we do rather than debates on whether our opinions are right. But why go one more round in the "Rasmussen is propaganda/Rasmussen beat almost everyone last presidential election" dance?

Here's this week's round-up of polls. Anyone that wants to check out any possible links over the next week can go to the link to the left. (Anyone wanting more details on a particular poll, just ask):

The political anger in America exploded into violence this past week when a virulent anti-Trumper opened fire on a group of Republican congressmen practicing for a charity softball game.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of Americans agree politics is to blame for the incident that left one of the GOP’s top House leaders in critical condition and aren’t writing it off as just random violence.

By comparison, just 28% said the shooting of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six others in Arizona in January 2011 was the result of political anger.

Just before Trump’s inauguration in January, 50% of voters said the United States was a more divided nation after eight years of the Obama presidency, but Republicans and unaffiliated voters felt that way much more strongly than Democrats did. Things may have only gotten worse since then: Just two months ago, 61% of Democrats still believed that Trump did not win the election fairly last November.

There are sharp partisan differences on virtually all political issues now, including most recently the president’s firing of FBI Director James Comey.

At week’s end, however, the president’s overall approval rating hit the 50% mark for the first time since late April. His approval rating has ranged from a high of 59% in late January shortly after he took office to a low of 42% in early April.

But the president continues to be plagued by leaks to hostile news organizations, the most recent ones seeming to come from the staff of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, the man charged with investigating whether there was any illegal contact between Trump or his associates and representatives of the Russian government. Following Comey’s recent public testimony before a Senate panel, 49% of voters believe the president tried to interfere with the FBI’s Russia probe, but here, too, there is a strong partisan disagreement.

In his testimony, Comey acknowledged that he leaked memos of his private meetings with the president to the New York Times through a friend. A sizable number of voters, including most Republicans, believe Comey should be prosecuted for leaking to the media at the time he was one of the nation’s top law enforcement officers.

Based on what Comey said, most voters think Congress also needs to investigate whether former Attorney General Loretta Lynch interfered in last year's FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton. Last year, 54% favored naming a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton because of potential conflict of interest concerns about Lynch and the Justice Department.

Voters weren’t overly impressed with Comey’s performance as head of the FBI, and his testimony before Congress merited a predictable partisan response.

Seventy-five percent (75%) of Democrats rate the media coverage of Comey’s testimony as good or excellent, a view shared by only 31% of Republicans and 47% of unaffiliated voters.

In the America outside Washington, D.C., the economy continues to grow. With the unemployment rate dropping to its lowest level in 10 years, optimism among voters that the U.S. economy is fair has soared to new highs.

The Rasmussen Consumer Confidence Index has jumped to its second highest rating ever.

Most Americans are planning to take a summer vacation.

Nineteen percent (19%) still think it will be Very Difficult for young people to find jobs this summer, but that compares to 41% four years ago.

Only 37% of voters believe the country is headed in the right direction, down from a high of 47% just after Trump took office in January. Still, that compares to 27% a year ago at this time.

The president commended the opening of a new coal mine in Pennsylvania last week, but nearly half (49%) of voters think the United States should begin to systematically phase out the use of coal-fired power plants over the next 50 years.

Greenhouse gas emissions from those plants are blamed for global warming. But while voters continue to say global warming is a serious problem, they refuse to pay more in higher taxes and utility costs to combat it.

In other surveys last week:

— This Father’s Day, 70% of Americans say being a father is the most important role for a man to fill in today’s world.

— Massachusetts is the latest state considering whether to legalize physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, and just over half of Americans continue to support a euthanasia law in their state.

— An international study released this week claims the United States has the greatest percentage of obese children and young adults, but most Americans don’t think that applies to them.

[Doug64]

How American Adults see the Congressional Republicans shooting:

Was the shooting incident the result of political anger in the country or was it just a random act of violence by an unstable person?

• Political anger in the country: 55%
• A random act of violence by an unstable person: 28%
• Not sure: 17%

Republicans

• Political anger in the country: 68%
• A random act of violence by an unstable person: 22%
• Not sure: 10%

Independents

• Political anger in the country: 51%
• A random act of violence by an unstable person: 28%
• Not sure: 21%

Democrats

• Political anger in the country: 49%
• A random act of violence by an unstable person: 33%
• Not sure: 18%

[Doug64]

Here's this week's round-up of polls. Anyone that wants to check out any possible links over the next week can go to the link to the left. (Anyone wanting more details on a particular poll, just ask):

This week witnessed the conclusion of the most expensive congressional race in history, and big money and divisive politics were on full display.

Republican Karen Handel narrowly defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff in the special election for Georgia’s 6th congressional district, one that Democrats hoped to flip despite its long history of electing Republicans. It was the most expensive congressional race in history, and voters agree money makes it impossible for most people to run for Congress. But they also still believe that money is not the most important factor in an election.

Democrats were hoping that opposition to President Trump would change some voters’ minds, but most Republicans said back in April that Trump will help candidates running for Congress this year.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Americans say they would consider running for Congress themselves.

Five months into Trump’s presidency, voters think America has become even more divided.

Half of voters in the country are angry at President Trump. The other half are angry at those who oppose him.

However, if there’s one thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on it’s that the nation’s politicians are in more danger of political violence these days.

President Trump’s deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein warned the American public late last week against putting much stock in news stories that cite anonymous officials. Voters seem to agree.

Voters are still critical of the news coverage President Trump is getting and continue to believe most reporters are out to get him.

Republicans strongly suspect that senior Obama administration officials used secret U.S. intelligence information for political ammunition, and voters think that's worth investigating. But few believe criminal charges are likely.

In the wake of the United States’ downing of a Syrian warplane, voters believe this is just the beginning of a situation that will get worse and could result in direct military conflict with Russia.

In other surveys this week:

-- Thirty-five percent (35%) of voters say the country is heading in the right direction.

-- Voters think it's easier to enter the United States illegally and stay here illegally than it is in most other countries around the globe.

-- Voters want to crack down on illegal immigration, and to many, that still means locking down the borders.

-- Americans still place high importance on children growing up in a home with two parents.

[Pants-of-dog]

.....

A reference page is a page where facts/data are gathered in one place so you can find them more easily when needed. I don't mind reactions here myself, so long as they focus on what US residents/likely voters (depending on the poll) think and why we might think the way we do rather than debates on whether our opinions are right. But why go one more round in the "Rasmussen is propaganda/Rasmussen beat almost everyone last presidential election" dance?

...

If facts and data are what is required for a reference page, then this is not a reference page, in my opinion.

Rasmussen polls seem to deliberately skew questions in order to promote an agenda. It may be a fact or data point that x number of US people treat it as a real survey and answer, but all it shows is how gullible some US people are to this type of thing, rather than actually providing any information about what people in the US actually think.

[Drlee]

There is absolutely no reason for me to read this slanted nonsense if I am not welcome to comment on it. You have seen the last of me and I was one of the few who read this republican propaganda machine.