Climate change is the top security concern in a poll conducted by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, followed by Islamist terrorism and cyber attacks while respondents in a growing number of countries worried about the power and influence of the United States.From Reuters no less.
The comprehensive survey by the Pew Research Center released Thursday found deep partisan divides over whether the country is achieving some of the values critical to maintaining democratic principles.Suggests that populism is on the rise across the population asa whole regardless of the partisan divide and large cohort that self-identifies as independent. This in turn suggests different forms of populism.
The latest national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted March 17-27 among 2,254 adults, including 1,787 registered voters, finds higher levels of dissatisfaction – with long-term changes in the country, the federal government, as well as with the economy and personal finances – among Trump supporters than among those who back any other candidate, Republican or Democrat.…Pew Research Center
Sometimes one reads a press article that is so obviously misleading that it is hard to know where to start with it. But perhaps the conclusion is the best place to start sometimes. Such is the case of a Bloomberg article (January 15, 2016) – What #ResistCapitalism Gets Wrong – written by American academic Noah Smith. Basically, the article attempts to attribute all of the post-Second World War prosperity to the “free market economy”, which he says is “a term many use synonymously with ‘capitalism’”. By the end of the article we learn that in fact that prosperity does not come from ‘free market’ liberalisation and that strong governments are essential for growth and reductions in inequality. The “boring old mixed economy” where, in Noah Smith’s words “government really is instrumental in creating growth”. Start with the conclusion and read backwards is my advice in this case.…Bill smacks Noah down for purveying conventional wisdom by setting for the facts. But Bill admits that Noah finally comes around in the end and wishes he had begun the post that way.
By a 57% to 39% margin, more Republicans and Republican leaning independents say their party’s leadership should move in a more conservative, rather than more moderate, direction. These views are little changed over the last four years.
And, as in the past, Democrats are more likely to say their party leadership should move in a more moderate direction (52% say this) than a liberal direction (41%). Yet the share saying the party should move in a liberal direction is now higher than it was following the 2010 midterms (41% today, up from 34%).
To some extent these differences between the two parties are the result of compositional differences: While 58% of Republicans and Republican leaners identify as conservative, only about four-in-ten Democrats and Democratic leaners (42%) identify as liberal.
Additionally, while about three-quarters (77%) of conservative Republicans and GOP leaners say they’d like to see the party become more conservative, a smaller majority (60%) of liberal Democrats and Democratic leaners say their party should shift to the left. Still, the share of liberal Democrats and Democratic leaning independents who want to see their party move in a more liberal direction has slightly increased from four years ago, from 50% to 60%.
"But the status quo is unsustainable. Some 10,000 Baby Boomers will be going on Social Security and Medicare every single day between now and 2030. By the time everyone in this big pig-in-the-python generation is drawing benefits, we’ll have just two workers per beneficiary – down from three-to-one now, five-to-one in 1960 and more than forty-to-one in 1945, shortly after Social Security first started supporting beneficiaries.
The math of the 20th century simply won’t work in the 21st. Today's young are paying taxes to support a level of benefits for today's old that they have no realistic chance of receiving when they become old. And they know it – just 6% of Millennials say they expect to receive full benefits from Social Security when they retire. Fully half believe they’ll get nothing."Its a good thing that I'm bad at math, since the author of this piece didnt bother to do any- apparently rhetorical flourishes will suffice. And hey, who knew all that 20th century math expired on December 31, 1999?
By 2042, so-called racial minority groups will make up the majority of the U.S. population.
That’s according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest projection. Building on that, the Pew Research Center recently released an extensive study on the shifting demographics of race in our country, showing that within a century (from 1960 to 2060), white Americans will have gone from making up 85 percent of the population to comprising 43 percent.
On the other hand, the number of Hispanic and Black Americans will have grown substantially over that time period, together making up 45 percent of the 2060 population.
Immigration and intermarriage account for much of this change in our country’s racial makeup, and for many, that’s a good thing, forcing us to embrace diversity and reexamine how we categorize race. However, other research suggests that these shifting demographics may cause fear or a tendency to become more conservative on the part of white Americans....The Huffington Post
