Why do 77% of americans say the country is going down the wrong path?

Question

and what are some examples of some of the things you think they are concerned about.

Please try to be honnest, and don't lie to us to spread propaganda.

I always find it amazing who the people are who answer questions about our society in a sensititve intelligent manner...and what side of the aisle they come from, and those who give answers that clearly show they are not sincere, or at the very least very uneducated.

To me the correlations are always the same. There is one side of the aisle that sounds like dumb uneducated people who sound like they are lying, and another side that gives honnest sincere well thought out answers. What does that tell you?

Answer 1

Billionaires up, America down
When it comes to producing billionaires, America is doing great.
Until 2005, multimillionaires could still make the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. In 2006, the Forbes 400 went billionaires only.
This year, you'd need a Forbes 482 to fit all the billionaires.
A billion dollars is a lot of dough. Queen Elizabeth II, British monarch for five decades, would have to add $400 million to her $600 million fortune to reach $1 billion. And she'd need another $300 million to reach the Forbes 400 minimum of $1.3 billion. The average Forbes 400 member has $3.8 billion.
When the Forbes 400 began in 1982, it was dominated by oil and manufacturing fortunes. Today, says Forbes, "Wall Street is king."
Nearly half the 45 new members, says Forbes, "made their fortunes in hedge funds and private equity. Money manager John Paulson joins the list after pocketing more than $1 billion short-selling subprime credit this summer."
The 25th anniversary of the Forbes 400 isn't party time for America.
We have a record 482 billionaires — and record foreclosures.
We have a record 482 billionaires — and a record 47 million people without any health insurance.
Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires — and 5 million more people living below the poverty line.
The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won't get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525).
Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer.
Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent.
In 2004, one out of six households had zero or negative net worth. Nearly one out of three households had less than $10,000 in net worth, including home equity. That's before the mortgage crisis hit.
In 1982, when the Forbes 400 had just 13 billionaires, the highest paid CEO made $108 million and the average full-time worker made $34,199, adjusted for inflation in $2006. Last year, the highest paid hedge fund manager hauled in $1.7 billion, the highest paid CEO made $647 million, and the average worker made $34,861, with vanishing health and pension coverage.
The Forbes 400 is even more of a rich men's club than when it began. The number of women has dropped from 75 in 1982 to 39 today.
The 400 richest Americans have a conservatively estimated $1.54 trillion in combined wealth. That amount is more than 11 percent of our $13.8 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) — the total annual value of goods and services produced by our nation of 303 million people. In 1982, Forbes 400 wealth measured less than 3 percent of U.S. GDP.
And the rich, notes Fortune magazine, "give away a smaller share of their income than the rest of us."
Thanks to mega-tax cuts, the rich can afford more mega-yachts, accessorized with helicopters and mini-submarines. Meanwhile, the infrastructure of bridges, levees, mass transit, parks and other public assets inherited from earlier generations of taxpayers crumbles from neglect, and the holes in the safety net are growing.
The top 1 percent of households — average income $1.5 million — will save a collective $79.5 billion on their 2008 taxes, reports Citizens for Tax Justice. That's more than the combined budgets of the Transportation Department, Small Business Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Tax cuts will save the top 1 percent a projected $715 billion between 2001 and 2010. And cost us $715 billion in mounting national debt plus interest.
The children and grandchildren of today's underpaid workers will pay for the partying of today's plutocrats and their retinue of lobbyists.
It's time for Congress to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and close the loophole letting billionaire hedge fund speculators pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.
Inequality has roared back to 1920s levels. It was bad for our nation then. It's bad for our nation now.

Answer 2

I agree with Zenith!

Parents educated in Psychology, too include abnormal, and Sociology would be able to ensure that their children adapt to the world and thus the would be less problems since educated people are not easy to fool.

There is a gap between high and low income and also many jobs are being outsourced to other countries. The wages of many are almost stagnant meaning the cost of living is getting higher than people's pay. Employee's have very few enforceable protections against Wrongful Termination, this is almost impossible to prove without witnesse(s), because of At-Will Employment and the Right to Work.

As far as what you ended with " don't lie to us to spread propaganda." that depends of how people wish to interpret an answer like lawyers do.

Answer 3

I can't speak for others, but I'm concerned about:

Government being allowed to do things it shouldn't be...such as torture etc. If we were living in the 1960's, there would be protests going on right now. Instead, people are just letting it happen, and allowing the president to do whatever he wants. Be it good or bad.

United States losing face on an international level because of bad decisions. Invading Iraq on false intelligence, holding prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo.

Answer 4

People are suffering now and they see the Administration and the government are out of sync with their needs. Bush should not run the country as if it were an oil company. He's crazy and it shows.

Answer 5

Americans spend too much. Government already spends too much and people keep asking them to spend more in every election the people vote for every spending measure. American people spend too much. We save less then any other industrialized nation in the world. If you are indebted to someone else they hold the power, not a good situation to be in.

Answer 6

I think that the morals are deplorable, young sluts spreading for everything that comes along, and breeding with no care of who will support them (generally its the tax payer). We have a generation that thinks they are owed everything and expect the government to fork it over. We have a generation of stupid kids who barely can read and right all because of the teachers unions. That is the wrong path I'm talking about when asked this question.

Answer 7

People don't trust the presidency at the moment. They don't like the war and they don't like handing billions of dollars over to the American black hole in Central Asia. They currently feel like they were lied to (whether they were or not is a different question), and got snookered.

Answer 8

they are concerned about terrorism, the war, healthcare, education, the economy, immigration and other issues...

and they are upset because no one seems to be doing anything about the above issues... at least anything that produces results...

Answer 9

they have begun to awaken, to the fact that those driving the country, are not going the same place we are. different goals different destinations.

Answer 10

Seventy percent of 300 million people is 231 million people. I can't believe anyone polled all of this people. I sure would like to see that poll.