To be fair, though, my original question was in response to someone saying that "many people who would say spending is out of control now, would say it was out of control in the 1970s".
I guess I'd love to get some kind of intuitive sense for what fraction of people who think spending is out of control _today_, would think it was out of control in the 1970s, and what fraction would think it was out of control in the 1930s.
Honestly, my naive my assumption is the number of people who would think spending has been out of control since the 1930s, and want to totally eliminate things like social security and medicare completely is small enough to be politically ignored. I could be wrong about that, though (I get the feeling that _most_ of the political actors who are aiming for this goal have decided to lie about their intentions, because it's such a politically toxic position to take today; but that makes it hard for me to get a sense of how many of those actors there are).
But, then I'd assume that the number that have thought it "out of control" since the 1970s would be a higher fraction (I would've guessed maybe...30% or 40% of the people who think it's out of control today). I would've assumed that a decent chunk of people thinking spending is out of control today, would've at least looked back favorably on the Clinton era deficit elimination and mild surpluses.
Anyway, I guess my point is, I have no idea how many people would hold to each of these positions, but I'm quite curious about each since it seems like my naive assumptions don't really line up well with how you think the distribution would be. And since you hold those beliefs, I think you probably have a better intuition about those belief distributions.
To be fair, though, my original question was in response to someone saying that "many people who would say spending is out of control now, would say it was out of control in the 1970s".
I guess I'd love to get some kind of intuitive sense for what fraction of people who think spending is out of control _today_, would think it was out of control in the 1970s, and what fraction would think it was out of control in the 1930s.
Honestly, my naive my assumption is the number of people who would think spending has been out of control since the 1930s, and want to totally eliminate things like social security and medicare completely is small enough to be politically ignored. I could be wrong about that, though (I get the feeling that _most_ of the political actors who are aiming for this goal have decided to lie about their intentions, because it's such a politically toxic position to take today; but that makes it hard for me to get a sense of how many of those actors there are).
But, then I'd assume that the number that have thought it "out of control" since the 1970s would be a higher fraction (I would've guessed maybe...30% or 40% of the people who think it's out of control today). I would've assumed that a decent chunk of people thinking spending is out of control today, would've at least looked back favorably on the Clinton era deficit elimination and mild surpluses.
Anyway, I guess my point is, I have no idea how many people would hold to each of these positions, but I'm quite curious about each since it seems like my naive assumptions don't really line up well with how you think the distribution would be. And since you hold those beliefs, I think you probably have a better intuition about those belief distributions.