Months ago, I pontificated on the prevalent American ideology of the last thirty years...infantilism. George Will coined the phrase back in the mid-1970s, describing the basic political position of the vast majority of Americans as being intensely desirous of a full, heaping, frequently replenished platter of government services without the commensurate willingness to pay for those services in the form of higher taxes...willing the ends while abhorring the means...an ideology that any six year old could comprehend and embrace...
Today's Field Poll of California's registered voters reveals, unshockingly, that infantilism is alive and well in The Golden State...67% of California's voters wanted the budget deficit chasm closed with spending cuts and not tax increases, and 70% favored a two-thirds legislative majority to raise taxes (thereby rendering tax increases very nearly impossible to enact).
However, those same voters, when polled, opposed by the same margins, cuts in the following areas of the state budget...
Water storage and supply facilities (63% opposed cuts here)
Mental health programs (66% opposed cuts here)
Higher education, including public universities, colleges, and community colleges (67% against)
Child care programs (66% opposed cuts here)
Health care programs for low-income Californians and the disabled (72% against cuts here)
Public schools (73% opposed cuts here)
Law enforcement and police (74% opposed cuts here)
The only area where a clear majority of polled voters favored making cuts was state prisons. While undoubtedly expensive, the prison system is at most 10% of the overall state budget.
Californians remain, like most of their countrymen, wildly unwilling to pay for all of the government services that they clamor for...and therein lies the great dilemma of modern governance in the greatest democracy in the world.
