News Flash: Americans Still Don't Understand Deficits

A large number think the fiscal cliff will increase the deficit.

by

At Business Insider, Walter Hickey reports results from an online survey (commissioned by the website) that show a public muddled over the consequences of going over the fiscal cliff. Per the survey, 47.4 percent of Americans said that the deficit would increase if we went over the cliff, only 12.6 percent say that it would decrease. Here are the full results:

Yes, this is an online poll, and you should take the results with a grain of salt. Still, this remarkable, given the fact that the whole reason to worry about the cliff is that it would put the United States on a path of large and (relatively) rapid austerity.

With that said, I'm not too surprised; most Americans don't actually understand what the deficit is-opinions of the deficit are essentially a proxy for opinions of the economy writ large. Voters associate high deficits with poor economic performance-the public might say that it wants more action to lower the deficit, but what it means is that it wants Washington to improve the economy.

People know that the fiscal cliff would have negative consequences for the economy, and they associate those with high deficits, even if that's the exact opposite of what going over the cliff would do.

A second Trump administration will cement a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court for a generation, and put our collective future in the hands of someone who will be virtually unchecked by our institutions. The country has shifted rightward, and the reverberations will ensue for potentially the next few decades. In this climate, a robust independent media ecosystem will be more important than ever. We're committed to bringing you the latest news on how Trump's agenda will actually affect the American people, shining a light on the stories corporate media overlooks and keeping the public informed about how power really works in this country.

Quality journalism is expensive to produce, and we don't have corporate backers to rely on to fund what we do. Everything we do is thanks to our incredible community of readers, who chip in a few dollars at a time to make our work possible. Any amount you give today will help us continue reporting on what matters to our democracy.

You can help power this newsroom by making a one-time donation or by becoming a member today.