Britons favour state responsibilities over individualism, finds survey

[alp227]

Britons are less inclined than the French to regard the workless as indulged, readier than the Germans to pay taxes to help them, and decidedly less relaxed about top salaries than the Americans, according to a major transnational study by the academic thinktank YouGov-Cambridge, which put identical questions to voters across four democracies at the same time.

The findings – shared exclusively with the Guardian – also demonstrate that Britons retain a European-style sense that the state has sweeping societal responsibilities, in defiance of Margaret Thatcher's 1980s efforts to shift the onus on to the individual. Most Britons, 52%, regard it as the government's job to redistribute income right the way across the income spectrum, as against the distinct minority of Americans, 32%, who take the same view.

Amid the most protracted economic slump in living memory, the data – prepared before a YouGov-Cambridge conference week, at which the Guardian is media partner – records considerable resentment towards the "undeserving poor" across the western world. In France, fully 47% of voters say their government is "not being tough enough towards people on benefit, and more should be done to force them into work", against just 28% who say that the government is "too harsh" on jobless people, "most of whom would like to work if they could".

That crushing margin in favour of greater toughness is closely mirrored by a 50%-25% split in Germany and 44%-25% in the United States.

full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/14/britons-sympathetic-unemployed-france-germany

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Interesting - there are several more questions in the article

Well worth reading, for the differences in US and European attitudes. You won't be surprised to find that it's Republican voters who have the "damn the poor" views, eg only 22% of them think a role of the state is "ensuring that rich and poor children have the same chances to get ahead", while the British, German and French figures are 78%, 87% and 77% (overall American support for that was 50%, so I would think Democratic opinion would be in line with European).

[malaise]

2. I found that amazing

Propaganda works really well