Most Americans Think Our Morals Are Going To Hell
Ask anyone about the state of moral values in the U.S. and you’re likely to get a response along the lines of, “we’re going to hell.”
Most Americans — 72 percent — are convinced that moral values in the U.S. are decaying, according to a new Gallup poll, and most people believe the current state of moral values isn’t all that great to begin with. Nearly half of those polled, 45 percent, called the state of moral values in the U.S. “poor,” while 34 percent said they are “only fair.”
Just 19 percent rated American morals as either “excellent” or “good,” and only 22 percent say the state of moral values is getting better.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, social conservatives have consistently been most likely to tell pollsters that the nation’s moral values are deteriorating, but the latest Gallup findings showed an uptick from 2014 to 2015 among social moderates and social liberals who believe moral values are regressing.
Related: How U.S. Morals Stack Up Against the World
Gallup also found that Americans’ views of the moral acceptability of a number of key issues has been shifting to the left since 2001. The largest shift was on gay or lesbian relations, with a 23 percentage point increase in the share of people who say that behavior is morally acceptable. The change coincides with a sharp increase in support for same-sex marriage.
Sex between unmarried people has also become more acceptable, as has having babies outside of marriage. Polygamy and divorce are also now acceptable to a greater portion of the population than in 2001. On the other hand, the views of married men and women having an affair haven’t changed much, with just 8 percent of Americans saying it’s morally tolerable.
However, respondents to the poll about the current and future state of moral values weren’t necessarily responding with those charged social and political issues in mind. In many cases, Gallup suggests, their views of the moral direction of the country were rooted in something much more basic: “That is, their views have less to do with greater acceptance of same-sex marriage or having babies out of wedlock and other hot-button issues, and more to do with matters of basic civility and respect for each other,” Gallup’s Justin McCarthy wrote.
Clearly, the Golden Rule is still the bedrock of our moral code: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
The High Cost of Child Poverty
Childhood poverty cost $1.03 trillion in 2015, including the loss of economic productivity, increased spending on health care and increased crime rates, according to a recent study in the journal Social Work Research. That annual cost represents about 5.4 percent of U.S. GDP. “It is estimated that for every dollar spent on reducing childhood poverty, the country would save at least $7 with respect to the economic costs of poverty,” says Mark R. Rank, a co-author of the study and professor of social welfare at Washington University in St. Louis. (Futurity)
Do You Know What Your Tax Rate Is?
Complaining about taxes is a favorite American pastime, and the grumbling might reach its annual peak right about now, as tax day approaches. But new research from Michigan State University highlighted by the Money magazine website finds that Americans — or at least Michiganders — dramatically overstate their average tax rate.
In a survey of 978 adults in the Wolverine State, almost 220 people said they didn’t know what percentage of their income went to federal taxes. Of the people who did provide an answer, almost 85 percent overstated their actual rate, sometimes by a large margin. On average, those taxpayers said they pay 25.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. But the study’s authors estimated that their actual average tax rate was just under 14 percent.
The large number of people who didn’t want to venture a guess as to their tax rate and the even larger number who were wildly off both suggest to the researchers “that a very substantial portion of the population is uninformed or misinformed about average federal income-tax rates.”
Why don’t we know what we’re paying?
Part of the answer may be that our tax system is complicated and many of us rely on professionals or specialized software to prepare our filings. Money’s Ian Salisbury notes that taxpayers in the survey who relied on that kind of help tended to be further off in their estimates, after controlling for other factors.
Also, many people likely don’t understand the different types of taxes they pay. While the survey asked specifically about federal taxes, the tax rates people provided more closely matched their total tax rate, including federal, state, local and payroll taxes.
But our politics likely play a role here as well. People who believe that taxes on households like theirs should be lower and those who believe tax dollars are spent ineffectively tended to overstate their tax rates more.
“Since the time of Ronald Reagan, American[s] have been inundated with messages about how high taxes are,” one of the study’s authors told Salisbury. “The notion they are too high has become deeply ingrained.”
Wealthy Investors Are Worried About Washington, and the Debt
A new survey by the Spectrem Group, a market research firm, finds that almost 80 percent of investors with net worth between $100,000 and $25 million (not including their home) say that the U.S. political environment is their biggest concern, followed by government gridlock (76 percent) and the national debt (75 percent).
Trump’s Push to Reverse Parts of $1.3 Trillion Spending Bill May Be DOA
At least two key Republican senators are unlikely to support an effort to roll back parts of the $1.3. trillion spending bill passed by Congress last month, The Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis reported Monday evening. While aides to President Trump are working with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on a package of spending cuts, Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) expressed opposition to the idea, meaning a rescission bill might not be able to get a simple majority vote in the Senate. And Roll Call reports that other Republican senators have expressed significant skepticism, too. “It’s going nowhere,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said.
Goldman Sees Profit in the Tax Cuts
David Kostin, chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, said in a note to clients Friday cited by CNBC that companies in the S&P 500 can expect to see a boost in return on equity (ROE) thanks to the tax cuts. Return on equity should hit the highest level since 2007, Kostin said, providing a strong tailwind for stock prices even as uncertainty grows about possible conflicts over trade.
Return on equity, defined as the amount of net income returned as a percentage of shareholders’ equity, rose to 16.3 percent in 2016, and Kostin is forecasting an increase to 17.6 percent in 2018. "The reduction in the corporate tax rate alone will boost ROE by roughly 70 [basis points], outweighing margin pressures from rising labor, commodity, and borrow costs," Kostin wrote.
