Well, here’s a shocker. A new AP poll shows that a majority of Americans want a higher minimum wage. They also want paid sick leave and parental leave, free community college and more gender equality laws. And, of course, they want wealthy taxpayers to pay for all of it.
Who wouldn’t? The poll doesn’t ask about the resulting economic impact of these feel-good policies.
Polls are supposed to be objective. They rarely are. Asking Americans if they support a higher minimum wage isn’t too far removed from asking, “Do you want to help poor people?” 
Pollsters will never ask questions such as, “Studies show that increasing the minimum wage results in fewer jobs and slower economic growth. Do you favor an increase in the minimum wage?”
The Poll That Will Never Be
To provide some balance, perhaps AP should poll Americans about the following questions.
Do you favor higher unemployment and lower economic growth?
It’s basic economics that when the price of something goes up, demand falls. Increasing the minimum wage, and requiring paid sick leave and parental leave may be desirable for employees, but many would lose their jobs as a result.
According to Forbes, “There is abundant evidence that a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage leads to a 1 to 3 percent decrease in employment of low-skilled workers (using teens as a proxy) in the short run, and to a larger decrease in the long run, along with rising unemployment.”
Do you favor a higher unemployment rate?
More than half of the respondents said “too little is done to help the unemployed.” So, presumably we should extend unemployment benefits, right?
As we’ve previously noted, the most important factor that contributed to reducing the unemployment rate has been the expiration of extended unemployment rates. Pay people to stay at home for 99 weeks … and they will stay at home for 99 weeks.
Do you want more government control over your life?
Having witnessed the rise of Nazism firsthand, F.A. Hayek, recognized that socialism inevitably leads to fascism. He wrote The Road to Serfdom in 1944 as a warning to the United States and the United Kingdom, which were becoming increasingly socialistic.
Hayek, a Nobel prize-winning economist, noted that Western democracies had “progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.”
Socialism, while presented as a means of assuring equality, does so through “restraint and servitude,” while “democracy seeks equality in liberty.”
He writes that “when economic power is centralized as an instrument of political power it creates a degree of dependence scarcely distinguishable from slavery. It has been well said that, in a country where the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation.”
What would Hayek write if he were to update his book today?
Do you want to reduce your children’s quality of life?
The federal debt is $17.8 trillion … and rising by more than $1 trillion a year. That does not include more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Social Security and government employee pensions.
Even at today’s historically low interest rates, paying the interest expense on the federal debt cost $431 billion in 2014. As the federal debt increases and as interest rates rise, the interest rates will soar past $1 trillion.
Our legacy to our kids will be that they will be paying more for today’s government spending.
You’ve paid for college for your kids. Do you want to pay for college for someone else’s kids as well?
According to the poll results, “More than half of Americans – 56 percent – favor a plan put forward by (President) Obama for the government to pay for community college for any student who maintains a certain grade-point average and makes progress toward earning a degree.”
Student loans from the federal government have resulted in the cost of college increasing at more than four times the rate of the consumer price index. Imagine the impact that “free” community college will have on the price of an associate’s degree.
But not to worry. Taxpayers will be paying for it.
Would you be willing to pay higher taxes to support people who don’t work?
The Heritage Foundation’s 2013 Index of Government Dependence noted that, “The United States held a dubious distinction in 2011—44.7 percent of the population pays no federal income taxes. While this percentage is a cause for concern, the figure is an improvement compared to the 48.5 percent of the population who paid no federal income taxes in 2010.”
According to the report, though, in 1984, 35.3 million Americans paid no taxes; in 2011, 139.3 million paid nothing.
The report notes increasing dependence on government for housing, food, income, student aid, and other assistance. For example, spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly the Food Stamp program, more than doubled from $37.6 billion in FY 2008 to $78.4 billion for FY 2012.
So we have more, larger government programs with fewer people paying for them.
The high level of government spending would be worthwhile, perhaps, if it helped create opportunities and reduced poverty. Instead, it’s creating more serfs.