The conservatives and Teapublicans are always running around yelling and screaming, Government is too big! and There is too much government control of our lives! and We are not free any more! and Take our country back! To hear them tell it, all of our current problems can be traced back to a single source: big, overreaching government. If we could only reduce the size of government, and reduce it drastically, then wed all be happy again. Or so they say. To test if this was actually something people believed, or it was just a result of talking points they were mindlessly repeating from media outlets like Fox News researchers at Baylor University did a study. They gave their subjects a test which began with a simple question: All things considered, how happy with your life would you say you are right now? (on a 1-10 scale). They then followed that with 10 questions which gauged how much respondents believed certain specific factors contributed to their overall happiness (or lack of it). Behind the scenes, the researchers cross-correlated the responses to four key indicators of government involvement is various aspects of peoples lives. What the researchers found was a little surprising. The people who said they were happiest were also the ones who indicated that they attributed their happiness to things the government is most involved in (even if they didnt know the government was involved). Conversely, the people who said they were unhappy blamed that on their lack of involvement with things the government can control. As the lead researcher wrote, Everything else being equal, our results firmly and robustly point to only one conclusion: at least in the advanced Democracies government interventions increase the likelihood that citizens find their lives satisfying. So they next time youre with one of your Teapublican friends who is moaning and complaining and going on and on all about the evils of big government just ask him if he is happy. If he says that things are pretty much going OK you can now point out to him that studies have shown that he owes his happiness to big government!
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 20:14:27 +0000
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