Monday, January 23, 2012

Polling What Matters to Americans

The Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation have been polling Americans about what matters in their lives, and they turned up some interesting numbers. They asked "how important is this to you" about a range of matters, and got these responses:



Very Important
Somewhat Important
Not very Important
Not at all Important
Being successful in a career
54
33
7
5
Having enough free time
57
37
4
2
Being married
51
24
15
10
Living a religious life
52
26
11
10
Having children
65
17
8
8
Being wealthy
12
41
35
11
Being respected by others
67
28
3
2
Being is a good romantic relationship
56
30
8
6
Being close with your family
88
9
1
1
Living a healthy lifestyle
77
22
1
1
Being physically attractive
16
48
26
10

You can see how seriously to take what people say is important to them by looking at that "living a healthy lifestyle" line; 99 percent of Americans say it's important, but how many are doing it?

What stood out for me is that number for "being respected by others," which comes in ahead of career, free time, religion, and marriage. This really is essential to human life, and one of our top goals ought to be to maximize the amount of respect and dignity in our society.

Read farther down into the survey and you find that 24% of white men worry about being discriminated against, which pretty much explains the support for Newt Gingrich's campaign.

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