How dumb are people? Maybe some can't count, but maybe pollsters make them sound dumb

CBS has a poll out that shows two interesting things. First, most people don't think they got a tax cut last year. Second, most of them think that President Obama's stimulus package passed last year caused more harm than good.

This is a pretty remarkable poll, and I suppose one could criticize the Obama team for not getting out there and making more noise about the bill they passed.

But just how dumb are people?

If you work and make less than about $250,000 per year for a couple, around April last year you started seeing more money in your paycheck. For the average person, it was about $80 a month. For a couple both working, it was about $140 or $150 a month.

I noticed it. Most people I work with noticed it. It didn't set the world on fire but I can tell you that I pretty much spend that extra money every month, pumping it into the economy.

Now, on the matter of the stimulus bill doing more harm than good: I can understand that some people may not see what the stimulus bill did (though the tax cut was part of it--and if you didn't see that you were asleep). But to say that the bill caused more harm than good? Huh?  Do you remember what was happening a year ago? We were losing 700,000 jobs a month. Stores were almost giving away merchandise and people wouldn't buy. States and cities were getting ready to fire police, firemen, first responders, and teachers.

The stimulus bill put the brakes on that.

I don't think most people are this dumb. I think pollsters ask questions in such a way that these answers can be extracted. I will fault many people in one way, however. I think they believed that when they changed presidents and parties that everything was going to turn around instantly. They looked at the stimulus bill as something that would suddenly accelerate the economy. The truth is that the bill put the brakes on the disaster we were heading for. It's just now starting to show some acceleration.

It's tempting to think that people are really dumb.  We can all feel so much smarter. Some of them are. But they can't be this dumb.