I’m not going by past trends. Demographics combined with entitlements are going to create a massive problem for the U.S. My perception is that Romney would handle this by reducing the rate of growth of entitlements and doing everything possible to increase economic growth whereas Obama wants to handle the problem by increasing taxes on the rich.
EDIT: To be clearer - You’re comparing a high-level goal/plan of candidate A (“make economy good”) to a low-level plan of candidate B (“get money from people”). Example: “Candidate X wants to safeguard our freedom and prosperity, but candidate Y wants to send Americans to fight and die overseas.” The reason this leads to a false impression is because we readily attribute low-level plans to high-level plans/goals (“if he wants freedom and prosperity, that means he’ll do good things”) but don’t attribute high-level plans/goals to low-level plans (“If he’s going to send Americans to fight and die overseas, how can you say he wants freedom and prosperity?”).
The rhetorical effect of comparing plans on different levels may be diminished by remembering that neither candidate is an evil mutant—they both have high-level plans that are pretty much “make good things happen, stop bad things from happening.”
I’m not going by past trends. Demographics combined with entitlements are going to create a massive problem for the U.S. My perception is that Romney would handle this by reducing the rate of growth of entitlements and doing everything possible to increase economic growth whereas Obama wants to handle the problem by increasing taxes on the rich.
You’re mixing up levels.
EDIT: To be clearer - You’re comparing a high-level goal/plan of candidate A (“make economy good”) to a low-level plan of candidate B (“get money from people”). Example: “Candidate X wants to safeguard our freedom and prosperity, but candidate Y wants to send Americans to fight and die overseas.” The reason this leads to a false impression is because we readily attribute low-level plans to high-level plans/goals (“if he wants freedom and prosperity, that means he’ll do good things”) but don’t attribute high-level plans/goals to low-level plans (“If he’s going to send Americans to fight and die overseas, how can you say he wants freedom and prosperity?”).
The rhetorical effect of comparing plans on different levels may be diminished by remembering that neither candidate is an evil mutant—they both have high-level plans that are pretty much “make good things happen, stop bad things from happening.”