Prioritizing The Future

You were right to suggest that Healthcare/insurance were the same but really when you distill the priorities down it comes down to Maslow's Hierarchy of needs to some extent. 

The problem is when people feel their short term survival (e.g. job loss or economic failure = losing home, health care, and food) could be threatened by taking action on longer term survival needs (e.g. the environment).

This was illustrated really well by the leader of the Liberal party here in Canada who essentially said that we should quit criticising the tar sands industry in Alberta because they provide lots of jobs to Canadians and give us more influence in the political arena, particularly with the US.

So that is the question we have to answer on our side, isn't it?  How do we make people feel (and actually be) secure that their livelihoods will not be immediately affected by making choices that are far more responsible in the long term?  Yes, there are the folks who are also concerned about their *lifestyle* being affected - losing the second car and the plasma televisions, but I don't think they're the ones we have to win over.  We need to help the folks who think that if they don't consume their friends will lose their jobs and by association their life (or the quality of it). 

How can we judge the priorities of the nation based on the views of 1,503 people? This method of polling is all too common.

"Moral decline" is at the root of most of these problems, but since the term is so vauge, and my own opinion on what constitutes moral decline would take too long to explain, I'll exclude it from my ranking.



Here we go:


Environment/energy/global warming/lobbyists/economy/education/helping the poor/trade policy/jobs/medicare/healthcare/social security/health insurance/
tax cuts/military/terrorism/crime/immigration/deficit reduction

My rationale is this:
Without a clean, safe environment nothing else we do will matter. Solving our energy problems will drastically reduce global warming.
Reforming the way citizens and companies deal with our government will help to solve a slew of problems.
We need some type of strong economy if we hope to pay for reforms of any sort. Education ensures the future survival of the nation. 
Helping the poor is not only morally correct, it lets citizens know their representatives will not let them fall through the cracks;this boosts citizen morale and reduces crime.
We can't provide jobs to Americans without fixing our trade policy.
Social entitlements keep people from having to commit crimes in order to survive, and promote a healthier, more humane, and more confident society.
Tax cuts: What I mean here is that many of the tax cuts we have seen over the past 8 years need to be repealed.
Military/Terrorism: We need to reform the way we use our military, and change the way we define terrorism.
Immigration: Why do people come to America illegally? More often than not, it is because we have induced capital flight in their home nation, and have brought that money/ those resources to the US. We have intentionally crippled Central America with our foreign/economic policies. The solution? Help rebuild these nations so that people aren't forced to leave them. Let them have real democracy at home.
Deficit reduction: Fix the other problems and this one will go away.