hey everybody welcome back it's time for unit 4 so let's go get out your study guide fill it in pause the video whenever you need to this unit is American political ideologies and beliefs and the three big picture ideas that we're looking for are how do our core beliefs about the role of government affect our Behavior why are some opinion polls better than others how can policy makers use polling information to make decisions all right let's get it this unit focuses a lot on areas of disagreement but we're going to start with is some core American values that provide some common ground for most Americans first rule of law is the idea that no person is above the law it doesn't matter how rich or powerful a person is everybody should be equal before the law and most Americans support limited government a government that only has so much power and that power is limited by the Constitution individualism means that each person is basically responsible for themselves we have the freedom to decide what to do and then we have to live with the consequences of our decisions equality of opportunity is the belief that everybody should have an equal chance to succeed but notice this does not guarantee equal outcomes and lastly the US economic system is founded on principles of free enterprise which means that it's mostly based on markets and that people have the freedom to choose what to buy and sell and what career to pursue while there's disagreement and debate over the best way to achieve these various values these widely shared values and beliefs about the norms and thoughts about how politics should be carried out help Define us political culture along with things like like democratic ideals and principles like natural rights popular sovereignty and the social contract political ideology on the other hand refers to a consistent set of ideas and beliefs about the purpose and scope of government for now we're going to focus on political socialization which refers to the process of a person obtaining her political beliefs the most significant source is typically a person's parents and family additionally peers schools religious organizations and the media can also influence person's beliefs about the size and scope of government we usually think of globalization in terms of trading Goods internationally but ideas and values also cross borders so Americans have both influenced and been influenced by the values of other countries and this affects the political socialization of Americans two more reasons for differences in political beliefs are generational and life cycle effects generational effects refer to different voting patterns and political beliefs of people from different Generations typically each younger generation is more liberal than the previous generation especially on social issues life cycle effect suggest that people focus on different issues at different points in life for example younger voters might care more about a candidate's proposal to reduce the cost of college while an older voter might care more about Medicare and Social Security broadly speaking younger people often favor more freedom and become more focused on security as they age additionally political scientists argue that major political events that occurred during young adulthood have a large influence on that person's political attitudes and beliefs experiencing the 1960s protest movements or 9/11 or covid at an impressionable age can lead to these events shaping a person's political beliefs far into the future shifting gears now will focus on how political scientists collect and measure public opinion there are two broad methods used to gather information focus groups and math surveys a focus group gathers a small group of Voters for an in-depth discussion featuring open-ended questions about candidates or issues in which respondents are invited to share their thoughts and their feelings the information gathered can be much more detailed than from a typical poll however the results aren't sign ific because of the small non-representative nature of the group a mass survey measures public opinion by interviewing or polling a large sample of population typically at least a, to 1500 people for a nationwide survey this is the most common method used by political scientists and pollsters to try to measure public opinion and it includes the four specific types of polls that we're going to discuss now first is an opinion poll and it measures opinion on an issue let's say we wanted to know how people feel about legalizing marijuana this is the poll that we would conduct a tracking poll is a continuous poll used to chart changes in opinion over time so ask the same question every time such as about presidential approval and it may even contact the same group of people and then it just tracks the changes in response to that question over time Benchmark polls are typically conducted by a campaign before the candidate has even officially announced that they're running it lets them gather information such as the strengths and weaknesses of a candidate helps them find out if people have favorable attitudes towards the candidate stuff like that this last type of poll is different though whereas the first three are most likely contacting people via the phone or Internet entrance and exit polls are done in person they're interviewing people as they enter or exit the polling place and are trying to gain insight into voting behavior to help campaigns and news organizations predict the outcome of the election before the votes have actually been counted they're usually trying to figure out which demographic group showed up and voted and what the key factors affecting voter Choice were in that particular election another thing we need to discuss are the elements of scientifically valid polls one characteristic is that the sample must be random meaning everybody in the population must have an equal chance of being selected for the poll think of a random number generator or something like that but this alone isn't enough the sample also needs to be stratified where in the population is divided into subgroups and weighted based on the demographics of the population for example your poll doesn't want to over or under sample certain groups otherwise this would negatively impact the validity of the poll we're thinking here of things like race gender party fil ation education level income age and location now even if you've done everything properly your poll will still contain a sampling error but you pulled only a sample of the population you didn't ask everybody so some of your result might be the result of chance variation a sampling error of plus or minus 3% is generally acceptable but understand what this means means the result of a given polar response with such an error could actually be 3 percentage points higher or lower than what's indicated additionally the wording of the question must be neutral and unbiased as any effort to push respondents towards a specific response makes the poll invalid the type and format of questions also will affect the results for example whether the question is open-ended or multiple choice or ring Choice Etc will affect the results a poll reliability refers to the fact that you get consistent repeatable results and veracity refers to the accuracy of that data all right the rest of this unit is mostly about political ideologies and how these various perspectives affect policymaking once again political ideology is about what you think the government should and shouldn't do how big and strong or small and weak should the government be APG focuses on just three ideologies conservative liberal and libertarian but the first thing to know is that the Democratic party is aligned closely with liberal ideological positions while the Republican party is more conservative let's start with a very basic broad sketch of each ideology and then we'll get into more specifics about economic and social policies in this section the key factor is where each ideology stands an issue of individual liberty versus governmental policies attempting to promote stability and order again broadly speaking conservatives favor more Liberty and economic areas and support government policies regulating social freedoms don't worry I'll get more specific in a minute Liberals are the opposite and support more government regulation of the economy but favor Liberty and social issues Libertarians are the easiest they want maximum Liberty and both economic and social areas so now let's get into more detail on this specifically regarding Economic Policy okay so we have two schools of economic thought that we're going to consider keying economics and supply side economics keying economics is named for the fame 20th century economist John Maynard KES he argued that when the economy is in a recession government spending should be increased and that this will jump start the economy liberals often Advocate keesing economic policies supply side economists have a different Preference they argue that to fight recessions the government should cut taxes and that this encourages businesses to grow and it leaves more money in people's pockets and that this will help get the nation out of a recession so they both agree that there is a role for the government in fighting economic downturns but they disagree on the specific tactic by the way whenever we're talking about government tax and spending policies this is fiscal policy remember that Congress has the power of the purse so along with the president they are in charge of fiscal policy another type of economic policy is known as monetary policy and is about the money supply and adjusting interest rates to stabilize the economy Insider tip be prepared to compare fiscal and monetary policy an important difference is that the Federal Reserve conducts monetary policy the Federal Reserve is an Independent Regulatory Commission and the idea is to remove these important monetary policy decisions from politics so whereas fiscal policy is very political monetary policy is not supposed to be political at all the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate from Congress meaning that they have two policy goals for the economy to achieve maximum employment and price stability that's the fancy way of saying that they want to keep us out out of recessions and keep inflation low If the Fed wants to reduce inflation the correct monetary policy is to decrease the money supply and increase interest rates if the fed's goal is to decrease unemployment they would do the opposite increase the money supply and decrease interest rates finally let's revisit our three ideologies one last time and fully discuss what they each favor both economically and socially going alphabetically let's start with conservatives when it comes to the marketplace conservatives favor less economic regulation and lower taxes but when it comes to government spending on domestic policy conservatives favor cutting spending on things like entitling programs especially those for people with low income on the other hand they often favor increased defense spending and a larger role for the government in crime and punishment favoring more police and more punishment of crime they also believe that the government should protect Traditional Values and if that sometimes comes into conflict with individual personal freedoms well the protection of those Traditional Values is more important ultimately providing security and protecting Traditional Values is a key purpose of government in the minds of conservatives and speaking of Traditional Values conservatives typically support vouchers to attend private schools including religious schools next let's talk about liberals who usually favor more economic regulation often arguing that corporations are too powerful so they favor higher taxes on people who earn higher incomes because they tend to focus more on economic equality than economic freedom so they want more spending on entitlement programs and they advocate for more expansive federal spending on things like Healthcare and college subsidies on the other hand liberals typically want to decrease defense spending and when it comes to Crime and Punishment they usually focus more on protecting individual rights civil rights and the rights of the accused but whereas they prefer government regulation over economic issues liberals believe that the government should not regulate personal private matters and that people should be afforded the freedom to basically do what they want and make their own decisions in the area of education and religion Liberals are usually major supporters of public education and therefore they often oppose vouchers for two different reasons first they see the vouchers as drawing funding away from public schools and secondly those vouchers could be used to attend religious schools so they argue that this violates the establishment clause and then there's Libertarians they're super consistent they want maximum freedom in basically every area of life so when it comes to the marketplace they want little to no regulations Beyond protecting private property rights similarly they argue that there should be minimal Taxation and this makes sense given their desire to dramatically reduce government spending and the size of government they favor dramatically cutting spending on en thaum programs as they believe that assisting the needy is better left to private charity than to governments Libertarians also favor a dramatic reduction in defense spending and when it comes to Crime and Punishment they favor decriminalizing things that can be described as victimless crimes and they are extremely concerned with protecting individual rights and the rights of the accused when it comes to education they favor privatizing education aring that government schools having a monopoly on education is why our education system performs so poorly and they favor expanding the choices that families have over schooling and that's it for unit 4 you are doing great keep it up make sure to finish the study guide do the multiple choice practice and I will see you in unit 5 until then this has been aam money production