The reading comprehension of American’s is apparently quite horrible. Via Paul Krugman, 

by a margin of almost four to one, people think that going over the fiscal cliff will cause the deficit to increase.

according to this online survey. I would be appalled if ratio were 1:1, but 4:1??? That’s nuts. I think that’s why our founding fathers were a bunch of elitists who didn’t intended for the uneducated masses to weigh in on such issues directly. In fairness, the whole point of a representative democracy is that we elect someone else to pay attention to such details for us, and such a poll demands we voice our justifiability uneducated opinion anyway.