Americans’ Sense of Freedom Plummets By 12% … Our Belief in “Widespread Corruption” In the U.S. Jumps 20% … and Our Trust in All 3 Branches of Government Hits Historic Lows

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

According to a new [Gallup] poll, Americans have become significantly “less satisfied with the freedom to choose what they want to do with their lives.”

Seventy-nine percent of US residents are satisfied with their level of freedom, down from 91 percent in 2006, according to the Gallup survey, released Tuesday.

That 12-point drop pushes the United States from among the highest in the world in terms of perceived freedom to 36th place, outside the top quartile of the 120 countries sampled, trailing Paraguay, Rwanda, and the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh [part of Azerbaijan]. 

Only 10 nations experienced as sharp a drop as the US in terms of the satisfaction of citizens with their level of freedom: Egypt, Greece, Italy, Venezuela, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Romania, Yemen, Pakistan, and Spain.

(We highlighted countries not especially known for their freedom.)

At the same time, the percentage of Americans who believe their is “widespread corruption” in the U.S. has skyrocketed. As the Monitor notes:

According to another poll also released by Gallup on Tuesday, the portion of Americans who believe there to be “widespread corruption” in the US has jumped from 59 percent in 2006 to 79 percent in 2013.

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