When Peter Hart Associates asked registered voters recently who they felt was benefiting from the government’s economic policies, the resounding answer was that the hundreds of billions poured into the economy have done far more to help those at the top of the economic food chain than those on the bottom. A paltry 13 percent of those interviewed for the September 2009 survey said that the average Joe and Jill have been ‘helped a lot or a fair amount’ — compared to 65 percent who think regular folks have gotten little or no assistance from the government. Fully 54 percent of respondents said Wall Street investment companies have been helped – and nearly two-thirds said the large banks have been taken care of. The voters seem to have gotten it about right. ‘In relative terms, the perceptions are dead-on: the big winners so far are the bailed-out bankers. Meanwhile on the jobs and housing front, things get worse,’ says University of Texas economist James Galbraith. ‘You can make an argument that everyone has been helped by the fact that the economy hasn’t collapsed even more completely,’ Galbraith added, but that does not ‘cut any ice with the […]