So, maybe Obama is making a smart bet that more Americans will side with him in his tax increase for millionaires deficit reduction proposal. In a just released AP-CNBC poll, few think they'll be rich anytime soon: despite the U.S. having the most millionaires of any country, only 2 in 10 American adults think they'll reach the milestone in the next decade. Of course, that's still a pretty optimistic measure. As The Atlantic's Daniel Invidiglio noted in May, an estimated 9 percent of American households are millionaires, meaning those polled by AP-CNBC expect that figure to more than double in the next decade. Still, according to the poll, we're more pessimistic than Australians (29 percent of them think they have a shot at becoming a millionaire), yet still more optimistic than the British (only 8 percent think they'll be wealthy). The Associated Press deemed the results of the survey to be a "psychic toll of the global economic doldrums," which seems to translate as: we're worried about keeping our existing jobs.

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Erik Hayden