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Getting people to vote against themselves (Politics)
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EndlesslyRocking



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This is something I can't figure out. Why do poor voters in the red states in the US vote for politicians that promote policies that are against their economic interest? Why do they vote against better health care, higher wages, more vacation time for the rank and file, maternity benefits that last longer than 6 weeks, etc? Why do they put a party into power which convinces poor kids that their best chance for success in life is to join the army? Why do they think it is reasonable to go bankrupt to bankroll one's cancer treatment, for example?

Barack Obama recently said:
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Is that it? They're all too distracted clinging to their guns and creationism? They're too preoccupied with building a big fence on the Mexican border, or getting abortion banned to notice that they are putting an administration into power that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer? Maybe they don't care at all because it won't matter when the Rapture comes?

People knock the current administration, but isn't this quite a clever thing to get people to do?
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Ishmael


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EndlesslyRocking wrote:
This is something I can't figure out. Why do poor voters in the red states in the US vote for politicians that promote policies that are against their economic interest?

The first thing to establish is that liberal policies truly are in the economic interest of the "red states". Perhaps the voters are simply smarter than you.

However, as Mick will shortly point out, every right-wing government that has ever been has held power through alliance with the lower classes. Rural populations rarely vote for "change". Thank god.
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Mick Harper
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Ishmael is correct, which politically for him is unusual. All you are doing, Endlessly, is demonstrating to the world that you are yourself left-wing. As you may have noticed, it is only left-wing people who claim that left-wing policies benefit poor people. You think right-wing people are just lying when they claim that, au contraire, it is right wing policies that benefit poor people.

Applied Epistemologists, who of course scorn any fixed political position and make up their own mind on each policy as it is presented to them right/left/centre/none of the above, tend to point out that it is only left wing people who think the poor are stupid, even though left wing people are always (otherwise) singing their praises. They are obliged to take this position because, as you point out, poor people do not habitually vote for left-wing policies. So, Endlessly, either they are stupid or you are wrong.

Actually poor people are slightly more stupid than non-poor people (for technical reasons we need not go into here) but not so stupid as to suppose
a) it is self evidently the case that left wing policies will benefit them even though they are specifically touted as such
b) it is self evidently the case that economic policies are more important than policies re guns, creationism, the Mexican border, abortion, the Rapture and so forth.
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EndlesslyRocking



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I read (or rather skimmed in parts of it) a book about this called "What's the matter with Kansas". The "matter" in question is why people in Kansas vote to be poor. But the author never satisfactorily explained why. If I recall, he said that people there started voting GOP after the unionized factories shut down in the 70's. He also said that Kansas is a hotbed for novel religious activity (there's a pope in Kansas, schismatic of course, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Michael_I). He thought that perhaps the wide open fields there inspired revelations of God. I think the author's intent was for the reader to draw their own conclusions about the economic/religion connection.

But, what is true, is that in the US, the rich have been getting richer and the poor poorer. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/09/BUVI10258K.DTL

"In California, the poorest 20 percent of families saw their incomes rise 1.4 percent in the 2004-06 period compared with 1998-2000, after adjusting for inflation, according to the study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. The income of the middle 20 percent of families rose 3.8 percent. By contrast, the top 20 percent gained 13 percent after inflation, while the income of the top 5 percent jumped 20.8 percent.

Nationwide, families at the bottom and middle of the income scale fared even more poorly than their counterparts in California.

Across the country, average incomes fell 2.5 percent from 1998-2000 with 2004-06 for the bottom fifth of families, while edging up 1.3 percent for those in the middle. The top fifth registered a 9.1 percent gain."

So isn't there a prima facie case for claiming that lower class voters are voting for parties that make them poorer?

Obama's rebuttal to criticisms about his original comment regarding poor people was that they 'don't vote on economic issues, because they don't expect anybody's going to help them.' He added: 'So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington.'

The other thing that doesn't make sense to me in regard to American politics is that the Republican party is a big supporter of guns. Why would a party want to have a well-armed populace? The Republican elite must assume that the well-armed would never turn their guns on them.
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Ishmael


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EndlesslyRocking wrote:
So isn't there a prima facie case for claiming that lower class voters are voting for parties that make them poorer?

If there is, make it.

Let us, for the sake of argument, grant your position that Republicans impoverish their voters. That of itself says nothing about the Democrats' propensity to do the same. It may well be that the two parties compete only for pacing -- Republicans may impoverish at a slower rate than would Democrats.

I advise you to ignore parties and think only of policies. What policies are advocated by Kansans? Low taxes, decentralization and personal responsibility are three that come to mind. Are these policies prima facie impoverishing?

"...they 'don't vote on economic issues, because they don't expect anybody's going to help them.'

In my experience, they don't want anyone to "help" them. I wonder why....

"But they don't believe they can count on Washington.'

Au contraire! I believe they know exactly what they can count on Washington to do. That's why they vote for he who promises to do the least. Didn't Thomas Paine say something along those lines? Ahh... but we've forgotten haven't we?
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Mick Harper
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I read (or rather skimmed in parts of it) a book about this called "What's the matter with Kansas". The "matter" in question is why people in Kansas vote to be poor.

A lovely unspoken left-wing assumption. Here we have the Great Political Question Of All The Ages: "How do you make people better off?" and somebody pops along to announce they not only know the answer to this question but have proceeded to the next question, "Why can't these dumb brutes see what I can see?"

But the author never satisfactorily explained why. If I recall, he said that people there started voting GOP after the unionized factories shut down in the 70's.

A case in point. It is perfectly possible in the short term for "the people" (ie a lot of individuals) to get richer at the expense of the few (in this case factory owners) but only at the long-term risk that the few will vote with their feet and take their factories elsewhere. This, it turns out is ALWAYS THE PROBLEM. It is always a technical matter of trying to work out one's best strategy when there are a huge number of unknowns.

The only thing one can be pretty sure about is that if it is current orthodoxy (ie what is called "the left wing solution" in your particular society) it is probably too late because you'll be one of the many so even if your solution turns out to be correct (ie the factory owners decide to pay you more rather than move the factory) you'll have to share the proceeds with so many others it will scarcely be worth it.

But, what is true, is that in the US, the rich have been getting richer and the poor poorer. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/09/BUVI10258K.DTL

Another splendidly unexamined left-wing assumption. The poor might be better off with more equality or they might be better off with less equality. It is a technical question that has to be decided on each occasion because it depends on whether the costs of enjoining equality outweighs the benefits. But left-wingers always assume that equality is (for some reason that is unfathomable) the highest good. Right-wing people are equally unfathomably gung-ho about freedom.

"In California, the poorest 20 percent of families saw their incomes rise 1.4 percent in the 2004-06 period compared with 1998-2000, after adjusting for inflation, according to the study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. The income of the middle 20 percent of families rose 3.8 percent. By contrast, the top 20 percent gained 13 percent after inflation, while the income of the top 5 percent jumped 20.8 percent.

An excellent outcome. It seems everybody benfited from these policies. A very unusual outcome looking at economic history as a whole.

Nationwide, families at the bottom and middle of the income scale fared even more poorly than their counterparts in California. Across the country, average incomes fell 2.5 percent from 1998-2000 with 2004-06 for the bottom fifth of families, while edging up 1.3 percent for those in the middle. The top fifth registered a 9.1 percent gain."

Clearly then they should adopt California's policies.

So isn't there a prima facie case for claiming that lower class voters are voting for parties that make them poorer?

You've just proved the opposite. The poor benefited in California where there has been right wing government, but didn't benefit nearly as much in the rest of the country where both left and right wing governments have been in power. Though, actually, if you really want to know, this is a perfect illustration of the AE dictum that nobody can tell what policies will benefit the poor.

Obama's rebuttal to criticisms about his original comment regarding poor people was that they 'don't vote on economic issues etc etc

The one riveting aspect that is obvious about Obama to us Europeans is that he is exquisitely upper class. This is why he never wins blue collar states....they spot him immediately as "a phony" (in Democratic economic terms). But the middle class liberals of course can't get past his blackness which they regard as ipso facto left wing.

Funnily enough it is the blacks that are getting it most wrong. They are voting for Obama in their droves without realising that their lot (West Africans) have absolutely nothing in common with and hate the shit out of Obama's lot (East Africans).
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Hatty
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Funnily enough it is the blacks that are getting it most wrong. They are voting for Obama in their droves without realising that their lot (West Africans) have absolutely nothing in common with and hate the shit out of Obama's lot (East Africans).

Maybe a territorial West/East difference somehow doesn't seem quite so important to American blacks when overshadowed by the larger issue of black versus white and only applies to very recent immigrants or when in Africa
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Ishmael


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"Nationwide, families at the bottom and middle of the income scale fared even more poorly than their counterparts in California. Across the country, average incomes fell 2.5 percent from 1998-2000 with 2004-06 for the bottom fifth of families, while edging up 1.3 percent for those in the middle. The top fifth registered a 9.1 percent gain."

Something I don't like about these statistics is how they are measured by groups. Do the groups get smaller or larger? There's just this lower-class group and middle-class group and upper-class group and their median incomes go up or down (how I don't know because one would think the group defined by its median income).

But how many individuals from the bottom tier enter the middle during their lifetime?

After all, even the relative sizes of the groups won't tell us anything as the lower tier is being contantly replenished by immigrants and high lower class birth rates.

Hmm... come to think of it, the middle and upper tiers must retract in size unless people are moving up from the bottom -- because their birth rates are below replacement levels.

You see. Damned lies and statistics. Deeper analysis is required.

P.S. Mick...not sure California can be described as having a "right-wing" government. Arnold has shifted the state slightly rightward but the legislature is dominated by leftists.

P.P.S. After the election of Obama as the Democratic Nominee, the presidential election is going to be a snore fest. McCain is a foregone conclusion. Obama simply cannot win the south or the mid-west. But the media, in pursuit of ratings, will do all to conceal the inevitablity of the election: A Reganesque sweep by McCain.
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Ishmael


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Something else about income rates as well.

As we learn in economics 101, money accumulates where resources are needed. The rise in upper-income levels may actually indicate ever increasing demand for upper-income types.

Might it be that life is so good in America, even at the bottom, that the rewards of advancement must rise exponentially merely to induce citizens to invest time and effort in the act of social climbing?

And another thing...

A bit back there was a complaint regarding the senselessness of losing one's life savings to cancer treatment. Personally, I can hardly think of a better use for my life savings than to save my own life. What will all that savings profit me when I am dead?

And while I see the sense of spending all my own money to fight my cancer, I don't see the sense of spending it all to fight yours.
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Mick Harper
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Hatty and Ishmael inadvertently make my points.

Maybe a territorial West/East difference somehow doesn't seem quite so important to American blacks when overshadowed by the larger issue of black versus white and only applies to very recent immigrants or when in Africa

Quite so, blacks vote for him in droves not because Obama can help them economically but because he is black. But dear old Endless assured us that the only proper reason to support somebody is because he can economically benefit you (so long as you're poor). But should we ask Endless whether on this occasion it would be OK if poor blacks voted for Obama he would thunderously assent because Black Advancement is a Left Wing Cause.

Actually we could be really mean and ask Endless what the economic record of all governments with a Black Head (going back to Toussaint L'Ouverture in Haiti in 1802) is and even he would have to shamefacedly admit it is according to the latest UN Blue Book:
Disastrous 158 Not Disastrous Nil.
But we're not that mean.

Mick...not sure California can be described as having a "right-wing" government. Arnold has shifted the state slightly rightward but the legislature is dominated by leftists

My statement "Nobody can produce statistical evidence to show that left-wing governments do or do not benefit poor people" should be added to a further statement: "Nobody can produce an agreed list of left-wing as opposed to non-left-wing governments in order that significant statistical evidence about their effect on the poor can be drawn from them."

Though all left-wing people believe you can. Just ask Endless who has been voting left all his life on the sole grounds of helping the poor. Remarkable.
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EndlesslyRocking



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Ishmael wrote:
Something else about income rates as well. As we learn in economics 101, money accumulates where resources are needed. The rise in upper-income levels may actually indicate ever increasing demand for upper-income types.

Types! That's why they pay people who get MBAs lots of money. They're a type. Types want other types just like them. I have friends who get MBAs and couldn't understand why they'd want to spend time hanging around people who think MBAs are worth getting. They're obviously much more clever than I am. Style is much better than substance as long as none of the other types care about substance.

My economics class wasn't econ 101. It was basically an extremely dull calculus course about how to calculate interest. No one learned anything in it.
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Mick Harper
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I vote the way I do because

Everybody apart from Applied Epistemologists and The Chronically Stupid votes the same way: for the tribe they joined in their late adolescence. In politically mature countries like Britain this means a certain amount of choice about the actual party label (for instance a lefty can presently vote Labour, Green, Liberal Democrat, Respect etc) but the test of True Rationality is always the same: How often have you voted for the 'enemy'?

This is because Applied Epistemology (or being Chronically Stupid) means that you use only individual choice and hence your actions are always inherently unpredictable. There are no enemies. It is certain, after a statistically significant number of elections, that all shades will at some stage appear to be, in Endless's words, "the best bet". So, Endless, tell us in which elections (local, national, referenda, opinion poll requests) did you plump for the Tories?

PS Remind me to tell you sometime why it is that elections are always decided by the Chronically Stupid and why they tend to get it right more often than the committed/intelligent.
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DPCrisp


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...the poorest 20 percent... the middle 20 percent... the top 20 percent...

What happens when you track families' fortunes through time rather than divide the population at given times? e.g. the poor will get poorer if enough poor people turn up, even if the ones who were poor become better off.

{Like wot Ishmael said; even though he seems to have forgotten how to divide up a distribution into equal areas.}

Maybe a territorial West/East difference somehow doesn't seem quite so important

It'll become important when it becomes important. (United against a common enemy only while there is a common enemy...) That's the thing with politics, innit.

Can nations be characterised by how they react when things come to light?
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Mick Harper
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the poorest 20 percent... the middle 20 percent... the top 20 percent...

"The poor" don't actually exist. They are like "the working class" -- mere abstractions that allow not-very-bright people (ie everyone except me) to pretend to make rational statements about politics eg "I always vote for parties with policies that benefit the poor."

Let's consider who the actual bottom twenty per cent really are. For a start, virtually all students would fall into this category. "I always vote for parties with policies that benefit students..." mmm. Also in that category would be young unemployed living at home. Idle bastards. Also heavyweight intellectuals with no visible means of support. I'm undeserving of any party's policies I'm afraid.

What people really mean when they talk about "the poor" are those old Victorian stereotypes, the Deserving Poor. People down on their luck through no fault of their own. But, when you look closer, they don't exist either. Let's take "The Unemployed". Now apart from times like the thirties when there is structural unemployment, all unemployed people are voluntarily unemployed. There are in practice an infinite supply of jobs and we know this because eastern Europeans flock here in their millions to do them!

What we mean by The Unemployed is people who find living on state handouts to be preferable to working. More power to their elbow, I say, but I wouldn't vote for a party whose main aim in life is to benefit these people.

The other great category of The Poor is of course Single Mums. And to what extent people voluntarily become single mums is a tricky question but what is not tricky is that all single mums have the choice between working and not working. Again, if they decide to stay at home, that's fine by me but I'm not going to vote for a political party that actually encourages them either to have babies or to stay at home with those babies.

And then come the pensioners....but hardly anyone talks about them. It's just too damned expensive for either left or right to start talking about benefitting them.
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EndlesslyRocking



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Actually, this got me to thinking about the masses more in general. Why do some masses get control of their governments, but others not?

Generally, the masses of Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, (and maybe Israel) have gained control of their governments, and have prospered. Everywhere else, they still have a ways to go, some places having a much greater distance to go than others.

People want to move to Western Europe, the US, Canada, Australia. No one really wants to move to Moldava, Bolivia, or India.

The usual answers as to why the west has prospered and the rest of the world has not are:
a) the dispossessed are oppressed by the ruling elite,
or
b) the ostensibly dispossessed are not actually dispossessed, it only seems that way to people who are abysmally materialistic.

Based on immigration patterns, "b" doesn't seem like the right answer.

But "a" doesn't seem like the right answer either. The masses of all the prosperous Old World countries were once all dispossessed, but then they started to figure out how to get control of the ruling elite and not be oppressed. In Greece, they started working on democracy a long time ago. In England, they drafted the Magna Carta. In Japan, they figured out how to make the Emperor just a figurehead. It would seem you can't blame it on genetics, or geography, or the climate.

So then it must seem like the masses are making a choice about whether or not to be dispossessed. But that leads to the conclusion that people choose to be oppressed and that's not right either.

I suppose the other way to look at it is that the masses don't gain control of the ruling elite or overthrow the ruling elite, but slowly trickle into the ruling elite, so that the ruling elite grows and grows, and then you get what looks like a democracy. But then that leads me back to the point of considering whether or not you could call working-class GOP voters in the US a ruling elite. That just seems strange.
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