"Economic self-interest is not closely tied to ideology or voting behavior. Upper-income voters now tend to vote for the Left which will increase their taxes."
"Working-class voters now tend to vote for the Right which is less likely to increase social spending."
I would push back on this a little.
The primary group supporting the left are professionals. Professionals are often paid directly or indirectly by the government. If I'm a school superintendent or a doctor at a hospital, I'm directly or indirectly a government employee.
Independent small businessmen continue to lean right, but less and less of the economy is independent small businessmen (independent practices amongst doctors for instance are vanishing, and its not a surprise they are moving leftward as a result).
Even were you aren't directly reimbursed by the government, regulatory capture, legal treatment of intellectual property (what makes up most of companies market cap today), and political goodwill to avoid anti-monopoly legislation and law fare are dominant in the big corp "private" sphere. Look at how it turns out all of Elon Musk's companies were doing illegal things the second he took on the wrong politics.
If someone has to pay slightly higher income taxes, but in return CMS increases your medical reimbursement rates, whose to say this is against your interest?
As to the working class, the GOP has completely moved on from Paul Ryan-ism. Could you imagine Trump cutting Social Security or Medicare. I can't. They've given up on repealing Obamacare too. There really isn't a huge gulf between the parties on the big entitlements anymore. Democrats might raise taxes to forgive student loans, but that's hardly something in the working class's interest. Even industrial policy gets entangled with DEI and other nonsense.
I don't really have a huge problem with a lot in this post, but I just think these are very out of date examples. The economy is 44% government spending (50%+ if you thrown employer group health insurance as "government"). The line between tax payer and tax receiver gets very blurry in such a world.
This bullet point you quoted was not supposed to explain all variations in voting behavior. I merely wanted to point out that economic self-interest (a type of Rationality) cannot explain why some demographic groups vote Left, while others vote Right.
You're assuming that ideology is synonymous with political ideology. There are numerous other ideological categories, e.g. religious ideology, ideologies of exercise, etc.
This, along with a lack of historical knowledge makes this essay both simplistic & silly.
The problem, in my personal view, I make no claim to be certainly correct, is that by 1961 this country had deliberately abandoned (its striking how candid about this everybody was at the time, and how false the assumptions they were going off of ended up being) one of the two elements of democracy: the ability to directly engage in the political system and governance structures. The two parties are no longer mass member parties, there's been intense centralization of decision making along with almost all major policy areas being done only through nationwide single policy implementations, etc.. Absent this other element, voters have no reason to really engage, they've lost their only sources of reliable deep information, every time there's an election its really just a crap shoot whether anything that their voting for will actually occur, many economic policies that are a single policy for the whole country aren't right for most people, etc. Rationally engaging in politics is, most of the time, literally impossible
Pragmatism > Ideology. I discussed this a bit in my discussion on “Democracy’s Final Days"
"When the political system becomes overtaken by ideology, lawmakers can no longer work with each other, compromise, or debate. The result is polarization and paralysis. The checks and balances become a straightjacket that results in endless gridlock. This gridlock tends to favor the aforementioned economic elites."
If we want progress in the United States, or anywhere else, in fact, we have to get back to reasonable discussion and pragmatic decision-making.
"Economic self-interest is not closely tied to ideology or voting behavior. Upper-income voters now tend to vote for the Left which will increase their taxes."
"Working-class voters now tend to vote for the Right which is less likely to increase social spending."
I would push back on this a little.
The primary group supporting the left are professionals. Professionals are often paid directly or indirectly by the government. If I'm a school superintendent or a doctor at a hospital, I'm directly or indirectly a government employee.
Independent small businessmen continue to lean right, but less and less of the economy is independent small businessmen (independent practices amongst doctors for instance are vanishing, and its not a surprise they are moving leftward as a result).
Even were you aren't directly reimbursed by the government, regulatory capture, legal treatment of intellectual property (what makes up most of companies market cap today), and political goodwill to avoid anti-monopoly legislation and law fare are dominant in the big corp "private" sphere. Look at how it turns out all of Elon Musk's companies were doing illegal things the second he took on the wrong politics.
If someone has to pay slightly higher income taxes, but in return CMS increases your medical reimbursement rates, whose to say this is against your interest?
As to the working class, the GOP has completely moved on from Paul Ryan-ism. Could you imagine Trump cutting Social Security or Medicare. I can't. They've given up on repealing Obamacare too. There really isn't a huge gulf between the parties on the big entitlements anymore. Democrats might raise taxes to forgive student loans, but that's hardly something in the working class's interest. Even industrial policy gets entangled with DEI and other nonsense.
I don't really have a huge problem with a lot in this post, but I just think these are very out of date examples. The economy is 44% government spending (50%+ if you thrown employer group health insurance as "government"). The line between tax payer and tax receiver gets very blurry in such a world.
Thanks for the comment.
This bullet point you quoted was not supposed to explain all variations in voting behavior. I merely wanted to point out that economic self-interest (a type of Rationality) cannot explain why some demographic groups vote Left, while others vote Right.
You're assuming that ideology is synonymous with political ideology. There are numerous other ideological categories, e.g. religious ideology, ideologies of exercise, etc.
This, along with a lack of historical knowledge makes this essay both simplistic & silly.
Just a guy,
Yes, ideology is synonymous with ideology. I did address religion in the article.
Exercise is not an ideology.
I have about 400 articles on history in this Substack column. Read them before you accuse me of "a lack of historical knowledge."
The problem, in my personal view, I make no claim to be certainly correct, is that by 1961 this country had deliberately abandoned (its striking how candid about this everybody was at the time, and how false the assumptions they were going off of ended up being) one of the two elements of democracy: the ability to directly engage in the political system and governance structures. The two parties are no longer mass member parties, there's been intense centralization of decision making along with almost all major policy areas being done only through nationwide single policy implementations, etc.. Absent this other element, voters have no reason to really engage, they've lost their only sources of reliable deep information, every time there's an election its really just a crap shoot whether anything that their voting for will actually occur, many economic policies that are a single policy for the whole country aren't right for most people, etc. Rationally engaging in politics is, most of the time, literally impossible
Pragmatism > Ideology. I discussed this a bit in my discussion on “Democracy’s Final Days"
"When the political system becomes overtaken by ideology, lawmakers can no longer work with each other, compromise, or debate. The result is polarization and paralysis. The checks and balances become a straightjacket that results in endless gridlock. This gridlock tends to favor the aforementioned economic elites."
If we want progress in the United States, or anywhere else, in fact, we have to get back to reasonable discussion and pragmatic decision-making.