DISQUS

pedro · 1 year ago

Well the socially liberal bit is easy to understand, but why would people who presumably understand how to make money be in favour of policies that tend to be antipathetic to the best and surest means of doing so?

ryan yin · 1 year ago

Will,
You seem generally willing to take seriously the point that your vote is ridiculously unlikely to matter, so why is this so shocking? With the exception of P-Diddy, I don't think many voters who make more than $100K really and truly believe that they're swinging the election.

bshor · 1 year ago

Will,

You forget from our book that the secularization effect happens in the blue/rich states much more so than the red/poor states. One of our big arguments is that politics happens differently in different places.

But thanks for the plug! :)

Boris Shor

publiusendures · 1 year ago

Will,
I've been making almost this exact argument for months, arguing, as you do, that the future of the Dem Party will make them ever more fiscally conservative, and the future of the Republican Party will make them ever more fiscally liberal. I haven't read Gelman's book, though. Anyways, the bottom line for me is that the future of libertarianism more generally lies much more with the Dems than the Republicans, with whom we have been more closely associated for decades.

Pedro - If you have two competing priorities, and neither party adequately represents both priorities, then you have to decide which priority is more important. If you have a good amount of income, then the difference between a 35% tax and a 39% tax is not the end of the world. There is also plenty of evidence that, above a certain level, additional income has little-to-no effect on one's happiness...which is, of course, the highest priority for most people.

ryan yin · 1 year ago

publiusendures,
Happiness studies also say that, after 6 months or so, becoming a quadriplegic has no affect on happiness. Does this demonstrate: (a) people don't care about being quadriplegics, (b) that what people want can't be collapsed to "happiness" or (c) happiness literatures is just junk that comes from taking utility theory waaaaay too seriously [except for the part about how a utility function is only unique up to a monotonic transformation]?

publiusendures · 1 year ago

Ryan yin: You seem to miss my point, which is simply that it is unsurprising that the prospect of a slightly higher marginal tax rate would be a comparatively low priority to someone with a particularly high income. If we were talking about a situation where their marginal tax rate was likely to increase by a tremendous amount (perhaps by 50% or more), then we could maybe expect a different result. This is not to say that no one with a particularly high income would deem this a comparatively low priority - only that it is unsurprising that a substantial number of such people would do so.

lemmy caution · 1 year ago

Only about 5% of americans have a personal income above $100,000. A 8% gain among these voters isn't as big of a deal as the 5% gain among the 95% of americans with personal income below $100,000.

ryan yin · 1 year ago

publiusendures,
I see the point, and I think it's reasonable (though I don't think I agree). I'm just saying that the happiness literature doesn't make your point more convincing, and also that the claim "happiness ... highest priority for most people" is provably false (at least if you define "happiness" to mean whatever it is those studies measure).

Regarding priorities, is it in fact the case that high income people do want lower/less progressive taxes? If they simply have other priorities that trump what they actually want on economic issues, then this should show up in public opinion polls. Does it?

Andrew Gelman · 12 months ago

Will: Thanks for the link and the discussion. I basically agree with what you wrote (of course) except that it's always iffy to try to predict what will happen next. Also, my impression from poll data from 2004 is that, like it or not, the Republicans could gain by moving to the left economically (i.e., in favor of more regulation and government intervention). More generally, voters prefer more ideologically moderate candidates, but the electoral benefits from moderation, at least in the short term, appear to be pretty small.

Finally, I think you might be right that the Democrats will have difficulty shaking off the support of the rich, now that they have it. The influence of upper-income Americans is not just in their votes (although that does matter in some of the richer states) but in campaign contributions and political influence felt in other ways (whether it be a news reporter or media executive with socially liberal views, or a business executive who opposes unionization).