Votes against self interest.

[Arkady]

Salon.com has a column by a man who was a die hard Republican, for years, despite knowing deep down that the Democrats supported policies that would be better for him:

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/16/i_was_poor_but_a_gop_die_hard_how_i_finally_left_the_politics_of_shame/

It's an interesting confessional in that the psychology it hints at is different from some of the standard reasoning about why people vote against their own economic self interest. Unlike some of the standard narratives, this guy doesn't cite race, xenophobia, or religious wedge issues as driving him, nor the imagining that he was a future millionaire who had to preserve those low upper-class taxes for when he got there. Instead, it was a kind of self-loathing. I don't know how common his mindset is, but it's worth the read, anyway.

I'm his mirror image -- someone who votes Dem against his own economic self interest. Although my roots are modest (I was an Army Brat), I've been firmly in the top 10% of earners for about 15 years, and more recently have been more like the top 3%. I'm also white, male, straight, married, able-bodied, healthy, in my peak earning years, a native-born citizen, and not a member of any protected class of workers. I even live in a part of the country likely to be less burdened by global warming than drier, hotter areas. Based on my demographics and economics and geography, the GOP's policies would very likely benefit me more than the Democratic Party's. Yet, despite having never been a registered Democrat, I vote Democrat nearly all the time.

I attribute this mainly to recognizing myself as a kind of lottery winner. I'm not exceptionally hard working. I skipped classes for weeks at a time in college and law school, and never really studied. I skated by on excellent test-taking and essay-writing skills. I'm not terribly hard-working on the job either. I have a position where the work is feast-or-famine and I have tons of down time, but my skills are sufficiently rare and in-demand, and the dollar figures for what I work on are sufficiently high that people are willing to pay me a whole lot of money for a modest amount of work. I may not have been born with Shaq's frame or Pavarotti's voice or a model's face, but in a way I won a similar genetic lottery. Through no merit of my own, I got born with a brain that has serious market value. Though it doesn't bring in millions like those other people's genetic assets, it lets me live luxuriously enough with a fraction of the work lots of poor people expend just to get by. Together with the dumb luck of being born with supportive parents and good overall health, I was basically handed the golden ticket. And I know it. So Republican rhetoric that's built around the idea that the rich are rich because they're deserving and the poor are poor because they're lazy is never going to fly with me. I'm fairly lazy and rich, and I've known people who worked like dogs and were poor.

So, I'm kind of in the same boat as that Republican: I vote against my own economic self-interest, at least in part, due to a kind of self loathing. I don't feel I truly deserve everything I have, and I assume the same is true for most people in my economic set (especially those who came from money).

How about others here? Setting aside substantive policy issues, do you have a sense for why you are drawn, emotionally, to the political views you support?

 

[Barbella]

Yes, I do. My main concern is the future of my children and grandchildren. I'm loath to burden them financially to a point where they'll break... I'd much rather we tighten our belts now, sacrifice a little, so that they may have a decent life.

Did you see where, according to the CBO, our deficit will be 106% of our economy by 2039? Do you think that's sustainable?

The U.S. debt held by the public is expected to rise to 106 percent of the economy in 2039 from 74 percent this year, largely driven by increases in the cost of health benefits, the Congressional Budget Office said.

To put federal finances on a sustainable path, Congress must boost revenue, cut spending on benefit programs or combine the approaches, the nonpartisan CBO said in its long-term budget outlook released today.

“The unsustainable nature of the federal tax and spending policies specified in current law presents lawmakers and the public with difficult choices,” CBO said in the report. “Unless substantial changes are made to the major health-care programs and Social Security, spending for those programs will equal a much larger percentage of GDP in the future than it has in the past.”

The CBO projected in April that the U.S. budget deficit will narrow to $492 billion this year, the lowest level since 2008 and down more than 60 percent from a record $1.4 trillion in 2009.

Higher spending on Medicare and Medicaid will cause the budget deficit to begin increasing in 2016, according to CBO’s projections.

As a share of the economy, the budget deficit will increase to 3.7 percent in 2024 and 6.4 percent in 2039, from 2.8 percent in 2014, the agency said today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-15/federal-debt-to-reach-106-of-economy-in-2039-cbo-says.html

 

[Constitutional Sheepdog]

Salon.com has a column by a man who was a die hard Republican, for years, despite knowing deep down that the Democrats supported policies that would be better for him:

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/16/i_was_poor_but_a_gop_die_hard_how_i_finally_left_the_politics_of_shame/

It's an interesting confessional in that the psychology it hints at is different from some of the standard reasoning about why people vote against their own economic self interest. Unlike some of the standard narratives, this guy doesn't cite race, xenophobia, or religious wedge issues as driving him, nor the imagining that he was a future millionaire who had to preserve those low upper-class taxes for when he got there. Instead, it was a kind of self-loathing. I don't know how common his mindset is, but it's worth the read, anyway.

I'm his mirror image -- someone who votes Dem against his own economic self interest. Although my roots are modest (I was an Army Brat), I've been firmly in the top 10% of earners for about 15 years, and more recently have been more like the top 3%. I'm also white, male, straight, married, able-bodied, healthy, in my peak earning years, a native-born citizen, and not a member of any protected class of workers. I even live in a part of the country likely to be less burdened by global warming than drier, hotter areas. Based on my demographics and economics and geography, the GOP's policies would very likely benefit me more than the Democratic Party's. Yet, despite having never been a registered Democrat, I vote Democrat nearly all the time.

I attribute this mainly to recognizing myself as a kind of lottery winner. I'm not exceptionally hard working. I skipped classes for weeks at a time in college and law school, and never really studied. I skated by on excellent test-taking and essay-writing skills. I'm not terribly hard-working on the job either. I have a position where the work is feast-or-famine and I have tons of down time, but my skills are sufficiently rare and in-demand, and the dollar figures for what I work on are sufficiently high that people are willing to pay me a whole lot of money for a modest amount of work. I may not have been born with Shaq's frame or Pavarotti's voice or a model's face, but in a way I won a similar genetic lottery. Through no merit of my own, I got born with a brain that has serious market value. Though it doesn't bring in millions like those other people's genetic assets, it lets me live luxuriously enough with a fraction of the work lots of poor people expend just to get by. Together with the dumb luck of being born with supportive parents and good overall health, I was basically handed the golden ticket. And I know it. So Republican rhetoric that's built around the idea that the rich are rich because they're deserving and the poor are poor because they're lazy is never going to fly with me. I'm fairly lazy and rich, and I've known people who worked like dogs and were poor.

So, I'm kind of in the same boat as that Republican: I vote against my own economic self-interest, at least in part, due to a kind of self loathing. I don't feel I truly deserve everything I have, and I assume the same is true for most people in my economic set (especially those who came from money).

How about others here? Setting aside substantive policy issues, do you have a sense for why you are drawn, emotionally, to the political views you support?

No my best interest is to stop the tax and spend democrats and stop filling the ranks of welfare recipients. My best interest is putting people back to work.

 

[Colorforms]

Salon.com has a column by a man who was a die hard Republican, for years, despite knowing deep down that the Democrats supported policies that would be better for him:

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/16/i_was_poor_but_a_gop_die_hard_how_i_finally_left_the_politics_of_shame/

It's an interesting confessional in that the psychology it hints at is different from some of the standard reasoning about why people vote against their own economic self interest. Unlike some of the standard narratives, this guy doesn't cite race, xenophobia, or religious wedge issues as driving him, nor the imagining that he was a future millionaire who had to preserve those low upper-class taxes for when he got there. Instead, it was a kind of self-loathing. I don't know how common his mindset is, but it's worth the read, anyway.

I'm his mirror image -- someone who votes Dem against his own economic self interest. Although my roots are modest (I was an Army Brat), I've been firmly in the top 10% of earners for about 15 years, and more recently have been more like the top 3%. I'm also white, male, straight, married, able-bodied, healthy, in my peak earning years, a native-born citizen, and not a member of any protected class of workers. I even live in a part of the country likely to be less burdened by global warming than drier, hotter areas. Based on my demographics and economics and geography, the GOP's policies would very likely benefit me more than the Democratic Party's. Yet, despite having never been a registered Democrat, I vote Democrat nearly all the time.

I attribute this mainly to recognizing myself as a kind of lottery winner. I'm not exceptionally hard working. I skipped classes for weeks at a time in college and law school, and never really studied. I skated by on excellent test-taking and essay-writing skills. I'm not terribly hard-working on the job either. I have a position where the work is feast-or-famine and I have tons of down time, but my skills are sufficiently rare and in-demand, and the dollar figures for what I work on are sufficiently high that people are willing to pay me a whole lot of money for a modest amount of work. I may not have been born with Shaq's frame or Pavarotti's voice or a model's face, but in a way I won a similar genetic lottery. Through no merit of my own, I got born with a brain that has serious market value. Though it doesn't bring in millions like those other people's genetic assets, it lets me live luxuriously enough with a fraction of the work lots of poor people expend just to get by. Together with the dumb luck of being born with supportive parents and good overall health, I was basically handed the golden ticket. And I know it. So Republican rhetoric that's built around the idea that the rich are rich because they're deserving and the poor are poor because they're lazy is never going to fly with me. I'm fairly lazy and rich, and I've known people who worked like dogs and were poor.

So, I'm kind of in the same boat as that Republican: I vote against my own economic self-interest, at least in part, due to a kind of self loathing. I don't feel I truly deserve everything I have, and I assume the same is true for most people in my economic set (especially those who came from money).

How about others here? Setting aside substantive policy issues, do you have a sense for why you are drawn, emotionally, to the political views you support?

So then you consider yourself superior to those who earn less than you do. Is that our take-away here? We need to compensate people because they are just too inferior to deal with life on their own merits?

 

[Drumcollie]

Salon.com BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH...never ever ever ever!!! complain that someone quoted Brietbart ever....wow really Salon.com what next Raw story of the dailykos????? What a hack!

But in all fairness if I were to explain why I joined the Party of Slavery and Segregation and how I became a democratic loser...I guess I could quote salon.com

 

[Arkady]

Yes, I do. My main concern is the future of my children and grandchildren. I'm loath to burden them financially to a point where they'll break... I'd much rather we tighten our belts now, sacrifice a little, so that they may have a decent life.

Did you see where, according to the CBO, our deficit will be 106% of our economy by 2039? Do you think that's sustainable?



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-15/federal-debt-to-reach-106-of-economy-in-2039-cbo-says.html

Obviously, nobody wants to see debt that high, but technically, it's sustainable, so long as interest rates are reasonable. Right now we pay 2.55% interest on 10 year Treasuries. So, the interest cost on 106% of GDP would be 2.7% of our economy. To put that in perspective, we spend 3.8% of our GDP on our military, compared to 1.3% for Germany, and something comparable in most other wealthy nations. So, the elevation in our military spending, relative to other advanced nations, represents about the same budget cost as the debt service on debt that's 106% of GDP.

That's not to say that having debt that high is a good idea (or that having military spending that high is good). Merely that it is, from a mathematical and economic perspective, sustainable. In fact, historically, we've had much higher debt. It was 118.9% in 1946, and we had it worked all the way down to 31.7% in 1981, before Reagan fouled it up with his imbecilic tax cuts. All you need, to get debt like that under control, is decent tax levels and decent growth.

Also, remember, much of that debt is money Americans essentially owe to other Americans -- taxpayers to bond-holders. So, a large segment of that interest payment gets cycled back through the economy.

 

[Arkady]

So then you consider yourself superior to those who earn less than you do. Is that our take-away here? We need to compensate people because they are just too inferior to deal with life on their own merits?

No. In a moral sense, I'm saying the opposite -- that I feel inferior to them, because I get by with so much less hard work.

 

[Drumcollie]

No. In a moral sense, I'm saying the opposite -- that I feel inferior to them, because I get by with so much less hard work.

Sounds like leftist white guilt

 

[Arkady]

Sounds like leftist white guilt

Or, as it's also called, empathy.

 

[Mr. Friscus]

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.

However, Democrats and Republicans charge each other with a 100% negative label regarding the issue.

 

[Colorforms]

No. In a moral sense, I'm saying the opposite -- that I feel inferior to them, because I get by with so much less hard work.

Right.....because of your superior intellect. I am not possessed of a great deal of motivation myself, but society really doesn't ask a lot when all is said and done. People like you, however, give people a pass because, after all, they are only groundlings, and not possesed of the superior attributes which allow you to be so successful with so little effort.

 

[Charcat]

Right.....because of your superior intellect. I am not possessed of a great deal of motivation myself, but society really doesn't ask a lot when all is said and done. People like you, however, give people a pass because, after all, they are only groundlings, and not possesed of the superior attributes which allow you to be so successful with so little effort.

And it MUST be very little effort. Most attorneys have plenty to keep them busy, and I don't know ANY attorneys who spend all day on a political forum.

 

[Colorforms]

And it MUST be very little effort. Most attorneys have plenty to keep them busy, and I don't know ANY attorneys who spend all day on a political forum.

Great point. No wonder he feels sorry for all of us groundlings. We obvoiusly aren't capable of measuring up to his standards. If only God's lottery possesed ME of Arkady's superior attributes. Maybe I can look down with pity on the rest of society and spread my generous nature to them at the expense of everyone else as well. After all, it's the least we superior beings could do.

 

[BRU]

And it MUST be very little effort. Most attorneys have plenty to keep them busy, and I don't know ANY attorneys who spend all day on a political forum.

but then you can be what ever you want on the internet ;-)

 

[Arkady]

Right.....because of your superior intellect. I am not possessed of a great deal of motivation myself, but society really doesn't ask a lot when all is said and done. People like you, however, give people a pass because, after all, they are only groundlings, and not possesed of the superior attributes which allow you to be so successful with so little effort.

I take no great pride in it. To do so would make as much sense as a basketball player taking pride in the fact he's a rugged 7 feet tall, or an actor taking pride in his natural charisma. It's just the lottery of genes. Some people get an assortment of GCTAs that gifts them with marketable physiological assets they did nothing to earn. For me, it's my brain. It's worth a hell of a lot less in the market than Shaq's frame or Brad Pitt's looks, but it does give me a decent "windfall."

I'm not claiming my brain is smarter in any absolute sense In some ways, I'm an idiot. But my brain does function such that it very easy for me to do some stuff that people will pay good money to have done. For that stuff, it's the mental equivalent of the guy who just naturally can throw 90 mph fast-balls, without much work. I'm fairly lazy, so I'm like the natural pitcher who never put in the effort needed to become a star -- just enough to become a journeyman bullpen guy, making decent dough riding on natural ability. I suspect most people who are doing well, economically, are similar -- they won a lottery of one sort or another, whether it was genetic, or having the right rich parents, or marrying into money, or being in the right place at the right time through dumb luck (e.g., the clerk at Google who did nothing special but ended up a multi-millionaire thanks to stock options), or stumbling on to the dumb idea that inexplicably paid off big (the pet rock), or literally winning the lottery.

Take Jim Sensenbrenner, the xenophobic Congressman. He "won the lottery" by being born into a multi-millionaire family, then actually literally won it by buying a winning lottery ticket. I don't begrudge such people their luck, just as I hope others don't begrudge me mine. But it would be nice if more of them were aware of how vital luck was in their success, and they didn't whine so much about being called on to share some of that windfall by way of progressive taxes.

 

[Arkady]

And it MUST be very little effort. Most attorneys have plenty to keep them busy, and I don't know ANY attorneys who spend all day on a political forum.

It's not a lot of effort, but it is feast-or-famine, so when I'm busy I'm very busy, and put in 80-hour work weeks. The rest of the time, I've got tons of down time.

 

[Mr. Friscus]

Take Jim Sensenbrenner, the xenophobic Congressman. He "won the lottery" by being born into a multi-millionaire family, then actually literally won it by buying a winning lottery ticket. I don't begrudge such people their luck, just as I hope others don't begrudge me mine. But it would be nice if more of them were aware of how vital luck was in their success, and they didn't whine so much about being called on to share some of that windfall by way of progressive taxes.

It all depends on what the taxes are going towards.

An effective, efficient, uncorrupt system? It sounds great in theory, but that's not what we have.

 

[Arkady]

It all depends on what the taxes are going towards.

An effective, efficient, uncorrupt system? It sounds great in theory, but that's not what we have.

The system is corrupt, like every system ever devised by man. But, I think the corruption is kept to an acceptably low level, as is the inefficiency, so that overall it's effective at its goals. Certainly it could be more effective, but we're talking about a government that won WWII, built the interstate highway system, built the foundation for the Internet, split the atom, put a man on the moon, vastly increased life expectancy, ended racial segregation, helped standards of living to rise greatly, made literacy almost universal, and on and on. Overall, I think we've bought one hell of a lot with our tax money.

 

[Colorforms]

I take no great pride in it. To do so would make as much sense as a basketball player taking pride in the fact he's a rugged 7 feet tall, or an actor taking pride in his natural charisma. It's just the lottery of genes. Some people get an assortment of GCTAs that gifts them with marketable physiological assets they did nothing to earn. For me, it's my brain. It's worth a hell of a lot less in the market than Shaq's frame or Brad Pitt's looks, but it does give me a decent "windfall."

I'm not claiming my brain is smarter in any absolute sense In some ways, I'm an idiot. But my brain does function such that it very easy for me to do some stuff that people will pay good money to have done. For that stuff, it's the mental equivalent of the guy who just naturally can throw 90 mph fast-balls, without much work. I'm fairly lazy, so I'm like the natural pitcher who never put in the effort needed to become a star -- just enough to become a journeyman bullpen guy, making decent dough riding on natural ability. I suspect most people who are doing well, economically, are similar -- they won a lottery of one sort or another, whether it was genetic, or having the right rich parents, or marrying into money, or being in the right place at the right time through dumb luck (e.g., the clerk at Google who did nothing special but ended up a multi-millionaire thanks to stock options), or stumbling on to the dumb idea that inexplicably paid off big (the pet rock), or literally winning the lottery.

Take Jim Sensenbrenner, the xenophobic Congressman. He "won the lottery" by being born into a multi-millionaire family, then actually literally won it by buying a winning lottery ticket. I don't begrudge such people their luck, just as I hope others don't begrudge me mine. But it would be nice if more of them were aware of how vital luck was in their success, and they didn't whine so much about being called on to share some of that windfall by way of progressive taxes.

You're not helping you argument at all, Arkady. The more you try to pull the humility routine, the more arrogant you come off sounding. Yes, luck plays some role, as does persistence, skill, and a little hard work in most cases. Luck is an excuse for not being what you think you should be. I hear all of the time about people who spent their childhoods poor before making something of themselves. For most, luck takes a back seat to vision and drive. If you claim to feel bad about simply possesing these attributes that you don't recognize in others, it' just more evidence that you feel you have something others are incapable of attaining for themselves.

People should be proud of wbo they are and what they've accomplished. What you have is arrogance.

 

[Charcat]

You're not helping you argument at all, Arkady. The more you try to pull the humility routine, the more arrogant you come off sounding. Yes, luck plays some role, as does persistence, skill, and a little hard work in most cases. Luck is an excuse for not being what you think you should be. I hear all of the time about people who spent their childhoods poor before making something of themselves. For most, luck takes a back seat to vision and drive. If you claim to feel bad about simply possesing these attributes that you don't recognize in others, it' just more evidence that you feel you have something others are incapable of attaining for themselves.

People should be proud of wbo they are and what they've accomplished. What you have is arrogance.

We have to be careful of what we say, Colorforms, we don't want to burst his balloon. I find it odd that other people who have "made it" due to their brains don't brag about it. I don't think I ever heard Romney talk about his big brain. I'm sure that many of us here on PJ have had successful lives, but the difference is we don't find it necessary to constantly remind each other of the fact. Something very odd, too, about someone wanting to leave his "fortune" to the government, rather than his child, too.