Rich man, poor man
Bookworm on May 09 2008 at 2:34 pm | Filed under: Democrats, Republicans
My kids used to go to a wonderful little private school. It was a stretch to afford it, but I felt the benefits outweighed the burden. Then the tuition went up, and up, and up. So we left. The wonderful little private school is now precisely like all the other private schools in our area, in that it has two classes of students: rich kids and kids on financial aid. (We joke that the students are made up of the kids of the investment bankers and the kids of their chauffeurs.) The middle income families have gone into the public schools.
The political scene has seen the same shift. One hundred years ago, Republicans were rich and Democrats were not. That started changing with the Roosevelt Democrats. The change is now complete. As John at Power Line points out in a post about Democratic efforts to shut down Republican 527s:
Most rich people who care about politics are on the Left, and the Democrats have also mastered internet fundraising better than the Republicans. As a result, it is a given, for the foreseeable future, that in every important race the Democrats will have more money than the Republicans.
Just as the private schools in my community are for rich kids and their subsidized school mates, so too is the Democratic party for the very, very rich and their downtrodden buddies in select urban areas. The middle income families (and those shading high and shading low in that middle, too), have gone to the Republicans or, sadly, collapsed into complete political inertia.
The question remaining is whether, just as more money in the home buys the better quality private schools, more money in the political arena will guarantee the rich party a numerical advantage at the polls.
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12 Responses to “Rich man, poor man”
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Strategy still counts.
The thing is, only the Democrats practice an insurgency or counter-insurgency doctrine here in the US when the yare getting votes. The Republicans still hold to traditional values of internal and local politics, while the Democrats fight their battles like real wars. Real wars out in the boondocks against guerrillas if Republicans are out of power and an insurgency if the Republicans are in power.
Bookworm, do you have stats to support this? I ask because in the area where I grew up (Youngstown, OH), the rich (white collar folks) are Republicans and the poor (blue collar workers) are Democrats. True then. True now. Also, more young people today are Dems than 10 or 20 years ago, but they are not richer. In fact, on a cost of living adjusted basis, the X and Y generations are poorer than the boomer generation. So I’m trying to understand just when the Democrats became the part of rich. Any numbers to support this claim would be great.
Eche: check out the info in the first paragraphs of this article. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area — home of the rich and liberal.
C’mon, Bookworm. You know that’s no answer. San Diego has as many rich people as SF, and they are all conservatives as far as I can tell–Art Laffer (as in Reagan’s Laffer Curve architect) lives there, for goodness sakes. And Orange County balances out liberal Beverly Hills. You need to provide some stats for me to believe that assertion…
I was thinking of articles like this, echeccone: Rich communities have gone Democratic. So it’s not a voter by voter breakdown, it’s a larger trend.
San Diego has as many rich people as SF, and they are all conservatives as far as I can tell
And you think that is a better answer than Book’s? I doubt it.
Of course not. I’m just ask asking for stats. Journalists and bloggers, like lawyers and politicians, are notorious for using stats poorly or not at all. You need numbers to talk sensibly.
Bookworm, Interesting article, but still no stats. There is a standard social science database that could answer this question pretty easily. I don’t know who amongst your many readers would have access to it. It would be interesting to see whether liberals do in fact have more income and wealth and, if so, whether they also have higher average education, which is often a corollary. Given the unsophisticated views on evolution and climate change held by conservatives, it would not surprise me that they have lower average education levels. Given their superior views on free trade and markets, I would not be surprised if they have higher average education levels.
Hello Bookworm,
If I may, I think the old “truism” that older, wealthy people tend to be Republicans was a false description of a real phenomenon. When that observation was made, I’m guessing around the middle of the 20th century, it described the current state of America. But as America shifted, as you pointed out in this post, so did the political mores of our economic “classes”.
I think relationship between affluence and political affiliation could be better understood in terms of cohort groups. The cohort group of the circa 1950’s to 1970’s who were older and affluent and tended to be more conservative. They were also the generation that went through the Great Depression, fought in WWII and even possibly fought in WWI and the Korean War as well. And being naturally conservative after all the horrors they’ve seen, the Democratic Party AND the Republican Party were much more conservative than they are now.
However, the generation in power now in America were those rebellious men and women during the 1960’s and 1970’s. They were the cohort group that were young and less affluent, and I think they were restrained in the 1960’s and 1970’s (in what I can only describe as darn near insurrection) by the overwhelming preponderance of their older, conservative parents.
The politicians in our Congress, peopling our state legislatures, holding offices in our city councils ARE the generation of radicals that threw rocks at the police, that burnt the American flag, etc.
Not everyone of the Baby Boomer generation did this, of course. On the one hand, we have Noam Chomsky. On the other, we have David Horowitz. There were many positive things that the Boomers did, such as the explosion in creativity, music, etc., (They didn’t do Civil Rights, as they like to claim, but their parents did.) but they were also the most destructive force in American history as well, perhaps even the history of Western Civilization when all’s said and done.
Wealth, I think, has less to do with political affiliation than the cohort groups, Bookworm. I think that in another couple generations, should we be so fortunate to see it, America will swing back the other way in its conservatism.
I see this return to conservatism as yet another swing in the cycle of American history (and yes, I think our history and the history of Western Civilization runs in cycles). The scary part to me, if history were to repeat itself in a very similar manner, is that the so-called Greatest Generation got to being what it was by going through trial by fire. World War I. The Great Depression. The Dust Bowl. World War II. The Cold War.
History might not repeat itself in exactly the same way, but if it’s similar to the major events I just broadly outlined, we’re going to be in for some chop…
Even if you had the numbers, EC, what good would that do you when your philosophical assumptions are wrong?
echeccone,
I think you have put your fingers on the rub of the matter. What you’ve called “unsophisticated views” exists in an entirely different metaphysical paradigm than what is taught at universities. If “education” as such is predicated on advancing views that agrees with a secular/atheistic cosmology, then I agree with you that, in all likelihood, liberals have more of an education than conservatives. However, education of this sort does not denote, nor does it connote an increased intelligence or a more apt ability in the creation of wealth.
In other words, it does not necessarily follow that belief in evolution and global warming would translate into having “superior views on free trade and markets”. One sphere of knowledge does not lead to the other, and to claim that this is so is a remarkable leap in deduction, one which I’m not usually accustomed to.
These beliefs, however, can possibly open doors that would lead to affluence, doors that would otherwise be closed had one believed in a traditional Christian concept of God Almighty. People usually like to associated themselves with like-minded people to the exclusion of all others. This doesn’t have to be a nefarious, conspiratorial dynamic. It’s just what people do. With universities hiring almost exclusively like-minded liberals, is it surprising that such institutions would draw and produce like-minded people?
And as you’ve put your finger on it, universities degrees and other degrees in higher learning are a great aid in the acquisition of more wealth. I agree with your observation actually, so we don’t disagree on this point.
Hello Bookworm,
My comment is in moderation. Thanks.