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And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For exam

by blowski 10y ago

And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For example, why did so many working class people vote for Thatcher in UK in the 1980s? Why are they not massively in favour of Jeremy Corbyn right now? I'm not saying it's irrational. But sometimes it's odd to hear people who need the government to subsidise their minimum wage zero-hours income just for basic survival defending the Conservative Party's economic manifesto. I read "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" some years ago, and this question really stuck with me.

vlehto 10y ago
I've noticed that typically poor men are not very left leaning compared to women. For a man it's somehow incredibly difficult to vote for some member of "intelligentsia" who is very condescending towards you. If men go left, they usually go radical "taking back what is rightfully ours". If you fall short of that, it's lot better to lure in poor men by promising more jobs. And they have noticed how economic growth seems to correlate with jobs. Who talks about GDP? Is he condescending? Paying less taxes and this dude makes this GDP thing go nicely and then I get better paying job? Sounds good. For women it's more like "oh the government is helping me to take care of the kids". It matters less if the politician is condescending, as you are kind of funneling that to your kids.
tommeader 10y ago
I read your comment and had a quick think, and it occurred to me that it's likely to do with nationalism. Most liberal political parties' views on immigration etc. tend to put off the voters you are talking about. Most of the right winged parties tend to emphasise (taking your example) British business and there's a lot of dey tuk urrr jerrbbs syndrome that comes from these types.
- blowski 10y ago
  Why do they believe it? Obviously, in any one election you can say it's the headlines of the day combined with the personalities of the leaders. So are working class people repeatedly irrational in voting for right-wing parties? Interestingly, UKIP are combining left-wing economics with right-wing social policies, and have made a lot of ground with the working class. Arguably, this is Trump's constituency in the US as well.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    The only UKIP MP wants to increase immigration from third world countries. I'm not sure that message gets through to the voters somehow. So like Trump, they surf on a wave on xenophobia, with little interest in actually following through with their promises.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
jeremyjh 10y ago
In the US the conservatives get those votes by pretending to give a shit about "values". Such as (subtly) not liking brown people, liking Jesus, etc. It is astonishing the votes you can get for free just making some meaningless statements that a lot of people agree with.
unlinker 10y ago
I guess they found out liberal economical policies lead to unemployment, and the poor loathe unemployment. By the way Corbyn is a very bad example. He's a walking train wreck.
- blowski 10y ago
  Your comment about Corbyn is essentially tautology - he's unelectable because he's unelectable. Why? Why don't the working class want a leader who's promising to end policies which continue to hit the working class the hardest? And why do the poor loathe unemployment? Why don't they loathe being poor more than being unemployed? Working minimum wage on zero-hour contracts means they're still poor.
  - ionised 10y ago
    He's so unelectable he was elected leader of the opposition.
- Joof 10y ago
  Source for liberal policies leading to unemployment?
brbsix 10y ago
I vote in accordance with my principles, even if it is against my immediate self-interest. Perhaps they are doing the same.
- blowski 10y ago
  Why do you have those principles?
  - brbsix 10y ago
    I'm not exactly sure. Perhaps because they're simple, rational, and can be universalized.
    - prutschman 10y ago
      I really appreciate the forthrightness of this answer.
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
I have also considered this question, my answer is that the party on the "right" will have a core mission of maintaining the power and wealth of the powerful and wealthy. This is, unsuprisingly, not a great vote winner for the masses. So around this core mission they need to build a platform, and so they pick the easiest way to attract voters to this cause up until the point when they get a majority that's able to actually fulfil the core mission. This explains lots of interesting things about politics. Why do the right hate foreigners, gays, athiests, muslims, transexuals etc. Why do they love patriotisms and wars and the good old days? Is there any obvious link between "good business" or "small government" and hating gays? The basic answer is that it's a cheap way to rally people to your cause. Nowadays it's common for right wing people to be openly gay, when for a long time they had to be hypocritical and keep it secret while attacking their own community. But cleary there's no direct link between sexuality and political orientation, the party just decided to start a culture war against a powerless minority for their own profit and some people ended on the wrong side of the line. Just think Buzzfeed but for politics, they want your click/vote, and they'll plumb the depths of human psychology to find out what they need to say to get it. Corbyn is like the anti-buzzfeed. Dry boring headlines about what's actually important. Let's try pacificism, and consider that perhaps the people who died on the other side of our wars were actually human too. So I would say it's irrational, most people are if they don't put time and effort into not being. And if someone has a financial interest in you not being rational, they have a good head start and some obvious levers to push to get what they want.
- throwaway7312 10y ago
  You’re assuming poor American working class voters vote against their interests by voting conservative. Leaving aside the social issues for now and looking solely at economic ones, let’s ask the question whether that’s true to them in their own minds. The American liberal party (Democrats) brands itself as the party that’s going to help you out. It’ll leverage redistribution (taxes) to take money from rich people and corporations and get you stuff like free healthcare, free college, unemployment insurance, etc. That should sound pretty appealing if you’re poor. However, the American conservative party (Republicans) brands itself as the party that’s going to get out of your way. It’ll cut taxes, remove regulations, get government out of your life and basically let you determine your own path without trying to hold your hand the whole way. Sure, less free stuff than the Democrats offer, but Republicans believe there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Nothing comes without strings attached in the Republican worldview, even if in the Democrat view of course there are no strings. These two economic angles tap into completely different mindsets. The Democrat angle taps into two mentalities: “We need to help people out” and “Free stuff? Don’t mind if I do!” The former is the wealthier, more educated Democrats, who feel life’s been good to them and they’d like to see others benefit too. The latter are the poor Democrats, who feel life’s been unfair to them and they could use a little help. The Republican angle taps into one mentality: “People can make it on their own salt.” If you’re a poor Republican, you just want to be able to live your life without worrying about government handouts with strings attached. The idea of free stuff is a little insulting to you – it implies you can’t make it on your own. If you’re a wealthy Republican, you feel like you got what you got fair and square, and the idea of taking what you’ve earned and giving it to someone who hasn’t earned it goes against everything this country stands for. You can ultimately boil American conservatives and liberals down into individualists (conservatives) and collectivists (liberals). Redistribution is fine for liberals because we’re all the same anyway – if two people have differing wealth, it’s because of unfairness, and we can use redistribution to remedy that unfairness. Redistribution is anathema to conservatives; it’s insulting to the poor and it’s robbery to the rich, not to mention it upends the profit motive, which in the Republican mind spells bad things for the economy. I suspect the right answer is somewhere between European socialism and robber baron laissez-faire capitalism, but I’ve always been a centrist myself. I won’t go into social issues in this comment, since it’s already quite long. However, if you want a better grasp of why conservatives have the stances they do and why liberals have the stances they do, I recommend checking out Jonathan Haidt on moral foundations theory first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt#Moral_Foundations_Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt#Moral_Foundatio... http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind Then perhaps a read-through or listen to Will and Ariel Durant’s Lessons of History (keeping an ear out in particular for the discussion of order vs. freedom, and the integral roles they play in society. American conservatives are pro-order socially and pro-freedom economically; American liberals are pro-freedom socially and pro-order economically).
lsd5you 10y ago
I think if the socialists are vexed then it is because they are part of the liberal 'elite' who basically don't understand the type of person who - according to their income - they patronisingly expect to always vote for them. The one dimensional politcal spectrum cannot hope to accommodate everyones views. Apart from the fear that socialism could tank the economy and leave everyone worse off, there are a number of other reasons. It used to be (in the Thatcher years) about one nation conservatism, though that supposedly died along time ago. A patriotic desire to put ones own country before oneself, which in recent years has been all about the strength of the economy. This is supposedly dead now, or certainly a smaller factor than it used to be. Now I would argue it is because many poorer people are not bought into utopian/universalist agenda. The logical conclusion of this is helping the rest of the world before helping them. Many will view others, perhaps only slightly below themselves in economic terms as deserving of what they get, or even undeserving of the help they already receive. Immigration also plays into this (in a big way currently). I would also argue that many believe state intervention is horribly uneven and unfair. Some people have the fortune to be heavily subsidised to live in pretty desirable places, or receive a lot of social care, whereas others struggle to get anything out of the system whatsoever. Poorer people in the UK often face an effective marginal tax rate of 60-100%. i.e. It doesn't pay to work. More socialism would only serve to excacerbate this. In reality the figure could be considered even higher once wealth thresholds are accounted for. If you save any money above (is it >35,000 pounds?) then you have to pay for your own social care in old age. If you have > 8000 pounds then you are disentitled from a lot of things too. One thing that is somewhat specific to the UK is that we have a needs based welfare system, as opposed to an entitlement based system (e.g. France). Being more needy jumps you to the front of the queue. I think above a certain income threshhold it easy to feel removed from this conflict (below) and feel as if you are operating in a capitalist/meritocratic system, but at the bottom the incentives are really quite perverse. Personally I think the most important political axis is honest/dishonest (or integrity vs corruption), and there is plenty of injustice at all levels of life. We should put the socialists in charge of (regulating) the banks and the conservitives in charge of administering wellfare.
CM30 10y ago
Perhaps due to the behaviour of the politicians more than their policies. A lot of left wing politicians and parties seem to be openly condescending to people they consider 'uninformed', whereas a lot of right wing ones will at least pretend to understand where they're coming from. Perhaps also because some people value social attitudes more than economic ones. Perhaps some people say, dislike immigration more than they dislike economic inequality. Maybe people would vote for parties with 'liberal' economic views and 'conservative' social ones, or 'conservative' economic views and 'liberal' social ones.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For example, why did so many working class people vote for Thatcher in UK in the 1980s? Why are they not massively in favour of Jeremy Corbyn right now? I think the more appropriate question is: how many working-class people voted for Thatcher, as a percentage? How many favor Corbyn today? Which number is larger? There has always been false consciousness, but I think it's often overstated the degree to which the working class actively holds and participates in false consciousness, rather than simply being repressed or ignored.

by blowski 10y ago

vlehto 10y ago

I've noticed that typically poor men are not very left leaning compared to women. For a man it's somehow incredibly difficult to vote for some member of "intelligentsia" who is very condescending towards you. If men go left, they usually go radical "taking back what is rightfully ours". If you fall short of that, it's lot better to lure in poor men by promising more jobs. And they have noticed how economic growth seems to correlate with jobs. Who talks about GDP? Is he condescending? Paying less taxes and this dude makes this GDP thing go nicely and then I get better paying job? Sounds good. For women it's more like "oh the government is helping me to take care of the kids". It matters less if the politician is condescending, as you are kind of funneling that to your kids.

tommeader 10y ago

I read your comment and had a quick think, and it occurred to me that it's likely to do with nationalism. Most liberal political parties' views on immigration etc. tend to put off the voters you are talking about. Most of the right winged parties tend to emphasise (taking your example) British business and there's a lot of dey tuk urrr jerrbbs syndrome that comes from these types.

blowski 10y ago
Why do they believe it? Obviously, in any one election you can say it's the headlines of the day combined with the personalities of the leaders. So are working class people repeatedly irrational in voting for right-wing parties? Interestingly, UKIP are combining left-wing economics with right-wing social policies, and have made a lot of ground with the working class. Arguably, this is Trump's constituency in the US as well.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  The only UKIP MP wants to increase immigration from third world countries. I'm not sure that message gets through to the voters somehow. So like Trump, they surf on a wave on xenophobia, with little interest in actually following through with their promises.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

jeremyjh 10y ago

In the US the conservatives get those votes by pretending to give a shit about "values". Such as (subtly) not liking brown people, liking Jesus, etc. It is astonishing the votes you can get for free just making some meaningless statements that a lot of people agree with.

unlinker 10y ago

I guess they found out liberal economical policies lead to unemployment, and the poor loathe unemployment. By the way Corbyn is a very bad example. He's a walking train wreck.

blowski 10y ago
Your comment about Corbyn is essentially tautology - he's unelectable because he's unelectable. Why? Why don't the working class want a leader who's promising to end policies which continue to hit the working class the hardest? And why do the poor loathe unemployment? Why don't they loathe being poor more than being unemployed? Working minimum wage on zero-hour contracts means they're still poor.
- ionised 10y ago
  He's so unelectable he was elected leader of the opposition.
Joof 10y ago
Source for liberal policies leading to unemployment?

brbsix 10y ago

I vote in accordance with my principles, even if it is against my immediate self-interest. Perhaps they are doing the same.

blowski 10y ago
Why do you have those principles?
- brbsix 10y ago
  I'm not exactly sure. Perhaps because they're simple, rational, and can be universalized.
  - prutschman 10y ago
    I really appreciate the forthrightness of this answer.

ZeroGravitas 10y ago

I have also considered this question, my answer is that the party on the "right" will have a core mission of maintaining the power and wealth of the powerful and wealthy. This is, unsuprisingly, not a great vote winner for the masses. So around this core mission they need to build a platform, and so they pick the easiest way to attract voters to this cause up until the point when they get a majority that's able to actually fulfil the core mission. This explains lots of interesting things about politics. Why do the right hate foreigners, gays, athiests, muslims, transexuals etc. Why do they love patriotisms and wars and the good old days? Is there any obvious link between "good business" or "small government" and hating gays? The basic answer is that it's a cheap way to rally people to your cause. Nowadays it's common for right wing people to be openly gay, when for a long time they had to be hypocritical and keep it secret while attacking their own community. But cleary there's no direct link between sexuality and political orientation, the party just decided to start a culture war against a powerless minority for their own profit and some people ended on the wrong side of the line. Just think Buzzfeed but for politics, they want your click/vote, and they'll plumb the depths of human psychology to find out what they need to say to get it. Corbyn is like the anti-buzzfeed. Dry boring headlines about what's actually important. Let's try pacificism, and consider that perhaps the people who died on the other side of our wars were actually human too. So I would say it's irrational, most people are if they don't put time and effort into not being. And if someone has a financial interest in you not being rational, they have a good head start and some obvious levers to push to get what they want.

throwaway7312 10y ago
You’re assuming poor American working class voters vote against their interests by voting conservative. Leaving aside the social issues for now and looking solely at economic ones, let’s ask the question whether that’s true to them in their own minds. The American liberal party (Democrats) brands itself as the party that’s going to help you out. It’ll leverage redistribution (taxes) to take money from rich people and corporations and get you stuff like free healthcare, free college, unemployment insurance, etc. That should sound pretty appealing if you’re poor. However, the American conservative party (Republicans) brands itself as the party that’s going to get out of your way. It’ll cut taxes, remove regulations, get government out of your life and basically let you determine your own path without trying to hold your hand the whole way. Sure, less free stuff than the Democrats offer, but Republicans believe there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Nothing comes without strings attached in the Republican worldview, even if in the Democrat view of course there are no strings. These two economic angles tap into completely different mindsets. The Democrat angle taps into two mentalities: “We need to help people out” and “Free stuff? Don’t mind if I do!” The former is the wealthier, more educated Democrats, who feel life’s been good to them and they’d like to see others benefit too. The latter are the poor Democrats, who feel life’s been unfair to them and they could use a little help. The Republican angle taps into one mentality: “People can make it on their own salt.” If you’re a poor Republican, you just want to be able to live your life without worrying about government handouts with strings attached. The idea of free stuff is a little insulting to you – it implies you can’t make it on your own. If you’re a wealthy Republican, you feel like you got what you got fair and square, and the idea of taking what you’ve earned and giving it to someone who hasn’t earned it goes against everything this country stands for. You can ultimately boil American conservatives and liberals down into individualists (conservatives) and collectivists (liberals). Redistribution is fine for liberals because we’re all the same anyway – if two people have differing wealth, it’s because of unfairness, and we can use redistribution to remedy that unfairness. Redistribution is anathema to conservatives; it’s insulting to the poor and it’s robbery to the rich, not to mention it upends the profit motive, which in the Republican mind spells bad things for the economy. I suspect the right answer is somewhere between European socialism and robber baron laissez-faire capitalism, but I’ve always been a centrist myself. I won’t go into social issues in this comment, since it’s already quite long. However, if you want a better grasp of why conservatives have the stances they do and why liberals have the stances they do, I recommend checking out Jonathan Haidt on moral foundations theory first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt#Moral_Foundations_Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt#Moral_Foundatio... http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind Then perhaps a read-through or listen to Will and Ariel Durant’s Lessons of History (keeping an ear out in particular for the discussion of order vs. freedom, and the integral roles they play in society. American conservatives are pro-order socially and pro-freedom economically; American liberals are pro-freedom socially and pro-order economically).

lsd5you 10y ago

I think if the socialists are vexed then it is because they are part of the liberal 'elite' who basically don't understand the type of person who - according to their income - they patronisingly expect to always vote for them. The one dimensional politcal spectrum cannot hope to accommodate everyones views. Apart from the fear that socialism could tank the economy and leave everyone worse off, there are a number of other reasons. It used to be (in the Thatcher years) about one nation conservatism, though that supposedly died along time ago. A patriotic desire to put ones own country before oneself, which in recent years has been all about the strength of the economy. This is supposedly dead now, or certainly a smaller factor than it used to be. Now I would argue it is because many poorer people are not bought into utopian/universalist agenda. The logical conclusion of this is helping the rest of the world before helping them. Many will view others, perhaps only slightly below themselves in economic terms as deserving of what they get, or even undeserving of the help they already receive. Immigration also plays into this (in a big way currently). I would also argue that many believe state intervention is horribly uneven and unfair. Some people have the fortune to be heavily subsidised to live in pretty desirable places, or receive a lot of social care, whereas others struggle to get anything out of the system whatsoever. Poorer people in the UK often face an effective marginal tax rate of 60-100%. i.e. It doesn't pay to work. More socialism would only serve to excacerbate this. In reality the figure could be considered even higher once wealth thresholds are accounted for. If you save any money above (is it >35,000 pounds?) then you have to pay for your own social care in old age. If you have > 8000 pounds then you are disentitled from a lot of things too. One thing that is somewhat specific to the UK is that we have a needs based welfare system, as opposed to an entitlement based system (e.g. France). Being more needy jumps you to the front of the queue. I think above a certain income threshhold it easy to feel removed from this conflict (below) and feel as if you are operating in a capitalist/meritocratic system, but at the bottom the incentives are really quite perverse. Personally I think the most important political axis is honest/dishonest (or integrity vs corruption), and there is plenty of injustice at all levels of life. We should put the socialists in charge of (regulating) the banks and the conservitives in charge of administering wellfare.

CM30 10y ago

Perhaps due to the behaviour of the politicians more than their policies. A lot of left wing politicians and parties seem to be openly condescending to people they consider 'uninformed', whereas a lot of right wing ones will at least pretend to understand where they're coming from. Perhaps also because some people value social attitudes more than economic ones. Perhaps some people say, dislike immigration more than they dislike economic inequality. Maybe people would vote for parties with 'liberal' economic views and 'conservative' social ones, or 'conservative' economic views and 'liberal' social ones.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For example, why did so many working class people vote for Thatcher in UK in the 1980s? Why are they not massively in favour of Jeremy Corbyn right now? I think the more appropriate question is: how many working-class people voted for Thatcher, as a percentage? How many favor Corbyn today? Which number is larger? There has always been false consciousness, but I think it's often overstated the degree to which the working class actively holds and participates in false consciousness, rather than simply being repressed or ignored.