6 ms·

Many people vote against their own self interest---universal healthcare, larger tax credits to the poor, cash welfare---because they think "if I can't afford $1

by thechao 10y ago

Many people vote against their own self interest---universal healthcare, larger tax credits to the poor, cash welfare---because they think "if I can't afford $15000 to give to the Feds, no one can". This is partly an innumeracy problem; but, partly, I think it's the fact (naturally) those who are taxed the most can mutually align their interests with those who are taxed the least: they both say the same words, but for entirely different reasons: one is because they can't; the other because they wont.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
$15k every year is a stupendous amount of money to nearly everyone in the US. There exist people in large numbers for whom this would change their lives quite radically. No innumeracy there. We all live with a lot of "s'posed ta-s" and we just won't get to 'em all.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
paulddraper 10y ago
I don't think the cost is as significant as the ineffectiveness of the effort. If I thought universal health care, more progressive taxes, and cash welfare worked without solving more problems than they create (without causing stagflation, unemployment, loss of personal liberty), I would support them. But I don't so I won't.
- thechao 10y ago
  We already have universal health care---we just choose to do it in the most expensive possible way (emergency health care), rather than in a less expensive way (urgent, chronic, terminal). I don't know about the rest; although, the EITC (the closest thing we have to cash welfare for non-family citizens in Texas) was actually a pretty important part of my income for the five years when I lived below and near the poverty line.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    > We already have universal health care For the next few months, at least
    - EpicEng 10y ago
      Emergency care isn't going anywhere, and Obamacare isn't universal health care. It's a compromise which keeps the insurance industry in place.
      - paulddraper 10y ago
        Well, by that token, ER isn't "universal health care" either. I have knee pain from a soccer injury and need arthroscopic surgery. Emergency/urgent care won't do that.
        EpicEng 10y ago
        It is if you have something life threatening, but I generally agree. Even then you won't get the preventative and proactive measures that could have saved you, and your standard of care will be low.
        toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Would you be interested in traveling to Cuba to have that surgery performed inexpensively? I'm working on an agency to match US healthcare consumers with service providers in Cuba, Mexico, Canada, and Thailand who will provide the same service at a fraction of the cost with quality exceeding that available in the US (and am doing market research). This is my way of hacking a lack of universal healthcare until the US gets its shit together.
        blawson 10y ago
        If it helps, I recently had surgery in Vietnam at the French Vietnamese hospital in Saigon and was really pleased with the cleanliness of the facilities. My US doctor so far thinks they did a great job too. Cost was $3500 US for a broken collarbone, probably would have been > 10x that in the Bay Area.
- Ensorceled 10y ago
  What do you mean by "worked"? You do realize EVERY other modern, rich country has these things and is doing just fine?
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    > every If by "fine" you mean a weak economy (http://www.businessinsider.com/italys-political-and-economic-crisis-threatens-europes-stability-2016-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/italys-political-and-economic...), perpetual 20% adult and 45% youth unemployment (http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/upshot/spains-jobless-numbers-almost-look-like-misprints.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/upshot/spains-jobless-n...), riots in the streets over unemployment (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/5258634/Riots-across-Europe-fuelled-by-economic-crisis.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/5258634/Rio...), a mismanaged centralized health care system in financial straits (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-01-03/frances-health-care-system-is-going-broke https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-01-03/frances-h...), and general government insolvency (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis), then yes every other modern, rich country is doing fine.
    - kesselvon 10y ago
      Way to cherry pick.
      - paulddraper 10y ago
        Guilty. And way for the parent to overgeneralize.
    - the_why_of_y 10y ago
      Notably, every single example you cite is from an Euro currency country. The design flaws of the Euro currency area were well understood already 20 years ago, if not, unfortunately, by European politicians. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/1996-09-01/euro-fantasies-common-currency-panacea https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/1996-09-01/eu...
lazulicurio 10y ago
If I may propose a different explanation: Many people vote against measures that are supposedly supposed to help them---universal healthcare, larger tax credits to the poor, cash welfare---because they think "why am I giving $15000 to the Feds when I can barely afford it, and they're just going turn around and give some of the money back but with strings attached". I think that framing people's political opposition to measures that you support as "voting against their own self interest" isn't helpful because it alienates the people you're trying to convince. Even if you might not think that opposition to universal healthcare, or tax credits, or welfare, is rational or sensible, that opposition may be rational or sensible when viewed from the perspective or someone else. There is a certain appeal to self-sufficiency that doesn't have to spring from radical individualism. It's extremely stressful feeling like you're not in control of your own life. Globalization and computerization have increasingly centralized power in either corporations or national governments. Some of that loss of control is political; for example, the steady erosion of the first sale doctrine under the guise of protecting "intellectual property". Some of that loss of control is due to the advance of technology, and can't be undone without further technological development; for example, barring significant breakthroughs in at-home manufacturing technology, your average consumer isn't going to be making an x86 CPU in their basement. Increasing people's ability to be self-sufficient should be something we can rally around as technologists---reducing healthcare costs so individuals can diagnose and treat themselves for common maladies, reducing the capital needed to manufacture modern electronics, increasing transparency and access to knowledge so people don't feel trapped by seemingly Kafkaesque bureaucracies and organizations---and I feel that trying to focus on common goals is more likely to result in positive societal change.
chrisseaton 10y ago
Everyone keeps attacking poor people for voting against their interests, suggesting as you have that they are innumerate, or conned by fake news, or short-sighted, or just stupid. Perhaps these people are voting with their conscience after careful consideration, and doing what they think is morally right, despite knowing that it will hurt them. You wouldn't get an article about billionaires voting for left wing politics even though it could be against their short-term interests, and laughing at their innumeracy, because it's assumed that they would be doing so for moral reasons. People don't seem to believe the poor are also capable of making self-sacrificing decisions for moral reasons.
- cooper12 10y ago
  Care to share these moral reasons?
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    Well you'd have to ask them, wouldn't you. What I am saying is that you should consider that maybe these people are not innumerate - they could realise that the policies they are voting for will harm them but they believe that it is the correct thing to do. Some people think that federal taxation in general is morally wrong and should be reduced. Whether you or I agree with that is irrelevant if what we're debating is have these people realised that it could help them but still think it's right to vote against it.
    - pixelbash 10y ago
      Perhaps they are doing what they consider to be correct according to the information available to them. The question then becomes what information are they being given?
      - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
        What information are you being given. How are any of us supposed to vote in our best intetersts, individually or collectively, when all the bastard politicians are pathological liers.
wavesounds 10y ago
This idea that the right is voting against their best interest needs to die. The thing the left forgets is that poor people don't vote[1]. So what you have in these "poor" red states are lower-middle/middle class people who are already being stretched thin voting against their poor neighbors who they can't afford to support. Like it or not Obamacare did cost middle class people money in the sense that their tax dollars went to pay for subsidies, their employers were required to spend more on health care, more demand for medical services drives prices higher and the individual mandate meant healthy people had to buy something they didn't want or be fined. Universal healthcare, tax credits for the poor and cash welfare can all be viewed through the same lens. 1. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/24/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-said-poor-people-dont-vote/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/...
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>Many people vote against their own self interest---universal healthcare, larger tax credits to the poor, cash welfare---because they think "if I can't afford $15000 to give to the Feds, no one can". They mostly don't. Poor and lower-middle-class people consistently vote for the Democrats, upper-income people consistently vote for the Republicans. However, the poor are much less likely to actually vote, sometimes because their vote is suppressed, and often because neither party is actually offering them universal social services or cash assistance. Then, throw in issues like gerrymandering, winner-take-all elections, and the Electoral College, and you've got one of the greatest voter inefficiencies (failure of votes to translate into seats in government) in the Western world. The problem is not that democracy fails because people are too irrational. The problem is that the people are approximately rational, but the system is designed to shut out the voices of the majority.

by thechao 10y ago

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

$15k every year is a stupendous amount of money to nearly everyone in the US. There exist people in large numbers for whom this would change their lives quite radically. No innumeracy there. We all live with a lot of "s'posed ta-s" and we just won't get to 'em all.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

paulddraper 10y ago

I don't think the cost is as significant as the ineffectiveness of the effort. If I thought universal health care, more progressive taxes, and cash welfare worked without solving more problems than they create (without causing stagflation, unemployment, loss of personal liberty), I would support them. But I don't so I won't.

thechao 10y ago
We already have universal health care---we just choose to do it in the most expensive possible way (emergency health care), rather than in a less expensive way (urgent, chronic, terminal). I don't know about the rest; although, the EITC (the closest thing we have to cash welfare for non-family citizens in Texas) was actually a pretty important part of my income for the five years when I lived below and near the poverty line.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  > We already have universal health care For the next few months, at least
  - EpicEng 10y ago
    Emergency care isn't going anywhere, and Obamacare isn't universal health care. It's a compromise which keeps the insurance industry in place.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      Well, by that token, ER isn't "universal health care" either. I have knee pain from a soccer injury and need arthroscopic surgery. Emergency/urgent care won't do that.
      - EpicEng 10y ago
        It is if you have something life threatening, but I generally agree. Even then you won't get the preventative and proactive measures that could have saved you, and your standard of care will be low.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Would you be interested in traveling to Cuba to have that surgery performed inexpensively? I'm working on an agency to match US healthcare consumers with service providers in Cuba, Mexico, Canada, and Thailand who will provide the same service at a fraction of the cost with quality exceeding that available in the US (and am doing market research). This is my way of hacking a lack of universal healthcare until the US gets its shit together.
        blawson 10y ago
        If it helps, I recently had surgery in Vietnam at the French Vietnamese hospital in Saigon and was really pleased with the cleanliness of the facilities. My US doctor so far thinks they did a great job too. Cost was $3500 US for a broken collarbone, probably would have been > 10x that in the Bay Area.
Ensorceled 10y ago
What do you mean by "worked"? You do realize EVERY other modern, rich country has these things and is doing just fine?
- paulddraper 10y ago
  > every If by "fine" you mean a weak economy (http://www.businessinsider.com/italys-political-and-economic-crisis-threatens-europes-stability-2016-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/italys-political-and-economic...), perpetual 20% adult and 45% youth unemployment (http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/upshot/spains-jobless-numbers-almost-look-like-misprints.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/03/upshot/spains-jobless-n...), riots in the streets over unemployment (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/5258634/Riots-across-Europe-fuelled-by-economic-crisis.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/5258634/Rio...), a mismanaged centralized health care system in financial straits (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-01-03/frances-health-care-system-is-going-broke https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-01-03/frances-h...), and general government insolvency (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis), then yes every other modern, rich country is doing fine.
  - kesselvon 10y ago
    Way to cherry pick.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      Guilty. And way for the parent to overgeneralize.
  - the_why_of_y 10y ago
    Notably, every single example you cite is from an Euro currency country. The design flaws of the Euro currency area were well understood already 20 years ago, if not, unfortunately, by European politicians. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/1996-09-01/euro-fantasies-common-currency-panacea https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/1996-09-01/eu...

lazulicurio 10y ago

If I may propose a different explanation: Many people vote against measures that are supposedly supposed to help them---universal healthcare, larger tax credits to the poor, cash welfare---because they think "why am I giving $15000 to the Feds when I can barely afford it, and they're just going turn around and give some of the money back but with strings attached". I think that framing people's political opposition to measures that you support as "voting against their own self interest" isn't helpful because it alienates the people you're trying to convince. Even if you might not think that opposition to universal healthcare, or tax credits, or welfare, is rational or sensible, that opposition may be rational or sensible when viewed from the perspective or someone else. There is a certain appeal to self-sufficiency that doesn't have to spring from radical individualism. It's extremely stressful feeling like you're not in control of your own life. Globalization and computerization have increasingly centralized power in either corporations or national governments. Some of that loss of control is political; for example, the steady erosion of the first sale doctrine under the guise of protecting "intellectual property". Some of that loss of control is due to the advance of technology, and can't be undone without further technological development; for example, barring significant breakthroughs in at-home manufacturing technology, your average consumer isn't going to be making an x86 CPU in their basement. Increasing people's ability to be self-sufficient should be something we can rally around as technologists---reducing healthcare costs so individuals can diagnose and treat themselves for common maladies, reducing the capital needed to manufacture modern electronics, increasing transparency and access to knowledge so people don't feel trapped by seemingly Kafkaesque bureaucracies and organizations---and I feel that trying to focus on common goals is more likely to result in positive societal change.

chrisseaton 10y ago

Everyone keeps attacking poor people for voting against their interests, suggesting as you have that they are innumerate, or conned by fake news, or short-sighted, or just stupid. Perhaps these people are voting with their conscience after careful consideration, and doing what they think is morally right, despite knowing that it will hurt them. You wouldn't get an article about billionaires voting for left wing politics even though it could be against their short-term interests, and laughing at their innumeracy, because it's assumed that they would be doing so for moral reasons. People don't seem to believe the poor are also capable of making self-sacrificing decisions for moral reasons.

cooper12 10y ago
Care to share these moral reasons?
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  Well you'd have to ask them, wouldn't you. What I am saying is that you should consider that maybe these people are not innumerate - they could realise that the policies they are voting for will harm them but they believe that it is the correct thing to do. Some people think that federal taxation in general is morally wrong and should be reduced. Whether you or I agree with that is irrelevant if what we're debating is have these people realised that it could help them but still think it's right to vote against it.
  - pixelbash 10y ago
    Perhaps they are doing what they consider to be correct according to the information available to them. The question then becomes what information are they being given?
    - TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      What information are you being given. How are any of us supposed to vote in our best intetersts, individually or collectively, when all the bastard politicians are pathological liers.

wavesounds 10y ago

This idea that the right is voting against their best interest needs to die. The thing the left forgets is that poor people don't vote[1]. So what you have in these "poor" red states are lower-middle/middle class people who are already being stretched thin voting against their poor neighbors who they can't afford to support. Like it or not Obamacare did cost middle class people money in the sense that their tax dollars went to pay for subsidies, their employers were required to spend more on health care, more demand for medical services drives prices higher and the individual mandate meant healthy people had to buy something they didn't want or be fined. Universal healthcare, tax credits for the poor and cash welfare can all be viewed through the same lens. 1. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/24/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-said-poor-people-dont-vote/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr/...

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>Many people vote against their own self interest---universal healthcare, larger tax credits to the poor, cash welfare---because they think "if I can't afford $15000 to give to the Feds, no one can". They mostly don't. Poor and lower-middle-class people consistently vote for the Democrats, upper-income people consistently vote for the Republicans. However, the poor are much less likely to actually vote, sometimes because their vote is suppressed, and often because neither party is actually offering them universal social services or cash assistance. Then, throw in issues like gerrymandering, winner-take-all elections, and the Electoral College, and you've got one of the greatest voter inefficiencies (failure of votes to translate into seats in government) in the Western world. The problem is not that democracy fails because people are too irrational. The problem is that the people are approximately rational, but the system is designed to shut out the voices of the majority.