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> Tallying the wedge issues is terrible methodology I'm unclear why you think these are wedge issues. I've copied what I think is the relevant paragraph descri
by ramblenode 5y ago
> Tallying the wedge issues is terrible methodology
I'm unclear why you think these are wedge issues. I've copied what I think is the relevant paragraph describing the sample:
These 1,779 cases do not constitute a sample from the universe of all possible political alternatives (this is hardly conceivable), but we see them as particularly relevant to assessing the public’s influence on policy. The included policies are not restricted to the narrow Washington “policy agenda." At the same time—since they were seen as worth asking poll questions about—they tend to concern matters of relatively high salience, about which it is plausible that average citizens may have real opinions and may exert some political influence.
The authors describe the issues as "high salience" because they were deemed worthy of being in opinion polls, and presumably because they were part of the national discourse. To the extent these are wedge issues, what poll question isn't a wedge issue? Polls concern possible changes to society, and that will always have opposing sides.
- fwip 5y ago> Polls concern possible changes to society The concept of the Overton Window is instructive here. Policies like "should local property taxes go up by .5 percentage points to fund school safety" are safely within the range of allowable discussions. These are issues on which the "elites" disagree, or don't have particular attachment to. But questions that threaten their status, like "Is it good that individuals own the means of production?" are not going to be in the Overton Window any time soon, mainly because those elites agree that they like the status quo.
- thrav 5y agoI wouldn't go so far as to say that's the main reason. The main reason is that doing it that way has proven to yield good results. We have work to do on how we manage the negative externalities of the approach, but the approach itself has proven solid.
- fwip 5y ago"Good results" is a subjective measure. The guys winning capitalism are a lot more likely to think the results are good than the people they're standing on.
- thrav 5y agoWho in the world, without some flavor of capitalism, is doing better? China needed to let individuals own companies to get where they are, even if they reserve the right to disappear those individuals at any time.