5 ms·

Much like single payer healthcare (which even a majority of Republicans are in favor of), the program is perfectly palatable to voters. The problem is that the

• Aurornis 3y ago
  > In order to win elections, you almost need those investors on your side more than the actual public …because those few elite investors outnumber the voting public at the voting booth? This claim doesn’t make any sense. It’s weird conspiratorial thinking. EDIT: Yes, people. I’m familiar with Fox News and the concept of campaign donations. However, Fox News’ prime time viewership is around 0.5% of the US population and the average size of presidential campaign contributions is well under $100. Claiming that elections are decided by a shadowy cabal of elite investors who trick unwitting voters into voting against their self interests is the election equivalent of claiming anyone who disagrees with you online is a bot or a shill.
  • malermeister 3y ago
    You need immense financial resources to win elections in the US. To get those, you need the support of elite investors. This is why other countries legally cap election campaign spending.
    • bluGill 3y ago
      This is why iowa has the first caucus. As a small state you need much less money to reach everyone and a win will get you attention and money to target other states. as an Iowan I hate it as so many caucus only for the strawpoll.
  • pydry 3y ago
    Have you heard of Fox News? It's a TV channel that runs completely fair and balanced news. Anybody who says otherwise is a weird conspiracy theorist. /s Those elite investors can run large scale propaganda campaigns via the media that they own to sway voters from candidate A to candidate B. Their preference is to cut candidate C (the kind that likes stuff like public housing, single payer healthcare, reducing military spending) out of the political system at a low level and let voters fight over A and B at the highest levels (e.g. president) safe in the knowledge that A and B both have billionaire best interests at heart and that voters really feel like they're getting a choice. Which, of course, they are not: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/voterspolicies.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/voterspolicies.pdf
    • ejb999 3y ago
      what is california's excuse for not solving the problem? non-republicans control everything and have for decades - and yet the problem remains. I guess it is much easier to just blame 'someone else', rather than solve the problem?
      • alistairSH 3y ago
        Except that’s not actually true. While overall California leans Democratic, there are substantial pockets of Republicans in the north and in the central valley.
  • pm90 3y ago
    Political campaigns today are decided by advertising budgets. It isn’t conspiratorial to think that the people funding these media campaigns would want something in return.
    • nradov 3y ago
      Advertising helps but it's not decisive. In the 2016 Presidential campaign, Clinton spent far more than Trump on advertising but she still lost. Savvy politicians have figured out how to leverage grass roots social media campaigns at very low cost.
  • wolfram74 3y ago
    One way the super wealthy can over whelm the intent of voters is through emphasis of information. It doesn't matter if candidate A supports 2 or 3 things most people like, if they also support or symbolize something they hate. By emphasizing a less important true thing through disproportionate marketing budgets, you can decrease the chances of people voting in favor of their own interests.
    • Wytwwww 3y ago
      I'm sure most homeowners (especially those owning multiple properties but not even remotely close to being "super wealthy") would gladly vote against their interest as long as lobbyists stopped trying to influence public opinion...
  • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    Any weirder than the idea that, having managed to eventually buy my own home, I secretly want to go live in section 8?
    • grugagag 3y ago
      Why is that?
  • yunwal 3y ago
    The problem is that getting to run for president requires a constant stream of money throughout your entire political career (or you need to have your own funds to contribute). This acts as a filter for any candidates that take anti-investor stances.
    • Wytwwww 3y ago
      Because most "normal" homeowners or those who own a couple of properties would be extremely happy to vote for policies which would potentially reduce their equity...
  • nickpinkston 3y ago
    It's actually well established in the research. In the below article, it summarizes the issue by saying: "Basically, average citizens only get what they want if economic elites or interests groups also want it." https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...
• andyjohnson0 3y ago
  > the program is perfectly palatable to voters. [...] The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing, because it reduces the value of their property investments. I'm not sure that's largely true. I suspect that many property-owning voters are okay with the concept of public housing, but are less ken on the actuality that building public housing increases the supply of housing which reduces the value of their property. There's also the weird conservative thinking that public housing provision somehow amounts to people getting "something for nothing".
  • consp 3y ago
    > getting "something for nothing" With renting, you never get anything. You just are allowed to live there while you pay.
  • pydry 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • ejb999 3y ago
      It is almost comical how you want to blame those evil 'conservatives' for this - I guess that makes it easy for democrats to have excuses about why they haven't solved the problem in places where they 100% control the statehouse and legislature and the purse strings. If liberals/democrats were truly in favor of public housing, then places like California would have a surplus of housing options available for everyone - or are you somehow suggesting that even though conservatives that cannot even come close to winning an election in CA, that they still somehow control all the levers of public policy?
      • pydry 3y ago
        I thought I made it clear that Democrats were just as much a part of the problem as Republicans. It's sad that American minds are so addled by their sports-team ("If you're not conservative you must be democrat!") politics that they literally can't see perceive the outside of it. You think that Democrats don't need a powerful media propaganda machine on their side? That they don't need campaign financing? That the billionaires who own them don't own property?
• thworp 3y ago
  > The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing, because it reduces the value of their property investments. Extra supply reduces the price of existing supply. While this is obviously correct, you completely ignored that all owners of housing have the same incentives. "All homeowners" is a much more consequential demographic, especially in local elections. More than that, these people aren't just against public housing, they are against any housing being built. It's so tiresome when people selectively ignore basic facts in order to pin the blame on their favourite scapegoats.
• Workaccount2 3y ago
  >The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing So pretty much anyone who owns property? It's not like homeowners are fighting to have new apartments built in their neighborhood. It's very well known that even the most bleeding heart liberal areas still have insane NIMBY problems. The blunt truth is that everyone who invested in a home in popular markets (read: a regular everyday metro homeowner) is going to have to take a big hit on the largest investment most of them will ever make in their life. This intrinsically makes it very unpopular on the whole. It's not some shadowy organization pulling strings behind the scenes. It's just about everyone who pays a mortgage and votes. Just read a housing expansion approval measure through a homeowners eyes: "Do you approve a measure to lower your home's sale price by 10-20% in order to allow people who earn less than you to move into the area? To grow classroom sizes and increase traffic?" It's like asking people to volunteer to have needles stuck in their eyes. What is the upside for them?
  • eszed 3y ago
    "Lower your home's sale price by 10% or 20%" is bad framing. For one thing, it's speculative: there's no way to tease any particular nearby building project's effect out of the thousands of other factors (most of them orders of magnitude more significant - like local and temporal macro-economic conditions) that effect home prices. For another, it ignores potential positive effects. If new building improves local economic conditions, then your home's price (still speculatively, mind you) could equally as well be increased. (With relaxed zoning you might hit the lottery, and find that your lot is worth building an apartment on, and never have to work again!) Focusing entirely on potential negatives is unfair argumentation. Even apart from price, this approach places emphasis on (potentially) negative second-order ("traffic"), while ignoring (potential) positive second-order effects. In my case I'd straight up trade a 20% decrease in my homes sale price in twenty years (I'd still come out $$ ahead) for twenty years of living near a re-vitalised (instead of currently derelict) commercial strip. I don't think it'd work out that way: I think living walking distance from, say, a nice coffee shop, pub, grocery store, and cinema (those buildings already exist, by the way, they just need to re-open, which can only happen if more people are nearby) would increase my home's eventual value. That's speculation, too, but equally worthy of consideration as the negative cases.