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Did you miss this statement "The single biggest donor to political campaigns just now is Tom Steyer, a Democrat with a passion for climate change."? If all the

Did you miss this statement "The single biggest donor to political campaigns just now is Tom Steyer, a Democrat with a passion for climate change."? If all the wealthy people had the same goals and views, then you'd be in trouble, but as they having competing ideals, what it seems America ends up with is the wealthy trying to outspend each other to gain political favour, which, according to the article, they have been unsuccessful at doing. The 99.09% may not have the money, but they've got the vote, they've got brains, creativity, and the persuasive effect of numbers. The question, what should those capabilities be pointed at resolving? Blame the rich may be popular right now, and I'm all for a more equal society, particularly bringing up the income of the lowest 50%, but I doubt a heaping tablespoon of sarcasm is going to get us there.

wpietri 12y ago
Honestly, sarcasm and ridicule are one of the best weapons people have against status quos. Humor cuts through bullshit like no amount of serious debate can. I don't think it's a coincidence that people like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have had such success in an age of rapidly increasing inequality.
- wturner 12y ago
  I look at sarcasm and ridicule as mechanisms to deal with feelings of powerlessness. Jon Stewert and Stephen Colbert used them as 'weapons' on their own audiences to build their own careers and to garner advertising revenue for the companies who employed them.
marcusgarvey 12y ago
>If all the wealthy people had the same goals and views, then you'd be in trouble One must of course speak in generalities but it seems obvious they have at least one goal in common: to remain wealthy & empowered, come what may. Which of course has implications for which public policies succeed and which fail As for your statement that the wealthy have not gained political favor -- not true: "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." http://m.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 http://m.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
- enoch_r 12y ago
  > One must of course speak in generalities but it seems obvious they have at least one goal in common: to remain wealthy & empowered, come what may. Which of course has implications for which public policies succeed and which fail. The self-interested voter hypothesis has been examined empirically quite a bit and the lack of evidence for it is pretty surprising. To avoid the risk of cherry-picking, let's look at a few papers that support your assertion, and look at how they describe the literature. In the first paper, "Caught in the Draft: Vietnam Draft Lottery Status and Political Attitudes,"[1] the authors found that eligibility for the Vietnam draft had a significant and quite strong effect on political opinions. Here's how the authors describe previous research on self-interest and public opinion: > Self-interest effects have been notoriously elusive in public opinion research. [...] "Longino (1973) found more negative attitudes toward the war among those with low lottery numbers, but not to a statistically significant extent (reaffirmed by Bergen’s (2009) reanalysis), while Aspler (1972) found more disapproval of the draft. Yet,civilian attitudes toward (or related to) the war in Vietnam have been shown to be at best weakly related to self-interest indicators whether one has a family member or friend serving in Vietnam (Lau, Brown,and Sears 1978, Mueller 1973). Indeed, Lau, Brown, and Sears (1978) find “no evidence that the self-interested had distinctly self-serving attitudes toward the war” (p.479). Here's another paper, titled "A Reconsideration of Self-Interest in American Public Opinion,"[2] let's quote their introduction: > A fairly extensive body of research has investigated the weight that self-interested concerns carry in defining the opinions that citizens come to adopt (e.g. Bobo and Kluegel 1993; Feldman 1982; Green and Gerkin 1989; Kinder and Kiewiet 1981; Lau, Brown, and Sears 1978; Sears, Hensler, and Speer 1979; Sears, Lau, Tyler, and Allen 1980; Sears and Citrin 1982; Sears, Huddy, and Shaffer 1986; Tyler 1990). Over and over in these studies the same conclusion emerges: the evidence for self-interest effects is, in most cases, weak at best. In an early review of this literature Lau and his colleagues concluded that "[i]n all these cases, self-interest, defined in terms of real or potential impact of a policy issue upon the individual's personal life, had only minor effects on policy attitudes and upon behavior connected with them" (Lau, Brown, and Sears 1978, 479). More recent reviews have reached similar judgments (e.g. Citrin and Green 1990; Kinder and Sears 1983; Sears and Funk 1990). They buck the trend of looking at material self-interest to look instead at subjective self-interest--"asking respondents to indicate whether the policy would have (national health care, school funding) or has had (affirmative action) either positive or negative consequences for themselves personally," and find a strong effect on opinion. (Given what we know about the human tendency to deny all costs of a favored policy, or deny all benefits of an unfavored policy, I fear that this is a pretty thorny definition of self-interest.) A third paper, "Self-Interest and Public Opinion Towards Smoking Restrictions and Cigarette Taxes,"[3] finds that nonsmokers are "far more enthusiastic about tightening smoking restrictions and increasing cigarette taxes than smokers, particularly heavy smokers." Unfortunately I can't find an ungated version, but here's their abstract: > A burgeoning literature suggests that self-interest has little influence on policy preferences. In sharp contrast are the findings discussed in this paper. [...] We conclude by discussing several explanations for the apparent discrepancy between these results and the pattern of null findings characteristic of the self-interest literature. So, three papers, all of which support your claim that political opinions are self-interested. To describe the existing evidence, they use words like "notoriously elusive," "weak at best," and "pattern of null findings." You can look through the literature yourself but what "seems obvious" has been studied quite a bit, and the evidence that our intuition is correct has been surprisingly sparse. [1] http://www.columbia.edu/~rse14/vietnam_rev_Feb2010.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/~rse14/vietnam_rev_Feb2010.pdf [2] http://www.electionstudies.org/resources/papers/documents/nes010876.pdf http://www.electionstudies.org/resources/papers/documents/ne... [3] http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/1/1.short http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/1/1.short
danieltillett 12y ago
I was not trying to be sarcastic here. I was summarising the articles defence of the 0.01%. It really is a subtle and powerful attack on the mega wealthy thinly disguised as a defence.

wpietri 12y ago

Honestly, sarcasm and ridicule are one of the best weapons people have against status quos. Humor cuts through bullshit like no amount of serious debate can. I don't think it's a coincidence that people like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have had such success in an age of rapidly increasing inequality.

wturner 12y ago
I look at sarcasm and ridicule as mechanisms to deal with feelings of powerlessness. Jon Stewert and Stephen Colbert used them as 'weapons' on their own audiences to build their own careers and to garner advertising revenue for the companies who employed them.

marcusgarvey 12y ago

>If all the wealthy people had the same goals and views, then you'd be in trouble One must of course speak in generalities but it seems obvious they have at least one goal in common: to remain wealthy & empowered, come what may. Which of course has implications for which public policies succeed and which fail As for your statement that the wealthy have not gained political favor -- not true: "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence." http://m.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 http://m.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

enoch_r 12y ago
> One must of course speak in generalities but it seems obvious they have at least one goal in common: to remain wealthy & empowered, come what may. Which of course has implications for which public policies succeed and which fail. The self-interested voter hypothesis has been examined empirically quite a bit and the lack of evidence for it is pretty surprising. To avoid the risk of cherry-picking, let's look at a few papers that support your assertion, and look at how they describe the literature. In the first paper, "Caught in the Draft: Vietnam Draft Lottery Status and Political Attitudes,"[1] the authors found that eligibility for the Vietnam draft had a significant and quite strong effect on political opinions. Here's how the authors describe previous research on self-interest and public opinion: > Self-interest effects have been notoriously elusive in public opinion research. [...] "Longino (1973) found more negative attitudes toward the war among those with low lottery numbers, but not to a statistically significant extent (reaffirmed by Bergen’s (2009) reanalysis), while Aspler (1972) found more disapproval of the draft. Yet,civilian attitudes toward (or related to) the war in Vietnam have been shown to be at best weakly related to self-interest indicators whether one has a family member or friend serving in Vietnam (Lau, Brown,and Sears 1978, Mueller 1973). Indeed, Lau, Brown, and Sears (1978) find “no evidence that the self-interested had distinctly self-serving attitudes toward the war” (p.479). Here's another paper, titled "A Reconsideration of Self-Interest in American Public Opinion,"[2] let's quote their introduction: > A fairly extensive body of research has investigated the weight that self-interested concerns carry in defining the opinions that citizens come to adopt (e.g. Bobo and Kluegel 1993; Feldman 1982; Green and Gerkin 1989; Kinder and Kiewiet 1981; Lau, Brown, and Sears 1978; Sears, Hensler, and Speer 1979; Sears, Lau, Tyler, and Allen 1980; Sears and Citrin 1982; Sears, Huddy, and Shaffer 1986; Tyler 1990). Over and over in these studies the same conclusion emerges: the evidence for self-interest effects is, in most cases, weak at best. In an early review of this literature Lau and his colleagues concluded that "[i]n all these cases, self-interest, defined in terms of real or potential impact of a policy issue upon the individual's personal life, had only minor effects on policy attitudes and upon behavior connected with them" (Lau, Brown, and Sears 1978, 479). More recent reviews have reached similar judgments (e.g. Citrin and Green 1990; Kinder and Sears 1983; Sears and Funk 1990). They buck the trend of looking at material self-interest to look instead at subjective self-interest--"asking respondents to indicate whether the policy would have (national health care, school funding) or has had (affirmative action) either positive or negative consequences for themselves personally," and find a strong effect on opinion. (Given what we know about the human tendency to deny all costs of a favored policy, or deny all benefits of an unfavored policy, I fear that this is a pretty thorny definition of self-interest.) A third paper, "Self-Interest and Public Opinion Towards Smoking Restrictions and Cigarette Taxes,"[3] finds that nonsmokers are "far more enthusiastic about tightening smoking restrictions and increasing cigarette taxes than smokers, particularly heavy smokers." Unfortunately I can't find an ungated version, but here's their abstract: > A burgeoning literature suggests that self-interest has little influence on policy preferences. In sharp contrast are the findings discussed in this paper. [...] We conclude by discussing several explanations for the apparent discrepancy between these results and the pattern of null findings characteristic of the self-interest literature. So, three papers, all of which support your claim that political opinions are self-interested. To describe the existing evidence, they use words like "notoriously elusive," "weak at best," and "pattern of null findings." You can look through the literature yourself but what "seems obvious" has been studied quite a bit, and the evidence that our intuition is correct has been surprisingly sparse. [1] http://www.columbia.edu/~rse14/vietnam_rev_Feb2010.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/~rse14/vietnam_rev_Feb2010.pdf [2] http://www.electionstudies.org/resources/papers/documents/nes010876.pdf http://www.electionstudies.org/resources/papers/documents/ne... [3] http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/1/1.short http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/1/1.short

danieltillett 12y ago

I was not trying to be sarcastic here. I was summarising the articles defence of the 0.01%. It really is a subtle and powerful attack on the mega wealthy thinly disguised as a defence.