Discussion of this Ebert essay is spreading around the internets because that is what the internets do, and the trope I’m hearing most regularly is the old canard of “well poor people are willing to support policy positions that benefit rich people because they think they might get rich some day.”
This is crap and has been crap for a very long time: it rests on the assumption that poor people are stupid and don’t realize how unlikely they are to become rich. I talk to these sorts of people frequently, and I think poor people who vote for policies that benefit rich people generally know exactly how unlikely they are to become rich. That’s not why these people support [insert policy here that screws them and helps rich people].
Instead, I think it’s generally because the elites who want these policies enacted have very successfully communicated their ideas in terms of basic fairness. “It’s not fair that I worked hard for all this money and when I die I have to pay estate taxes and my children won’t get everything they deserve.” “It’s not fair that my company has to pay more tax than an equivalent company in Somewhere Else.” “It’s not fair that I should pay a higher income tax rate than someone else just because I make more money.” “It’s not fair that you should be forced to buy health insurance if you don’t want to.”
That these positions are frequently disingenuous is besides the point: the point was to make these terribly unfair policies appear fair, because the voters who come out to support them really do value the concept of fairness more often than not, and if you can demonstrate that a policy they support is basically not fair then gradually they will change their minds.1 When liberals natter about how non-rich conservative voters are voting against their interest because of some cynical hope that one day they’ll benefit from it, all they’re doing is engaging in cariacature, mostly because it’s satisfying to portray political opponents as idiots2 but ultimately it just feels like an excuse: if you want to get people to endorse policies that are truly egalitarian rather than ones that only pretend to be that, you have to put in the groundwork.
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See also the Review published last year that led into the increase in the threshold for the British Tuition fee and the horrible economic furore that this will bring up.
Looking up the website, you’ll find that Lord Browne’s Spending Review is subtly phrased in order to market the idea of paying £9000 a year for three years as the very fairest thing anyone could do for rich OR poor students, while constantly adding that the alternative put up by Vince Cable – a Graduate Tax – is inherently unfair down to its core. Where it should list proofs of this unfairness, Browne & co.’s report puts the basic equivalent of “Because We Say It Is”.
So, now we have it that most British Tuition Fees after 2012 will be paid by the state after no graduate is able to pay them back in 15 years. And the British economy will tumble, very fairly, into a well.
I don’t think poor people are stupid.
I think PEOPLE are stupid.
This makes sense. “The government is taking MY money!” is sound bitier than “Because they use lots of public services and pay laughably few taxes, the wealthy are stealing YOUR money.”
Don’t forget the addendum.
If it benefits poor minorities, chances are the white poor will vote it down order to make sure the blacks/Hispanics/Asians don’t get the benefits, even if the whites would get it too.
Phrasing isn’t everything, of course. There are those who just refuse to see the elephant in the room and are a-OK with something akin to a police state. See the 29%’s who were satisfied with Bush’s presidency.
The fairness thing is insightful, but I think there are a lot of factors (and yes, stupidity is one of them, and greed is another). Actually, I think the “fairness” thing and the “what if I was rich someday” thing are two sides of the same coin–they’re both about projecting your own mindset into that of the wealthy, it just boils down to whether you choose to see that in a positive or negative light. Empathy or envy.
I’d like to propose another possible reason: thinking about politics is hard, stressful, and inflicts a certain amount of psychic damage no matter what side you’re on, because it’s about stuff you can’t directly control. The more you learn, the more you get involved, and the more you get involved, the more you learn. It’s hard to duck in and out, or take a break from caring about politics.
I think a lot of people know this, and choose to remain ignorant for that reason. They pick whatever side is most convenient, and stick to it emotionally, avoiding facts that might challenge their viewpoint. And it’s not an absolutist thing–you can get a *little* into politics and then decide that it’s time to close your mind off. It’s not even a bad thing–at a certain point you have to make up your mind, right? But I think there are people out there committed to certain views–maybe it’s gun control, maybe it’s abortion, maybe it’s the economic stuff Ron Paul talks about, maybe it’s fear of Muslims, maybe it’s not liking the fact that the President is black–and who are so passionate about that particular point that they’re willing to swallow all the rest of the stuff that goes along with being a Republican, even if they might otherwise have different views. Abortion, in particular, I think, is something that’s drawn a lot of people who might otherwise find our current economic policies unfair towards the right. They want abortion to be outlawed, so they’ll support the team who says they want to do so in everything else, even if those policies hurt them.
People like to side with the winners and they feel that the rich are the winners. Poor people might not believe that they’ll ever get rich, but it’s human nature to want to feel like a part of the winning team.
Because when those with the bankrolls control most of the information the average person gets, the average person does not get educated that they are being mugged, year after year.
“This is crap … it rests on the assumption that poor people are stupid … poor people who vote for policies that benefit rich people … because the elites who want these policies enacted have very successfully communicated their ideas in terms of basic fairness.”
But this is just another way of saying these voters are stupid. All you’ve done is redefined the nature of their stupidity from “greedy and stupid” to “gullible and stupid”. Not that much of an improvement, I’d say, and it misses an essential point. Most conservative voters vote that way not because of any notion of fairness, but because the “elites” have harnessed the economic policies that benefit them to a whole raft of social policies that pander to the vicious minds of the conservative voter. Check out the comments section of the Daily Telegraph (or any other Tory website) if you don’t believe me.
Incidentally, I don’t believe most people change their positions because they are gradually convinced that gay marriage or whatever is fair. They just die off and the survivors change their ways because they no longer can shelter among a large group of like-minded bigots.
Support for gay marriage has increased among 60+ voters even more quickly than it has among twentysomethings in the last several years. It doesn’t seem likely that ‘liberal social positions’ is likely to extend one’s lifespan, so there must be some changing-of-minds going on in that cohort.
I suppport equality for women even though I’m male. I support equality for gays even though I’m straight. I support equality for minorities even though I’m white. Arguably, I’m therefore supporting policies that don’t specifically benefit me because I think that they’re right, not fair.
Lindsey: in “the last several years” a lot of people who used to be 60- became 60+. You’re seeing people getting displaced, not converted.
And taken on it’s own, rate of change isn’t a meaningful marker anyway. Of course support for gay marriage isn’t increasing much among twenty-somethings: they virtually all support it already.
@Doc Green: that’s not the whole story. At the age of 60, 20 years ago, my mother believed that homosexuality was wrong. Within the last 10-15 years she has undergone a complete political/social 180, and she is as firmly a supporter of gay rights, gay marriage, and other “liberal social positions” today at 80 as she was against them 20 years ago at 60.
Which is anecdata, true. But at least it shows that there is some conversion going on, and it may be just as illustrative of a larger trend as the notion that the only reason the 60+ age group is becoming more socially liberal is because the liberal boomers are ageing up into it.
The whole “lotto dream” effect, which was tied to some polls which basically show people overestimating their financial situaiton in the future is just a specific case of future bias. The thing that leads to procrastination, and deep credit card debt, and make it hard to lose weight, etc … is all sort of tied to the concept. Looking in the long term, you assume you are going to do the right thing, buckle down, work hard, and things will work out. In the moment however, we don’t normally do that. They’ve done studies on it (give someone a netflix list. Pick three movies they want to see, one they have to see now, one in a week, one in a month. While they pick the movies they “should” see, like Oscar winners, or artistically challenging, politically important, etc movies… the ones they pick to watch immediately are more likely to be an action blockbuster.)
The sort of mindset leads to assuming your future self is going to be better off, even if your present self never gets around to doing what needs to be done to do so. (And of course, it doesn’t help that the whole Ameican Dream, pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality convinces people that with hard work and elbow grease, instead of knowing the right people and getting the right opportunities, can lead to you bettering your lot in life.)
So, part of it is that people assume that they are going to be the statistical outliers becuase wanting it more than the other guy means you’ll get it (also, casinos and the lotto exist entirely because of this); part is that people have bought into the bootstrap idea, and thus assume that the rich deserve to be rich, and the poor deserve to be poor, which ties into the fairness thing; and part of it is the framing … they don’t get much money and they do see some of it going to the government, and so they begrudge the people who get that money, don’t notice the benefits they actually get out of it, and see the rich not taking any money. The problem in the last case is that they don’t see “not having to pay taxes” as equivalent to “recieving money that came from taxes” even if the tax breaks are much bigger than the small ammount of money someone gets from employment insurance.
Okay, that’s generous of you — you’ll grant that poor people aren’t completely stupid, just stupid enough to believe conservatives’ devious arguments. Would it really be so hard to further grant that we ourselves believe our devious arguments? I know it’s easier to argue against people who are being “disingenuous”, since that’s an automatic point against them, but is there any actual reason to assume we don’t mean what we say?
1. Never underestimate the dumbifying powers of Jebus, their lord and savior.
2. Never underestimate the dumbifying power of being told what you want to hear.
Mix the two, and you keep getting people elected who couldn’t trust to mow your lawn.
I don’t know if this is different in Canada, but in the US, 15-20% of the electorate believe they are in the top 1% economically. This is one of the reasons that leaders of the Democratic party have been trying for years to express tax proposals in specific $ numbers instead of “top 1%”.