The baffling (to liberals) fact that a large minority of working-class white people vote for conservative candidates is explained by psychological dispositions that override their narrow economic interests.
My hypothesis would be: religion; distrust of large government; white self-interest. Even if that gets the explanation a bit wrong, it shouldn’t be “baffling” or require an appeal to personality types.
It’s almost more interesting to ask, what sort of person does find the existence of working-class conservatism baffling? I’m going to guess and say there are at least two types, “naive people” and “activist believers”. The naive ones are those who don’t understand it because they are genuinely clueless about something, e.g. that schemes of economic “redistribution” are themselves an opportunity for favoritism. I think of the “activist believers” as people who do know reality (whether or not they are working-class themselves) but who for specific reasons think it’s politically obvious that left is better than right for the working class. Perhaps activism is not the best label here, given the word’s frequent connotation of flakiness, fanaticism, and chosen involvement in a cause. I’m thinking more of organized collective self-interest—the people who lead, and the people who participate.
In fact, it strikes me that the perception of politics as nothing but the expression of mindless tribal affiliation is itself an intellectual blind spot, present in LW’s circle of ideas but also in many other places (and once again, one could ask the sociological question, who has this blind spot and why). Politics is also about alliances and negotiations, it’s about your group having a seat at the table when decisions that affect its future are made. Even a household or a relationship can have a “politics”.
And even a politics that expresses nothing but tribal self-interest doesn’t have to be mindless. I see an “altruist” or “universalist” bias here, which assumes that politics is fundamentally about working out what’s best for everyone, as opposed to just working out what’s best for your tribe in a large and often hostile world, where there are powers from outside the tribe who also have political representatives.
The left would like to fleece the rich in favor of the poor, but the rich are hard to fleece: are politically organized, have influence in government, can lobby, can hide money, etc. So in practice they do the next best thing: fleece the middle class in favor of the poor: that’s where a lot of money is too, and it’s easier to get it. That some working middle class types aren’t fond of this should surprise no one.
There are cultural issues in the south, too.
I don’t think voting patterns are that weird, I think the puzzlement here isn’t genuine puzzlement, but a kind of back-patting: “but … we are so great …”
I think this was adequately covered in the posts about “zebra status”, each class of society signalling they are not the one under. The working class signalling they are not the welfare class etc.
Prediction: redistributive policies to people who actually have a blue-collar job would find huge popular support as long as they are different in kind, not just numbers. Because fiddling with income thresholds does not given a strong message. But figure out something a working person needs and a not working one not so much. Say, free kindergarten? I think things like this would be hugely popular.
The trick of of the popularity of European welfare states is that they do not see themselves as charities to help the the poorest poor but services providers for basically but the richest few.
Apparently it was more or less a conscious choice in America that the welfare state looks after only the neediest and purposefully leaves out the working and middle classes e.g. Medicare / Medicaid which a 21 years old factory worker at GM has little reasons to support, he will not get anything out of them for decades.
This choice—to set up the welfare state as a charity for the unusually needy, not a service provider for all, has doomed its popularity. After all, who likes to think they are unusually needy?
Working class conservatism I’d hard-.er to understand than upper class conservatism, precisely because it is harder to understand than in terms of rational self interest.
Is that a fact? Is it true everywhere? Welfare systems are generally intended to tide people of speaks of unemployment. You write as though the workers never claim, and the claimants never work.
Intended, maybe, but in fact they create a perpetual underclass. And AFAIK true in many countries and often ethnically, in the US welfare is associated with blacks in Hungary or Romania with Roma people in the UK with Pakistanis etc. of course part of this perception is the racism of the non-welfare-recipient ethnic majority, but the whole point is that they can only afford to be racists about welfare because they see welfare recipients as a distinct class from themselves.
Do not confuse welfare with unemployment insurance. AFAIK the majority of it is child-related welfare. That, of course, is a reason why it tends to be encoded in racist terms, “Those Xs breed like rabbits to get government money!” but the point is, it is not really temporary if it is child related.
Intended, maybe, but in fact they create a perpetual underclass
Is that a fact? Is it true everywhere?
In any case, its not very relevant to the original point. Its not very much in the interests of working poor to oppose welfare to spite the non working poor,
My hypothesis would be: religion; distrust of large government; white self-interest. Even if that gets the explanation a bit wrong, it shouldn’t be “baffling” or require an appeal to personality types.
It’s almost more interesting to ask, what sort of person does find the existence of working-class conservatism baffling? I’m going to guess and say there are at least two types, “naive people” and “activist believers”. The naive ones are those who don’t understand it because they are genuinely clueless about something, e.g. that schemes of economic “redistribution” are themselves an opportunity for favoritism. I think of the “activist believers” as people who do know reality (whether or not they are working-class themselves) but who for specific reasons think it’s politically obvious that left is better than right for the working class. Perhaps activism is not the best label here, given the word’s frequent connotation of flakiness, fanaticism, and chosen involvement in a cause. I’m thinking more of organized collective self-interest—the people who lead, and the people who participate.
In fact, it strikes me that the perception of politics as nothing but the expression of mindless tribal affiliation is itself an intellectual blind spot, present in LW’s circle of ideas but also in many other places (and once again, one could ask the sociological question, who has this blind spot and why). Politics is also about alliances and negotiations, it’s about your group having a seat at the table when decisions that affect its future are made. Even a household or a relationship can have a “politics”.
And even a politics that expresses nothing but tribal self-interest doesn’t have to be mindless. I see an “altruist” or “universalist” bias here, which assumes that politics is fundamentally about working out what’s best for everyone, as opposed to just working out what’s best for your tribe in a large and often hostile world, where there are powers from outside the tribe who also have political representatives.
The caricature in the US:
The left would like to fleece the rich in favor of the poor, but the rich are hard to fleece: are politically organized, have influence in government, can lobby, can hide money, etc. So in practice they do the next best thing: fleece the middle class in favor of the poor: that’s where a lot of money is too, and it’s easier to get it. That some working middle class types aren’t fond of this should surprise no one.
There are cultural issues in the south, too.
I don’t think voting patterns are that weird, I think the puzzlement here isn’t genuine puzzlement, but a kind of back-patting: “but … we are so great …”
This is a caricature.
I think this was adequately covered in the posts about “zebra status”, each class of society signalling they are not the one under. The working class signalling they are not the welfare class etc.
Prediction: redistributive policies to people who actually have a blue-collar job would find huge popular support as long as they are different in kind, not just numbers. Because fiddling with income thresholds does not given a strong message. But figure out something a working person needs and a not working one not so much. Say, free kindergarten? I think things like this would be hugely popular.
The trick of of the popularity of European welfare states is that they do not see themselves as charities to help the the poorest poor but services providers for basically but the richest few.
Apparently it was more or less a conscious choice in America that the welfare state looks after only the neediest and purposefully leaves out the working and middle classes e.g. Medicare / Medicaid which a 21 years old factory worker at GM has little reasons to support, he will not get anything out of them for decades.
This choice—to set up the welfare state as a charity for the unusually needy, not a service provider for all, has doomed its popularity. After all, who likes to think they are unusually needy?
Working class conservatism I’d hard-.er to understand than upper class conservatism, precisely because it is harder to understand than in terms of rational self interest.
To put it simply, the welfare goes to the class under the working class, the welfare class. They get little out of it.
Is that a fact? Is it true everywhere? Welfare systems are generally intended to tide people of speaks of unemployment. You write as though the workers never claim, and the claimants never work.
Intended, maybe, but in fact they create a perpetual underclass. And AFAIK true in many countries and often ethnically, in the US welfare is associated with blacks in Hungary or Romania with Roma people in the UK with Pakistanis etc. of course part of this perception is the racism of the non-welfare-recipient ethnic majority, but the whole point is that they can only afford to be racists about welfare because they see welfare recipients as a distinct class from themselves.
Do not confuse welfare with unemployment insurance. AFAIK the majority of it is child-related welfare. That, of course, is a reason why it tends to be encoded in racist terms, “Those Xs breed like rabbits to get government money!” but the point is, it is not really temporary if it is child related.
Is that a fact? Is it true everywhere?
In any case, its not very relevant to the original point. Its not very much in the interests of working poor to oppose welfare to spite the non working poor,