# Asking middle class (and lower) Dopers why they vote Republican. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 12, 2010, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402 "2010-11-12T06:56:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2010, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/101 "2010-11-14T22:33:14Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Not even remotely close. For one thing, you only need to buy insurance if you drive on _public_ roads. If you’re driving your own truck on your own land, you don’t need insurance. You don’t even need a driver’s license or registration. > > Second, when driving on public roads the only insurance required is liability insurance. In other words, you need to be insured so that you can pay for the damage you cause to _other_ people. Collision insurance to protect the value of your own vehicle is totally optional. > > Finally, in many place you can have the requirement for insurance waived if you can show that you have the ability to pay reasonable damages yourself. > > If you want a real analogy with public health insurance, imagine car insurance like this: > > 1. Everyone is forced to buy it. > 2. The government sets the rules for what is covered and what isn’t. > 3. The insurance must cover not only catastrophes (collisions), but also routine maintenance, inspections, and all new parts and service required to keep the car running long past its natural lifetime. > > Imagine a system like that. Imagine that every time you needed tires, or a tune-up, or had an engine failure, you had a right to free service. You’d have people taking their cars in for free service every time they heard a new squeak or rattle. And auto service stations would love that, since the insurance companies are paying for it. > > To carry the analogy further, what about the people who are currently uninsured because they’re driving old beaters that are falling apart, so private maintenance insurance is too expensive for them? So the government announces that it will mandate that every car on the road be covered, even if that car is a wreck blowing blue smoke and requiring almost a ground-up rebuild to keep it running. > > In a system like that, can you imagine how expensive insurance would be? If auto service stations were paid by insurance companies, where would your incentive be to keep costs down and to take care of your car? > > In a system like that, auto repair places would have every incentive to pad the bill, since the end customer doesn’t care. But the insurance companies have an incentive to keep costs down. Therefore, they would require large amounts of diagnostic testing and paperwork to prove that the work is necessary. Administration costs skyrocket. > > The car insurance analogy works once you put in assumptions to make it look more like the health insurance market. And once you do, it becomes clear just how screwed up that idea is. > > I wish health insurance were like car insurance. Such insurance would protect you from catastrophe, but would require that you pay for your own routine health care. It would have high deductibles, so that insurance companies only need to be involved in the transaction between doctor and patient for severe or chronic cases. It would retain the inherent cost control by putting the burden for payment on the patient for routine matters, and give the patient freedom to seek out any doctor they chose while under the insurance cap. > > Would you go for a system like that? Severe or chronic/ Does that include those associated with old age. I would start a policy and call it Medicare. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/102 "2010-11-15T03:45:01Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Nixon would be better than most of the prominent Republicans around today, Watergate and his pasty, sweaty paranoia notwithstanding. Not just Nixon, whose politics were to the left of the majority of the Democrats currently in Congress and Barack Obama, but the Patron Saint of the Republican Party. [This video sums it up](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXu-CB1XbO4) - don’t worry, the point is made in the first 30 seconds so the Liberal cooties will wash off easily. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/103 "2010-11-15T14:29:27Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Appeals to authority are so cute. > [@Stoid](#): > > Sam: please define what people in this forum are doing when they “cite”. Explain your answer. I’m not **Sam Stone** , obviously, but since this question hasn’t been addressed, and it evidences a fairly basic confusion between the process of citing authority and invoking the fallacy of “appeal to authority,” I write to address it. It’s an easy mistake to make, **Stoid**. You assume that since the demand for a cite involves providing the words of an authority to back up the claim made, this is the same as the “appeal to authority” fallacy. It’s not. _Argumentum ad verecundiam_ occurs when you offer your authority as conclusive proof of the proposition because the authority is infallible. “This was a great movie. Gene Siskel said it was. Do you know more about movies than Gene Siskel?” This is an example of an appeal to authority, the fallacy. We are not given any of Siskel’s arguments or his criteria; we merely must accept the conclusion because of Siskel’s expertise in cinema. A cite’s proper purpose is to confirm a factual assertion. Of course, what constitutes a “factual assertion” can blur, especially in areas like economics. And there are times when the authority in question _is_ infallible, at least for the purposes of the discussion. We might disagree on how infallible the Pope is, but since canon law gives him immediate universal legislative power over the whole Catholic Church, it’s not a fallacious appeal to authority to invoke the Pope’s declaration of what Catholic law is as an authoritative definition. The US Supreme Court is not claimed to be infallible, but their pronouncements about the meaning of federal law are likewise conclusive. When you see an argument like this, ask yourself, “Does the cite buttress the factual claim being made by the rhetor? Or am I asked to agree with the claim because of the respect and authority of the author cited?” ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/104 "2010-11-15T15:36:52Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > I asked the question the way I did because I believe the author of [this](http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1289623187&sr=1-1) book is absolutely right. It’s very thoughtfully and intelligently written, not at all hysterical or excessive. > > From the reviews: I got about 30 pages in before putting it back on the shelf as a really stupid book. “Ignorant” and “bigoted” are two of the words that come to mind w/r/t the author. It makes about as much sense as reading Sean Hannity in an effort to understand liberals. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/105 "2010-11-15T15:58:37Z")
By the way – although it’s fair to say I no longer qualify in the economic range **Stoid** lays out, it’s equally true that I once did: even as a VERY poor member of a very poor family, I voted Republican. Why? To put it in terms the Kansas commentator might respect, I didn’t want to “win” a race by hobbling my opponents. I wanted to win the race by running faster than they did. I knew the Democrats wanted to favor me economically, for example, by pushing affirmative action. I wanted no part of it, and (to my high school counselors’ dismay) refused to identify myself as “Hispanic” on college application forms. I felt it was wrong to gain an advantage by anything other than skill and work. The author **Stoid** hypes calls this decision foolish because it cuts against my economic interest. I agree that it did, but not that it was foolish. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/106 "2010-11-15T16:27:59Z")
I apologize most profoundly, **Bricker** , I was unaware of the nobility and idealism of your youth. I had always assumed it was simply the first step in your plan for world domination. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/107 "2010-11-15T16:32:02Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > I apologize most profoundly, **Bricker** , I was unaware of the nobility and idealism of your youth. I had always assumed it was simply the first step in your plan for world domination. The two are not mutually exclusive, are they? ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/108 "2010-11-15T18:44:37Z")
The argument **Idaho** uses - “people who assert a right to anything want a right to everything” - is petty, reactionary, mean-spirited, and meant to distract and derail meaningful debate. I don’t assume he has these qualities, but the people who promote this line of thought sure do. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/109 "2010-11-15T18:50:13Z")
First of all, I want to say that, as a liberal living in a liberal state whose friends are almost all liberals, I’ve found the (serious) responses to this thread very interesting, and thanks to all who posted them. It would be very easy for me to fall into the easy mental narrative of “all those people who vote Republican are just (insert random pejorative)”, and threads like this help fight that. Not, of course, that I don’t think you’re all completely wrong, of course 🙂 > [@IdahoMauleMan](#): > > If politicians have no power to do anything, other than legislate and execute within the basic strict construction of the Constitution, than you have nothing to worry about. Lobbyists, unions and corporations can spend all of the money they want on campaigns and it won’t matter. Because there is nothing that will be coming in return. > > You are treating the symptom instead of the root cause. The root cause is that politicians take your money and spend it, make regulations that restrict your freedoms and choice of trade, and in general act in their own best interests and in the interests of their big-moneyed constituents. I understand the point you’re making. But I have two responses: (1) Sure one can imagine a hypothetical version of the USA in which the power of the government is so strongly circumscribed that there is no longer any point in corporations pulling out their checkbooks and hiring lobbyists, but there is absolutely no way we’re going to get there from here. Even if one assumed that Republicans honestly wanted us to get there (and I’m skeptical of that), it’s not going to happen even if they win every national election for the next 50 years. Therefore, you’re just ignoring a huge problem because you think that it should, theoretically, be fixed. But it isn’t, and won’t be. Even if a wave of massive actual-government-shrinking occurred and the departments of education, HHS, HUD, etc., all got axed, there would be plenty of reason for corporations to want to wield influence. Certainly the Department of Defense spends oodles of money, and fairly few people want to get rid of the FDA. (2) Corporations give huge amounts of money to Republicans. Doesn’t that indicate to you that Republicans are unlikely to move government towards a state in which corporations no longer have any incentive to give money to Republicans? > [@](#): > > You’re not that concerned about signing away the power you currently have, as well as the power of your fellow citizens, to keep their earnings and choices. You’re happy to sign it away. As long as it is to The Chosen One. He will lead us. He will take care of us. He will make everything OK. We’re happy if he has power. Just as long as it’s not those nasty Republicans. Really, was this necessary? ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/110 "2010-11-15T19:43:43Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Not even remotely close. For one thing, you only need to buy insurance if you drive on _public_ roads. If you’re driving your own truck on your own land, you don’t need insurance. You don’t even need a driver’s license or registration. So we can tool around on our driveways without insurance! My argument about the necessity of auto insurance is quelled, floored, annihilated! > [@](#): > > Second, when driving on public roads the only insurance required is liability insurance. In other words, you need to be insured so that you can pay for the damage you cause to _other_ people. Collision insurance to protect the value of your own vehicle is totally optional. Beside the point. I was only arguing that here were two instances of insurance being compelled for the government. Nothing in your post, save for the incredibly weak point about private roads, is relevant to that issue. > [@](#): > > Finally, in many place you can have the requirement for insurance waived if you can show that you have the ability to pay reasonable damages yourself. The law is majestic in its objectivity, forbidding rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges and beg on the streets, and permitting both to waive auto insurance. I’m so impressed. Y’know, if you guys would pay the least bit of attention to coming up with stuff that had something to do with more than 10 percent of the population, I’d be a LOT more impressed. As it is … > [@](#): > > If you want a real analogy with public health insurance, imagine car insurance like this: > > 1. Everyone is forced to buy it. > 2. The government sets the rules for what is covered and what isn’t. > 3. The insurance must cover not only catastrophes (collisions), but also routine maintenance, inspections, and all new parts and service required to keep the car running long past its natural lifetime. > > Imagine a system like that. Imagine that every time you needed tires, or a tune-up, or had an engine failure, you had a right to free service. You’d have people taking their cars in for free service every time they heard a new squeak or rattle. And auto service stations would love that, since the insurance companies are paying for it. > > To carry the analogy further, what about the people who are currently uninsured because they’re driving old beaters that are falling apart, so private maintenance insurance is too expensive for them? So the government announces that it will mandate that every car on the road be covered, even if that car is a wreck blowing blue smoke and requiring almost a ground-up rebuild to keep it running. > > In a system like that, can you imagine how expensive insurance would be? If auto service stations were paid by insurance companies, where would your incentive be to keep costs down and to take care of your car? > > In a system like that, auto repair places would have every incentive to pad the bill, since the end customer doesn’t care. But the insurance companies have an incentive to keep costs down. Therefore, they would require large amounts of diagnostic testing and paperwork to prove that the work is necessary. Administration costs skyrocket. > > The car insurance analogy works once you put in assumptions to make it look more like the health insurance market. And once you do, it becomes clear just how screwed up that idea is. > > I wish health insurance were like car insurance. Such insurance would protect you from catastrophe, but would require that you pay for your own routine health care. It would have high deductibles, so that insurance companies only need to be involved in the transaction between doctor and patient for severe or chronic cases. It would retain the inherent cost control by putting the burden for payment on the patient for routine matters, and give the patient freedom to seek out any doctor they chose while under the insurance cap. > > Would you go for a system like that? So far, you are the only one who has addressed the risk pooling concept I brought up wrt single payer insurance plans. Congratulations, you seem to have realized that by ignoring that point you are ceding it, none of the other conservative posters on this board has done so. Clearly the best way to handle the high expense of medicine is to spread the risk as much as possible in the largest insurnace pool you can. Single payer would do that. Your solution would greatly restrict medical treatment for most middle class people. Mine would make it easier. Mine is more human, more intelligent and more logical. Yours is catastrophic insurance for the rich. Even relatively ordinary medical treatments can still break your average middle class family financially. Once again, you come up with a solution for the upper 10 percent only. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/111 "2010-11-15T19:53:58Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > So far, you are the only one who has addressed the risk pooling concept I brought up wrt single payer insurance plans. Congratulations, you seem to have realized that by ignoring that point you are ceding it, none of the other conservative posters on this board has done so. […] Even relatively ordinary medical treatments can still break your average middle class family financially. Once again, you come up with a solution for the upper 10 percent only. Interesting…have we established that **Sam** _belongs_ to that upper 10 per cent? If not, he’s a fine example of middleclass people whose principles go against their interests - few such people explain their principles so thoroughly. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/112 "2010-11-15T19:59:14Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > Interesting…have we established that **Sam** _belongs_ to that upper 10 per cent? If not, he’s a fine example of middleclass people whose principles go against their interests - few such people explain their principles so thoroughly. Things Sam has posted in the past about his work and his life history leads me to believe he works in a good paying job, has done so for a good while, and inherited money. Won’t go into details, that’s up to him to provide or not provide. So, yah. I’m guessing lower upper class income. Except he is also Canadian, which makes him a guilty bystander, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/113 "2010-11-15T20:21:08Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > No doubt. But then, only those portions of economics upon which both Krugman and Friedman and all the rest agreed could be considered “basic economics”. A slender volume, at best. > > At any rate, dismissing someone’s opinions by alluding to the authority of “basic economics” is facile reasoning without a solid foundation, it can hardly be anything more substantial than “This fellow does not agree with me, therefore he does not understand the essential facts of the matter”. > > Which was the only point I was trying to make with that. Both Krugman and Friedman would agree that restrictive trade policies (e.g., tariffs) could be set in such a way as to make Kansas workers better off. When \*\*IdahoMaulMan \*\*claims the the opposite is true, and says that basic economics supports him, it is clear that he doesn’t understand basic economics as well as he thinks. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/114 "2010-11-15T20:45:38Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > So we can tool around on our driveways without insurance! My argument about the necessity of auto insurance is quelled, floored, annihilated! The point I’m getting at is that the government does not require you to have insurance to protect _yourself_ from harm or from personal financial harm through accident or catastrophe. It only requires that you buy insurance such that you can pay for the harm you do to _others_, which is why it’s only required when you drive on public roads, and why there is no legal requirement to carry collision damage insurance on your own vehicle. Health care insurance is fundamentally different. > [@](#): > > Beside the point. I was only arguing that here were two instances of insurance being compelled for the government. Nothing in your post, save for the incredibly weak point about private roads, is relevant to that issue. The other thing you seem miss is that you are basing your entire equivalence on the idea that by government mandating auto insurance, it creates a large risk pool. But auto insurance is rarely available in group rates. It is purchased personally, and the rates vary based on your own personal driving record. > [@](#): > > Clearly the best way to handle the high expense of medicine is to spread the risk as much as possible in the largest insurnace pool you can. Single payer would do that. Yes, it would. But what you ignore is that risk pooling is only one way to lower health care costs, and universal insurance brings in other big costs, such as the lack of cost containment when all bills are paid by third parties and the explosion of administration costs that occurs when those third parties do try to exert some sort of cost control. It also ignores the cost increase that comes from increasing demand for a relatively fixed resource. If you want to truly contain the cost of medicine, you might at least entertain ideas like expanding the number of doctors and nurses by loosening the control their professional organizations have on educational standards and other requirements that are often set more to limit entry into the market and keep salaries high than for any real job-related need. You might also consider removing some of the FDA’s more onerous regulatory requirements which drives the cost of medical devices and drugs through the roof, and enacting some tort reform to help reduce unnecessary ass-covering diagnostic procedures and liability insurance costs. > [@](#): > > Your solution would greatly restrict medical treatment for most middle class people. Mine would make it easier. Mine is more human, more intelligent and more logical. Yours is catastrophic insurance for the rich. Even relatively ordinary medical treatments can still break your average middle class family financially. Once again, you come up with a solution for the upper 10 percent only. You don’t even know what my plan is, so I’m not sure how you can say that. All I did was point out the correct analogy to car insurance. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/115 "2010-11-15T21:28:03Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Things Sam has posted in the past about his work and his life history leads me to believe he works in a good paying job, has done so for a good while, and inherited money. Won’t go into details, that’s up to him to provide or not provide. So, yah. I’m guessing lower upper class income. Except he is also Canadian, which makes him a guilty bystander, I guess. Where the hell did you get the idea that I inherited money? I think that says a lot about your own personal biases that you would make that assumption. In this very thread I described my background in some detail. I grew up in relative poverty with a single mother. I had to leave home and travel to another city to find opportunity when I was 21, and had nothing but a few belongings I took in the trunk of my 12 year old car and enough money to pay rent for a couple of months - money I saved by working full time after high school. I lived in a basement suite with a roommate for five years after that, and worked 20 hours a week part time while I put myself through college. I never made more than $25,000 per year until I was almost 30. My wife worked even harder. She too left a small community that had no opportunities for her, and worked her way through nursing school while living with a roommate. When we met we had a grand total of maybe $2000 in savings between us. After we got married, she studied nights to get her Bachelor’s degree while holding a full-time job and raising a kid, and worked her way into management. Now she’s working her ass off at night to finish her Masters. while working in a job that often requires her to put in 10-12 hour days. We lived in rented apartments for years while we saved up a down payment on our own house. Anything my wife and I have, we earned. Yes, we’re in the top 10% now. We’re a two income professional household, and that’s pretty much what it takes. But my political point of view has been libertarian since I was a young teenager. My wife was a libertarian when I met her. We were both poor. In fact, I think the success we’ve had is in large part due to our individualistic, self-reliant streak. We never wasted time whining that life wasn’t fair. We never looked for excuses to justify slacking off or accepting our financial situation. We never expected someone to come along and save us from our horrible condition. I’ve had crappy jobs and bad bosses. I’ve been exploited by people who knew I needed the money badly. But whenever that happened, I simply used it as motivation to work harder and seek out better opportunity. Maybe that’s what the people of Kansas really know - if you spend less time demanding things from others, and more time working hard to improve your own life, you’ll be happier, more independent, and ultimately the better for it. Maybe Kansans understand how destructive it is to the human spirit to be dependent on the charity of others, and how dependency breeds dysfunctional communities and unhappiness, and how money earned is twice as sweet as charity received. Maybe Kansans understand that the nature of liberalism is to make everyone dependent on everyone else. Liberals think this turns us into a village. In fact, it makes us resentful and changes the focus of our efforts from working hard to better ourselves to fighting hard to get what other people earned, while they in turn fight to get what you earned. It breeds division, class warfare, and dependency. It also strips us of liberty and the right to self-determination. Maybe Kansans aren’t looking for a bigger slice of the government pie - maybe they’re simply living their own lives and would rather not accept charity from the faceless bureaucrats in Washington. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/116 "2010-11-15T21:32:14Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Both Krugman and Friedman would agree that restrictive trade policies (e.g., tariffs) could be set in such a way as to make Kansas workers better off. When \*\*IdahoMaulMan \*\*claims the the opposite is true, and says that basic economics supports him, it is clear that he doesn’t understand basic economics as well as he thinks. Do you have a cite for that? Maybe Krugman has said such a thing in the past, but Milton Friedman was pretty much a free trade absolutist. He specifically wrote that lowing all tariffs was a good thing, even if your trading partner didn’t reciprocate. And he was right. The internal cost structure of another country is irrelevant. Yes, you’d do even better if they dropped their tariffs, but you still benefit if they don’t, so long as you are free to trade with them or not as you see fit. I think the only exception he would have made was in cases of national security. For example, not outsourcing the construction of weapons to your potential enemies, or to countries that could easily have their supply lines to you cut. But those would be very limited cases, and he would say that what you’re doing is paying more for your goods as a price for increased security. Oh, if you’re saying that tariffs can be set up such that very specific groups can benefit, I would agree (and I’m sure IdahoMauleman would too). Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland love their tariffs. Kansas might have their agricultural economy protected by tariffs. But that would be at the expense of every American who consumes those products, and the net result would be negative. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2010, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/117 "2010-11-15T22:12:08Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Maybe Kansans aren’t looking for a bigger slice of the government pie - maybe they’re simply living their own lives and would rather not accept charity from the faceless bureaucrats in Washington. A good portion of _What’s The Matter With Kansas_ is a history of the state, and how in the late 19th century it was not just liberal, but downright radical. And how that passion was successfully redirected towards social issues like abortion and gay marriage - it’s no surprise that both Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps and Operation Rescue are from Kansas. The depth of Kansas’ unemployment is disguised by the huge beef processing operations, horrible, poorly paid work that is constantly churning through workers. And by Johnson county, the very wealthy suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. Virtually every rich person in the “Greater Kansas City” area lives on the Kansas side of the state line. Go 100 miles from Kansas City and you’ll see the real Kansas, mired in poverty, small towns with their Main street decimated by Walmart. I’m in Kansas City and most of my clients are very right-wing. But one millionaire client, owner of one of Kansas City’s largest real estate firms and a former Marine officer, told me that he and his wife had voted for Obama. So there is the possibility that Kansas my be changing back. ---
**Author:** ![IdahoMauleMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/71c47a/32.png) [@IdahoMauleMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IdahoMauleMan)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2010, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/118 "2010-11-16T01:23:13Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Both Krugman and Friedman would agree that restrictive trade policies (e.g., tariffs) could be set in such a way as to make Kansas workers better off. When \*\*IdahoMaulMan \*\*claims the the opposite is true, and says that basic economics supports him, it is clear that he doesn’t understand basic economics as well as he thinks. That’s always entirely possible. I’m always open to hearing where I’m wrong. My wife tells me so, about a hundred times per day. But let’s first make sure we articulate what we’re debating. I will stipulate that trade barriers and increasing burdens on entrepreneurial employment can temporarily shield certain classes of workers from change. That it is entirely possible for certain Kansan industries to take advantage of these barriers/burdens and shield their workers in the short term. Thereby making them (technically) “better off” in the short term, relative to some other alternative. That is essentially what the US sugar industry, steel workers, UAW and the US automotive industry tried to do for decades. Hell, even the Soviet-era Trabant workers benefited from the same approach. I guess. But in the long run, of course, it doesn’t really do any good. It delays the inevitable. And it penalizes the _consumers_ of those products in the form of reduced choice and higher prices. That’s why I said maybe those poor Kansans are smarter than Frank thinks. I can’t tell with 100% certainty from his writings if (1) he actually believes trade barriers and increased employment costs truly help the economy or (2) if he just thinks Kansans are stupid because the system is there to manipulate, and they aren’t taking advantage of it. That’s why you’ll notice in my Frank posting (above) I prefaced the paragraph with the word “If”. I don’t know if that’s what you were talking about, or not. If not, please accept my apologies and steer me back to the course you were on. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2010, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/119 "2010-11-16T03:00:50Z")
Ya know what I’ thoroughly sick of? The distinction between right and left being reduced to the entirely false charity v. self-reliance. freeloaders v. hardworkers. I call bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2010, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402/120 "2010-11-16T03:03:29Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Ya know what I’ thoroughly sick of? The distinction between right and left being reduced to the entirely false charity v. self-reliance. freeloaders v. hardworkers. > > I call bullshit. If you repeat bullshit long enough, though, it’s as good as true. The right _owns_ self-reliance and the work ethic, and has reduced both to a curious state where you’re supposed to stand proud and defiant to sissy-pants humanists while bending obediently to the forces of wealth and power. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/asking-middle-class-and-lower-dopers-why-they-vote-republican/560402.md?page=7)