I’m a Democrat and I vote for my economic self interest. It’s in my economic interest that the Justice Dept made sure IBM didn’t maintain an effective monopoly on business mainframes and allowed the growth of the computer industry through innovation on a level playing field. When IBM developed the PC they followed the guidelines they were given and unbundled the hardware and software and allowed Microsoft to become one of the biggest businesses in the world. It was in my economic self interest when progressive states like California created a great system of public colleges that seeded Silicon Valley with highly trained engineers. It was in my economic self interest when ARPA/DARPA funded the development of the Internet, and gave research grants to CMU that led to the development of the kernel of the MacIntosh OS, and funded research into new algorithms for search engines that later turned into Google. It’s in my economic interest that the female half of the population gained equal access to education and doubled our supply of trained workers.
It would be in my economic interest if when I was laid off I wasn’t saddled with healthcare insurance rates of $600/mos at the very time I couldn’t afford them, or if potential entrepreneurs could leave their job and start a new business without worrying that they not be able to get insurance because of pre-existing conditions. It’d be in my economic self interest if medical costs in the US were in line with the rest of the world that manages to pay less, cover more people, and have equal or better results.
It’d be in my economic self interest if the US once again invested in infrastructure projects on the scale of the Hoover Dam and the TVA. Imagine if every business and household had ultra-fast access to the Internet over fiber and WiFi was more widely available.
Just quoting this because that’s what I’m seeing, too. All this nit-picking that people are doing here is just not what the voters are concerned about.
And if Right-wing Rove-followers spend the next few weeks screaming “Acts OF terrorism = Obama conspiracy!!!” … then they’ll be ignoring The Issues That Count At The Ballot Box.
I would think the point is that no, they don’t see themselves doing it, yet they do it anyway, not realizing it is against their own interests. I doubt you, or most Republicans, would agree.
The fact is average household income is higher for all classes under Democrats than under Republicans, except for the very rich (who do equally well under either party’s leadership). In fact, under Democrats, every economic indicator does better.
There is simply no economic reason to vote for Republicans.
No, no, please do go ahead. When you don’t have the time or energy to figure out what a cite is about, the last thing we want is for you to keep your opinions about the cite to yourself. Nothing’s better than an ignorant unsupported opinion thrown out there, except maybe a defense of such behavior.
I, however, lack your confidence in the supreme quality of my uninformed opinions. To wit: because I’ve not read What’s the Matter with Kansas, I don’t consider myself qualified to address your review of that book, or its relevance to the Democratic party’s central principles.
Most of the Republicans that I know are voting against a Secret Socialist Muslim from Kenya. So, I would give extra points to anyone who is actually in touch with reality over those beliefs.
Is that an admission that you don’t have a cite for “under Democrats, every economic indicator does better”? I’ll give you another one that’s been worse under Obama than Bush: unemployment.
Yes, I’m quite aware that the economy hit a rough patch a few years ago. That doesn’t excuse utterly unsupported claims like “under Democrats, every economic indicator does better.”
Nice, but it’s kind of a hilarious cite, inasmuch as it just goes further to demonstrate how little time you spent looking at the website you decided to trash earlier. If you want to stop embarrassing yourself, go back and look at that website.
(Here’s a free hint: it ain’t all about the pay gap).
That said, if you want to open a thread on the pay gap, instead of addressing the links offered in this thread, here you go.
Edit: if your interest is in shutting me up on this issue, you could always try a sincere apology for spouting off about a cite you didn’t even bother to read, and a promise not to do so in the future.
I’ll leave it to **Hentor **to expand on his claims, but you must acknowledge that you’re minimizing the hardships of the economic disasters the Bush administration created by calling them “a rough patch,” much as you maximize the Obama administration’s casualness in referring to Benghazi as a “bump in the road.”
I could justify Obama’s phrase simply by looking at the Middle East and our relationship with Arabic and Muslim cultures as one requiring centuries-long solutions, in which context the killing of four Americans does represent a bump in the road, but I can’t find a context that doesn’t handwave away the importance of the lives of all Americans now living in calling the Bush economic catastrophe that Obama has certainly improved in 3 and 1/2 years a mere “rough patch.”