How many people in the US vote “wittingly” about anything? 
These things are usually sold to the public as 'Your tax money is being wasted, (On welfare queens, subsidies for X) so we will cut taxes." There has been a lot of chin music about the "job creators"but you just have to look out your window and see them moving offshore, doing every possible thing to avoid such a role. (See Trump, Donald, bankruptcies of.) People do vote into that but I’m not sure what their reason is other than an exploitable habit of rage.
Again - it’s possible to support things that go against your economic interests that satisfy other interests and on balance, provide net positive utility. Focusing only on economic interests can be used to draw the misleading conclusion that people vote against their interests.
Ultimately I think people place great weight or value on things that vary wildly from person to person. Failure to account for those differences appears to folks as voting against their interests. This is why I label it as arrogance. It’s thinking that other people would value things similarly, when in reality, I don’t think this is the case.
Roughly the number that recently gave Republicans control of Congress (headline: GOP passes massive tax break for millionaires, billionaires), that elected Walker in Wisconsin, Brownback in Kansas (headline: Kansas lawmakers want the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich), Abbott in Texas, Scott in Florida, Snyder in Michigan, and many others. Enough to drive the US Gini coefficient – the income disparity between the rich and poor – to the worst level among first-world nations.
It seems that all that wealth that’s supposed to be “trickling down” isn’t – it’s all mysteriously stuck, way up there where the 1% live. Do you think that’s what voters actually wanted? But it’s what they got.
If you want to consider that bit of ideology a “value”, then yes, that would be an example of such a disagreement, but I don’t even see it as being meaningful. “Lower taxes” than what? “Less government” than what? Does it just continue until there are no taxes and no government at all? Is that the ideal end point? The real objective here it seems to me is that government should be efficient and effective, not be wasteful, and provide those essential services that only governments can do effectively. Surely there’s not anything there to disagree on?
Or take something like the gun debate. We can surely agree that public safety and personal security are laudable social goals. But we appear to be at polar opposites as to how to achieve that.
See my response to John Mace.
There really are such things as facts. Far too often, people vote for lying, self-serving politicians because they’ve been duped into believing bullshit. There is a huge industry out there whose sole product is spinning bullshit for the financial benefit of their clients. Real companies, large ones, often multinational – and spinning bullshit is all they do – directly, indirectly, through ads, front groups, fake grassroots organizations, whatever it takes. Bullshit is their product. And it affects virtually everything that people vote for in public policy: the environment, energy policy, tobacco, health care, tax policy – everything. Ask the average voter what he knows about any of those things. It’s often virtually nothing, and other times, what he thinks he knows is demonstrably wrong – the product of the bullshit spinners.
In the ideal world, everyone would always act in the best interests of everyone in the world combined. In such a world, we would need no government, no laws, no economy. Such behavior is still to be aspired to, but we don’t live in that world. Many people, instead of acting in the interest of all, act only in their own interest.
So, in recognition of that unfortunate fact, we have created institutions like democracy and capitalism, which enable a functional society even where people act in their own interests. These institutions still work, so long as everyone acts in either their own interests, or in the interests of all.
But institutions like democracy and capitalism do not work when people act in ways which is neither in the interest of all, nor in their own interest. So when we see people acting in such a way, we should do what we can to discourage it, because they’re ruining it for the rest of us.
Again, you are assuming that since Republican Congresscritters proposed something, the voters who voted for them supported that thing. And that article is quite deceptive, saying the GOP “passed” that bill when all it got was a yes vote in the House. No way is that going to get thru the Senate. I’d like to see a link to a poll showing large numbers of Americans supporting tax cuts for the wealthy (only) and thinking that those tax cuts will help them.
There are lots of things that the House throws out there that the voters don’t support and a lot of things that voters DO support that don’t ever get out of committee.
A lot of the things you count as “other” interests have been “wedge issues” designed to siphon votes and having no real meaning. So many people voted a certain way when they were fed a diet of “Gay Marriage” or “Pro-life” or “anti-weed” or “Anti-commie” or “war on terror"or a thousand other things that seemed important (or at least on point) at the moment but, as the Shirelles sang 'Will you love me tomorrow?”
Those issues were meant to siphon votes where there was a fear of what would happen if people actually voted their “economic interests.” There is a long history of the right trying to avoid this problem: People could vote to redistribute wealth if they got it together. That is what anti-communism was. That is what so many other features of our 24 hour news cycle are now.
That’s why progressives like to measure their vote utility in economic terms. And I don’t blame them.
Would you be proud that a small issue takes your eye off the ball and buys your vote for an economic elite? Is it arrogant or elitist to ask this question?
In the ideal world everyone acting in their interests benefits everyone. That is the invisible hand theory. But it isn’t working. And it isn’t because some are acting in no one’s interest at all… There are very great interests being served. Things don’t happen without that.
If you got energy for discouraging something please read “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein. Love to talk about that sometime.
I’m grouping two of your quotes for clarity, since you responded to your own question, though the response was in different posts.
You are implying that the people that voted for each individual Republican in congress that was up for reelection, AND those that voted for Walker, AND those that voted for Brownback, AND those that voted for Abbot, AND those that voted for Scott, Snyder, etc., that all of them voted for those people because of deeply held values even knowing it would hurt them personally, on an economic level? Is that your intention to assert that? It seems absurdly ridiculous. Among those wide groups of people you identified, is it within your ability to conceive that they may have voted for those individuals for other or a combination of different reasons?
You’ve essentially concluded that everyone who votes in ways that you disagree with are doing so for some monolithic reason. It’s beyond facile.
Yes, I disagree. The real objective is that government should first be small. Full stop. Only then can you get to essential services. But even that, is as I said, at a high enough level to be meaningless. Your initial conclusion that the vast majority of cases both sides agree on basic values and even on specific objectives - I don’t think that’s true. This is where the arrogance of criticizing people for voting against their interests comes in. If you make the assumption that you have, about values and objectives, then when people act contrary to those that you assume are shared you can conclude they are acting against their interests. But if their values are different and their objectives are different, the criticism falls apart.
Again - everyone who votes differently than me is doing it wrong! Or instead, maybe they just don’t agree with your assessments.
If a candidate says that they are focused on reducing AGW, and a person opposes them because they think the focus should be on spaying and neutering domesticated cats instead, are they doing it wrong too? I’d say no. They simply value things differently than others. It would be arrogant to say they are voting against their interests because it assumes they should have the same value system that leads the person leveling the criticism to do so.
That is the opposite of my ideal world.
Who determines what issue is small? I wouldn’t call it arrogant or elitist to ask the question. I’d characterize it more as ignorance.
If you’re calling flag burning or Willie Horton or weed a big issue then you’re just the kind of voter they are looking for.
There are a lot of shades of ignorance.
Oh and race is a big silent push on these wedge issues too.
So you don’t believe in them? What about the Republican southern strategy. You just play duck and cover?
Really, I’m sure your post makes sense to some people. I am not one of those people.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I suspect that this is for you, a means, as opposed to an end.
That is, I suspect (and correct me if I’m wrong) that what you really want is a society in which people are free and prosperous and happy and safe… one in which the American Dream is within reach, people can freely make choices to live their lives however they like, the various rights enumerated in the constitution are protected, etc. Oh, and also there are tons of jobs, we again lead the world in manufacturing and we build awesome cars, etc. Oh, and everyone can freely own all the guns they want (since I’ve argued with you about that in the past).
And what you honestly believe is that the best way to achieve that goal is through a smaller government… but the goal is the society, not the size-of-government.
Or am I wrong?
I don’t know if it’s an either/or situation - and I’m cognizant that this is simply an example I raised to rebut the point that we all have the same goals so I’m not going to get into it in detail. But as a goal itself, it could be accomplished by pegging the spending levels of government to some ratio of something. After that, choices need to be made on what to use the appropriation for.
I would say that limiting the size of government as a goal in and of itself has downstream benefits, as well as downstream costs. At the extremes, as in the scenario you put forward, I would decline those outcomes if the tradeoff was a very large governmental presence. In part because I think some of the examples you state are mutually exclusive with large governments.
I don’t think you’re wrong - but I don’t think you’re exactly right either. In any case it is a tangent. My main point was that what is construed as voting against one’s interest upon examination is simply a different measure of marginal utility at the individual level.
Republicans = bad.
Worth looking into.
Oh good grief. Obviously the tax cuts are for everyone - it’s just that the ones for the ordinary people are small and the ones for the rich are big.
I trust you are not arguing for a cite that tax cuts for (but not exclusively for) the wealthy got sold on job creation. Since the rather good marketing guys in the Republican party are selling it this way, that justifies my answer.
But supporting tax cuts for everyone when you don’t get one (or more likely, tax credits instead of direct payments) is an excellent example of voting against one’s interests.
I agree - it is the sum of values which counts. But when someone used the term “voting against their interest” it is often about voting for a policy which is sold to benefit them when it will not.
It’s my intention to assert the opposite. But you knew that, right? It’s my intention to assert that most of those who voted for them did so because believed that it was in their own best economic interests, and that they were gullible fools for doing so.
Government should be small enough, according to Grover Norquist, “to be drowned in a bathtub.” I’m occasionally reminded of just how far removed from reality American politics is.
I separated two of your quotes from different posts by a dotted line so that I could respond to both of them at once, since here we come to the real crux of the matter.
I’m not disputing the obvious fact that people vote on the basis of the totality of positions of any given politician, and that politicians of even one party aren’t a monolithic entity. John Mace made the same criticism, and it misses the point. The point is the remarkable consistency among all of them in the degree to which the interests of the wealthy and the corporatocracy are being pandered to at the expense of the remaining 99% of the general public. This is most notable with Republicans but I don’t think it’s exclusive to them.
I listed in #44 some of the state governors most nefarious for this, and federally, yet more Congressional tax cuts for the rich. It’s a fact that the US has the worst income disparity in the first world as measured by the Gini coefficient. It’s a fact that the national debt is at staggering record levels even as the rich enjoy unprecedented beneficence in tax treatment. It’s a fact that the approval rating of the US Congress has long been in the sewer, often in the single digits, rarely above the teens. So with a range of 10-20% approval, it seems that the voters who elect their Senators and Congressmen in some apparent act of inspired wisdom also apparently think their duly elected representatives always turn out to be worse than useless. In a recent poll 60% of voters thought that most members of Congress would sell their Congressional vote for cash or campaign contributions (which just leaves me wondering what the other 40% could possibly think!).
It’s a fact that there’s billion-dollar industry exclusively devoted to spinning PR bullshit for vested interests, whether it’s tobacco, oil, coal, health insurance companies, or the politicians that they control. It’s a fact that the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have been, quite literally, interviewing candidates for the position of US President to see who best meets their needs, like a corporate tycoon interviewing for an assistant flunky. And on whose behalf their billions will put the spin industry to work so that the rubes will vote correctly – an industry whose lucrative job it is to never let a fact stand in the way of their clients’ interests. To such an extent that it’s been suggested that the US is no longer an actual functional democracy.
But the voters are smart enough to ignore this avalanche of propaganda and assess the complex issues fairly and objectively, right? Apparently those would be the highly informed evidence-guided voters who, at the end of the first Fox News debate, wanted confirmation from the Republican presidential candidates that they were being properly advised by God. They wanted to know what God was telling them. Because when the domestic and foreign policy of the USA is guided by the imaginary voices in someone’s head, what could possibly go wrong?
Of course issues are not monolithic, and politicians are all different. So are trees. But I’m describing the forest, which apparently you can’t see because of the trees.
What? When has that ever happened in the history of American politics? 
“Flat tax”, consumption tax, trickle-down economics, and repeal of estate taxes are all tax changes which are widely touted, receive broad applause, and would shift tax burden from the rich to the poor. Many “ordinary people” explicitly support such policies and the politicans proposing them. Is this clear to you? Is your quibble just with the precise nature of voter misinformation?
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Once upon a time, profits were considered a reward to innovaters so they would innovate more. But now there is wide sentiment on the right that the rich should be pampered just for being rich. Given two persons, equally ambitious and talented, extra money should be given to the richer one not the poorer one – the richer one may invest the money creating jobs while the poorer one will merely consume it. (Obviously it will be difficult to catch right-wingers making this claim explicitly. But it does show up when one “reads between the lines.”)
Still no cite, huh? At least wolfpup made an attempt. As for “flat tax”, that is not a tax cut only for the rich and it needn’t shift the burden from the rich to the poor.