Why middle class support for Republicans?

[cosmosdan]

@Hostile_Dialect

A note of clarification: I didn’t mean that 50% happened in most developed countries, just that incredibly high income taxes are de rigeur in most developed countries and they could get as high as 50%.

Thanks for the clarification. This is significantly different than your previous post.
I’m up for seeing evidence that a progressive tax system makes a society run better. It may be true. The concept that People who work harder and are successful owe something extra to the less fortunate probably isn’t. I prefer companies that have a social conscience and are willing to share their good fortune with their employees and community. I’ll pay extra to buy something from that kind of company. I’d agree that society works better if we offer a hand up, and opportunity to the less fortunate. The difference is I see it as a conscious choice for the individual rather than a moral or ethical debt owed by the individual.
I’m speaking of some additional debt other than the taxes they already pay.

Well, gee, when you put it so simply it makes a lot of sense, but what about the public education that allowed you to put together a widget business? What about the firefighters who saved your home when you were 10 so that you would one day grow up to be a widget maven? What about the social security checks that allow retirees to buy your widgets? What about, dare I say it, the unemployment checks that allow those down on their luck to buy your widgets? What about the public education that put 5 million people in the position to buy widgets from you? (If you sell medical widgets, you’re screwed without a plentiful supply of doctors and hospital managers to sell to. If you sell automotive widgets, you’re screwed without a plentiful supply of cars, drivers and mechanics in this country.) What about the society that gave you and 5 million widget-buyers bootstraps to pull yourselves up on, so that one day you could grow up to sell widgets and 5 million people could grow up to buy them?

What about them? Look, I recognize that a society has a degree of interdependency to work well, but you haven’t demonstrated anything to support any idea of some imagined debt owed by those who do well based on their own efforts. Do doctors owe a debt to sick people because without them they’d be out of work? If I was a farmer and raised crops would I owe a debt to people because they have stomachs and need to eat?
If I go into major debt to build a factory and hire folks to work does society owe me a debt if my efforts fail and I’m left with a huge debt and a warehouse full of bata max widgets nobody wants? After all, I paid property taxes to my community and my employees paid taxes and helped their community by being employed.

By the way, if it’s not OK to subsidize people who fall on hard times, why is it OK to subsidize businesses that fail based on bad business practices?

By the way, I never said any such thing. Don’t assume I hold positions I haven’t expressed.

The whole point of your heartwarming little risk-benefit story is that you risked everything to make widgets and you want to reap the benefits. But under the Republicans, super-rich banking firms reap the benefits and have no risk. How does that make sense?

Didn’t say it did. Never even addressed it. I see a major difference between people who actually create something, build something, offer something tangible for pay, and those who amass fortunes by manipulating numbers.

Someone asked why there are rich Democrats. I answered. If you have a problem, take it up with the rich Democrats.

They weren’t the ones who made the comment.

What evidence, exactly, are you looking for?

Something like the most countries thing you seem to have changed positions on. We try to structure a society that works well for the most people. We want people to have motivation and to contribute to that society in ways great and small. We need to find the proper balance between a hand up and requiring some effort from those who need help to promote self reliance and personal responsibility.

And that person would have the same education and capital to start this business growing up in, say, Belize?

And the same number of quality workers would be available in Belize?

And those customers would have the exact same need and disposable income in Belize?

None of this is relevant to the point. The motivated person adapts their efforts to the society they live in and seek to do business in.

That’s a fine argument in theory, but in practice, most widget mavens actually do get a special advantage. They have rich daddies, they’re white, straight, and Christian, and they grew up in nice neighborhoods where they were expected to do well and treated accordingly.

Cite?

Growing up in a positive can do atmosphere certainly has it’s advantages. That’s not limited to rich white straight Christians.

Um, yeah, that would be the entire point. What, exactly, do you think we’re asking him to give?

You seemed to be indicating that the well off owe some additional debt to the less fortunate and society in general. Some moral and ethical debt beyond their legal taxes and the contributions a successful business makes in jobs and services. Is that not the case?

[cosmosdan]

[quote=“Hentor_the_Barbarian, post:100, topic:468531”]

@cosmosdan

I agree with you. Wealthy business owners have no greater direct obligation to the poor than anyone else. I’ve not said anything to the contrary here.

They do have a greater obligation, even if only out of sheer self-interest, to America than others.

America must then decide what obligations it has to the poor.

ok. What seems to be inevitable is our advance into a global economy and how that affects the average American citizen as well as others.

Personally, I think we’ll begin to see how interdependent we really are and how treating other people better is really in our own interests. That won’t happen without a lot of struggle and pain.

When it comes down to what policies we have concerning the poor the details are not simple or obvious. IMHO.

[welby]

@Hostile_Dialect

That’s a fine argument in theory, but in practice, most widget mavens actually do get a special advantage. They have rich daddies, they’re white, straight, and Christian, and they grew up in nice neighborhoods where they were expected to do well and treated accordingly.

:rolleyes:

@Hostile_Dialect

Because he has more to give, silly. Maimonides’ rules of Jewish giving didn’t apply to paupers. OTOH, anyone with as much money or more has an equal (or greater) obligation to give back to society.

I do give back more. I pay more taxes and provide more people with employment than a pauper does. There is no additional obligation.

@Hostile_Dialect

Um, yeah, that would be the entire point. What, exactly, do you think we’re asking him to give?

You imply that there is some debt above and beyond the norm for a wealthy person, and that’s what I’m arguing against. Morally, I don’t have any obligation to do anything other than pay my taxes and obey the law of the land. To imply that I have an obligation to do more simply because I work hard, save hard, and invest carefully is patently ridiculous. I’m already doing more! How much would you have me do? Whats the limit? Should I give away all of my additional earnings until I’m making the median income of the U.S.? Would that appease the moral obligation gods?

[IClaudius]

@cosmosdan

Thanks for the clarification. This is significantly different than your previous post.
I’m up for seeing evidence that a progressive tax system makes a society run better. It may be true. The concept that People who work harder and are successful owe something extra to the less fortunate probably isn’t. I prefer companies that have a social conscience and are willing to share their good fortune with their employees and community. I’ll pay extra to buy something from that kind of company. I’d agree that society works better if we offer a hand up, and opportunity to the less fortunate. The difference is I see it as a conscious choice for the individual rather than a moral or ethical debt owed by the individual.
I’m speaking of some additional debt other than the taxes they already pay.

I firmly believe in a positive obligation framework, but that’s kind of neither here nor there. The best argument for progressive taxation isn’t a post-facto duty on the rich, its social contractarian theory. Most liberals intuitively subscribe to something like the Rawlsian veil of ignorance, or the Dworkin’s equal auction system which is more sophisticated about uncultivated talents, and these serve as methods of argument for establishing the social contract.

That is, it is taken that we can only meaningfully establish some framework for fairness if we control for our undeserved lot in life. Indeed, the most common and potent argument against libertarian style thinking is that it simply hand waves away what are very serious questions about starting conditions, because the problem is too hard. About the only attempt has been Nozick’s argument about Wilt Chamberlain, and that has never been accepted in philosophy as a good or sophisticated argument. The remaining arguments simply make indirect points repeating a mantra about the workability of retributive agendas which never apply to modest progressive taxation.

[Whack-a-Mole]

@Dinsdale

Is there a rational basis for middle class Americans to feel they would do better economicaly under a Republican platform than Democrat?

No. In fact it is irrational to believe that.

I have not read the whole thread but it seems a recent book that looks at exactly this problem has not been mentioned.

Unequal Democracy by Larry Bartels is an in-depth and detailed analysis of the economy under various presidents (it is worth noting Bartels is rather apolitical…he does not have an axe to grind on this). His findings were rather dramatic:

The stark contrast between the whiz-bang Clinton years and the dreary Bush years is familiar because it is so recent. But while it is extreme, it is not atypical. Data for the whole period from 1948 to 2007, during which Republicans occupied the White House for 34 years and Democrats for 26, show average annual growth of real gross national product of 1.64 percent per capita under Republican presidents versus 2.78 percent under Democrats.

That 1.14-point difference, if maintained for eight years, would yield 9.33 percent more income per person, which is a lot more than almost anyone can expect from a tax cut.

<snip>

The accompanying table, which is adapted from the book, tells a remarkably consistent story. It shows that when Democrats were in the White House, lower-income families experienced slightly faster income growth than higher-income families — which means that incomes were equalizing. In stark contrast, it also shows much faster income growth for the better-off when Republicans were in the White House — thus widening the gap in income.

The table also shows that families at the 95th percentile fared almost as well under Republican presidents as under Democrats (1.90 percent growth per year, versus 2.12 percent), giving them little stake, economically, in election outcomes. But the stakes were enormous for the less well-to-do. Families at the 20th percentile fared much worse under Republicans than under Democrats (0.43 percent versus 2.64 percent). Eight years of growth at an annual rate of 0.43 percent increases a family’s income by just 3.5 percent, while eight years of growth at 2.64 percent raises it by 23.2 percent.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/business/31view.html

[cosmosdan]

@IClaudius

I firmly believe in a positive obligation framework, but that’s kind of neither here nor there. The best argument for progressive taxation isn’t a post-facto duty on the rich, its social contractarian theory. Most liberals intuitively subscribe to something like the Rawlsian veil of ignorance, or the Dworkin’s equal auction system which is more sophisticated about uncultivated talents, and these serve as methods of argument for establishing the social contract.

That is, it is taken that we can only meaningfully establish some framework for fairness if we control for our undeserved lot in life. Indeed, the most common and potent argument against libertarian style thinking is that it simply hand waves away what are very serious questions about starting conditions, because the problem is too hard. About the only attempt has been Nozick’s argument about Wilt Chamberlain, and that has never been accepted in philosophy as a good or sophisticated argument. The remaining arguments simply make indirect points repeating a mantra about the workability of retributive agendas which never apply to modest progressive taxation.

Interesting. How does this relate to the discussion at hand?

[IClaudius]

@cosmosdan

Interesting. How does this relate to the discussion at hand?

Well, if I’m following this correctly… it is relevant because being behind a veil of ignorance style scenario means that we might more plausibly find agreement about the diminishing returns of purchasing power wealth compared to a full spectrum of possible disadvantage for ourself, and thus arrive at the legitimacy of a robust safety-net which secures equality of opportunity via progressive taxation.

If we don’t know our identity, family and talents, and we are offered various hypothetical systems of economic life, which have various implications for our chances of being somewhere near or at the bottom rung, then we are far more likely to take seriously the need for a structured insurance-like mechanism.

Rawls’ veil of ignorance is one of these thought devices for translating that intuition into a form of legitimation for progressive taxation within a liberal democratic order.

The wiki entry for the Original Position here.

Nozick’s criticism of this is fair; he states that Rawls’ actual corrective mechanism of a maximin rule goes too far. And I agree, I don’t think the original position requires us to say people are so risk and merit-reward averse. However, Nozick mistakes those criticisms as a reason to simply ignore starting conditions.

He also appeals to the Wilt Chaimberlain argument to make the case that inequalities will always arise and that they are just choice based outcomes. But this argument has never been respected in philosophical circles, because it refuses to acknowledge the ontological priority of the social contract that he is talking about. He simply uses Wilt’s court appearances in a vacuum.

A more recent, additional argument against this is that Nozick conflates together deserved rewards, based on cultivated effort, with rewards which may flow from morally arbitrary factors like uncultivated talents. Under the veil of ignorance, where we don’t know our talents, or the market that may exist for them, we may accept the reality of inequality from uncultivated talents, but it is not an unbound claim of acceptance as Nozick tries to argue it must be when analogising from Wilt back to everyone at large.

Dworkin offers a different form of this device to Rawls, which I think is better. His account involves a complete reset button scenario where everyone can pursue their preferences at auction, and then he uses the results of that auction as the basis for sorting through option luck risk-reward, and brute luck risk reward, to show how justified inequality can co-exist with the social contract mechanism.

I personally prefer this approach, though it is not that well known compared to Rawls’ Original Position, because it leaves us with powerful ontological basis for progressive taxation, whilst still respecting Nozick’s counter-arguments about justified inequality.

Both methods, however, are about taking starting conditions seriously as a fundamental central pillar of valid political economy and political philosophy.

[cosmosdan]

@IClaudius

Well, if I’m following this correctly… it is relevant because

You might want to consider the fact that on a public forum not everyone is familiar with these philosophies and/or the terminology. I enjoy learning new things but I don’t have time to take a philosophy class in order to understand your post.

How these terms relate to the daily lives and situations of real people might prove interesting.

Sure sounded impressive though.

[iwakura43]

If I can attempt to do justice to this in a sentence or two, under the “veil of ignorance” idea, if those who currently argue for little social insurance had to start life over and didn’t know if they would be born Bill Gates’ son, an upper-middle class Long Island Jew, a WASP in rural Tennessee, or a poor black child in Baltimore, then that person would be likely to want to be born into the society which had greater social insurance.

[IClaudius]

@iwakura43

If I can attempt to do justice to this in a sentence or two, under the “veil of ignorance” idea, if those who currently argue for little social insurance had to start life over and didn’t know if they would be born Bill Gates’ son, an upper-middle class Long Island Jew, a WASP in rural Tennessee, or a poor black child in Baltimore, then that person would be likely to want to be born into the society which had greater social insurance.

Yep, that’s the basic gist of how the veil of ignorance scenario is posed, and what it is supposed to imply about political morality and taxation.

The rest of my post was just a sort of rough primer for further reading which tracks how at least one prominent libertarian philosopher has responded to Rawls’ Original Position inferences, with a quick consideration of how effective that response has been, and other developments since Rawls in social contractarian arguments.

Philosophy jargon can be pretty impenetrable - so sorry for that. Obviously I could have explained it better, but I chose to keep with the terminology found in those works so that it’s at least transparent as a reference to print and online texts, which will be able to offer full arguments and definitions as well as commentaries on them.

[robby]

I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned the book “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”, which directly addresses the question raised by the OP.

[cosmosdan]

@IClaudius

Yep, that’s the basic gist of how the veil of ignorance scenario is posed, and what it is supposed to imply about political morality and taxation.

The rest of my post was just a sort of rough primer for further reading which tracks how at least one prominent libertarian philosopher has responded to Rawls’ Original Position inferences, with a quick consideration of how effective that response has been, and other developments since Rawls in social contractarian arguments.

Philosophy jargon can be pretty impenetrable - so sorry for that. Obviously I could have explained it better, but I chose to keep with the terminology found in those works so that it’s at least transparent as a reference to print and online texts, which will be able to offer full arguments and definitions as well as commentaries on them.

I appreciated the post. I wish I understood it better and was hoping for something in layman’s terms to accompany it.

IMHO the issue of greater social insurance has to do with balancing compassion with personal responsibility. We see examples that being born into privilege doesn’t guarantee a better life , nor does abject poverty guarantee a worse one.
People are forged by their hardships into better people, or they blame others, or the world in general. People use their advantages to build a good life that contributes to society or they may squander them. IN my own experiences and observations I’ve formed a simple theory. Somewhere in those formative years depending on nature and nurture, individuals across the economic spectrum develop an attitude that stays with them, probably throughout their lives, although choices made affect the intensity. One is “I can” and the other is “I can’t”
rich or poor, embracing the “I can’t” usually has negative consequences. Rich or poor “I can” leads to a better life.

It is better for society as a whole to offer opportunity and encouragement to those who believe “I can’t” so that they might come to believe “I can” but we must also accept that the ultimate choice lies within the individual. Sometimes tough love is required by society in teaching personal responsibility.

I prefer to live in a society that offers a helping hand, compassion and support of it’s citizens, but I also know that too much support makes us enablers of the “I can’t” attitude and ads “so you should” so we must seek to find the proper balance between aide and compassion and that tough love that provides the occasional kick in the ass.

There are of course several other factors this doesn’t address. Economic disparity for one. If basic jobs provided enough funds for the basics of life then we wouldn’t have such a need for a social net.