American Politics Discussion Thread

[superdeath]

It's easy to let a kid you've never met die so that you can keep your murder fantasies alive, but if it's someone you can put a name and a face to, it is an awakening to reality.

No one has murder fantasies ffs.

[darrelljs]

It's economic selfishness, and cognitive dissonance does the rest.  The left wants money and resources from their government, so they convince themselves into anything that increases government power.  The right gets their economic value from the private sector, and government is the economic threat to them, so they convince themselves into anything that limits or decreases government power.

It has to be more than that, because the more educated you are (which I'm going to assume correlates with "I get paid by a company" and "high tax rates hurt me more") the more likely you are to vote Democrat. Or is that a recent, Trump driven phenomenon?

Darrell

[Jowy]

Why not just cut the middle man and nationalize the shit that's critically important?

Efficiency.

On a tangential note, I've never been able to figure out why the "left" has blind trust in government and mistrust in the private sector, while the "right" has blind trust in the private sector and mistrust in government.  Obviously the only sane attitude is to trust no one.

Darrell

Companies only exist to create profits for the owners. Government's reason to exist is a bit more complicated as different people value different things, but in general you can say that the government is elected by the people and given a mandate to fulfill their campaign promises. Now, corruption exists, and companies can buy and control the government in countries that didn't have legal preventions in place to stop that. But companies are even worse as they have absolutely no reason to do anything but create profit for their owners. Companies work against you by default. The government at least is supposed to be on your side.

[T-hawk]

the more educated you are (which I'm going to assume correlates with "I get paid by a company" and "high tax rates hurt me more") the more likely you are to vote Democrat. Or is that a recent, Trump driven phenomenon?

The causation goes the other way. It's not that educated voters shifted to voting Democrat. It's that Democrat voters started getting more useless college degrees. They still aren't employed, or underemployed at Starbucks, and so they still depend on government support despite the "education level" that shows up as a college degree on a poll but is useless in real life.

The other answer is that these Democrat voters are employed in government or government-adjacent jobs, like government-funded schools and defense contractors and so on. They're funded by taxes, and their job is safer the more the government apparatus grows around them, so that's what they support.

[superdeath]

the more educated you are (which I'm going to assume correlates with "I get paid by a company" and "high tax rates hurt me more") the more likely you are to vote Democrat. Or is that a recent, Trump driven phenomenon?

The causation goes the other way.  It's not that educated voters shifted to voting Democrat.  It's that Democrat voters started getting more useless college degrees.  They still aren't employed, or underemployed at Starbucks, and so they still depend on government support despite the "education level" that shows up as a college degree on a poll but is useless in real life.

The other answer is that these Democrat voters are employed in government or government-adjacent jobs, like government-funded schools and defense contractors and so on.  They're funded by taxes, and their job is safer the more the government apparatus grows around them, so that's what they support.

what do you consider useless degrees?

[Mjmd]

Its also possible that educated people know history and are less prone to fear tactics. They also may look poorly on a party that doesn't believe in science.

[Jowy]

It's economic selfishness, and cognitive dissonance does the rest.  The left wants money and resources from their government, so they convince themselves into anything that increases government power.  The right gets their economic value from the private sector, and government is the economic threat to them, so they convince themselves into anything that limits or decreases government power.

It has to be more than that, because the more educated you are (which I'm going to assume correlates with "I get paid by a company" and "high tax rates hurt me more") the more likely you are to vote Democrat.  Or is that a recent, Trump driven phenomenon?

Darrell

The less educated you are, the easier it is to fool (= control) you. There is a reason why Republicans want to destroy the school system, even further than it is. It's not like business owners' kids will be going to those shitty schools. An example from my country, the Basic Finns (aka right wing racists) in 2015 had 29% of the total votes among uneducated, 29% of trade school educated, 18% of high school educated, 12% of high trade school educated, and 6% of university educated.

Interestingly I found this when looking for international stats:

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail...ernational

Sadly I can't see the article. I would guess that the richest 10% are higher educated than they were 40 years prior, while the poor 90% are easier to control in the age of mass media.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/201...ed-adults/

Here's a US only article that I only skimmed.

[Tarkeel]

Why not just cut the middle man and nationalize the shit that's critically important?

Efficiency.

On a tangential note, I've never been able to figure out why the "left" has blind trust in government and mistrust in the private sector, while the "right" has blind trust in the private sector and mistrust in government.  Obviously the only sane attitude is to trust no one.

Darrell

The best answer I've found, is that the private sector is better at innovation, while the public sector is better at maintenance. So the best course of action is something where the private sector gets limited monopoly to reap the benefits, and then the rights revert to the public.

This is of course something that has not worked out as intended during the last centure, where everything created before The Mouse is public domain and anything created after is unlikely to ever become public domain.

[Jowy]

Why not just cut the middle man and nationalize the shit that's critically important?

Efficiency.

On a tangential note, I've never been able to figure out why the "left" has blind trust in government and mistrust in the private sector, while the "right" has blind trust in the private sector and mistrust in government.  Obviously the only sane attitude is to trust no one.

Darrell

The best answer I've found, is that the private sector is better at innovation, while the public sector is better at maintenance. So the best course of action is something where the private sector gets limited monopoly to reap the benefits, and then the rights revert to the public.

This is of course something that has not worked out as intended during the last centure, where everything created before The Mouse is public domain and anything created after is unlikely to ever become public domain.

Innovation to a certain direction, whatever makes the most profit for the company owners. Anything that isn't profitable won't be innovated on. Then there's the worst case, the state funding private companies so that they don't even have to take any risks. Also all the other subsidies that the state has to pay because those services are critical for the survival of the state. If you think it works great, look back at the topic that led us here. Socialism for businesses, not for people. Having private businesses is okay, I'm not against that. Just the state needs to control the important areas. Private companies can take anything else, or even compete with the state.

[Tarkeel]

I think we are pretty much in agreement Jowy. I find that one of the main divisors between the "right" and "left" comes down to which tasks they want the government to perform.

For those who haven't seen it, Bo Burnham drops som heavy truths in this one:


One of my issues is that even the state is starting to get run like a private company, with focus on short term economics. We've seen it in healthcare here: Hospitals are paid for the procedures they perform. This has the perverse result that maternity wards whom are good at preventing complications during birth get paid less, while still have to have the (less used) emergency team support.