Posted on 05/14/2005 3:33:42 PM PDT by neverdem
Last week the Pew Research Center came out with a study of the American electorate that crystallized something I've been sensing for a long time: rich people are boring, but poor people are interesting.
The Pew data demonstrated that people at the top of the income scale are divided into stable, polar camps. There are the educated-class liberals - antiwar, pro-choice, anti-tax cuts - who make up about 19 percent of the electorate, according to Pew. And there are business-class conservatives - pro-war, pro-life, pro-tax cut - who make up 11 percent of voters.
These affluent people are pretty well represented by their parties, are not internally conflicted and are pretty much stuck in their ways.
But poorer voters are not like that. They're much more internally conflicted and not represented well by any party. You've got poor Republicans (over 10 percent of voters) who are hawkish on foreign policy and socially conservative, but like government programs and oppose tax cuts. You've got poor Democrats who oppose the war and tax cuts, but are socially conservative and hate immigration. These less-educated voters are more cross-pressured and more independent than educated voters. If you're looking for creative tension, for instability, for a new political movement, the lower middle class is probably where it's going to emerge.
Already, we've seen poorer folks move over in astonishing numbers to the G.O.P. George Bush won the white working class by 23 percentage points in this past election. Many people have wondered why so many lower-middle-class waitresses in Kansas and Hispanic warehouse workers in Texas now call themselves Republicans. The Pew data provide an answer: they agree with Horatio Alger.
These working-class folk like the G.O.P.'s social and foreign policies, but the big difference between poor Republicans and poor Democrats is that the former believe that individuals can make it on their own with hard work and good character.
According to the Pew study, 76 percent of poor Republicans believe most people can get ahead with hard work. Only 14 percent of poor Democrats believe that. Poor Republicans haven't made it yet, but they embrace what they take to be the Republican economic vision - that it is in their power to do so. Poor Democrats are more likely to believe they are in the grip of forces beyond their control.
The G.O.P. succeeds because it is seen as the party of optimistic individualism.
But when you look at how Republicans behave in office, you notice that they are often clueless when it comes to understanding the lower-class folks who put them there. They are good at responding to business-class types and social conservatives, but bad at responding to poor Republicans.
That's because on important issues, the poor Republicans differ from their richer brethren. Poor Republicans aspire to middle-class respectability, but they are suspicious of the rich and of big business. About 83 percent of poor Republicans say big business has too much power, according to Pew, compared with 26 percent of affluent Republicans. If the Ownership Society means owning a home, they're for it. If it means putting their retirement in the hands of Wall Street, they become queasy.
Remember, these Republicans are disproportionately young women with children. Nearly 70 percent have trouble paying their bills every month. They are optimistic about the future, but their fear of their lives falling apart stalks them at night.
Poorer Republicans support government programs that offer security, so long as they don't undermine the work ethic. Eighty percent believe government should do more to help the needy, even if it means going deeper into debt. Only 19 percent of affluent Republicans believe that.
President Bush has made a lot of traditional Republicans nervous with his big-government conservatism. He's increased the growth of nonsecurity domestic spending at a faster rate than Lyndon Johnson and twice as fast as Bill Clinton. But in so doing, he's probably laid down a welcome mat to precisely these poorer folks.
Even so, Republicans have barely thought about how to use government to offer practical encouragement to the would-be Horatio Alger heroes. They've barely explored their biggest growth market. If Republicans can't pass programs like KidSave, which would help poor families build assets for education or retirement, then Hillary Clinton, who is surprisingly popular with poor Republicans, will take their place.
E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com
Can't they do it by themselves?
And pretty much what I get from this article is that how moral poor people who believe in hard work, investment and self betterment are attracted to a party that encourages the same. Notice how the people that want to blame somebody else for their troubles are Demon-rats.
Can't they do it by themselves?
Apparently not, as the last time I read it, we have all time high consumer and government debt. Do you need a link?
Your contributions on this thread are masterful and ought to be mandatory reading. My dad worked in a cardboard factory and my mother in a garment factory. My experience in their household tells me you are right on target on populism, Reagan Democrats and the working/lower middle class.
From a former critic, keep up the great work.
How far do you want to go to ease the life of the working poor? Guaranteed housing provided by the government? Oh wait, we already do that it's called section 8 housing. Same with health care, we already do that. I would say that giving too much assistance is like a child that refuses to let her child learn how to walk. It's not compassion, it's child abuse.
I hate corporate welfare as much as anyone, the way to get rid of is is to take the life or death decisions that politicians have over the wealthy and the business owners by returning to a government limited by the constitution. Regulating interstate commerce was not a blank check to punish and reward your friends and enemies with favorable or confiscatory tax laws and regulations.
FDR bought the votes of the farmers, bought the vote of the union members, bought the votes of the blacks by punishing the productive. His theft lead to the substitution of individualism for dependence on the government and specifically dependence on the Democrats for sustenance. Second term, his plans were well in place asking Republicans "Why are you for starving the farmer and the working man?" In 1942 FDR attempted to raise the income tax to 99.5% of all income over $25,000. It didn't pass, so he did an executive order setting the rate to 100% over $25,000. I can see that you would be jumping for joy at this populist executive order.
If you take away the incentive to produce, you will succeed more than likely. This is what you want, right?
FWIW, BE, Sam always posts well-thought out positions.
On the immigration question, Sam has identified (correctly, IMHO) part of the problem as wage-slavery (you recall Belloc's Servile State.)
IIRC, in essence, Sam's hypothesis is that by and large the Fortune 500 is decidedly neutral on the issue because they can easily substitute illegals at $6.25/hour for the native workers at $8.50.
Take a look at any meat-processor.
Further, I think the Pew analysis misses a very significant breakdown category--faith.
My suspicion is that we are looking at another way to phrase the "socially conservative/economically liberal" position of not only genuine Conservatism, but genuine Christianity.
Madison Avenue has long been a target of thinking Catholics, some at extremely high levels in the Church. Consumerism/materialism debilitates society.
A high-end men's clothing retailer in Milwaukee is now running radio ads which address the economic situation up here--it's mixed--by proposing the solution of BUY, BUY, BUY as "the American way" to fix the economy.
I can't decide if the commercials are tongue-in-cheek...
Consider the source.
NY Times ^ | May 15, 2005 | DAVID BROOKS
Lies, lies, half truths, opinions stated and facts and more lies. This is what you get in the old grey whore. Why anyone believe anything published in this pompous fishwrapper?
Freemarketeers have no answer for this argument.
So you were able to save money for the house, buy a car, take vacations on mimimum wage? Did you have children too? When was it?
We did fine.
It was in the 1980's. You know the evil Reagan years when seniors were forced to eat dog food to survive and we had interest rates of 15% at the beginning of the decade. First mortgage rate was about 12%.
One child that we put in a Montessori school for a couple of years until we saw the light.
So that money pile just magically grows all by itself while the evil rich sit back and enjoy? That's funny!
Deal with it.
The author, David Brooks, wrote for the Washington Times and the Weekly Standard before working for the NY Times. He's not a liberal. He's guilty of being from New York, like me, and I'm no liberal.
Every time I see him on TV, he's arguing against some hard core lefty, such as Mark Shields on PBS' The News Hour. Here, he's enthusiastically praising the optimism of folks who expect to work their way to prosperity, while commenting on the results of this PEW poll.
I'll agree that Brooks has a compulsive trait for sociological analysis, but don't you think Karl Rove looks at the PEW poll results also, even if it's recognized for its leftwing bias?
Besides getting insights into how the left, the enemy, thinks, the NY Times serves other functions. Where else would Arlen Specter have "Paying for Asbestos" printed, the New York Sun? Can you tell me about any other conservative newspapers with a national reputation?
The fact remains that the NYT publishes lies, distortions, one sided garbage and opinions disguised as facts and ALWAYS HAS. They are becoming increasingly irrelevant as the masses begin to realize that the "Pravda" in the Times is nothing like the truth. People don't have to accept the lamestream media's garbage as truth anymore. To hell with the New York times. The only people who give a rat's a$$ what it says are new yorkers anyway.
Dream on. Your antipathy to New York is nothing new. I'm still waiting for the name of any conservative newspaper with a national reputation. The only thing conservative about the Wall Street Journal are its OpEd pages.
Should I take odds on whether your Lutheranism is the Missouri Synod variety--or that of the ELCA?
Well, my Church is with the ELCA. Unfortunatly, I don't go too often, I usually work Sundays, but I think the only course of action is to get the pastor aside and ask questions since there are soe ELCA Churches that could jump synods. Once I am in a better position economically to where I don't work Sundays, if I'm not satisfied with the answers I get concerning the ELCA and where my Church is headed, I'll look for a Missouri or Wisconsin synod Church. I'm looking to get back to Church, I admit I've been out of the loop for a while.
Yes, faith is most definitely a factor. Jesus had a lot to say on the subject of haughty pride and selfish greed so Christians are not "free market at all costs", "I've got mine so screw you", "If you are poor it is because you are weak and stupid and lazy and you don't deserve to live" types. We hear the same smug proclamations from the free market types about how roaringly prosperous a country with massive debt burdens and no savings rate is. You don't have to be a genius to figure out that if most households in this country are massively in debt (net downwards social mobility staved off with plastic) and saving nothing they are one job loss or major illness away from disaster.
I wonder if war exacerbates strains. It is very, very obvious that it is the poor Republicans who are in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most assuredly NOT the rich Republicans. Orwell in England, Your England correctly observed the decadence of a ruling elite in terms of their unwillingness to share the risks and the dangers and put their own butts on the front line. I think we are seeing in the recent precipitous drop in Army recruitment rates a mounting class resentment against this.
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