Do You Live in a Political Bubble?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> Democrats, surveys have shown, are more likely than Republicans to prioritize walkable neighborhoods with good public transit. Republicans, on the other hand, prize neighborhoods with more Christians and larger houses.
From the study the article links to just below that paragraph:
> We explain a paradox in the literature on partisan polarization and sorting: partisans differ in their stated preferences over the partisanship of communities and numerous correlates of partisanship, but these preferences do not lead to meaningful partisan differences in residential migration. ... Despite the statistically significant influence of community partisan composition on partisans’ community ratings, partisanship’s direct effect on where people live is likely to be weak due to the low priority that Americans assign to the partisanship of their communities and neighbors. ... potential movers with a stated propensity to move to more copartisan neighborhoods are, regardless of their underlying motivations, more likely to have few choices if they select first on affordability and quality. ... those who have the most desire and most latitude to sort by party are not doing so. ... Our study shows, neither partisan affect nor its correlates are sufficient to overcome the substantial material concerns that inform a decision as weighty as residential choice. When it comes to one extremely important household decision, politics remains, in Robert Dahl’s (2005) words, a “sideshow in the great circus of life.”
I don't think the study supports the article.
The study extract asserts that people do not use the partisan composition of communities to make housing decisions.
This are not exclusive assertions. At first glance they even look complimentary.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/687569#d5...
The article concludes:
> By making it easier for Democrats and Republicans to live side by side, President Biden might also restore some of our trust in one another.
But the paper already says:
> crime, school quality, and commuting time rank much higher on both Democrats’ and Republicans’ “hierarchy of needs” (Maslow 1943) than explicitly political concerns. ... for all their differences in stated preferences, we show that partisans are not, on balance, moving to more compatible communities. While Republicans are moving to more Republican communities, on average, Democrats are as well. An analysis of the moving histories of our survey respondents shows that movers tend to relocate to communities similar to their current residences. Overall partisan residential migration is best described as regression to the mean, with both Democrats and Republicans in extremely copartisan zip codes moving to more moderate neighborhoods, on average. Indeed, we find no evidence that even ideologically consistent partisans (liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans), those who might be most likely to sort because of the strength of their political concerns, are more likely to sort.
So I don't think the paper really supports the article.
Do you read: "President Biden [should] restore some our trust in one another, [thereby] making is easier for Democrats and Republicans to live side by side."?
> Democrats, surveys have shown, are more likely than Republicans to prioritize walkable neighborhoods with good public transit. Republicans, on the other hand, prize neighborhoods with more Christians and larger houses.
Followed by the graph lifted from the paper, with the intro "When deciding where to live, Democrats were more likely to prioritize ..."
The article is implying these lifestyle choices are why Democrats and Republicans live in different places. But that is contradicted by the study which says that while Democrats and Republicans do indeed express those preferences, those are low priority and that the higher priority things which predict where people will move, Democrats and Republicans agree on.
That's my first issue, that the article is misstating the study.
Separately, the article claims:
> Middle-income Democrats who can’t afford a single-family home should still be able to raise their children in a duplex with a front yard. And young, lower-income Republicans shouldn’t be priced out of the cultural amenities that city life provides.
But, I don't follow this reasoning. Is there evidence of Republicans who would live in cities but for the cost? Isn't it more likely there are Democrats who would rather live in cities but for the cost? Similarly, aren't there likely to be more middle-income Republicans interested in those duplexes?
The article seems poorly reasoned to me.
I think Biden should try to help Democrats and Republicans alike and not worry about how this influences where folks end up living.
Partisan districting is a whole separate issue that needs to be addressed separately, independent of housing policy.
The politicians no longer run our country. Bankers now do the job of organizing and optimizing our nations resources. Politicians are middle managers of America, a face for the citizens to look to for moral support, but not actually in control of the ship. However, most Americans haven’t noticed the shift that’s happened in the last few decades. That’s why it feels like wrestling. It looks real but the consequences aren’t really felt in reality.
Has the average American’s life really changed because of Bush, Obama, Trump, or Biden? Regardless of the political figurehead, there has been a consistent trend towards lower wages and rising inequality.
Yes? Lots of life changing events have happened for many average Americans because of those presidents' decisions. Going to war, being able to afford health insurance, losing health insurance, dying of covid, etc.
They want cheap labor, low taxes, pretend regulation (Google, Apple, Amazon, etc.)
Politicians pretend they listen to the public and they go through motions but rarely deliver what's in the interest of the people who elected them.
I doubt today ATT would get broken up.
Biden is ending the 20 years of continuous war we were knowingly lied into by the Bush administration. It's hard to fathom what impact the $6+ trillion we burned in Iraq could have had domestically. The friends and families of the 150k+ human beings who were murdered in this illegal war don't see this a "wrestling match". If Bush II had not been in office this would not have happened. I defy you to actually understand the historical record from this time period and argue that things would have gone the same with a Gore administration.
The affordable care act is another obvious counterexample. The voting record in congress relating to it speaks for itself as far as who supported and opposed it. It materially improved the everyday living situation for millions of people, was very popular, and continues to be very popular. It began to address the cause of medical poverty, which is responsible for about 1/3rd of foreclosures. Republicans spent years attempting to sabotage and destroy it at every opportunity while offering no alternatives for replacement.
At the end of the Obama administration, polling showed that "80 percent of Republicans strongly disapprove of Obamacare. Only about 60 percent strongly disapprove of the Affordable Care Act." Of course these are just different terms for the same exact thing.
https://www.npr.org/2017/02/11/514732211/obamacare-and-affor...
I'd hate to break it to you but your grasp on reality isn't any better than most humans meaning it's pretty poor.
It's been amusing to me to see this data that shows that when it comes to the rate of hospitalization with covid one side is dramatically more misinformed than the other.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-misinformation-is-dis...
Obviously if I were to look at other pieces of information the other side would be the more uninformed one.
The point is if you are positive you are on the side of righteousness you are almost certainly wrong. I have family members who vote Republican and they are not Nazis despite your opinion that they are. I don't know if you're in your 20s or not but you remind me of a young college student ranting at the student lounge.
I'm curious if this is what the Catholic-Protestant rift felt like.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/160373/democrats-racially-diver...
Where I am is 84D and 16R. However, given I am a single remote worker and my friend group is all 35 and under (living in big cities) the tilt of my social interactions is probably closer to 98D 2R
In the abstract, I don't want to live in a bubble, but when the alternative to doing that is to leave your bubble, it's a very uncomfortable prospect indeed.