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Comment by JohnBooty | Hacker News Reader

    In democracies, the opposite is true: the winning 
    coalition is large, and the real selectorate is 
    almost as large as the nominal selectorate. This 
    means that dictators can keep their jobs by 
    handing out private goods to their cronies, 
    whereas democratic leaders have to dole out 
    public goods to maintain their power. That 
    seems to square pretty well with observations 
    in the real world.

I'm not sure how to square this with recent US elections, where poorer folk increasingly vote for the party that openly pledges to give them the least, at least in tangible terms.

I suppose that "dole out public goods" doesn't necessarily have to apply to tangible goods, of course. A lot of Republicans are happy to vote for Republicans simply because they have promised to ban things they find objectionable, like abortion. If preventing women from having abortions is one's biggest personal issue, then I suppose a guarantee to curb abortion rights would be seen as "public goods."

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>poorer folk increasingly vote for the party that openly pledges to give them the least, at least in tangible terms.

One of the keys is that they pledge to give other groups even less.

As LBJ said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you"

You are completely missing the point as to why people voted Republican recently, and of course, doing it with an air of smug superiority and vague references to racism. LBJ's quote ironically applies in reverse to the democrats of today, especially and including some minority communities. He might have said:

"If you can convince the lowest person that his situation is not his fault, he won't notice that you're making it harder for him to rise up. Hell, give him welfare and a system to blame, and he'll happily and loyally stay down forever."

>give him welfare and a system to blame, and he'll happily and loyally stay down forever.

So.....farmers?

The welfare tropes are so exhaustingly played out, especially when all data shows that red voters get far more welfare.

https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal...

This applies in most states at the local level too:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/why-are-w...

Also, you're ignoring the voters who explicitly tell us why they're voting that way: "he's not hurting the people he needs to be": https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/tr...

The data shows that states with red voters also have high welfare rates. That's very different than showing that red voters get more welfare.

Given that welfare recipients are among the minority in every single state, it's very possible that the welfare recipients are voting majority blue and still losing their state elections

To support what you are saying, I found this article: https://wallstreetpit.com/89671-are-welfare-recipients-mostl...

"Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats, while full time Workers are evenly divided between parties."

That's a very narrow definition of "welfare". Farm subsidies are welfare, as are corporate loan guarantees, pro sports stadiums, tax breaks for the energy industry and so on, and those overwhelmingly benefit red states.

And who can forget "don't let the government get ahold of my Medicare"? Conservative voters love to believe that the only good welfare is the welfare that benefits them (similar to how "cancel culture" is bad until it's time to ban books from school libraries and so many other hypocrisies).

Where's the evidence?

If you trust Vox to give you insight into Republican voters, then I cannot take you any more seriously than if I cited a Federalist article to tell you why people voted for Biden. My trust for the Guardian is only slightly higher than for Vox, but I find this article at least seems far more balanced: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/why-did-peop...

It includes things like:

* Voters felt Trump was more genuine than Hillary. That's not hard to believe. Trump is raw and real to a fault. Hillary is a corrupt career politician.

* Make America prosperous again. Democrats like to ignore history that shows that conservative presidents bring far more prosperity; leftist presidents destroy prosperity.

* Trump was the best or only conservative option. In general, the best reason to vote for a candidate is simply that the other candidate is worse.

* A reaction to Obama. Thomas Sowell at the time believed Obama was the U.S. worst president ever. While not a historian myself, I am inclined to take the opinion seriously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UpiNiaak18&list=WL&index=1&...

And, if you are sick of the welfare tropes, you probably need more Sowell in your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdwXoKTW3Ew

> Democrats like to ignore history that shows that conservative presidents bring far more prosperity; leftist presidents destroy prosperity.

Oh man, this was my 8th grade understanding in a Republican household.

However it's not very hard to look at the US economy and debt under Clinton, then Bush, then Obama as recent, alternating, and stark differences. Clinton had one of the best US economies in history with a budget surplus, Bush squandered that on wars and the 08 recession. Obama picked up the pieces of a recession and brought us back to economic strength from the brink.

Then there's the crucial point in history where the three consecutive conservative presidencies, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover led us to the Great Depression vs. FDR's birth of the modern American middle class...

(Yes, I read and appreciate Sowell. And when I say the president's names, I mean their administration's policies.)

Well sowell blames the depression first on hoover for doing the very progressive thing of interfering with the economy and he made things worse. Sowell also states that all of FDR's policies made everything worse as well.

Similarly, sowell believes democrats caused the 08 recession via affirmative action housing policies and that Obama put the economy into a a coma until trump got things back in order. Sowell is an economist by trade, by the way.

We can both agree the economy thrived under Clinton, and I would add bush senior. Clinton was a rarity for being relatively fiscally responsible.

Are you sowell speaking in the third person or do you just base everything you believe in one author?

If sowell had a cookbook I bet I could guess your diet.

The Sowell diet! You guessed it! I can't help it if he's the best source to cite for many current social issues. It's not like diversifying my sources would change your mind.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=111 There you go. Another author explaining how FDR only made things worse.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-obama-recovery-took-so-...

Here's another author explaining how Obama damaged our economy. And of course Biden is damaging it even further.

> give him welfare... and he'll... stay down

Are you sure it's not: he'll fare... well?

No, I meant "stay down": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdwXoKTW3Ew

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDwDRGtvDrQ

Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCVnydB3bj0

I am familiar with the allegory of the grasshopper and the ant, but I consider it mythological, and not scientifically rigorous.

Its all well and good to take people at face value when you ask them a direct question, but when the data consistently bears out that that is not the truth you have a responsibility to look at reality.

Response bias is well studied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_bias

Especially when one has been fed a narrative specifically to cover underlying beliefs in something that has more social acceptability.

"The democrats are smug" okay...lets ask the follow-up question. Why? how? please explain? Taking people at their literal word for why they do something is basically the worst possible version of any social sciences research.

> but when the data consistently bears out that that is not the truth you have a responsibility to look at reality.

I have to admit you've lost me. What reality are we talking about?

> "The democrats are smug" okay...lets ask the follow-up question. Why? how? please explain?

Thomas Sowell has written entire books about the arrogance of leftism. This one I've read personally: https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas-Sowell/dp...

This one I would like to find time to read: https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-S...

From my own personal experience, it takes a certain arrogance to believe in authoritarianism, that a few elite should be making all the decisions for the unwashed masses. This describes the current democrat party to a tee.

Similarly, it takes a certain arrogance to believe you have all the answers, and similarly, to ignore all the evidence that disproves your assumptions. This describes most so-called progressives.

In contrast, it takes humility to be a conservative, recognize that you don't have all the answers, that things are the way they are for a reason, and that the world is complex with more far tradeoffs than pure solutions.

> it takes a certain arrogance to believe in authoritarianism, that a few elite should be making all the decisions for the unwashed masses. This describes the current democrat party to a tee.

I see you got the names of the Democrat and Republican parties confused. As the 2020 election showed a minority of the country tried to throw out the results of an election to usurp power for their authoritarian...

No I got the parties right. Democrats are the true authoritarians right now. No amount of January 6th political theater can cover it up. It's too massive to hide.

Making you feel bad isn’t authoritarianism.

I’m pretty convinced parent comment is parody. Sadly that’s a position I’m holding just for my own sanity

This is what is meant by the “arrogance”. Peoples opinions are not accepted as inherently credible. The bad faith and the intellectual dishonesty and the projection are not an accident, they are a narrative tool that metastasizes

“People have written books”

Is not a response to “why do you hold this opinion”

It strikes me as pretty much straight up satire to use as your primary source the writings of a guy with degrees from Harvard and works for the Hoover institution at standford. To then go from the arrogance of the left to the arrogance of authoritarianism…I honestly think this is parody.

The basics here, that are worth reiterating, is that there is, as usual, no serious people on the left claiming they have all the answers…the only people claiming that are constructing useful strawpeople to then try and tear down.

I'm glad I can amuse you with satire that isn't. I challenge you to read one of those books and open your mind a little. If you aren't blind, the authoritarianism and arrogance of the left is visible everywhere. And Sowell is anything but the typical Harvard grad. So there is nothing funny about my citation.

The fundamental misunderstanding is thinking that people vote to implement their wishes as opposed to express their values. Why don't people vote for policies that help them-- the rich as well as the poor btw? Working class people vote against social welfare programs, professionals vote for tax hikes.

The reality is that people know that their individual vote has a tiny chance of changing policy so the material reward for it is very small. The psychic reward for expressing your values is greater. So the working class person may vote to reduce social welfare, but won't tear up a child tax credit. The professional who votes for higher taxes won't donate an extra $5k to the government. In both cases when those people vote they are expressing their values, not their interests.

> If an autocrat’s “inner circle” feels that their future is insecure, they will be incentivized to improve the lot of the nominal selectorate in case they someday find themselves on the outside.

"The professional who votes for higher taxes" probably fears that someday they won't be a professional, much like the autocrat who fears they will someday be on the outside.

While to a large extent that is true, I think a larger part of the issue is that people actually have different foundational mental models of how the world "really" works.

Conservatives, for the most part, believe that a hierarchy of haves and have-nots is not only natural, but inevitable. It is consistent for them to therefore extrapolate that anyone claiming to work on flattening the hierarchy (by giving to the have-nots) must really be trying to get their in-group further up the hierarchy, at the expense of those currently benefitting from it.

That's why "He’s not hurting the people he needs to be" can be rationalized as in their self interest. In their view, there is some constant, immutable amount of "hurt" that some demographic has to bear. "No such thing as a free lunch" and such. So deep down, conservatives interpret any calls to reduce that harm as instead being an existential threat to redirect that harm to their group.

I really recommend Ian Danskin's videos on the subject, they explain it better than I can in one HN comment, with plenty of scholastic sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4&list=PLJA_jUddXv...

(Linked is "Always a Bigger Fish". Many of the historical sources justifying the argument are discussed in the "endnote" video that follows, but this video is the one that lays out this particular argument, along with the later video "I Hate Mondays")

I would square it by looking at the rhetoric which often focuses on "big government paying cronies and the 'swamp'". It's important to distinguish what they're actually doing from what they're saying to get support.

Also see a huge amount of research that who gets part of the public goods is almost important as the fact that they're giving out public goods. Which often falls along nationalistic and racial lines.

I personally doubt that most in GOP vote along those value lines, but there are very vocal and organized segments that do which I think explains why it'd seem that way.

Source: personal experiences and anecdotal evidence (e.g. take with a grain of salt)

I think it’s more nuanced than that. People are just skeptical of government especially in rural areas. Aside from access to healthcare, I don’t think many poor people have faith in government help.

And living in a major city like Los Angeles is even worse. The government’s spending billions of dollars for 600-800k apartments for the homeless, when the cost of living for regular people goes up and up. And with little support for small businesses.

The trope that poor Republicans are just “too stupid” to vote for Democrats to save them, or are blinded by social issues, seems largely false. They view the government as causing their problems via cheap labor, “free trade”, unfair regulation and inflation.

Free trade and cheap labour are republican policies though. That's what the republican god Reagan was all about

Republicans and Democrats alike bought into neo-liberalism entirely, no later than 1990 (though, yes, it did start on the R side). The leaders and presidential candidates of the big two parties have consistently been on board with it, with the only big exception being... Trump.

Meanwhile, neo-liberalism has been and remains unpopular with the electorate on "both sides" (which is why Trump was able to leverage that gap between voter preferences and the standard party platform)

    The trope that poor Republicans are just 
    “too stupid” to vote for Democrats to 
    save them, or are blinded by social issues, 
    seems largely false.

I know a lot of Republicans who are very smart, but they value vastly different things than I do (to put it mildly) and vote accordingly, thus my observation.

> People are just skeptical of government especially in rural areas.

I would be more convinced of this if rural and conservative areas weren't net takers of federal funds. In the US at least, urban areas subsidize rural ones by quite a lot of money.

In addition, take a look at the federal deficit under each partie's leadership for the last 100 years. It's quite a coup that Republicans get to pretend that they are the party for small government and fiscal responsibility.

In almost Urban area, the rural voters know about this company or that company that is on a government contract and fails to deliver the goods and services, while the companies owners are living like Kings of the rural area.

The narrative you are using is the opposite side of the same coin that Republicans use about how wealthy people who vote for paying for more taxes should just donate money to the government. If the government is giving out money, you'd be a fool to refuse to take it because it's going to get dispersed either way and the voters arent getting their taxes back.

Poor white people vote Republican. If you actually look at the entire population, Democrats consistently win the lower class.

This has to do with immigration and equity among races more so than a direct transfer of wealth.

In one of the most contentious elections in the last 100 years, the racial voting lines were not quite as stark as I expected. While black voters voted in the ratio I expected, I honestly expected this type of ratio along all racial lines except white given the Republican rhetoric in the latest presidential election:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184425/presidential-ele...

TBH, this was an election for the Democrats to lose, when it came to non-white voters and the ball was dropped. I'm not sure why they keep chasing these edge-case voters and ignoring the lower and middle class, base. They assume they're "gimme's" I assume - but voter turn out will, and does, drop =[

Full disclosure, I live in the Seattle area, so the rhetoric bubble here is strong

EDIT: typo

Just to add to your comment, here's a chart showing how college education (probably a good proxy for socioeconomic class) correlates with Democrat/Republican leanings across racial groups: https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2020/09/1618431...

Perhaps you can’t resolve that contradiction because it doesn’t exist. By income, Democrats won the lower third and middle third income groups by 55-45 in 2020.

This trend has been changing over time, though. Democrats are losing poorer voters and gaining among highly educated, and higher earning voters.

Data? Pew poll says that trump won non-college-educated white men 4:1 in 2016 and only 3:1 in 2020. Isn’t that going the opposite direction of your claim?

I think that's more an effect of the gender of the opposing candidate than anything else. You can't deny that sexism played a huge role in the public opposition to Hillary Clinton's campaign. It was plain to see if you followed any of the discussion online, often becoming openly misogynistic.

Edit: also, this source seems to disagree with you: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/11/once-aga...

That source seems to agree with me. The graph shows less-educated white voters with a 10% swing to democrats between 2016 and 2020. Also I completely agree that irrational animus towards HRC was a big cause in 2016.

I understand how you came to that conclusion, since those graphs are extremely confusingly designed*, but the 10% change is the predicted change in margin of victory (which the article is examining because said prediction was wrong), and the actual change is more or less negligible, trending slightly towards more Republican.

Behind the paywall, the article text confirms this:

>However, there was scant evidence that white voters without degrees preferred Mr Biden to Mrs Clinton. Mr Trump’s margins of victory in white working-class counties this year were just as large on average, and in some places even bigger, than in 2016.

* Honestly, they're astoundingly bad, to the point of being actively misleading if you're not looking carefully. I highly suspect they were thrown together by someone without statistics training using bad autofit at the last minute.

Poorer, less-educated white voters overwhelmingly favored Trump.

This framing carries the kind of contempt that propels poorer people to vote Republican. They consistently feel contempt from democrats. Should it be surprising why?

I observed that many voters value their morals/values (for example, Republicans who place a high value on preventing abortions) more highly than they value tangible goods.

Many would consider that a compliment.

I am such a person, or at least I strive to be.

I understand well that there's a "poor Republicans are so dumb that they consistently vote against their own interests" narrative out there. It appears to me that's plainly something you brought to the table here. That trope wasn't present in my observation, either explicitly or implicitly.

the way I think about what's happened in the USA is that primarily by means of "lobbying" it happened that the public (i.e. the citizenry) stopped being made out of human individuals and became corporations and other large businesses.

this implies that giving out public goods is actually about giving tax breaks and subsidies to campaign donnors and lobbyists both of which are really for-profit companies.

...or something like that.

Yeah, that makes sense. There's kind of a dance our politicians have to do. They have to keep the corporations and PACs happy first and foremost, but they also have to... well, not necessarily keep the people happy, but say the right things so that people will actually go vote for them.

Basically yes. About 20% of the population is highly politically engaged and partisan (mostly the upper-middle class). The rest are neutral or lean Republican or Democrat, but are really more concerned with day to day things. If you piss of your ideological base in the 20%, you will get primaried. If you screw something up so badly that it affects the day to day life of the other 80%, you will be destroyed in the general election. So the winning strategy is to go as far as you can to please your base without pissing off the main population too much. An example of this is "defund the police." Perfect for the Democratic base, but absolutely toxic to the unengaged middle watching SF shoplifting videos on Youtube. See how quickly they backed off that?

> See how quickly they backed off that?

The Democratic Party never adopted it at all. The activists that did were largely outside of the Party and opposed by the elected Party officials from day one.

It’s simpler than that: Fox News has been inculcating fascism in the USA for 20 years. We are transitioning rapidly from democracy into a dictatorship.

Joss Fong investigated "How American Conservatives Turned Against Vaccines":

https://twitter.com/JossFong/status/1496525152598777856

It is really good.

This quote also suggests a failure mode: if the people expect more than the people are willing to give plus maximum debt increase. Like you want low tax/social security payments and retirement age of 50.

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