only 19% of Americans ages 18 to 29 identified themselves as “capitalists.”
From a recent Time Magazine article, Saving Capitalism.
A couple of weeks ago, a poll conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics found something startling: only 19% of Americans ages 18 to 29 identified themselves as “capitalists.” In the richest and most market-oriented country in the world, only 42% of that group said they “supported capitalism.” The numbers were higher among older people; still, only 26% considered themselves capitalists. A little over half supported the system as a whole.
Far more than any check the N.R.A. could write, it is this mobilization operation that has made the organization such a challenging adversary for Democrats and gun control advocates
Far more than any check the N.R.A. could write, it is this mobilization operation that has made the organization such a challenging adversary for Democrats and gun control advocates
Lobbying and dark money in politics is bad and distorts our democratic system of one person one vote, but eligible voter complacency is the worst distorter of the people’s will.
There are three ways to compel a democratically elected government to act:
A revolution – overthrow them.
Agitation that is strong and so pervasive in the media, and yet sympathetically covered, that the voting majority is influenced by the group’s actions in their voting choices.
I have cavilled about the insidious effects of gerrymandering elsewhere. Some states have a bipartisan commission draw voting district lines. Here is a map of computer defined electoral districts.
Lawrence Wright’s July 10, 2017 New Yorker article, “The Future of Texas,” has a good description of the effectives of systematic gerrymandering.
This excerpt describes the efforts of Tom Craddick, the ultraconservative, Midland, TX Republican Speaker of the Texas Legislature, after January 2003, when the Republicans took over the legislative majority. The “cracking” of Austin’s democratic voting blocks is a classic strategy.
As this excerpt concludes, “Texas become a model for how to get control.”
The state of our nation demands a new way of thinking about democracy. I’m less interested in why the Democrats lost this election than to understand how we have come to such a bifurcated society.
A casual morning’s coffee reflection suggests a sobering list of structural problems, related but distinct, and each requiring a diagnosis and resolution.
We seemingly lack an agreed upon collective identity as a nation, that contains and imposes normative standards on our sub-group conflicts. Dewey’s The Public and It’s Problems (1927), assumed the boundary conditions of the larger “public” body, and focused his analysis on how we bring the rich, local, and contextual mutual regard of the small town to a great nation of 119 million. In 2017, we are roughly three times that size (323 million).
The “central tendency” of agreed upon truth that largely held in the 20th century is now gone. By “truth” I mean agreement on the laws of the physical and social worlds — the facts — against which, strategies and tactics to change the facts could be debated (here I am using a loose view of Pierce and Dewey’s Pragmatist definition of truth is what inquirers agree is true at any moment in time). Media elites – national and major city newspapers and post-war broadcast media – defined a generally shared narrow spectrum of what they agreed was the “truth”. Importantly, the media elites actively managed this agreed upon definition of truth and the boundaries of who could contest their agreed “truth.” Yeah, I know there are all sorts of problems with the above: (i) Is the Pragmatists’ definition of inquirers’ truth valid (ii) did the 20th century media elites really hold a central tendency of truth; (iii) if so, was that central tendency truth unbiased and representative of the entire society? (I think we all know the answer to this one). While the central tendency of the conversation was distorted, the normative impulse to have a single conversation was important. Today, groups seem to be not just talking past one another but engaging in increasingly separate, intra-group optimized conversations. Persuasion through rhetoric, logic and facts are no longer considered necessary (remember “truthiness” and now look at Trump, Kelly Anne Conway and climate change deniers). There was a lower level of “talking past each other” than appears to be the case today. The question is, was this true? Is a single conversation good? Is it possible to have a single conversation without the distortion of power?
We don’t know why people vote the way they do. People don’t vote their economic self-interest. So what motivates them? If they are seeking to optimize something (but see below) what are they seeking to optimize? – Religious belief, social morality, collective identity, family and small group cohesion, …?
Are our citizens rational? Even if they wanted to and claim to, can people calculate what is optimal for themselves? Behavioral Economics suggests that we are not; that we cannot calculate risk; that we cannot think strategically for more than a few minutes at a time.
Can we put the genie back in the bottle? Now that we are in this state of discourse and democracy highly corroded by market logic, can we ever go back to a stronger balancing assertion of social and political logic and power?
My Reading List
I have a few books on my Q1-2017 Reading List. What’s yours?
Five-years studying Tea Party friendly working class residents of one of the poorest and highest per capita Federal support recipient states – Louisiana.
Frank argues that the Democratic party―once “the Party of the People”―now caters to the interests of a “professional managerial class” consisting of lawyers, doctors, professors, scientists, programmers, even investment bankers.
David Brooks’ comments on the current state of American elites here. This quote says its all:
Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this. (emphasis added)
We may not like the quaint paternalism associated with past elites, but implicit in Brooks’ contrast with today’s elite attitudes, paternalism has been replaced by a pure market logic of self-interest.
Daniel Kahnemann. Thinking Fast and Slow. And for those who don’t want to read the must read opus, Michael Lewis’ recent biography and summary of Kahneman’s and his partner, Tversky’s work (The Undoing Project).
There is growing data suggesting the political parties are stratifying along suburban-urban, white-ethnic, working class-more affluent, and low density population-high density population spectra.
At the Congressional district level, this barbell effect is quite clear. After the 2014 Congressional elections, the Congress bulged on two ends of the spectra.
Diversity & Education Levels and Party
Figure 1 shows the high correlation between education levels, level of minorities, and party alignment.
Figure 2 compares two time periods’ correlations of population density and party affiliation. In 1952, population density did not correlate with party preference. By 2012, population density (i.e., urban vs. suburban or exurban) strongly correlated with party preference.
Figure 2: Population Density and Party Preference, 1952 vs. 2012. (Source: New York Times).
Racial and Ethnic Diversity
The greatest racial and ethnic diversity exists on the coasts (see Figure 3) and, for the most part, in urban or high population density areas.
Figure 3. Diversity rates (Source: Wall Street Journal).
But the rate of change is greatest in heretofore non-diverse areas of the country – upstate New York, and the upper Great Plains (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Rate of Change in Diversity Levels (Source: Wall Street Journal).
Change is scary. Populations undergoing multiple changes simultaneously have a lot to be scared about; but they may also misattribute the actual from perceived sources of their fear. I recommend this New York Times piece on White identity’s role in this election, quoted here in part:
Identity, as academics define it, falls into two broad categories: “achieved” identity derived from personal effort, and “ascribed” identity based on innate characteristics.
Everyone has both, but people tend to be most attached to their “best” identity — the one that offers the most social status or privileges. Successful professionals, for example, often define their identities primarily through their careers.
For generations, working-class whites were doubly blessed: They enjoyed privileged status based on race, as well as the fruits of broad economic growth.
White people’s officially privileged status waned over the latter half of the 20th century with the demise of discriminatory practices in, say, university admissions. But rising wages, an expanding social safety net and new educational opportunities helped offset that. Most white adults were wealthier and more successful than their parents, and confident that their children would do better still.
That feeling of success may have provided a sort of identity in itself.
But as Western manufacturing and industry have declined, taking many working-class towns with them, parents and grandparents have found that the opportunities they once had are unavailable to the next generation.
That creates an identity vacuum to be filled.
“For someone who is lower income or lower class,” Professor Kaufmann explained, “you’re going to get more self-esteem out of a communal identity such as ethnicity or the nation than you would out of any sort of achieved identity.”
Focusing on lost identities rather than lost livelihoods helps answer one of the most puzzling questions about the link between economic stress and the rise of nationalist politics: why it is flowing from the middle and working classes, and not the very poor.
While globalization and free trade have widened economic inequality and deeply wounded many working-class communities, data suggests that this year’s political turmoil is not merely a backlash to that real pain.
Is not voting a sign of contentment or alientation? — the perrenial political science question.
Only 58% of the eligible voters actually voted in the 2012 US presidential election — a historic election, given the first black candidate was running. While regional voting rates varied dramatically, 2012 was not a impressive civic participation year.
A New York Times article showed data on the American electorate’s participation rates, which is included below.
Is not voting a sign of contentment or alientation? — the perrenial political science question.
Before we look at who (doesn’t) vote in the US elections, let’s look at how the US compares against 34 other democracies. The answer: pretty badly. Other countries with near single party control (Mexico and South Korea), something that might promote voter apathy, have higher turnout than the US. Countries with turbulent and arguably dysfunctional governments (Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy), something that might lead to voter alienation, have higher turnouts than the US.
Perhaps American voters are just happily complacent, as judged by their low participation, and contrary to media reports of the alienated electorate. The 2016 election will be a test of that theory and the contrary alientation theory, which is used to explain the Trump core voter demogrpahic.
But let’s look back at the 2012 election data as a baseline of American voter civic participation.
