[lbo-talk] further adventures in political surrealism

Michael Hoover hooverm at scc-fl.edu
Thu Feb 16 08:37:49 PST 2006



>>> dhenwood at panix.com 02/15/06 4:12 PM >>>
[this is an excerpt from Larry Bartels' paper "Homer Gets a Tax Cut" <http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/homer.pdf>] The results of my analysis suggest that most Americans support tax cuts not because they are indifferent to economic inequality, but because they largely fail to connect inequality and public policy. Three out of every four people say that the difference in incomes between rich people and poor people has increased in the past 20 years, and most of them add that that is a bad thing-but most of these people still support Bush's tax cuts and the repeal of the estate tax. People who want to spend more money on a variety of government programs are more likely to support tax cuts than those who do not, other things being equal. And people's opinions about tax cuts are strongly shaped by their attitudes about their own tax burdens but virtually unaffected by their attitudes about the tax burden of the rich-even in the case of the estate tax, which only affects the wealthiest one or two percent of taxpayers. Some of these peculiarities appear to be mitigated by political information, but others seem perversely resilient. <<<<<>>>>>

that class divides public opinion should be a *truism* of politics, after all, mounds of data over last 50 years *consistently* shows that working class folks are more likely to favor government programs to create jobs, establish workplace health & regulations, prevent capital flight, promote national health insurance, increase public funding for educatiion, and taxing on basis of ability to pay...

people with incomes and formal education levels below the median are more concerned about high unemployment, feel more vulnerable in global corporate economy, more likely to think favorable about unions, less likely to think favorably about corporate behavior...

now, class divided opinion may not be as pronounced in the u.s. as in most other political democracies, working class folks in other places might well be surprised at comparatively high percentage of u.s. workers who seem to oppose measures that would redistribute wealth - and power - downwards, thereby, limit corporate behavior in the process...

moreover, if working people do not always think like a class, wealthier generally do, surprise, surprise, little support among affluent and above for economic redistribution...

if class opinion differences in u.s. re. economics are less pronounced than in most capitalist democracies, they are more so re. certain political aspects - affluent in u.s. not only have stronger sense than u.s. working class that political participation matters, they express higher levels of political efficacy than their counterparts in other liberal democracies... meanwhile, u.s. working class falls below its counterparts in such places (one result is steep decline in voter turnout among u.s. workers compared to workers elsewhere)...

notion, nay, theory of 'plural elite' democracy - upon which much poli sci research dating to post-ww2 rests - *requires* largely passive public... yes, opinion can be ill-informed and incorrect, particularly re. policy details, and appear to 'go whichever way the wind blows' (you don't need a weatherman, yeah, yeah, yeah), particularly re. presidents & military deployment...

however, there is lttle evidence that working people - nor anyone else, for that matter - hold generally incoherent views relative to their class position, too much of current debate is about trying rearrange vote choice of some portion of existing electorate... mh



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