>Even this regression can only explain 27% of the variation of U.S.
>personal income. Yet age comes up highly significant. Only sex and
>higher ed (college and grad/professional school) come up as more
>significant than age.
<...>
Later, Julio Huato wrote:
>Yes, but that
>shows up in the 40s and 50s. Obama's support in those age categories
>was either lower or -- if you prefer -- at statistical par with
>Hillary's.
i had to snip all that lest I be thrown into a nostalgic revery of drinking too much coffee and whining about unix commands.[1]
i'll try again: I don't get why the insistence that young people are "poor" or "poorer" in a way that connects them to the kind of "poor" or "poorer" we usually mean.
You could have used other phrases such as lower middle income or middling. I read your use of "poorer" as an attempt to persuade people of the superiority of the kinds of people who support Obama. Sure they are young, but they are "poorer" and so we need to be on their side because lefties, they are on the side of the poor!
I am suspicious of the notion that there are a lot of "poor" or "poorer" people voting in primaries, particularly given what we know about who typically votes: the bulk are not from the bottom half of the income distribution.
A concrete illustration of the confusion, which you obviously understand given the second quote above:
My son is making $12/hr no bennies,working in a casino, hoping he'll be discovered and get a gig as a dealer where he assures me he'll make the big bucks. That puts him at, not poor, but less than middling in Tampa Bay. "poorer" was your word. Likely to be "poorer" because young. [2]
My colleague, Graphic Designer guy, is earning 12.50/hr with bennies, in a city with a higher cost of living than Tampa Bay,
They are earning that because they are young. My son is earning that also because he is from a lower middle strata (class) income background. Designer guy is earning that because he's entry-level in a profession where it's common to get low pay during apprenticeship. Graphic Designer Guy is earning that because of his position on the _career_ ladder and his lack of tenure in his profession. His position on the _class ladder_, as determined by the family he was born into? Decidedly professional-managerial,upper middle income levels.
Position on the career ladder as a consequence of youth is not the same thing as position in the class structure as a consequence of what kind of family you were born into.
My money's on people like Graphic Designer Guy voting in a primary elections in greater numbers than people like my my son, who typically don't vote. Which is exactly the case with these two young men.[3]
Which is all well and good. I just don't see why the "poorness" of people on the lower rungs of the career ladder is something I'm supposed to wet my knickers over. Frankly, that older people are "richer" doesn't get my knickers knotted. I see them only as "richer" because they are at different places on the career ladder. Just as you point out above. [4]
oh, and also: on the plus/minus margin of error thing. My issue is bigger, which I should have mentioned. I get itchy when I see people use 5-6 point spreads as somehow meaningful. When language like "only" 45% to compare to 50%, it is irritating. Maybe dwayne can lend me his anti-itch cream.
All in all, most of this conversation just seems like desperation: marshalling whatever it takes to say yay or nay to obama. Maybe this was a reaction to Doug in the first place, I don't know.
At 11:22 PM 2/7/2008, 3.3.3. wrote:
>I'm sure not everyone presents their data this way, but don't we want to
>know how many White Males that make 40K voted for Other
You're right that it's more interesting, but in 1000n polls like this, the number is so minuscule, number crunchers can't do much with the data. By the way, I didn't really think there was a debate over anything, so much as me being bothered by phrases like "rich" "poor" "poorer" that make me itchy. Like I once remember having to learn how to run regressions by doing a study on abortion attitudes and religion. I could never break it out by Jewish because there just weren't enough in the poll. Same thing, at the time, with questions that tried to get at whether they were evangelical xtians. So, I had to end up using less granular demographics: protestant/catholic, male/female, etc. I couldn't get at black attitudes cut by their religion and religiosity and age, etc. because, by the time I got done, the numbers were too small. (that's why that particular yearly survey i was using has years where they oversample blacks)
shag
[1] I am sorry I ever told him about Perelman's secretary's son.
[2] Yah, I know guys. Some of you will be happy that he decided to ditch being a cop. A mama is rilly rilly wishing he'd get back to wanting to be a cop right now.
[3] While I'm old, my memory of voter reg with NYPIRG and, later, GOTV drives was that all the young people we got out to vote were in college or had just graduated and still living around a campus area. Isn't that typically the case and, at the time, why town legislators didn't want college students voting?
[4] Only tangentially, the use of "rich" and "poor" here is also troubling. IIRC, Doug used something like "upscale" -- which at least doesn't carry the connotations of "rich" which typically means millions, not a lousy 100k in San Fran or NYC -- or even Tampa Bay. It's plenty of money, but it's not rich or at least what I think people typically mean. I'm sure it may not be your intention to engage in this, but I see it a lot on blogs too. Its used to speak as if the only issue at stake is the "rich" and the very "poor". The rich oppress the poor, you see. When people talk "rich" or "poor" in these contexts, it's about everyone else but them. It makes me itch. Yeah. That's not what you were talking about. Still makes me itch. Uh, yoohoo, Dwayne .... :)
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