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Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#111

Post by Jsrs »

catawbasam wrote: post #94
petewailes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the factory closing is a net benefit long term. Was losing millions of jobs in the farming sector a bad thing? Or the automation of the glass industry in the 1930's and 1940's that increased production and cleaned up emissions? Is the move to driverless vehicles and what that'll do to the logistics industry bad? There's lots of examples of people losing jobs. That's sad for the individual, but long term it's…

Not saying you're entirely wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you yourself aren't in immediate danger of having your job eliminated. If you were, I'm guessing you'd see another side of the story.

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to that other side if the people most in danger of losing their jobs weren't overwhelmingly voting against socialism.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#112

Post by vlehto »

blowski wrote: post #18

And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For example, why did so many working class people vote for Thatcher in UK in the 1980s? Why are they not massively in favour of Jeremy Corbyn right now? I'm not saying it's irrational. But sometimes it's odd to hear people who need the government to subsidise their mi…

I've noticed that typically poor men are not very left leaning compared to women. For a man it's somehow incredibly difficult to vote for some member of "intelligentsia" who is very condescending towards you. If men go left, they usually go radical "taking back what is rightfully ours". If you fall short of that, it's lot better to lure in poor men by promising more jobs. And they have noticed how economic growth seems to correlate with jobs. Who talks about GDP? Is he condescending? Paying less taxes and this dude makes this GDP thing go nicely and then I get better paying job? Sounds good.

For women it's more like "oh the government is helping me to take care of the kids". It matters less if the politician is condescending, as you are kind of funneling that to your kids.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#113

Post by ionised »

mapleoin wrote: post #46
edanm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this actually true? Plenty of former Russians are very anti socialist, because of their experience with communism. They would say that their larger experience causes them to fear things that sound good in theory, but are terrible in practice. Either way, I doubt you could get away with saying they have a simple worldview without nuance. I think your view really boils down to "i'm right they're wrong, so of course…

How does one get to be a former Russian?

Perhaps they meant former 'Soviets'

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#114

Post by raverbashing »

tempestn wrote: post #24
sandworm101 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps not highly educated in the sciences. Many US schools allow students to graduate without any real exposure to science.

We're talking about post-graduate degrees though. I would hope that most people with advanced degrees would have the critical thinking skills to understand the net benefits of vaccination, even without formal training in science.

> . I would hope that most people with advanced degrees would have the critical thinking skills to understand the net benefits of vaccination

Yeaaaaah. No. Not really

But to be honest a lot of people trained in "hard fields" have some trouble with concepts that are "easier" for the people in the humanities field

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#115

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dagw wrote: post #107
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he is the only candidate who doesn't want to send his demographics jobs offshore Or at least he'll say that. Whether he'll a) change his mind the next day, b) have any feasible plan to implement this, c) whether it's actually a net-positive for his demographic, d) whether he supports a bunch of other things that will hurt this demographic are all less clear. I mean this is a man who manufactures stuff in China hims…

Or at least he'll say that. Given a choice between someone who promises to fight for the thing you care about, but might be lying, and someone who promises to not fight for the thing you care about, the choice seems easy.

I have a really cheap bridge to sell you, it's powered by a perputual motion device. You can raise the money to buy it by helping me extract the fortune of my Uncle, a former military commander in Nigeria, just reply with the details of your bank account.

If you reply within seven days you get exclusive access to my fat burning natural rose petal extract pills!

Don't listen to those people who claim it isn't this easy to be rich and thin, they're just haters. I'm the only one looking out for you!

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#116

Post by ionised »

eivarv wrote: post #86
tehwalrus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think Liberal means? In the UK, as well as in the USA, it generally doesn't mean "the market solves everything" (You might be thinking of Libertarianism[1]). The article explicitly references redistributive economic views, quite the reverse of the market-centric view you attach to the label. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

Generally, when people say "liberal" in Europe they mean "economically liberal", while people mean "socially liberal" in the US.

I've always used 'liberal' in the socially liberal sense (I'm from the UK).

Here we tend to use 'neo-liberal' to describe the laissez-faire attitude towards economics.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#117

Post by avz »

gaius wrote: post #81
petewailes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the factory closing is a net benefit long term. Was losing millions of jobs in the farming sector a bad thing? Or the automation of the glass industry in the 1930's and 1940's that increased production and cleaned up emissions? Is the move to driverless vehicles and what that'll do to the logistics industry bad? There's lots of examples of people losing jobs. That's sad for the individual, but long term it's…

Sure, but telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood in the now, for a net long term benefit that he or she may not live to see, is a hard sell.

> telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood

What you need to tell the worker is not that they need to give up their livelihood, but that they need to retrain. Still painful, but much less. Also, there are ways to reduce and relieve the pain of retraining. And who knows for many people acquiring new skills and contacts may even turn out to be exciting and fun.

We need a politician with the guts to openly explain to the public that retraining is a necessity instead of fostering delusions that the old jobs can be kept. In fact, the progress in the development of self-driving cars combined with the fact that the most common job in most states is a truck driver [1] make this something of an emergency.

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#118

Post by ionised »

blowski wrote: post #57
unlinker wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they found out liberal economical policies lead to unemployment, and the poor loathe unemployment. By the way Corbyn is a very bad example. He's a walking train wreck.

Your comment about Corbyn is essentially tautology - he's unelectable because he's unelectable. Why? Why don't the working class want a leader who's promising to end policies which continue to hit the working class the hardest? And why do the poor loathe unemployment? Why don't they loathe being poor more than being unemployed? Working minimum wage on zero-hour contracts means they're still poor.

He's so unelectable he was elected leader of the opposition.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#119

Post by ionised »

lake99 wrote: post #83
sandworm101 wrote: post #15

For perspective, what in the US is called "liberal" in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre. The two parties are pulling apart from each other but to outsiders they remain very similar both in policy and ideology, at least at the national level. Neither is talking of actual reform, only incremental change.

> in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre I find "rest of the world" hard to justify. The Indian right-wing are Hindu hardliners, but economically not all that different from the "center-left" INC, both of which, are IMO, way more left-wing than the US Democratic party when it comes to economics. Socially, all parties here pander to their regional (as opposed to national) voterbases. The Pakistani r…

Rest of the western/developed world perhaps.

Re: Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal?

#120

Post by Kurtz79 »

fab13n wrote: post #72

I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset. So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated community. But that's pretty mu…

"I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening competitive mindset."

That's mostly my rationale for being in favor of (moderate) wealth redistribution, which on surface would be against my interests, as someone by no means wealthy but with an above-median income.

What's the point of having money if you cannot walk safely among people ?

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