i remember when jd vance blamed the haitian immigrants to springfield for rising home prices. well, the prices will come down, because a mass departure of haitian workers will crash the local economy.
a friend of mine once suggested to me that it is rising prosperity, and not declining prospects, that leads people to indulge their prejudices at the voting booth. once you feel you're materially secure enough, you might decide that you want to vote for a psychological wage.
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it makes sense, a ton of people are just kinda bored. a guy with a private jet doesn't fly his buds to jan 6 because he's economically disadvantaged, it's because he imagines himself being a hero in a morality tale!
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Your friend is 100% correct. And bloodlust outweighs the desire for wealth.
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The old "I got mine, you get yours". As they close the door tightly behind them.
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NYT paywall
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People think redistribution would only benefit the poor. But it’s the psyches of the rich, driven by their owners like mules, that would receive the most relief!
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Yes! Been saying this for a while, there's a Maslow's Political Hierarchy of Needs and above "material conditions" comes "culture war bullshit"
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implicit in this take is that there is a steep hierarchy everyone must contend with, a dangerous price to pay for wealth inequality. were taxes imposed in order to keep the playing field more level, to dissolve the crushing disparities btwn haves & have nots, that might well ameliorate those risks.
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I think this is partly behind a lot of libertarian techies going right. Many of them bought into crypto early and now think they have a secret stash of “fuck you” money they can ride out. If they were smart enough to sell they might actually have it too.
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This was definitely one of my big takeaways reading a lot of the flagging consensus lit about how ppl processed postwar prosperity
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Just like with vaccines and Y2K. Things are too effective and the bad things are forgotten after decades so those things must not be necessary
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Fascism as a luxury belief
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well, that should get fixed within the next year, I suppose, based on jobless claims and employment data.
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It’s interesting that he brought that up because we’re not experiencing that much prosperity although there have been countless books and businesses popping up in the last 30 years that gave told us that we are. Or could be. The Prosperity/Propaganda Culture. Segregation by class.
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That, plus there may be more of a fear of loss of what’s already been gained - and that’s when you really start to worry about the proverbial barbarians at the gate, real or imagined.
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I think it is described somewhat along those lines in White Rural Rage. Correct, @paulwaldman.bsky.social ?
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This is a central tenet of OUR OWN WORST ENEMY: THE ASSAULT FROM WITHIN ON MODERN DEMOCRACY by @radiofreetom.bsky.social
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If both rising prosperity and declining prospects could be answers, maybe those people are just racists.
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anyway, the reality of racial depolarization in the electorate should not blind one to the very real role that prejudice played in producing and rationalizing a set of political choices
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Would explain the cycle of the last 30 years.
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I had a lot of discussions like this after 2000. A lot more people were economically comfortable, and gave all kinds of excuses for why they were voting for the guy who was in the party opposed to the one that gave them the prosperity.
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Naaaahhhh...race is just a construct. But racism? That is some real American ideology. They use it for everything.
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Good times make weak men, you're saying
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This explains the 2016 election in the Midwest; and those people have stayed w Trump and Rs ever since
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Prosperity plus fear of loss of prosperity. ACTUAL loss not necessary.
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I think this is true and education polarization plays into this in different ways. The employed non-college class gets a psych wage from positioning itself as superior to a lumpen free loaders and college educated class from being benevolent and hospitable to the marginalized.
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@radiofreetom.bsky.social There's a book about this isn't there
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Azar Gat makes the point that it's not precarity that drove hunter-gatherer groups to war, but prosperity--once they had the surplus to risk expending some of it in warfare, they were much more willing to gamble on seizing their neighbors' land and wealth. I suppose it's a similar sort of instinct.
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Kamil Galeev (@KamilKazani.org, but mostly Twitter-era & -side) has postulated that revolts & revolutions mostly don't happen in times of misery, but prosperity. (forgot the finer nuances, like whether sharing/cutting-up wealth is where the frenzy & animosity starts (instead of all being miserable))
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Entitlement and grievance. One hand washes the other. Both rooted in the illusion of innate superiority.
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Anecdotally, I'd put some (not all!) Bernie bro types in this camp. While not indulging prejudices, they're comfortable enough materially where they don't care to fight prejudices. "Burn it all down" or "they're both the same side" comes into play bc they're comfortable enough to not see the risk.
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for sure. they can't fathom that there will be consequences; they can't imagine a world without comfort, they think it sounds good to shake things up. there are tons of people like that.
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The theory could also be applied to Trump voting latinos, poor white maga, etc. "I got mine, now get out"
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A union member making good money would be a lot more likely to vote for a candidate dedicated to eliminating unions!
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I feel like we're constantly learning about new reptile brain impulses. I had no idea so many prople felt an urge not just to push the ladder down behind them but to ban ladders for all times.
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They’re convinced we’re moving to their neighborhoods to rob them and lover their value.
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I think this is right. But not just at the voting booth. I think this, plus the hedonic treadmill, or it’s cousin, “grass is always greener” syndrome, needs to inform Dem candidates on how to run. Need to reinforce the idea of positive-sum rather than zero-sum.
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Well absolutely. Look at some wealthy villages in the south-west of Germany. Rich, picturesque, and, yikes.
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Culture war is a luxury good. Can't remember who said that.
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We have a word for this, decadence. And it's what the Republican party is premised on exploiting.
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In the absence of data, this is all speculation. I’ve always speculated in the opposite direction: when people have enough prosperity and psychological comfort, they’re less likely to need to express their prejudices.
But again, there’s no data so…
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I'll always framed it as "politics" is a luxury good. (Defining "luxury" in much the same ways that economists do. As your income goes up, you can afford to increase the percentage of your income that you spend on performative nonsense)
