Education vs politics

I think that those graphs are very deceiving. Sure areas that had high % of college grads voted democrat, but that is because the vast majority of educated people naturally go to a major city where jobs that require college degrees are highly concentrated. Those cities naturally of course have a lot of poor people...you can even see this in the results as light blue (which is most of what we could call democrat land) is still only 38-47% of the population. Point is that a lot of those open areas don't have a lot of jobs that require an education and can instead be learned on the job...it's not to say that the jobs don't require intelligence, it's just that they don't require a person to get drunk for 4 years and then get a stamp of approval before an employer will look at their application.

I think we have a case of causation vs. correlation.

No need to muss with that correlation and causation business. We can just look at the exit polls.

http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls…

Historically, the Dems do quite well with the worst (high-school dropouts) and best (post-grad) educated and the Reps do well with the middle of the pack (high school grads, some college, college grads). Obama won all categories in 2008, but these kinds of aberrations happen in landslide years.

If you are at all interested in politics and demographics, take a look at the link, it is pretty cool.

Other interesting tidbits from the page: Reps have not lost the white Protestant and Dems have not lost the Jewish vote in 40 years.

Black women voted for Al Gore at the same rate as Obama!

Ladies love Democrats. The GOP hasn't won a majority of females since Reagan.

Asians have become strikingly more liberal over the last two decades. They broke 55-30-15 for Bush/Clinton/Perrot in 92 and 62-35 for Obama in 2008.

No Democrat has won the South since Jimmy Carter.

The info on Asians is surprising, you would think that they would grow increasingly conservative over the years.

most of the asians in the states are welfare munching parasites with little or no education. so of course they vote dems........

My personal opinion of Dems is that two types of people are attracted to the program. Very poor or uneducated who want the government to help and have been raised with assistance so they are accepting of the trade off between support and freedom.

The other group are extremely educated and very well off. These people are used to being connected, not really playing by the rules and think they know better than the "lesser people". They are more than happy to increase government pay outs because they know in return they can control more.

I wish I could scream this, but all I can do is type. There is no free lunch. The more the government does for you the more they tell you what to do.

The other group are extremely educated and very well off. These people are used to being connected, not really playing by the rules and think they know better than the "lesser people". They are more than happy to increase government pay outs because they know in return they can control more.

explain that last sentence because you completely lost me.

I'm still not understanding. You're blaming super-rich libs for not caring about their money- Are you saying you'd rather the super-rich be covetous of their wealth and neglect to provide social programs to uplift the very bottom rung? Or do you think basic social welfare for the bottom rung ruins the upper-middle class's chance of evetual extreme wealth (Actually I think this is the main misunderstanding)? we are talking relatively basic if you're willing to compare us to western Europe. -Please don't give us a hollywood movie clip to give credence to your argument- I guarantee you'll be hard pressed to find such a socialistic+wealthy family in modern real-life.

There are super-rich democrats and super-rich republicans. If you look at the statistics of corporate donations and lobbying fees- you'll see that each side gets a bit- but there is a huge republican bias. If you want fair capitalism with mobility between social classes, then you're in-line avg. democrat. If you want oligarchy capitalism with zero estate taxes, minimal public education, with relaxed white collar (and charged blue collar) crime convictions, then you may as well relate to the avg. repub. (please not that these are generlizations, but accurately averaged ones, there are plenty of self-serving bastards on both sides).

every 1 knos the elections are rigged

and Democratic policies stop mobility between the social classes at every level..mostly through taxes, but I am sure that if I did a little more research I could find one or two more examples.

Minimal public education---please. How about educational freedom where an education is not controlled by a teacher's Union that steals with complete immunity. Superintendents getting paid 200K a year, crappy teachers who can't be fired earning 80K for 9 months work. We support Private and Charter schools where parents can choose where to send their kids, pay what they want, and by all indications receive a better education than most public school kids (of course wealthier districts have better public schools, but again you will also find that parents have a great deal of control in those schools as well).

I find it absurd that wall street employees can accuse public school teachers of "stealing with complete immunity." To be sure, the public school teacher labor market is a worker's market- at those low prices pickiness isn't feasible- hence there are crap teachers (but I doubt many survive long enough to gain the seniority to make 80k!). repub. notions of lower public educational spending aren't helping that. Furthermore, yes, Superintendents of school districts can make 200k. Is there a problem? Wouldn't someone with so many years of management experience overseeing the education of as many as hundreds of thousands of students, faculty, administrators, teachers, and other employees not warrant such a salary? I'm surprised they can get adequate appointments. I don't think you realize that charter schools are nearly 100% publicly funded? I support charter schools. There have been some failures, but the model of giving schools greater fiscal control (and the resulting accountability) can do wonders- much like allowing factor-level workers in an organization have input over the "big picture." As for private schools, that's a great option too. IF you can afford it. Are you going to give poor families subsidies to attend overpriced private schools? (Even I'm against spending that much on the poor).

There's two kinds of repubs as far as I'm considered: The first is the intelligent businessman who realizes what he's doing is against the social cause but is motivated by natural inclinations for wealth/success. The second is the unaware brainwashed stooges waving the flag of social justice at tea party protests and fumbling for actual evidence to support their ingrained beliefs. The former I can at least respect.

I fail to see how increasing social programs is benefiting anyone. Other than handing people the means to live you are not actually improving their lot. I have zero issue with basic welfare, basic social security, basic health insurance for the poor, but we are far from basic. Dems rely on unions, poor or lower class and elite voters. Unions want protection and are happy to support anything that gives them this. The poor just want hand outs and could careless about the complexities of the democratic ideal and the rich just want power.

Slavery comes in many ways. When you are dependent on the government to eat, live and educate you naturally give up some rights.

Just watch, once the government starts paying for healthcare you will see more rules against unhealthy behavior. Just like when your parents give you a car they say what goes, so does the government. Gifts are never given without strings.

Furthermore, I am so sick and tired of hearing how business men and rich people are somehow to blame for anything. Banksters is the cool word now. As if some banker kicked down a poor persons home, made them completely forget common sense, forced them to sign and live in a house and now they are stealing it back. Get real. People got greedy, banks got stupid and the whole thing collapsed.

I don't know, in my entire life I cannot think of any grievous robbery that hurt me by corporate America. What I can think of is how my parents struggled to pay always increasing school taxes only to see new tracks and football fields constructed. I witnessed tickets, fines, tolls, fees, etc increase steadily yet no increase in service or quality.

Everyone points to profits as something evil until they realize those profits are shared by the people who own stocks, ie you and I. Maybe 50 years ago shareholders were wealthy aristocrats, but now they are union works and McDonald employees.

Welcome boys and girls, we are in the new age where nothing is my fault, it is always someone else's. Please Uncle Sam, please rescue me from life!!

Anthony, I'm not against Bankers specifically. But I can easily point out that corruption between financial services and other key industries and government is a vastly bigger problem than the "ill-gotten gains" of ineffectual public teachers and unionized blue collar workers.

I don't know if yours is a template rant but you don't seem to be responding to my last post. I actually agree with much of your last post aside from the above.

The poor just want hand outs and could careless about the complexities of the democratic ideal and the rich just want power.

Slavery comes in many ways. When you are dependent on the government to eat, live and educate you naturally give up some rights.

Furthermore, I am so sick and tired of hearing how business men and rich people are somehow to blame for anything. Banksters is the cool word now. As if some banker kicked down a poor persons home, made them completely forget common sense, forced them to sign and live in a house and now they are stealing it back. Get real. People got greedy, banks got stupid and the whole thing collapsed. I don't know, in my entire life I cannot think of any grievous robbery that hurt me by corporate America.

You should be unless you don't believe in basic ricardian equivalence. Just because it doesn't come physically from your pocket doesn't mean it doesn't hurt you in the long run. "It's a zero sum world"

Everyone points to profits as something evil until they realize those profits are shared by the people who own stocks, ie you and I. Maybe 50 years ago shareholders were wealthy aristocrats, but now they are union works and McDonald employees.

Nobody but the most radical idiotic socialist-hippie is against profits as long as they are the result of technological ingenuity and hard work. Tell me, do you believe as vehemently as Gekko in abolishing the estate tax in the face of record wealth gaps?

people could argue about estate tax all day. the only thing we can agree on is estate taxes help limit wealth inequality of future generations. the rest is just opinion. (my opinion happens to be that abolishing estate tax goes against the ideals of personal hard work, the American Dream, and capitalistic notions of survival of the fittest.) here are the questions my estate tax question really hits at: are you interested in limiting wealth inequality? do you think accumulation of huge disparities in wealth might create sociopolitical problems in the future or is otherwise not economically ideal?

On the contrary, I'd say that the estate tax is morally right. And yes, it should be applied to everyone.

How is freedom of choice less moral? Let those who earn decide whether or not they wish to pass on their wealth to family, or give it away to charity (or a combo). It's their property.

How can you think that the estate tax limits social inequality when all it succeeds in doing is helping to create it by not allowing people to build on the hard work their family has built from one generation to the next.

simple dude. super-rich die. super-rich's riches get passed down to next genreation of super-rich. The fact that the presence of wealth allows allows for easier wealth creation compounds it further. Pretty soon we have an insane wealth gap that limits democracy and freedom and draws paralles to a "monarchy" of the rich. To note again, I'm not against profits or wealth creation or an elite class. But there is a level where the wealth gap becomes so severe that a true democracy can only exist in name (we are still not there, but it is a much, much more realistic future than any of that slippery slope "gov controls everything" bullshit- try "the rich control everything").

How can you talk about capitalist notions of survival when you support social programs that piss money away on anyone and who gladly live off the system.

I don't want people to suffer. I want the "people who live off the system" to have a meager basic existence. That's a moral decision on my part. The idea that people are living nicely while taking advantage of the system is exaggerated. You DON'T want to be someone who qualifies for basic welfare in America.

One of the best ways to judge the fairness of a tax is to have it apply to everyone, do that and I'll stop saying its an immoral tax and just admit that it is a stupid and unfair tax...but then again so will everyone else, don't you think? It's easy to support a tax that doesn't affect you, but the second a teacher has to start forking over 50% of their estate when they die, you can bet that her tune will change real quick.