It could be that our monied betters voted “against their own economic interests” because it was actually in their own economic interests. It’s almost as if people would rather pay more taxes on more money than less taxes on less money. Shocking!
------
Registration is now required! We're still in the process of getting it all squared away, so for the moment don't forget to Login or Register using the links in the upper left menu before starting to write your comment.
I saw this point made during election night coverage on MSNBC by none other than Pat Buchanan. I about fell off my couch.
If you are wealthy and would rather live in a third-world shithole, there isn’t anything stopping you. If you want to live in a country where there is a healthy rule of law and living standards that prevent unseemly events like home invasions, you might think twice about voting for candidates hell bent on destroying the very frameworks that ensure security and create markets for stuff.
Could it possibly be that — contrary to the Republican construction of wealth — rich people don’t use their personal wealth as a weapon in the vast, simian prick-waving contest that is the trickle-down economic model?
Who’d have ever thought?
I can’t figure out why the rich wouldn’t want universal health care. Isn’t it better to live in a place where people can see a doctor if they want or need to? as opposed to a third-world shithole where only the richest can afford to leave the country to see a real doctor?
Yes, it costs more to have a first world nation. But wouldn’t it be better to live in a country that doesn’t simply write off a major city b/c a hurricane hits it straight on?
How many rich assholes can there be who really want to have all the money and laugh at the poor snivelling in the streets?
It’s a safety issue, too. If the poorest people are still living decently—clean, fed, educated, healthy, with opportunities to better themselves—they are much less liable to storm the barricades and chop off the heads of their ‘betters’.
You know the phrase “increase shareholder value” that certain wealthy people bandy about in such an annoying way? Well, here’s the thing about that phrase: high net worth people who actually manage their money, who expect accountability and results from their executive managers, who see debt as a tool rather than a lifestyle, who can see beyond the bloody next quarter—those wealthy people (and they do exist) looked at Bush’s $700B no-questions-asked bailout and reacted just like “The Monopoly Guy” in that picture.
A blank-cheque corporate rescue or acquisition of any distressed company is unthinkable to that kind of wealthy person. It doesn’t “increase shareholder value” in their eyes: to them it’s rewarding incompetent management instead of firing their useless arses; it’s “flushing money down the toilet,” and guys like this know you don’t get richer doing that.
Now it’s hard to say whether serious wealthy people voted for Obama—unlike Joe the Plumber and his imaginary fortune, these people know they’ll be affected by higher taxes, and many (understandably) won’t vote against their personal interests. But at the same time, they also aren’t naturally inclined to vote for or support someone who was promising a continuation of the magical economic thinking of the last 8 years—because (again) unlike mooks like Joe the Plumber, the value investor understands where that leads your enterprise: to ruin.
I’m in this income bracket ($250K+) as are most of my neighbors and friends. Most of us are self-made (though admittedly most of us were from middle to upper middle class backgrounds).
And we all voted Obama, every single one.
It’s as simple as this:
1) People in this income bracket are typically well educated. We all have college degrees and often graduate degrees, often from the best colleges in the land. Along with that education, comes a respect for elite schooling. We don’t call it “elite and snobby,” we call it something to strive for, and we only hope that our children are smart enough to wind up at Occidential / Columbia / Harvard as well. We respect policy wonks like Clinton, Gore, and now Obama, because we are wonks in our own disciplines and we demand no less from our leaders.
2) Along with that also comes a respect for science. We encompass scientists and engineers. We value science and facts and the preponderance of the evidence, not made-up shit. The anti-science policies of the Republican party (evolution/ID, global warming, stem cell research) are appalling to us.
3) We’re socially liberal when it comes to abortion (pro choice), gay marriage (pro), and end of life decisions. We may be privately religious, but we abhor the religious right. With a passion.
4) We’re urban. We understand that it’s really cool to live in diverse communities with all different points of view. We laughed at the whole Ayers drama because we get that in big cities, movers and shakers cross paths with people of different beliefs and that’s just part of what keeps it all fresh and exciting.
Just sayin’. From this admittedly very nice perch, it’s no surprise at all that we voted Obama.
There’s a facet about the conflicts in capitalism that isn’t discussed as often as it should be discussed. Not only is there conflict between labor and managment, but there is a fundamental conflict between ownership and management. Regulations as implemented by the SEC really do very little for the poor, but they are in place so that management reports fairly and that ownership/capital can make correct and informed investment decisions.
The Republican war on regulation has been to benefit management of corporations at the expense of shareholders. The same result can be seen in the excessive salaries for executives.
Meanwhile Democratic fighting for regulation increases openness of information in markets, and as a result, shareholder value increases faster. That’s part of why markets do better under Democrats.
And, no one represents labor.
Anyway, that’s how it looks from here.
I would add to Elizabeth’s:
Those who enter the higher tax brackets without going through the halls of higher education themselves, but terrific entrepreneurship, are not usually Joe the Plumber. They can do math, plan ahead, work from realistic expectations, and they want the experts they deal with to be REAL experts who will give them good results.
as a member of one of those “rich” households that make over $250k/yr and who has marched, phoned, sold cookies and blogged for 3 years to see this election outcome, I think I am at the very bottom of economic range of people who could have been excused for voting against obama for motives of personal greed or sensed economic threat. And I have also read that it is the petty bourgeois not the solid millionaires who were more for than against Obama. I basically agree with Jesse’s summary and Elizabeth and, in a way, Ms Kate: We saw the guts of a pro-middle class economy sliced open and spilled on the ground over the last 25 years. The no-tax greed, the Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan faith, all served to cut the supply lines by which america had amassed the universities and infrastructure wherein it labored for its wealth. 25 years of selling an ever more gullible population the comfortable lie that they don’t have to pay for the pillars of their economy was all masked by the fact that we were basically burning the stored fat as it were, letting bridges age, shuttering once bustling factories, swapping the modest growth of real goods productivity for paper wealth. The wealth coming from a mix of manufacturing jobs has been eroded far more than you can account for by citing the rise of competing economies. I for one will prefer paying down some of our debts and building up a greener infrastructure for my children and theirs even if it means a lot more taxes. My class, if you insist on drawing class lines, can afford the taxes and NONE of us, rich or poor can afford to have no future.
James: the obscene pay packages for the top echelons of corporate america bring the interests of management solidly in line with those of the ownership class. It is, I suspect, actually WHY the pay has grown beyond all reason or business case justification.
I can’t figure out why the rich wouldn’t want universal health care. Isn’t it better to live in a place where people can see a doctor if they want or need to? as opposed to a third-world shithole where only the richest can afford to leave the country to see a real doctor?
Not to mention, of course, that if by paying a paltry sum in taxes every year the government will take care of basic health care for everyone who needs it, suddenly you don’t have to worry about providing healthcare to your employees, or losing smart people to a bigger company which can, or dealing with the fact that the insurance you provide your employees is not sufficient to keep them healthy enough to do their jobs well.
Yes, it costs more to have a first world nation. But wouldn’t it be better to live in a country that doesn’t simply write off a major city b/c a hurricane hits it straight on?
And, hey, New Orleans is a major vacation destination (or was before Katrina, at least)—I bet there are plenty of rich people who were shouting at their TV sets: “Noooooo, Bush! You idiot! I was six months away from buying a townhouse in the French Quarter! Fucking moron ruining all the good vacation spots!”
I’m being somewhat facetious about the last one, though seriously speaking I have no idea whose interest it’s in to let entire parts of the country just sink into the sea. Of course, the most racist among us were happy to see Katrina happen because what it really meant was driving out the blacks (AKA the local democratic base) and permanently destroying their homes and neighborhoods. It was a gerrymandering pogrom of epic proportions. But usually The Most Racist != The Most Wealthy, so that’s beside the point.
I’ve talked to not a few Republicans who are clutching their pearls to a humorously irrational level over the idea that taxes for the wealthy might increase. Though the worst are the conservative medical school students I know who are convinced that a nationalized healthcare program is going to make practicing medicine only slightly more lucrative than running a cash register at Walmart (especially funny considering that one of the proposals Obama has alluded to would be helping the primary care shortage by creating a loan forgiveness plan for people willing to do primary care in remote or low income areas).
The thing is, for someone who is making $250K and up, an increase of four and half points on marginal income just isn’t that much. If you believe that the money is going to be spent in even marginally useful ways (universal health care, environmental protection, infrastructure, blah blah blah) it’s way worth it. Someone who makes, say, $300K a year is paying a fraction of the cost of a week’s family vacation, or a month’s car-lease payments, or the price of this year’s flat-screen to make sure that they’re going to be living in a decent country.
It’s almost as if people would rather pay more taxes on more money than less taxes on less money.
That was one of the many nails in the coffin of McCain’s campaign: making a capital gains tax cut a centerpiece of his economic policy.
I mean, when stock markets around the world become wild rollercoasters trending ever downward, currencies swinging wildly, banks are collapsing every day, and real estate values are plummetting, the last thing anyone, even the wealthy, is concerned about is the tax they’re going to owe on their capital gains, seeing as you actually have to have some gains before you can owe taxes on them.
Utter cluelessness.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s a slim possibility that some people don’t make every decision based only on the financial results.
Crazy, I know.
(Good lord, have these people never walked away from a well-paying job because the working conditions were intolerable?)
Exactly, Ms. Kate. It cracks me up when I see conservatives hand-wringing about what fools we Marin County folks are for having all this money, yet being liberals. It’s almost as if we like having police departments, schools, roads, parks and libraries. Clearly, the hot tubs are affecting our rational thought processes! We should be Norquistians, insisting on tiny government that benefits nobody but us, and placing the burden for paying for that on others.
as opposed to a third-world shithole where only the richest can afford to leave the country to see a real doctor?
Brazil has universal healthcare.
That said, saving on taxes is a simplistic measure of hoarding wealth ... especially when wealth cannot protect you entirely from health failures and hospital bills that wipe out your amassed wealth. Also, when you have a lot of money at the expense of others, those others can’t spend their money making you rich off that which you are selling.
The right has consistently used “moral values” as a means to get working class voters to vote against their economic interests. It is no surprise that the upper middle class also votes against their (narrowly defined) economic interests in the name of moral values. The difference is that one set of moral values is grounded in fear and the other is grounded in hope.
The Opoponax - I’ve noticed this incredibly baffling attitude in health care too, “But Obama wants socialized health care! Why vote for someone that wants us all to be poor?”
Uh…
But regardless of this fanciful fear of socialized medicine, it never has made sense in the long-term to neglect basic screenings and health care, like booster vaccines and colonoscopies and making sure people have their antipsychotics, in favor of intensive hospitalized care. Even if doctors worked for two years in primary care in a rural area in order to get reimbursement for their loans, then went into a specialty, that’d be a two-year boost in primary care to that area.
Why vote for someone that wants us all to be poor?”
Uh…
Someone who enters the medical profession solely “to be rich” deserves poverty. growl…
Tenya, I’d be curious to know the source of all this “socialized medicine means that all doctors will be poor!” claptrap.
Is it an assumption drawn from pathetically low teachers’ salaries? Not that teachers at private schools do any better, and from what I understand teachers before the era of publicly funded mandatory k-12 education were glorified servants, if not volunteers or participants in a sort of informal skill-share/gift economy. And of course it’s massively privilege-revealing for physicians and med students to call teachers “poor”.
Is it something to do with doctors’ salaries or status in countries with nationalized healthcare plans? Because AFAIK doctors still do very, very well financially in places like Britain, France, and Canada.
Is there an underlying assumption that, as a physician, the only way to make money is to swindle patients and be in the pocket of insurance companies and big pharma, and they’re worried that reforms might force them to actually practice medicine ethically and conform to accepted standards of care, for a fair price? Not that I think most doctors don’t do that already (or that the inflated costs of healthcare have anything to do with individual doctors), but, like, what are they afraid of, you know?
I guess I could see that some med school students and other physician hopefuls don’t want to be forced into primary care - everybody wants to think that they’re going to be a neurosurgeon or cardiologist someday, with the seven figure salaries that go with those job titles. And a functional national system is going to require a massive uptick in primary care as more people have access to it. Which means that more incoming doctors are going to face pressure not to specialize. Well boo fucking hoo. You’ll only make a quarter of a million dollars a year! Waaaaah! Again, if that’s “poor”, in your opinion, you need a fucking attitude adjustment, I’m sorry.
Not that teachers at private schools do any better
Teachers in private schools in California are paid less than teachers in public schools. At least in that state, private school teachers can’t get a job in public school, due to budget cuts or lack of training and education.
I used to work front office in a medical clinic and there’s nothing doctors like to do more than complain about what shit reimbursement they get from insurance companies. This is coupled with insurance companies repeatedly denying reimbursement for no reason and requiring huge amounts of documentation, which increase doctors’ overhead when they’re forced to hire billing and office staff. But universal health care would be worse apparently.
keshmeshi:
Teachers in private schools in California are paid less than teachers in public schools.
I believe that this is true pretty much everywhere, at least at the primary education level. At the university level, however, pay is highly variable and apparently completely independent of the public/private distinction.
I guess I could see that some med school students and other physician hopefuls don’t want to be forced into primary care - everybody wants to think that they’re going to be a neurosurgeon or cardiologist someday, with the seven figure salaries that go with those job titles. And a functional national system is going to require a massive uptick in primary care as more people have access to it. Which means that more incoming doctors are going to face pressure not to specialize. Well boo fucking hoo. You’ll only make a quarter of a million dollars a year! Waaaaah! Again, if that’s “poor”, in your opinion, you need a fucking attitude adjustment, I’m sorry.
Knew many pre-meds majors from my high school graduating class and intern/resident doctors in my Greater Boston area neighborhood who felt this way.
Their reasoning from what I recalled goes something like this:
To get into med school, they have to forgo having an undergraduate life to maintain at least a 3.5/4.0 overall GPA, maintain at least -A level grades in all pre-med science classes, and volunteer a decent chunk of time in volunteer activities in hospitals to even have a sliver of hope of gaining admittance to any AMA accredited Med school within the US.
Even then…chances of admittance are slim as a few pre-med friends with above 3.6/4.0 overall GPAs* from places like Cornell, UC Berkeley, and Columbia have found as it took them 3 or more years of reapplications before they were admitted anywhere. Even then, this is only the beginning of a long struggle through 4 years of medical school where they are competing against other classmates with similar levels of academic performance.
Assuming they graduate, they now have huge med school loans to pay back unless they chose to attend special medical schools like the US Armed Forces Med school where they have a free education in exchange for serving a minimum # of years in the military’s medical service.
As interns/residents, they now have to put in at least 80-130 hours/week for several more years before they become “real doctors” instead of what one former roommate who was a resident termed “glorified journeymen”. One thing I observed from having 3 roommates who were medical interns/residents in “internal medicine” was that their work schedules were INSANE**....even when their field of medicine was considered “easy” by their peers and even by the standards of law firms where 60-70 hrs/week and working weekends was the norm.
Not to say I sympathize with them necessarily as many of my neighboring doctors did have a hugely overblown entitlement complex…..but that some of it is derived from bitterness arising from the perception that they sacrificed far more free time and years in education and training than other professionals…..and yes…some of my former MD neighbors actually said that they were “smarter” and “harder working” than other professionals such as lawyers and engineers. 
* Several former pre-med friends have told me their pre-med adviser told them that if their overall GPA ever dipped below a 3.5/4.0 and/or they received any grade less than an -A in any of their pre-med core classes, that they should forget about applying as no decent AMA accredited med school would bother taking them when competition among thousands of applicants with 3.5+ overall GPAs and As/-As in all their pre-med core courses was so fierce.
** 120-130 hours/week was quite common for my roommates. They also had to put up with doing several 36 hours or longer straight shifts with only 1 or 2 10-15 minute breaks….if they have the chance. Most of the few rare times I saw them…even on weekends…they were using the chance to catch up on much needed sleep.
Assuming they graduate, they now have huge med school loans to pay back unless they chose to attend special medical schools like the US Armed Forces Med school where they have a free education in exchange for serving a minimum # of years in the military’s medical service.
If we did go to a single-payer system, this would be the biggest thing that would have to change. There would have to be MASSIVE forgiveness of loans for people who go into primary care (internal, family, pediatric, etc.)
Well, that and the insane hours that interns and residents are required to work. I don’t think any other countries still do it that way, so at this point it’s really just hazing.
exholt - that is why I turned away from being a pediatrician like my momma wanted. I spent two years working about 80-90 hours a week and decided medicine was not for me. I couldn’t fathom having to work even more.*
Of course, given my general dislike of working more than 40 hours a week, I’ll never come close to making 250K a year. I’m OK with that. Though it sucks for my kids that they’ll have huge debts if they want to go to college like the ones Spouse and i are still paying off. However, as I’ve said to numerous republicans “It’s not about the amount of tax, but how it is spent.” Republicans at the national level have been poor stewards of our money. I’d rather pay more in taxes and have it be used for useful things being made by people making decent wages that pay less and get nothing much in return. I don’t think I’d change my mind if I suddenly became more ambitious about making money.
*This is a little off the subject, but maybe nationalized medicine can lead to some reforms in Medical intern policies. They must lose some good people who just want to have a life.
I guess I should reveal that my father is a primary care physician. Things might have been different 25+ years ago when he was in school, but he certainly didn’t seem to have a problem paying back his student loans, and nobody in our family ever wanted for anything.
Was it rough in the early years for everyone involved? Sure. My mom went back to work right after I was born because she was the primary breadwinner while he was in med school. We basically never saw him during his residency and the early years of his practice.
Did we have slightly less money than we might have, had he become an oncologist or something? Sure. Horror Of Horrors - my parents couldn’t afford to send both me and my brother to a fancy-pants private elementary school until I was in the third grade!!!!1!!11! I only got a used Toyota Corolla when I turned 16! We didn’t take family trips to Europe, and only travelled domestically! My parents could only afford to drive ordinary cars, not BMWs or Mercedes! We only had a 4 bedroom house in only an upper middle class neighborhood, and we had to build our own pool (which we couldn’t even afford until well after my dad’s loans were paid off)! We didn’t have a summer home or go skiing! Yeah, man, we were so poor! I can’t believe my dad voted against his own interest and went for Obama…
Part of the reason I want to slap the med students in my life who are such entitled little brats is because I grew up with the lifestyle they seem to think is poverty, and honestly anyone who thinks so should have to flip burgers at minimum wage for a decade or two before they’re allowed to take out another student loan.
Jeebus, my mom and dad certainly went through some “lean years” when Dad was finishing law school and Mom was having four kids, but would never, NEVER vote for some horror like W. I was raised to know how lucky I was and my dad has always told me that and I’m quoting again for sheer accuracy “taxes should be higher.” Sure, my parents were able to send their two daughters to Cornell and Johns Hopkins, hell, they’d've sent my brothers too if they’d managed to get in, but Radford and NC State costed money too and so did all of our graduation-present cars (I didn’t like my sister’s Toyota, so promised to learn a stick shift so I could get a New Beetle) and trips to Europe. But still? Taxes should be higher. The social safety-net is important to building a worthwhile society. I have a lot of trouble with the Catholics, and was raised Catholic, but I really respect the actual embracement of things Jesus was actually supposed to have taught that I was brought up with, not that asshole who claims to speak for Catholics on the pundit-shows.
I used to work front office in a medical clinic and there’s nothing doctors like to do more than complain about what shit reimbursement they get from insurance companies.
Actually, there’s nothing doctors like to do more than complain, period. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I realized that being a doctor was actually a great job compared with many others, and that the typical compensation from salary was far beyond anything that one could typically expect outside of finance. Given that we’re entering a recession in which lots of people are going to lose their jobs for a long time, some of whom will never find a new job at their previous salary ever again, I have to invite those doctors to quit complaining so damn much.
I guess I should reveal that my father is a primary care physician. Things might have been different 25+ years ago when he was in school, but he certainly didn’t seem to have a problem paying back his student loans
My guess is that tuition growth has far outstripped salary growth over the past 25 years. Even if you go to a public medical school, you’re on the hook for a lot of money in loans, and you’re not going to start making good money as a doctor for at least 6-8 years after you finish med school.
Part of the reason I want to slap the med students in my life who are such entitled little brats is because I grew up with the lifestyle they seem to think is poverty, and honestly anyone who thinks so should have to flip burgers at minimum wage for a decade or two before they’re allowed to take out another student loan.
Agreed.
The mentality of most doctor neighbors I once had along with some high school classmates who were pre-med majors/MDs, however, was that considering all the sacrifices in money, studying, and free time from undergrad through residency, that living the upper-class life was just compensation for those sacrifices….especially when their perceptions lead them to believe that all other professionals had the free time to party and have a good time in undergrad and subsequently during times they had to put their academic/medical noses to the grindstone.
Shorter them: Their sacrifices to become medical doctors entitles them to the most elite status…..and no “dimwit” politician or anyone else who studied less than they did has the right to tell them otherwise.*
exholt - that is why I turned away from being a pediatrician like my momma wanted. I spent two years working about 80-90 hours a week and decided medicine was not for me. I couldn’t fathom having to work even more.
Though an aunt attempted her best to push me onto the med school track….I realized even in my first year that the only end result of that would be my fighting a series of malpractice suits due to something stupid such as transplanting someone’s left foot on their right ear…prescribing more Oxycontin for patients fitting the profile of a certain talk radio “personality”......or leaving a pair of surgical scissors in the patient after surgery. Thankfully, she stopped pushing when I said I’d be willing to consider med school if she’d be willing to pay for all the inevitable malpractice suits that come up. 
My decision to not pursue a medical career was further confirmed when I saw how resident MD roommates and neighbors were extremely sleep deprived, literally had NO LIFE, had enormous entitlement complexes*, and some had serious bitterness/anger issues…..traits I doubt contribute anything positive to patient care and well-being.
Compared to them, my working 10-14 hour days 5-6 days a week in IT and in law firms was pure relaxation…..
* It is funny how they all consider themselves far more “intelligent” and “smart” than other professionals/people when some of those self-proclaimed genius MD neighbors almost burned down my apt block a few times because they had no clue on taking basic common sense precautions when cooking up a meal in the kitchen.
You know who med-students and such could bitch to, who I bet would have a very enlighted opinion of it? Veterinarians. Same ridiculous requirements, doctorate from just as many exclusives colleges - crappiest compensation. Why? Because public or private insurance isn’t available to animals, and when direct pay is the name of the game, keeping costs low gets ridiculous. Average salary being below what I make as an RN with a two-year degree, I find it a terrible state of affairs.
Well, Rich Uncle Pennybags is sure shocked about it.