>The problem that bugs me is this presumption that the people are not cognizant of what is good for them.
Go to America. Live there for a while. Move to a red state and actually talk to people. This presumption won't seem so arrogant when you meet so many people for which there is no other logical conclusion to make.
>I would argue that it is not in Warren Buffett's self interest to vote for higher taxes
It's not, but the voting environment has gotten so skewed that people like Buffet feel they have to abandon voting in their best interests to try and get some kind of balance. At least they claim to publicly.
I grew up in and retired to a reddest of Red State America, spent a dozen year in the very Blue State Boston area and a dozen in the D.C. area, which was sort of mixed but plenty Blue State, and I have to say that this "What's the Matter with Kansas" false consciousness thesis is presumptuous bunk.
It basically labels our different concerns, or different weighting of various concerns, as illegitimate. In your case, a lot of this seems to reduce to the economic man world view ... and even then, since you don't consider things like "trickle down economics" (sure seemed to work better for us in the '80s than what's been tried after Clinton) or our "libertarianism" AKA classical liberalism at least debatable points vs akin to the KKK....
I mean, is there any room in your world view for religion, e.g. "Man does not live by bread alone", or, say, non-economic principles that are worth dying for??? Any non-economic reason why anyone would volunteer for the military?
Sadly, you sound very much like what I'd expect from a red state. I bet you also think Obama is very left wing, don't you?
>since you don't consider things like "trickle down economics" (sure seemed to work better for us in the '80s than what's been tried after Clinton)
If you're not going to educate yourself, there's not much point in bothering with this. The stats are in, trickle down never worked [1]. And trickle down was continued through Clinton (somehow you don't realize he was more conservative than a lot of so-called republicans) on to the present time.
>or our "libertarianism" AKA classical liberalism at least debatable points vs akin to the KKK....
Of course libertarianism has some debatable points. But luckily, those points also belong to legitimate political movements as well (minus the naivety inherent in an-cap/libertarianism).
>I mean, is there any room in your world view for religion, e.g. "Man does not live by bread alone"
Sure.
> non-economic principles that are worth dying for???
As a matter of fact there are, though I would phrase it as "worth risking your life for" since simply dying is extremely unlikely to help anything.
>Any non-economic reason why anyone would volunteer for the military?
Sure. For example, if an imperialist, evil world power claimed my country was "terrorists friendly", "has weapons of mass destruction" or some such nonsense I would volunteer for the military to try and help push back these scum from our lands.
But blind patriotism? No. I don't believe someone "died for my freedoms" simply because they joined the military and died. For me to believe they died for my freedoms, my freedoms would have to be in danger from something they actually fought.
> Go to America. Live there for a while. Move to a red state and actually talk to people. This presumption won't seem so arrogant when you meet so many people for which there is no other logical conclusion to make.
I lived in a red state (TX) for three years. Tell me more how this is supposed to have exposed me to the idiotic masses who have one exact reason why they vote conservative.
Go to America. Live there for a while. Move to a red state and actually talk to people. This presumption won't seem so arrogant when you meet so many people for which there is no other logical conclusion to make.
>I would argue that it is not in Warren Buffett's self interest to vote for higher taxes
It's not, but the voting environment has gotten so skewed that people like Buffet feel they have to abandon voting in their best interests to try and get some kind of balance. At least they claim to publicly.