What does this mean in practice? On the one hand, you’ve got a working class that can’t stand being lectured to on social issues by the Brahmin left. But on the other hand, that lecturing is changing minds. More than 75 percent of working-class people think gay couples ought to be permitted to adopt, and 56 percent think there’s too much anti-trans discrimination. It’s quite possible that the Brahmin left’s perceived condescension so infuriates the working class that it pulls the lever for Trump—and that the Brahmin left’s arguments nonetheless persuade the working class to be more tolerant of gender difference. But that wouldn’t be true across the board. The gap between the working class and the middle and upper classes on guns, for instance, is unchanged (though the working class has always been more favorably disposed toward gun control than is generally supposed).
On economic issues, the survey divides “predistribution” from “redistribution.” Predistribution concerns ways to make the economy more egalitarian, while redistribution concerns ways to even things up after the economy botches the job. Protections for union organizers, a higher minimum wage, trade protections, and government job creation are predistributive. Income taxes, welfare, government-funded health insurance, and Social Security are redistributive. The working class is more favorably disposed than the middle or upper classes toward predistribution and less favorably disposed toward redistribution. But it’s strongly supportive of both.
On predistribution, the working class has always stood further left than the middle and upper classes. That gap has been shrinking since 2008, not because the working class is changing its view but rather because the middle and upper classes are catching up. On matters like the value of union organizing, it’s the proletariat that has been lecturing to the Brahmin left, and the message is starting to get across. The dynamic is similar with redistribution, except that in this instance the middle and upper classes not only caught up with the working class but surpassed it in supporting, for instance, higher taxes on the wealthy and more government spending on health care.
The working class, meanwhile, more strongly supports Medicare and Social Security. On welfare, the survey found, working-class attitudes were all over the map, depending on how the question was posed: 82.1 percent agreed we spend too little on the poor, but only about half said the government should help the poor—and when the question included the word “welfare,” support dropped as low as 24 percent. That helps explain why Republicans imposed a job requirement on Medicaid recipients; it makes them look like recipients of welfare, when in fact they’re recipients of health care services that even the rich can’t usually afford to pay for out of pocket.
Great Job Timothy Noah & the Team @ The New Republic Source link for sharing this story.
