U.S. Politics: Huff and Puff the Socialism away

[drawkcabi]

17 minutes ago, sologdin said:

why did they bother to trademark their little double entendre? 

 

Quote

The Argus Leader reports a Minneapolis marketing agency created the campaign. South Dakota’s Department of Social Services paid the agency nearly $449,000 this fall, according to the state’s finances website.

 

They had to have been high.

[DMC]

On 12/2/2019 at 9:22 AM, Ormond said:

Perhaps DMC can tell us whether other research by political scientists generally supports the idea that those who leave rural areas are less conservative than those who stay behind. 

While not specifically (or solely) concerned with the question of rural voters, research on geographic sorting (also called partisan or even sometimes "residential" sorting) strongly supports the notion that there has been increased partisan clustering generated by migrant patterns that's resulted in increased geographic polarization.  This is generally accepted by most behaviorists - the only prominent remaining skeptic I'm aware of is Morris Fiorina (and that's simply a corollary of his insistence that there is no polarization among voters, only elites).

However, it should be noted that this may simply reflect the correlation between movers' living preferences with partisanship.  Most studies are quick to emphasize that a migrant's moving decision is obviously driven much more so by non-political factors.  However, even when these factors are controlled for, partisanship remains a significant factor among both GOP and Dem-leaning migrants.  Moreover, this study finds that migrants are more likely to move to areas that ideologically align even after controlling for the partisanship of where they moved from.  In other words, migrants moving from rural to urban areas tend to be less conservative (or more liberal) regardless of how conservative that rural area is.

Also, while I can't find it on a quick search, I recall an article from one of my grad seminars that found that respondents were able to infer the partisan makeup of residential areas simply by receiving non-political information on the housing/neighborhood to a pretty remarkable degree.  This supports the idea that partisan clustering may not really be intentional (whereas racial clustering almost certainly is), but rather a feature of people's living preferences more frequently aligning with their political preferences.

Finally, the interesting debate going on in the lit related to this right now is the direction of causality.  Is it that Dem-leaning voters are moving from GOP areas to Dem areas, or is it that migrants are more likely to adopt the dominant politics of the place that they move to?  Obviously, the general answer is it's both, but interestingly a number of studies (including the first one cited above) find that Republicans that move to Democratic areas are much more likely to become Democrats (and vice versa).  So, score one for the forces of political socialization.

TL; DR:  Yes, the political behavior research generally supports the idea that those moving from rural to urban areas are less conservative than those that stay behind.

[Fragile Bird]

8 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It would be hugely insensitive. It's reasonably accurate, but a more accurate statement is that when white people in the US have issues with substances they get treatment and support and blame the manufacturers. When black people do, they lock up the black people. This has little to do with the right and a lot more to do with the US in general; there's a reason that Clinton and Biden were very hardcore on crime and why that resonated with Democrats and Republicans. 

Because in general, Democrats and Republicans are quite happy to agree to lock up minorities.

While I generally agree with you, hasn’t the opioid crisis been different than other drug problems? Doctors weren’t pushing cocaine, heroin, LSD, meth or other drugs on patients the way they pushed opioids on patients. Drug cartels got the blame for most drug problems, but pharmaceutical companies certainly deserved the blame for the spread of opioids. Drug dealers are in on the action now, but it was the medical profession that got the ball rolling.

[sologdin]

intentional (whereas racial clustering almost certainly is), but rather a feature of people's living preferences more frequently aligning with their political preferences.

is it possible to untangle these two sorts of clustering? 

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, sologdin said:

is it possible to untangle these two sorts of clustering? 

Well, any halfway decent study on either is going to control for both racial and partisanship factors (as in, even after controlling for the race of migrants, partisan sorting remains a significant factor, and vice versa).  Whether that's sufficiently "untangling" the two is in the eye of the beholder.  I'm not familiar with any research that really digs into the differences between the two, but that doesn't mean it's not out there - and it is an interesting research question.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

26 minutes ago, DMC said:

While not specifically (or solely) concerned with the question of rural voters, research on geographic sorting (also called partisan or even sometimes "residential" sorting) strongly supports the notion that there has been increased partisan clustering generated by migrant patterns that's resulted in increased geographic polarization.  This is generally accepted by most behaviorists - the only prominent remaining skeptic I'm aware of is Morris Fiorina (and that's simply a corollary of his insistence that there is no polarization among voters, only elites).

However, it should be noted that this may simply reflect the correlation between movers' living preferences with partisanship.  Most studies are quick to emphasize that a migrant's moving decision is obviously driven much more so by non-political factors.  However, even when these factors are controlled for, partisanship remains a significant factor among both GOP and Dem-leaning migrants.  Moreover, this study finds that migrants are more likely to move to areas that ideologically align even after controlling for the partisanship of where they moved from.  In other words, migrants moving from rural to urban areas tend to be less conservative (or more liberal) regardless of how conservative that rural area is.

Also, while I can't find it on a quick search, I recall an article from one of my grad seminars that found that respondents were able to infer the partisan makeup of residential areas simply by receiving non-political information on the housing/neighborhood to a pretty remarkable degree.  This supports the idea that partisan clustering may not really be intentional (whereas racial clustering almost certainly is), but rather a feature of people's living preferences more frequently aligning with their political preferences.

Finally, the interesting debate going on in the lit related to this right now is the direction of causality.  Is it that Dem-leaning voters are moving from GOP areas to Dem areas, or is it that migrants are more likely to adopt the dominant politics of the place that they move to?  Obviously, the general answer is it's both, but interestingly a number of studies (including the first one cited above) find that Republicans that move to Democratic areas are much more likely to become Democrats (and vice versa).  So, score one for the forces of political socialization.

TL; DR:  Yes, the political behavior research generally supports the idea that those moving from rural to urban areas are less conservative than those that stay behind.

Isn’t the real answer here exposure to diversity?

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Isn’t the real answer here exposure to diversity?

Possibly, sure.  That would be the "location causes change in political preferences" direction as opposed to "political preferences cause change in location" direction.  Generally, I trend towards the "stable partisanship" school of thought, which would mean migrants over a certain age (say, 25) should not be changing their partisanship based on where they live or even who they socialize with.  What's always surprised me about the research is it's often found that, yes, migrants actually do change their partisanship to conform to their new location.  But overall, my prior is the "political preferences cause change in location" has a considerably stronger impact on geographic sorting than location changing an individual's attitudes.

33 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

While I generally agree with you, hasn’t the opioid crisis been different than other drug problems? Doctors weren’t pushing cocaine, heroin, LSD, meth or other drugs on patients the way they pushed opioids on patients. Drug cartels got the blame for most drug problems, but pharmaceutical companies certainly deserved the blame for the spread of opioids. Drug dealers are in on the action now, but it was the medical profession that got the ball rolling.

The pharmaceutical companies certainly deserve the blame for a whole hell of a lot of it.  Adderall is basically synthetic speed and is thus used as a substitute/alternative for coke and meth users.  Likewise, oxycontin is basically synthetic morphine - and fentanyl too, just stronger - and is often used as a substitute/alternative for heroin users (to the point heroin is apparently now often cut with fentanyl).  The opioid crises could certainly be more accurately described as the pharmie crisis.

[sologdin]

actually do change their partisanship to conform to their new location

is the inference to be drawn that there's a tendency to be ideologically flexible on the basis of a cynical goal-orientation (social pressure, say) rather than a principled truth-orientation?

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, sologdin said:

actually do change their partisanship to conform to their new location

is the inference to be drawn that there's a tendency to be ideologically flexible on the basis of a cynical goal-orientation (social pressure, say) rather than a principled truth-orientation?

I don't think it necessarily has to be cynical.  Kind of like Ty said, there's plenty of stuff out there showing increased empathy (e.g. having friends or family of a certain out-group) leads to changes in attitudes including gay rights such as SSM or racial preferences including social policy like welfare, health care, etc.  A more normatively neutral explanation is cultural/social integration.  After all, if your community generally socializes via high school football on Friday nights and church on Sunday, and you want to be part of that community, it shouldn't be surprising that you'd have an increased tendency to adopt the political views of such voters.  Although I suppose that would be described as goal-orientation as well.

What is well-established across studies in a number of subfields of political behavior, however, is that simple exposure to alternative points of view does not usually lead to a change in attitudes.

[James Arryn]

Harris is dropping out.

[DMC]

Harris - and more specifically her campaign - has been getting really horrible press the past couple weeks.  When you consistently get those type of quotes from staff, the writing's on the wall.

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

While I generally agree with you, hasn’t the opioid crisis been different than other drug problems? Doctors weren’t pushing cocaine, heroin, LSD, meth or other drugs on patients the way they pushed opioids on patients. Drug cartels got the blame for most drug problems, but pharmaceutical companies certainly deserved the blame for the spread of opioids. Drug dealers are in on the action now, but it was the medical profession that got the ball rolling.

No, it hasn't.

If it were we would see criminal charges against pharma. There is not a single one. And regardless of who caused it, HOW WE TREAT THE ADDICTS IS WILDLY DIFFERENT. Even though the addiction treatment itself and even the addictive drugs themselves are the same. 

[Fragile Bird]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

No, it hasn't.

Well, I disagree.

[aceluby]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

No, it hasn't.

If it were we would see criminal charges against pharma. There is not a single one. And regardless of who caused it, HOW WE TREAT THE ADDICTS IS WILDLY DIFFERENT. Even though the addiction treatment itself and even the addictive drugs themselves are the same. 

There were over 2,000 federal lawsuits against Purdue Pharma alone, which produced settlements over $3 billion.

[Zorral]

12 hours ago, Kalbear said:

15 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Would it be insensitive to cynically say: No wonder the right is so concerned about the opioid epidemic, it's killing their voter base.

It would be hugely insensitive. It's reasonably accurate

Paul Krugman has a nuanced political-economic opinion about this today in the NY Times; the crawling up to 2000 comments on the piece are interesting too, many of them very nuanced and others what one expects from the it is all the fault of liberals and immigrants ruining our perfect nation and its life-expectancy crowd:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/opinion/life-expectancy-united-states.html?

Quote

 

... the past few decades have been marked by growing divergence among regions along several dimensions, all closely correlated. In particular, the political divide is also, increasingly, an economic divide. As The Times’s Tom Edsall put it in a recent article, “red and blue voters live in different economies.”

What Edsall didn’t point out is that red and blue voters don’t just live differently, they also die differently....

.... The thing is, the red-blue divide isn’t just about money. It’s also, increasingly, a matter of life and death.

Back in the Bush years I used to encounter people who insisted that the United States had the world’s longest life expectancy. They hadn’t looked at the data, they just assumed that America was No. 1 on everything. Even then it wasn’t true: U.S. life expectancy has been below that of other advanced countries for a long time...

...This rise in mortality has, in turn, been largely a result of rising “deaths of despair”: drug overdoses, suicides and alcohol. And the rise in these deaths has led to declining overall life expectancy for the past few years.

What I haven’t seen emphasized is the divergence in life expectancy within the United States and its close correlation with political orientation. True, a recent Times article on the phenomenon noted that life expectancy in coastal metropolitan areas is still rising about as fast as life expectancy in other advanced countries. But the regional divide goes deeper than that.

.... In 1990, today’s red and blue states had almost the same life expectancy. Since then, however, life expectancy in Clinton states has risen more or less in line with other advanced countries, compared with almost no gain in Trump country. At this point, blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts...

...Beyond that, there has been a striking divergence in behavior and lifestyle that must be affecting mortality. For example, the prevalence of obesity has soared all across America since 1990, but obesity rates are significantly higher in red states.

One thing that’s clear, however, is that the facts are utterly inconsistent with the conservative diagnosis of what ails America....

 

 

[sologdin]

the rates of firearm ownership/gun death maps follow a similar pattern, as do rates for divorce, teen/unwed pregnancy, and other purported 'moral' 'defects.' the incidence of fascistic politics appears therefore to correlate with harshness of circumstance. we are not surprised.

[IheartIheartTesla]

I never though Harris would drop out before Mayor Pete.

All the top 4 D candidates have serious issues with them, and I am getting more and more depressed about 2020. I wasnt a supporter of Harris to begin with, but she would be no worse than Biden or Pete. In fact, I'd probably put her 3rd in my list of candidates to vote for in the primary.

[Zorral]

22 minutes ago, sologdin said:

the rates of firearm ownership/gun death maps follow a similar pattern, as do rates for divorce, teen/unwed pregnancy, and other purported 'moral' 'defects.' the incidence of fascistic politics appears therefore to correlate with harshness of circumstance. we are not surprised.

This is true too, at least from my personal and anecdotal experience.  But the stats do bear this out as well; lower income, struggling people have a much higher level of divorce and deserted marriages and families (leaving out, for the moment, the truly high financial bracket turnovers in this such as both J-Lo and Marc Anthony having aged out for each other, so divorced and re-married people who were the same age JL and MA were when they married each other!).  And certainly gun ownership and obesity and drunk driving. Not to mention domestic violence.

Additionally farming is maybe the most dangerous of occupations, from so many directions, from toxic chemicals to machine accidents to so much else.

Plus, access to medical care, preventive or otherwise, child care, internet -- all of it hard and harder to have, the smaller the community, because their states do not care to support any of this.

But you know it's all the fault of women for being so selfish as to not to want to get married to a guy who lives out there and put her life at risk from lack of ob/gyn, etc. in favor of moving away, having a job that pays and medical insurance and the opportunity to sit around with girlfriends after work and talk about Gossip Girls!  Byatches!

 

 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, aceluby said:

There were over 2,000 federal lawsuits against Purdue Pharma alone, which produced settlements over $3 billion.

And no criminal charges were filed against any individual. No mention of jail time for a single person. The settlements were for $3 bn, which was 1 20th of what was asked for and what the damages actually were. 

HOw many drug dealers have been jailed? How may Sackler family members have been jailed?

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well, I disagree.

How is it different? How are heroin overdoses now different than crack overdoses or heroin overdoes in the 1990s? How are people dying in drug deals different now than they were in the 90s? How are people getting high and stealing to keep their addiction going different now than they are in the 1990s?

Pharma might have started it, but the crime and despair and issues that the drug use has caused is not in any way particularly different. The big difference is that the people who are addicted are white.