False Consciousness?

Public choice theory suggests that voters pursue their self-interest at the polling booth no less than at the cash register. Judging by this table from the Tax Foundation, though, they must be ranking symbolic above pecuniary values. As it turns out, "red states" are the big benificiaries of federal largesse, while "blue states" are net losers in the scramble for tax booty. (Via Atrios.)

Comments

[Steve in CO]

I have a hyper-conservative (read: Bushophile) friend from Mississippi who has nothing nice to say about Democrats. When I asked him to explain the discrepency of voters in a state that receives more federal dollars than they pay, he just mused that, people don't vote for national-level Republicans for tax reasons, rather moral reasons.

That seemed to fly in the face of all the rhetoric about the evil tax-and-spend Democrats I have had to listen to from him. When I pointed that out he said, well that's his position but he believes the morality issue is what most others decide upon when the vote.

Seems a little schizophrenic if you ask me.

Personally I almost always vote Libertarian, not because of taxation (I clear enough after tax to live very well)... but as an attempt to rein in some of the rediculous anti-freedom legislation that the two major parties seem to have just falling out of their pores.

🙂

[Gene Berkman]

After the experience of Richard Nixon,Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush as President, it is not clear why anyone would vote for a Republican for President in order to get lower taxes or fiscal responsibility.
The Congressional Budget Office just raised the estimate for this year's Bush Deficit to over $400 billion.
Warheads and prisons cost money. War is a government program, and taxpayers get to foot the bill for GOP militarism and interventionism.

[jacob]

Gene says "taxpayers get to foot the bill for GOP militarism and interventionism."
but Clinton intervened with military regularly: in Haiti and Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, just for starters.

I'm not defending the GOP interventionism here. but practically every major war (ww1, ww2, korean, vietnam) since the civil one was under a democrat. republicans are more tendenitious to small wars, like the spanish-american one, or reagan in grenada, or gulf one.

[Anonymous]

The frickin' West... all them Goldwater Republicans, but heavens to betsy if an east coast politician dare suggest cutting back on federal land ranch subsidies, or USDA access road programs, or changing the Strategic Air Command deal with a non-Cold War mission, or updating the mineral rights royalty valuations out of the 19th century. Sheesh.

Though you'd think that they could balance the ratio for poor New Jersey by spending Superfund money. C'mon Whitman, send *something* back!

[thoreau]

Look on google for a paper by Dean Lacy (formerly of the Hoover Institute, now at Ohio State). It's called "A Curious Paradox of the Red States and Blue States: Federal Spending and Electoral Votes in the 2000 Election"

It's strange enough that the "Red States" tend to get more than they pay (with some exceptions) while the "Blue States" tend to pay more than they get (with some exceptions, e.g. New Mexico, Hawaii, Pennsylvania). Stranger still, the extent to which a state benefits on April 15 is positively correlated with Bush's margin of victory.

In other words, statistically speaking, the more a state benefits on April 15, the higher Bush's margin of victory tended to be (with all sorts of statistical disclaimers and fine print), while the more a state gets screwed on April 15, the higher Gore's margin of victory tended to be (with all of the usual statistical fine print and disclaimers).

Even stranger still, when you factor out military spending, the relationship becomes even stronger: Non-defense spending received minus taxes paid is positively correlated with Bush's margin of victory. (That part sort of makes sense: Gore did quite well in coastal areas while Bush did better inland, and the Navy just doesn't have that many bases in Utah and Kentucky.)

Still, I'm sure that after the 2004 election we'll get to hear pundits say "Bush did better in the good God-fearing places that pay taxes, while [insert name of sacrificial Democrat here] did better in the places that live off welfare."

[Dylan]

Hyper-conservative (read: Bushophile) Radley Balko has weighed in about this.

P.S. To humorless nannies: That's sarcasm about RB being a hyper-conservative Bushophile.

[JDM]

thoreau,

With half the taxes being paid by the wealthiest 1% (or whatever the exact statistic is) there is nothing surprising to me about this. The very richest people by and large live in and around the major metropolises (I think,) though the majority of the population in those large cities - and hence the states those cities are located in - vote Democrat.

[thoreau]

JDM-

Your explanation is interesting. I wouldn't take it as self-evidently true, but it's worthy of consideration.

As far as Mr. Balko's commentary, he makes a good point about federal land ownership accounting for some of it. However, most of his explanation is full of useless stereotypes.

Also, there's another key point in Prof. Lacy's paper (referenced in my previous post): The strongest statistical relationship was an inverse relationship between taxes paid and Bush's margin of victory. Spending became irrelevant statistically when the tax variable was isolated in the calculations. So the tax-spend discrepancy isn't necessary as an explanatory variable.

Why would places that pay less in taxes support Bush, while places that pay higher taxes support Gore, irrespective of how much they get back in federal spending? It's an intriguing question. JDM's observation may explain it, but I'm not hitching my cart to any particular theory at this point.

[jacob]

JDM; i would say your theory is incorrect, because while its true that the very welathy 1% may live in cities and vote democrat, they are only one percent- and an elction is not won by one percent alone. or even swayed enough to make that kind of change.

i guess it goes down the scale a bit, but these figures are merely close, not complete. after all, not *all* 1% voters vote democrat. and not *all* middle class midwesterners vote republican.
]

[Nicholas Weininger]

There's another possible explanation for this: per capita federal spending in a state is (roughly) inversely proportional to per capita income in that state, and there's a correlation between per capita income and political affiliation-- only it's exactly the opposite of what people tend to assume: the richer people get, the more Democratic they get.

I don't know if there're any national studies that show this correlation, but certainly it's true in some areas of the country. In upstate New York, where I grew up, it's especially stark: practically everyone above a certain income level is a Democrat and practically everyone below that level is a Republican. At election time in 2000 you saw the old rustbuckets festooned with Rick Lazio stickers and the Lexuses with Hillary stickers.

One (speculative) cause for this correlation, in turn, might be: voters correctly perceive that the two parties differ very little on economic issues, but believe that they differ a lot on social issues; and lower-income folks are, as in most places, more socially conservative than upper-income folks. Call it the Bobo Hypothesis. But the emphasis here is on the "speculative".

[thoreau]

Another possibility could be that if you have enough money, taxes don't cramp your lifestyle.

I know, I know, the progressive income tax is indeed a horrendous thing. All I mean is that taking $8,000 from a guy who makes $30,000 will hurt his lifestyle, but taking $10 million from somebody who makes $20 million won't affect his quality of life one bit.

It could explain the "limousine liberals" and "Hollywood liberals": They can afford taxes, while the rest of us are hurting.

[JDM]

jacob,

I'm saying that the other people who live in the cities who are not wealthy vote Democrat, the votes of the people paying most of the taxes count for almost nothing, whichever way they vote. Whether or not they vote Republican, at 1% of the vote, doesn't really matter.

thoreau,

It's possible I'm wrong about where the very wealthy tend to live, which would invalidate the whole line of reasoning. I'm wondering if anyone's done an analysis of it.

If you visualize it by neighborhood or individual though it seems pretty convincing. If the very wealthy are clustered around the cities that vote democratic, tax money will disproportionatly flow out of the rich neighborhhoods to the poor neighborhoods, regardless of what state the poor neighborhoods appear in. The taxes paid would act the same way if you ignore where they get paid out to. Even if you picture them flowing the wealthy neighborhoods of the blue states, into the pit of the Federal government.

It's probably pretty meaningless to look at this by state. That's why there's no obvious conclusion to be drawn.

Nicholas,

Wealthier people generally vote Republican, just like conventional wisdom says.

The interesting demographic to me is the Public Sector versus Private sector vote, which is really what wins elections for the Democrats. The public sector votes in greater percentages, because they have a strong personal stake, and for the party that promises them a bigger piece of the pie. Nothing like voting for the people who decide how big your paycheck is.

[Glenn C]

The question starting this commentary off was voters pursuing self-interest. At first blush, voting for someone who (theoretically anyway) is less likely to send your state more money is not in the voter's self-interest. This, however, assumes the average voter sees the money, and approves of the way it is spent.
Knowing the already rich farm owner is getting larger subsidies is unlikely to cause the auto mechanic to be thrilled about federal largesse. Sitting in traffic delayed by construction is unlikely to cause people to cheer. Dealing with the Medicare beauraucrats (or any beauraucrats) frequently tends to make people apostles of less government (until the aggravation wears off).

[thoreau]

JDM-

Whether you're right or wrong, you raise interesting questions. It makes a certain amount of sense that the wealthy might tend to live in states with big cities. A wealthy person is probably more likely to live near a center of commerce and industry because, well, people become wealthy through commerce and industry.

As for whether analyzing these things state-by-state makes any sense, the institution of the Electoral College has the people of each state cast all of their votes collectively as one unit. If it makes sense to elect the President through a mechanism that looks at the overall opinion in a state, rather than the break-down by individuals (i.e. popular vote), and if this affects how the gov't makes its spending decisions, then it must be at least somewhat meaningful to analyze the effects in the same manner, by looking at the state as a whole rather than breaking it down by individuals.

Of course, that's a whole other topic.

[thoreau]

fredH may have a point about the need for finer resolution. However, I think Congressional districts may provide the necessary resolution needed to understand this issue.

To understand the link (if any) between voting and spending one should look at who decides on federal spending and how those people are elected. Members of the House are elected from districts, Senators are elected state-wide (making the state-wide comparisons at least somewhat relevant), and the President is elected via 50 separate state-wide elections that assign electoral votes.

[Lazarus]

thoreau: But this only accounts for 51% of the voting population that actually bother to show up.

Really all this "Blue vs Red" analysis proves is how stupid and dangerous it is to make assumptions based on abstractions based far and above reality.

[Croesus]

I would argue that this is more a matter of history than anything. During the New Deal, Greaty Society, etc., the government was ramped to send loads of $ to poor areas of the country. I would bet those patterns of distribution hold true today.

[Croesus]

Oh, and that the poor areas of the past = the red states of today.

[Franklin Harris]

If Alabama is typical, much of the federal spending in "red states" takes the form of military spending and farm subsidies -- i.e., the kinds of spending where Republicans are generally known and expected to outspend Democrats. Also, how does spending on poverty programs fit into all of this when the poor, in general, don't vote at all? Voter turnout needs to be factored into this as well.

[Lazarus]

This is somewhat meaningless, as most States are not uniform.

Does anyone have this information by County? I know that in Michigan (a Blue State) most of the RURAL counties voted Gore - of course so did Detroit.

But the millionaires in the suburbs and the Red counties in Western Michigan voted solidly Republican - and I doubt these types get any type of tax-profits. I would like to see how this compares to other States.

[fredH]

I think that JDM's observations about tax load disparities and Lazarus's comment about county breakdowns together argue that we are not looking at the data on a fine enough grid. Urban/suburban/rural breakdowns would probably make a lot more sense than state-by-state ones.

[joe]

Having systematically underinvested in education, workforce development, and public infrastructure, the red states and their third world economies (digging up and selling unprocessed raw materials, growing grain at a loss) turn their pleading eyes to the more advanced economies of Massachusetts, New York, California, etc.

[Hooper Chris]

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DATE: 01/25/2004 01:20:03
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.