Hmm, seems to me that your correlation of Left Wing with 'poorer' hardly seems correct to me. The under-class -- people who don't work; who rely on government subsidies for support -- are indeed ferverently left, but these days, the WORKING CLASS is definitely, strongly right wing (see Daniel Trump-- it is the working class that supports him most ferverently-- and not because he is promising them any free government goodies either ). The working classes choice to vote right seems very logical to me: they don't see govenment subsidies as benefiting THEM, they see government subsidies as benefiting people one social class down from them-- the underclass-- the people who they most clearly differentiate themselves from, and dislike and dispise. And the provision of liberal government subsideis to the under-class, downgrades the working class's own achievment of supporting themselves and their families, of making it on their own, and attacking their own sense of self worth. Possibly even worse, the upper 'cultural capital' class-- the "busybody left"-- is constantly denegrating the working class: their opinions, lifestyle, and beliefs. I think that most of Trump's support comes from the fact that he is openly, blatently, aggressively not polically correct or 'woke'-- merely by openly expressing the views that most working class people actually hold, he makes it more socially acceptable (especially in working class circles) to express those views as well.
Anyway, my point is, today in the US, the under-class, the bottom 5% -10% is definately left; but I'd say the entire rest of the 'bottom third' is now 'right'.
Authoritarian -> Antiauthoritarian or Level of control is another axis commonly discussed these days. How repressive should policies be [to the other side]?
Open mindedness - this is the hardest to parse and see. Does a person require purity testing for the in-group? Maybe phrase this as Meta-Authoritarian.
Meta-Meta-Authoritarians may require purity testing for open-mindedness. My in-group must be open minded about whether or not purity testing is allowed.
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It may be very difficult to have empathy for a person or their opinions; but we may find a way to have empathy for how their mind got to the place it is now.
>Everyone seems to blame the internet for our ever-increasing polarization. It would be funny if the true culprit were education and economic growth.
Unless I'm doing my mental coordinate transformation wrong, polarization is correlated with education (total capital) and *anticorrelated* with (distributed) economic growth. That is, if the majority of individuals perceive themselves as having a lower proportion of economic capital, despite a high total capital, that's the peak of polarization. Which tracks well with complaints about the "shrinking middle class".
This was such an interesting read. I appreciate the revised curves to represent the independents, who are sometimes impossible to place on conventional left-right scale.
I wonder if the weird you lead with could be explained in part by Simpson's paradox.
Wait, in your last graph you put the left as the area with the lowest total capital *and* lowest economic capital. But both getting more economic capital and getting more education (presumably a culture proxy) capital reduces % of independents as per the introductory graphs. Shouldn't the "LEFT" and "INDEPENDENT" area labels be swapped?
Very intriguing ! I'm trying to map 60s France to 60s Texas in my mind. Not as hard as it might seem. Hunting, horses, ski boats, whiskey...
Hmm, seems to me that your correlation of Left Wing with 'poorer' hardly seems correct to me. The under-class -- people who don't work; who rely on government subsidies for support -- are indeed ferverently left, but these days, the WORKING CLASS is definitely, strongly right wing (see Daniel Trump-- it is the working class that supports him most ferverently-- and not because he is promising them any free government goodies either ). The working classes choice to vote right seems very logical to me: they don't see govenment subsidies as benefiting THEM, they see government subsidies as benefiting people one social class down from them-- the underclass-- the people who they most clearly differentiate themselves from, and dislike and dispise. And the provision of liberal government subsideis to the under-class, downgrades the working class's own achievment of supporting themselves and their families, of making it on their own, and attacking their own sense of self worth. Possibly even worse, the upper 'cultural capital' class-- the "busybody left"-- is constantly denegrating the working class: their opinions, lifestyle, and beliefs. I think that most of Trump's support comes from the fact that he is openly, blatently, aggressively not polically correct or 'woke'-- merely by openly expressing the views that most working class people actually hold, he makes it more socially acceptable (especially in working class circles) to express those views as well.
Anyway, my point is, today in the US, the under-class, the bottom 5% -10% is definately left; but I'd say the entire rest of the 'bottom third' is now 'right'.
Or a 3d space? Or a 4d space?
Social + Economic are tackled in this article.
Authoritarian -> Antiauthoritarian or Level of control is another axis commonly discussed these days. How repressive should policies be [to the other side]?
Open mindedness - this is the hardest to parse and see. Does a person require purity testing for the in-group? Maybe phrase this as Meta-Authoritarian.
Meta-Meta-Authoritarians may require purity testing for open-mindedness. My in-group must be open minded about whether or not purity testing is allowed.
---
It may be very difficult to have empathy for a person or their opinions; but we may find a way to have empathy for how their mind got to the place it is now.
>Everyone seems to blame the internet for our ever-increasing polarization. It would be funny if the true culprit were education and economic growth.
Unless I'm doing my mental coordinate transformation wrong, polarization is correlated with education (total capital) and *anticorrelated* with (distributed) economic growth. That is, if the majority of individuals perceive themselves as having a lower proportion of economic capital, despite a high total capital, that's the peak of polarization. Which tracks well with complaints about the "shrinking middle class".
I'm baffled to see farmers as the lowest possible capital, under unskilled workers?
This was such an interesting read. I appreciate the revised curves to represent the independents, who are sometimes impossible to place on conventional left-right scale.
I wonder if the weird you lead with could be explained in part by Simpson's paradox.
Wait, in your last graph you put the left as the area with the lowest total capital *and* lowest economic capital. But both getting more economic capital and getting more education (presumably a culture proxy) capital reduces % of independents as per the introductory graphs. Shouldn't the "LEFT" and "INDEPENDENT" area labels be swapped?
I wonder where Video Games would fit on that chart - my first instinct was that it would fill in that lower left segment but I'm not so sure.