What's your point?

With all due respect, that article does not bolster your case. Yes, it points out that affluent people on the coasts tend to be more liberal than affluent people elsewhere (big surprise!), but it too does not provide any substantial evidence that most wealthy people are liberal...

Again, as a rule wealthy people "tend" to vote their economic interests, but they also tend to be more "liberal" regarding foreign policy and by a host of other liberalism measures. This has been fairly well-known for a long time, and as I said Lipset devotes considerable ink to it. If you look at the latest World Values Survey data for the US and correlate either income or self-assessed socioeconomic class with "economic welfare-state liberalism" there is a slight negative correlation, but it's less than 0.10. That's hardly as strong as one would expect. I may have overstated the case with the phrase "most rich people are..." because it depends on what you mean by "liberal," but the expectation that wealthy people overwhelmingly vote conservative even where their economic interests are concerned is just false. And they are clearly "liberal" on a number of non-economic dimensions. Lipset also points out the "wet tory" phenomenon in Britain, as well as the larger "noblesse oblige" concept... observing that the stronger this sentiment the more likely you are to find some form of socialism.

My thesis is that during times of economic extremis the wealthy vote their long term power interests, rather than their short term economic interests... Moreover, this isn't inconsistent with the multi-dimensional liberalism notion, because you don't get to implement your preferences in that arena if you don't stay in power.

Yes what would we have done without the "innovations" of the top "producers" over the last several years. My god those Credit Default Swaps and complex derivatives were a boon to mankind on the same plan as the telephone and the printing press.

Cute, but low and outside for a ball. The point you mess is that those credit to fall swaps and complex to revenues were the result of government interference in the marketplace.

Bithead likely doesn't support those who have abused the system, but does support those of us who make up the biggest percentage of GDP providing jobs and paying taxes. So, take your faux outrage and send it to your representative in DC. He/she will use it to leverage another deal for his/her favorite lobbyist.

Correct, and Well said. To which I would add that the largest portion of abuse came from government entities.

The older I get, the more I am convinced that small business is our strength. Big business looks to be just about as efficient and corrupt as government

While you're correct so far as you go, here's a clue; Why? Why is it that larger corporations have a tendency to become more corrupt? It's because big business has a tendency to get more involved with government and with unions.

Steve

...the sorry saga of a few privileged financial dorks set free by morons in government.

Oh look, an argument for more regulation...

So what Klein is telling us is that those who produce, and produce well, are getting paid better.

Yes what would we have done without the "innovations" of the top "producers" over the last several years. My god those Credit Default Swaps and complex derivatives were a boon to mankind on the same plan as the telephone and the printing press.

The only thing the "producers" have given us lately is a more effective way of shuffling money from one pile to another (taking their cut at each level of course), gutting American manufacturing by following the buffalo heard of cheap labor around the world and the iPod.

How impressive.

Are you good at mind reading or projection?

Meanwhile the working poor feel like they are spinning their wheels, but instead of working towards a less stratified society most of them dream of becoming a local bigshot who can exploit the less ambitious around him.

Income levels have always been more about social access than about actual effort. In a lot of small towns the rich are the people who were born into families with established pedigrees in real estate, or law, or business development. The kids go to private school, they meet the influential people in the greater area through family connections, they have the money for a college/medical/doctoral degree, find the mentors they need to succeed in business, and continue their heritage of squeezing as much income from the working poor as possible.

Meanwhile the working poor feel like they are spinning their wheels, but instead of working towards a less stratified society most of them dream of becoming a local bigshot who can exploit the less ambitious around him. To create a more equitable and meritocratic situation would reduce their future bigshot earning potential! So "socialism" is unpopular, thanks in part to its association with fertile "welfare queens" and various other darker-skinned people who seem to have an easier lifestyle...

The first comment is instructive: forget the Wall Street billionaires who made their money largely by bilking Main Street investors, lets focus on the 9-5 government workers making 5-figure annual salaries...!! I find it baffling that so many conservatives seem to be shadowboxing "pothead hippies", "welfare queens", "bureaucrats", "union members", "black power activists", "rainbow coalitions", and so on, long after these groups have stopped having any kind of significant impact on the national lifestyle. Like an Alzheimer patient they constantly confuse modern reality with their oppositional experiences from the previous decades...

I suspect Mr. Klein has been spending entirely too much time reading das Kaptial.

Umm, no I don't know that...you got any proof to back that statement up...

Probably nothing that you would consider proof, ultimately. But it is interesting, that there are number of indicators out there that would suggest the like. As an example. Look at the voting patterns in the most liberal states in the nation. California Oregon Washington, Illinois New York Pennsylvania, the New England states.
is there any question that these are the most affluent states and the union? Is there any question that they are the most liberal voting states in the union?

Granted that Michigan stands out as something of a sore thumb; (Given its geographic features you should pardon the pun ) They've been voting Liberal for several years, he at Detroit looks like a bloody war zone, and economically speaking Michigan isn't doing all that well. However, its recent history, practicing 1950, is significantly better. One could aver by that set of conditions, that the current spate of poverty Michigan is seeing is a direct result of its liberalism.

There is also, while I have the editor open on the subject, some indication that a higher population density tends to lead toward more leftist thinking.

That said, I did note an interesting item in the NY Times around the election... I saved the thing but the link I trapped is broken.(It was captured in my palm pilot...before my old Palm Pilot died, and I'm on the new one at the moment.. I'm amazed it made the transition)

Maybe a search against the text will reveal it. Anyway;

In the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election, exit polls showed that 52 percent of voters who make $250,000 a year or more voted for Barack Obama.

Gee, somehow that doesn't strike me as the uber rich being overly conservative in their voting patterns. One might also consider the tendency to vote democrat given the income level self destructive. However it's not true; they're voting for their self interest.

Being in the truck, I don't have the article directly to hand, though I will look for it tonight. The article I'm thinking of pointed to after-tax income levels of "the rich" all and the pattern of same under both republican and democratic presidents. I was surprised to learn that under the democrats, their after-tax income tended to go up, I recall this was particularly true as compared to the remainder of the income quintiles. I'll see if I can dig that out tonight.

That said, the basis of this discussion were having seems to be focused on the rather socialist idea that we're still living in a zero sum world... the misbegotten notion that when someone a cheese something, somebody else loses. Interestingly, this incorrect notion of the world seems to have , in our society at least, settled in for the long haul at the ivy league schools. You know, the schools for the rich.

With all due respect, that article does not bolster your case. Yes, it points out that affluent people on the coasts tend to be more liberal than affluent people elsewhere (big surprise!), but it too does not provide any substantial evidence that most wealthy people are liberal...

Steve