Lecture slides for the “Politics” section of my Social Issues in America course:
The collapse of the New Deal coalition
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Lecture slides for the “Politics” section of my Social Issues in America course:
The collapse of the New Deal coalition
Lane Kenworthy 
I’ve often wondered about the apparent paradox – rich voters prefer Reps, but rich states prefer Dems. It sure seems that voting for Democratic policies is what made the rich states richer and keeps them richer. We know that rich people do better with a Democratic president than with a Republican, and there seems to be a similar effect at the state level. Why not? What better way is there to get rich than to sell stuff to those in the thriving middle and working classes? The more they thrive, the richer you get. You can only get so rich selling to the poor. They just don’t have all that much money. (I know this sounds obvious, but an awful lot of people don’t get it. They want to be the only rich person and have everyone else be poor, but that just doesn’t work very well, at least not for long.)
In red states, rich people are more concerned with class prerogatives and identity politics, so they vote against their own economic interests. This keeps them rich, but not as rich as they could be, and it keeps everyone else poor. In blue states, the rich vote for their own economic interests, even if it means crossing class boundaries. That means they stay quite rich, but everyone else in the state gets richer too.
I’ve often wondered about the apparent paradox – rich voters prefer Reps, but rich states prefer Dems. It sure seems that voting for Democratic policies is what made the rich states richer and keeps them richer. We know that rich people do better with a Democratic president than with a Republican, and there seems to be a similar effect at the state level. Why not? What better way is there to get rich than to sell stuff to those in the thriving middle and working classes? The more they thrive, the richer you get. You can only get so rich selling to the poor. They just don’t have all that much money. (I know this sounds obvious, but an awful lot of people don’t get it. They want to be the only rich person and have everyone else be poor, but that just doesn’t work very well, at least not for long.)
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