The capacity to imagine future danger and take constructive steps to avert it is called “adaptive anticipation”. Adaptive adaptation starts with sensitivity to threat. It ends with effective problem solving.
According to this trope, the Fearful Conservative is afraid of change and uncertainty, clinging to the safe harbor of habit and tradition, overly controlled, troubled by bad dreams and distressed by disorder. In so many words: fear makes conservatives stupid. The authors usually bolster their case with a few studies and quotes from “experts”, which can be hard to refute if you don’t know what they’re leaving out - namely, evidence to the contrary.
One thing the articles and opinion pieces don’t mention is the decades of research on personality and political attitudes, covering tens of thousands of participants. And that research is, well, unequivocal: conservatism is not associated with anxiety or fear - it’s most strongly associated with Conscientiousness.
Azarian wrote a Psychology Today piece titled, “Fear and Anxiety Drive Conservatives' Political Attitudes” …he supported his claims with evidence from four studies. Luckily I was able to locate most of the original studies to see if his conclusions were reasonable. Here’s what I found…
“…industry, self-reliance, frugality, self restraint or control, modesty, temperance, fortitude, cheerfulness, civility, compassion, and respect for the property of other persons.” Jean M. Yarbrough, author of American Virtues: Thomas Jefferson on the Character of a Free People.
What would be the opposite of these virtues?
The preliminary report doesn’t discuss why over two-thirds of those contacted did not complete interviews. Nor does it address potential differences between individuals who did complete interviews and those who did not.
Why would Amazon refuse to remain neutral if employees tried to unionize? I’m thinking it wasn’t so much about wages. After all, Amazon employees at the NYC headquarters were expected to earn an average of $150,000 a year...
So the question, “was the Amazon deal worth it?” is partly answered by “What was the alternative”? Were there other businesses in the wings that wanted the same location and could provide greater benefit at less cost?
When people say that political differences boil down to differences in values, they’re often implying an unbridgeable gulf between their side and the other side. And so we have the increasing polarization and breakdown of communication between Democrats and Republicans. After all, if you don’t care about the same things, what’s the point in talking to each other?
Written in partnership with the Conservation Evidence project, What Works in Conservation is an essential reference guide that summarizes and evaluates the latest scientific evidence on over a thousand conservation interventions.
Bottom line: the terrestrial biosphere depends on insects and the insects are dying. Why is this happening? In a word: agriculture….
…the point of income and wealth is what you can get with them. Besides status and influence, that would be stuff you can buy, now or later: housing, food, healthcare, transportation, entertainment, education, clothing, security, experiences, etc. One would think that inequality in buying power would translate to a similar level of inequality in the value of the stuff bought. One would be wrong.
The idea of a federal jobs guarantee is that anyone who wants a job gets a job and the job pays enough to support a family. Per Bernie Sanders, that would be a full-time public-sector job paying at least $15 an hour with healthcare and other benefits.
For instance, in one Pew research survey, just 53% of those under 30 who initially identified as Republicans or leaned Republican consistently remained with the party over four subsequent surveys.
I’ll start with political spending by “business interests”, a convenient category that includes rich people, corporations, non-corporate businesses, business associations, and industry groups. If spending by business interests influenced US elections and legislation in a major way, one would expect the US to do well in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings. And it does okay - but not as well as Denmark and Norway.
We typically talk about inequality in terms of income and wealth. But what are income and wealth good for? They’re good for their exchange value, i.e., what you can get with them. Another way of saying this is that income and wealth are proxies for current or future spending. So let’s look at how Americans have been spending…
To be bankrupt is to owe more than you can possibly pay. Which translates to irredeemable, as in rotten to the core. In politics, that translates to “I refuse to engage the other side, because they have the wrong values.” In other words, the Other Side cares about the wrong things.
Fraud and waste is why US healthcare is so damn expensive. An estimated 10% of Medicare/Medicaid is lost to fraud. As for waste, at least 20% of US healthcare spending is unnecessary due to…Imagine if the US cut healthcare spending by a quarter. That would shave off almost a trillion dollars - enough to fund a healthcare system where everyone is covered and everyone’s paying less. All it takes is political will, including a willingness to face down the AMA.
The other countries [like Denmark] have broad-based tax systems. Not only does the bottom 90% pay more income tax, they also pay higher consumption taxes, which tend to be regressive...Broad-based tax systems operate on the principle that everyone contributes to the common good. We’re all in this together. Sure, those at the top should pay more, but the idea is that everybody pitches in. That attitude encourages a collective problem-solving approach to government policy. More pragmatism, less ideology. More “us”, less “us versus them”.
As far as government policy goes, whatever works is fine with me. I don’t care if the boosters for a particular policy are in it only for the money, that they’re solely motivated by self-interest, greed, political advancement, salvation, selfless devotion to the common good, or pure compassion. Good people have bad ideas. Bad people have good ideas. The proof is in the pudding.