More on Inequality
Will asks the following question in his most recent post on inequality:
I’ve see no evidence that inequality tends to produce more Democratic voters. Does Jim have some?
No.
I’ve created original analysis that I believe provides direct evidence that more unequal places tend to vote for Democrats, but in the post to which I linked where I reviewed this analysis, I was very careful to say that:
To bound this, however, I should emphasize that this analysis neither supports nor refutes any assertions about causality. Inequality may cause changes in voting behavior, but it is certainly entangled with many other factors.
Trying to build some kind of a cross-sectional model that “holds all other factors equal” is almost certainly a fool’s errand. Interactions between drivers are a central, not a peripheral, component of such a complex social phenomenon. This complexity would overwhelm 3,000 data points pretty quickly. (Professor Gelman, who is one of the best statisticians in America, is acutely aware of this generic issue.)
If anything, the observation that changes in inequality don’t correlate with changes in voting tends to undercut the argument for (simple) causality, though obviously this was pretty crude analysis – I didn’t even have well-aligned time periods, didn’t consider possible lag or confounding effects and so on.
Ideally we would have some kind of structured experiment to establish causality, but it’s pretty hard to see that happening. Barring that, the next best solution would be natural experiments (e.g., look at location-periods with a sudden immigration spike because of some weird legislative change, etc.), but even there it’s hard to see how you would not have deep confounding. Even so, that seems to me to be best bet for some way to disentangle effects.
In my post reacting to Will’s original post, I was responding specifically to Will’s challenge that:
Did Matt not look at the exit polls? Did he not notice that Obama dominated in fundraising among really, really rich people? Here’s a bet for Matt. Take the group that voted for Obama and the group that voted for McCain. Calculate the Gini coefficient for each of those two groups. I’ll bet $1000 dollars that income inequality is higher in the Obama-voting group. If Matt doesn’t want to take this bet, then he needs to explain why divergence in material circumstances poses more of a political problem for Republican coalition-building than it does for the Democrats–the more economically unequal coalition.
I took this to mean, roughly speaking, that Will believes that the hypothesized difference in Gini coefficients between Republican and Democratic voters, if confirmed, falsifies the theory that more inequality tends to produce more Democratic voters. (If Will simply meant that he is agnostic about the causal impact of inequality on voting patterns then I misinterpreted him.)
My response included the delineation of a plausible mechanism by which inequality could help Democrats, which is why I was careful to describe the mechanism in the hypothetical (though, upon re-reading my post, I realize that I should have been clearer about this):
If inequality of condition causes a preference for Democratic policies, then as inequality increases, you will get more Democrats. If it’s a marker for other causes of Democratic voting, then it’s a marker for things that make more Democrats. The idea of a coalition of aristocrats and the proletariat against the petite bourgeoisie and yeoman farmers is not a new one.” [Bold added]
I have not seen compelling evidence that within the normal scope of day-to-day politics in contemporary America inequality either helps or hurts either Democrats or Republicans. I do, however, hold the non-analytically-derived belief that extreme, sustained inequality tends to undermine limited government over time.
I commented on your previous post. Basically, the Mean-Income-Maximizing-and-Floor principle has been empirically proven as the most stable cooperative strategy over time.
So long as this principle is enforced, “inequality” is a metrical red-herring (save at the extreme margins).
— JA · Nov 7, 10:10 PM · #
well…as a mathematician I would try maximizing SES, Socio-Economic Status…because things like social cohesion and church membership can raise SES.
Only raw income affects Gini.
For example, being in grad school and living on ramen. ;)
SES is still good, because it is an aggregate metric, and being very poor gets raised by being in grad school.
A lot of things can raise SES.
I tried explaining this before, but I think in the bellcurve IQ distribution, democrats populate the tails, and republicans make up the big chunk in the center.
Republicans believe anyone can bootstrap themselves, the upper tail and the lower tail know that simply isn’t true.
— matoko_chan · Nov 8, 03:31 AM · #
Let’s talk about the obvious: if you let in a whole bunch of low human capital illegal immigrants, they and their descendants will tend to vote for the tax and spend party. Thus, California has switched from voting Republican 9 out of 10 times from 1952-1988 to Democratic five times in a row since.
— Steve Sailer · Nov 8, 06:17 AM · #
Or the other obvious: As oppposed to those states with natural low human capital like Alabama, Missippi and Louisiana which are consistently Republican
— Steven Donegal · Nov 8, 07:23 AM · #
Steven, That is because those deep red staters get SES raised from other than things than income.
I would hazard a guess a guess that they are largely religious and get an SES boost from their community religious institutions, or perhaps just from feeling superior to local blacks.
— matoko_chan · Nov 8, 01:39 PM · #
Sailer, it is not that simple, and you know it.
The GOP has projected anti-immigrant sentiment. The choice is simple for those people.
Do you vote for the party despises your relatives or the party that values what human capital you to give?
Or at least MESSAGES that they value you.
— matoko_chan · Nov 8, 01:43 PM · #
C’mon Sailer, Manzi, et all….I doubledog dare you.
Map IQ position on the bellcurve to party affiliation.
My hypothesis is 30 dem/40 repub/30 dem.
— matoko_chan · Nov 8, 03:26 PM · #
. . . those states with natural low human capital like Alabama, [Mississippi] and Louisiana. . .
You mean those states with lots of black people, Steven? Or is it only white people living in poverty and with few educational opportunities that you have contempt for?
— Alan Jacobs · Nov 8, 04:48 PM · #
Isn’t Sailer the one to blame for introducing “low human capital” to the discussion in the first place?
— Freddie · Nov 8, 09:26 PM · #
You’re right, Freddie — sorry I missed that. It’s a repulsive phrase when used in relation to anybody.
— Alan Jacobs · Nov 8, 10:03 PM · #
“Low human capital” is a standard term in economics to describe people without the capabilities to earn much money.
You may have noticed that a lot of people in California and a few similar states turned out not to have the human capital to be able to afford those huge mortgages they were taking out over the last decade.
Or, more likely, you were too busy being repulsed to notice much about the real world.
— Steve Sailer · Nov 9, 12:38 PM · #
You’re right, of course, Steve, but it seems to me that the term is rarely used as a simple economic descriptor but rather has been borrowed for purposes of mockery. Maybe I’m misreading.
— Alan Jacobs · Nov 9, 02:20 PM · #
Pfft, I’m sick of this Steve-is-a-racist trope. He isn’t a racist, but he might be an IQist in that he expects people of high IQ to understand what he is saying.
He just speaks the truth, and he isn’t going to wrap the truth in “crafted languange” or feel good platitudes.
Keep your crafted language for the base.
You’re going to need it.
— matoko_chan · Nov 9, 02:53 PM · #
Matoko, I think if someone thinks that certain races of people are inherently less intelligent and more prone to violence and criminality than others, that’s definitionally racism. Now, they could argue that a racist worldview is a correct worldview. But I’m pretty tired of dancing around what the word means, rather than confronting the consequences of believing in that worldview. The debate on race has become too preoccupied with nomenclature.
— Freddie · Nov 9, 06:54 PM · #
As Freddie says, Steve is by definition a racist. He probably sees himself as a beneovlent racist. But what is really wierd to me is not the racisim but the obsession with race. As Bill Simons is a sports writer, Steve Sailer is a race writer. Whatever the topic he finds the race angle. And what he writes is usually something about how other races are negativly impacting the white race, like the IQ thing.
And the whole genetic IQ racial thing is a big destructive waste of time. It is a vasty complicated issue and the evidence for and against—as far as I can tell—is just a huge pile of contradictory “information.” And even if it did turn out to be true that different races had significantly different IQs it is completely usless information. There is nothing positive you could do with that. And as I said before, the issue is increadibly destructive socially. The costs of persuing this line of inquiery far outweigh the benefits, because there are no benefits, at least that I have seen.And I believe Steve persuse his race obsession to his detriment. Most people don’t like him. I don’t think he could get hired by any mainstream media becasue of his resume. I don’t think any normal newspaper is going to buy a column by him if they do any sort of vetting. Or any well paying magazine or website. I can’t believe he makes much money doing what he does, but I bet he could make a lot more becasue he is a good writer with good insights when he does write about issues other than race. So, there’s no benefit to society from his persuits and no benefit to himself. I can only think that this self-destructive, socially destructive behavior is rooted in some sort of psychological condition.
If he wasn’t a blog phenomena, then I’d say who cares, but he is putting his crap out there, over and over again, so….
— cw · Nov 9, 07:42 PM · #
About the evidence for and against racial IQ disparity, I shouldn’t have said “A huge pile of contradictory information.” I should have said a “tiny” pile. The clues exisitant make up a tiny little pile in comparison to the mountain of what one would need to know to accurately answer this (usless) question.
— cw · Nov 9, 08:09 PM · #
I’m sorry that I’m a heretic about the reigning dogmas of the day, but there is such a thing as reality.
For example, I point out using all available statistical sources that the typical human capital — the ability to earn money — in California these days is lower than most people think. The rest of the world says, “That’s racist!” and goes ahead and gives countless half million mortgages to Californians, who promptly turn out to, indeed, lack the human capital to earn enough money to pay back these giant mortgages, setting off an economic crisis.
— Steve Sailer · Nov 10, 06:42 AM · #
Human capital cuts both ways though. You seem to know the data – how much money do you think has been lost from the bad mortgages? Back of the envelope for me is 400billion. Not chump change, but hardly a global economic crisis (the Fed wants twice that to stop the bleeding).
Now the hedge fund managers and investment bankers who repackaged, leveraged, and gambled on the insurance for those mortgage-backed instruments – they have, by any measure, the highest human capital in modern society. (Not to mention IQs from the high end of the distribution.) And ‘those people’ really have made a mess of everything.
— rortybomb · Nov 10, 07:31 AM · #
Well..I think I have to agree with Dr. Watson and Steve both on this, cuz, like, they are teh experts.
The truth is not racist.
And the truth is, all men are equal under the law, but no men are equal under the genes.
I see a profound and perhaps wilfull lack of understanding of what happened with econopalypse.
We should have had a recession on Sept 12.
Instead, Bush told America to go shopping and colluded with Greenspan to cut rates so Americans could use their homes as ATMs. Bush also recognized the changed population demographics and engaged in hispandering and jiggerring qualifications to allow more home-ownership. The new domain of sketchy mortbacked instruments was instantly colonized by “sharp dealers”, the kind that free market capitalism encourages.
Pandering on mortgages qualls is, of course, not Bush alone, but historical for both parties. However, relaxed regualtions + artificially depressed interest rates resulted in a torrent of bad paper.
Also, Bush and his advisors have known that the recession they had pushed out, was coming, for at least 2 years….but they thought they could delay it with corporate welfare until after the election. Then it could be a sort of housewarming gift for the next occupant of the White House.
Meanwhile, so that Americans didn’t have to feel pain that would result in a slow down on spending, Bush borrowed 700 billion dollars or so from the Chinese to fund the Grand Misadventure of the Manifest Destiny of Judeoxian Democracy.
btw i voted for Bush.
mea culpa
— matoko_chan · Nov 10, 03:30 PM · #
And for once, and possibly the first time ever about anything in the widewide world, Sarah Palin is correct.
It is all Bush’s fault.
— matoko_chan · Nov 10, 03:41 PM · #
Jim,
A serious on topic question for you. I don’t understand why you say the following: “I took this to mean, roughly speaking, that Will believes that the hypothesized difference in Gini coefficients between Republican and Democratic voters, if confirmed, falsifies the theory that more inequality tends to produce more Democratic voters.” I thought Will was saying the exact opposite — that given higher inequality amongst Democratic voters, this will benefit the Democratic party while there is high inequality. Will explicitly says “Take the group that voted for Obama and the group that voted for McCain. Calculate the Gini coefficient for each of those two groups. I’ll bet $1000 dollars that income inequality is higher in the Obama-voting group.”
So isn’t he saying he thinks it is more likely that inequality produces Democratic voters?
- Jeff
P.S. Mr. Jacobs, whose writing I admire and whose latest book I plan to go out and purchase at full price to support his writing, is just wrong about there being anything offensive about the phrase “low human capital”. Social scientists and economists use this term all the time to think about the workforce and Steve’s comments should be taken in this economic/social science framework.
— Jeff Singer · Nov 10, 04:36 PM · #
And one more thing — I just as confused about Will’s position since he says he sees no evidence that “inequality tends to produce more Democratic voters”. But didn’t he just provide that evidence to Matt in the quote I provided above? Perhaps what he is really saying is correlation is not causation, which makes sense, but with the evidence that both high-income and low-income voters overwhelming favor Democrats, it would be nice to at least explain why this correlation doesn’t mean Republicans are in trouble as long as the current income distribution remains unchanged.
- Jeff
— Jeff Singer · Nov 10, 05:05 PM · #
California has gotten vastly more unequal over the last two generations and has got vastly more Democratic. That’s just one example, but it’s the biggest example possible in the U.S.
— Steve Sailer · Nov 11, 02:05 AM · #
Sailer: California has gotten vastly more unequal over the last two generations and has got vastly more Democratic.
So, what’s your point? Which is propter hoc?
Are you just pointing out a rather dull fact? Or is there an implicit propter hoc lurking here?
— Steve Roth · Nov 11, 08:58 AM · #
And, I’m sorry to scold but the GOP needs to own what happened with Bush. He was trying to do the right thing.
He just wasn’t smart enough to know what that was.
— matoko_chan · Nov 11, 02:22 PM · #
Freddie,
I wanted to chime in once again to defend Sailer against the charge that he is racist. You argue that the definition of racism is “someone [who]thinks that certain races of people are inherently less intelligent and more prone to violence and criminality than others”, but my friends at “dictionary.com” say the following about racism:
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races
All three definitions include the notion that there are moral implications to the differences between the races. I never read Steve arguing that because Blacks and Hispanics have lower IQs (or anyone with a low IQ), they shouldn’t have the same rights and responsibilities that whites have. He simply argues that differences amongst races exist and we should take those differences into account when shaping public policy (see e.g. No Child Left Behind). He doesn’t argue we need separate laws and/or rules for Blacks and Hispanics and he doesn’t argue that the white race should rule over other races. He also exhibits no hatred for other races and in fact, in his interest in other races he exhibits a curiousity that so called “enlightened whites” rarely exhibit, because they are too scared to acknowledge the obvious staring at them in the face (e.g. certain Africans are better runners that whites, African-American culture is different than mainstream white culture, etc.)
— Jeff Singer · Nov 11, 06:19 PM · #