Yeah, I know that study. I believe I wrote it up once or twice, a few years ago, in fact. There are more recent studies on dissonance and politics as well (e.g., this one).
Still, neither of those studies, or the many others, test your empirical claim.
Eh, sample size issues are generally, and this is a general case, only a problem for people who don't do statistics or social science research. The size of the sample is pretty much irrelevant after a certain point (and that point is well below 400), so long as the sample is representative and certain methodoligical issues are avoided (e.g., when I used to do survey research, I always did a follow-up non-response survey, though they take time so political surveys rarely use them).
I should add that the pdf to which both you and Res State link does not contain the words "weighted sampling." It mentions "weighting," but doesn't give context, and looks like part of a boilerplate disclaimer. A quick review of other PPP releases show that this is true.
Just so it's clear, "weighted sampling" is distinct from weighting results. Weighted sampling select subgroups (in this case, likely age and race demographics) based on some criteria (in this case, population, whether that population be the population of Mississippi or Mississippi Republican primary voters). It's used in almost all polls that us samples, which is almost all polls.
By the way, speculating that people might have misheard the question is one of the more unique responses to a poll result that I've seen. It's little more than speculation. I'd love to see real reasons for doubting these results, because let's face it, the results are disturbing. However, you haven't provided any such reasons.
You'll both enjoy them. I immediately put With Fire and Sword on my favorite books list, and The Deluge may be even better than it.
When you're done, all three books have pretty good Polish movie versions. Sienkiewicz is pretty much the Polish literary royalty, sort of like Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Chekov in Russia. You can't make it through a Polish education without reading his books.
Well, that depends on what you mean by "public sector." In the last two years, and particularly in the last few months, state and municipal employees have had real issues with job security.
Butanyway. Ordinarily, engineering and technical workers accept a tradeoff when they sign up to work for the government. They know that, relative to the private sector, their pay is going to be poor. In compensation, they get fantastic job security.
If you add in retirement benefits (the back end stuff) and health care, you're pretty much talking about all government employees. Since, in addition to the drop in job security, states and perhaps the feds are going after pensions and benefits, there is going to be very little incentive for anyone who can get a job in the private sector to work in the public sector, soon.
Well, not many trilogies end up winning their authors Nobel Prizes. This one did (plus Quo Vadis). Any of the books can be taken by themselves, though. The trilogy part comes less from the continuity of the series, though there are plot lines that run through them all (or at least characters who do), but because it tells of a particular period in Polish history over the course of 3 books, starting with the Cossack rebellion, through the Deluge, and the Russian invasion.
Eh, in the Commonwealth, it was the Poles who did most of the ruling. It's because they didn't like the Poles that the Dnieper Cossacks rebelled. I suspect they'd have been happier with a more Lithuanian dominated leadership (the Poles considered the Cossacks to be scum, or something slightly below it).
Have you read The Deluge? I just finished the trilogy about 6 months ago, and am still feeling blown away by it.
I must be, because I was describing what the guest posters were doing, and Heidegger thinks I was describing my own view. But then, being understood by Heidegger is not a good measure of comprehensibility. Or by you, to be honest (clearly someone else understood what I was getting at).
By the way, I've said several times that I suspect liberals are as mistaken about conservatives as conservatives are of them.
I disagree to some extent with Haidt's characterization (and from the liberal end of the social science's, with Lakoff's as well), but the point they both make, that we're coming from entirely different moral and even epistemic perspectives, is definitely an important one.
Haidt is a social psychologist, and has done some really interesting research, but like most social psychologists, his theorizing goes way, way beyond his data. I used to jokingly call social psychology E! Psychology. Haidt, though he does interesting research, in his writings for the general public tends to justify that label.
Let me say more about this. What the recent conservative guest posters are clearly doing is trying to localize where their beliefs differ from those of liberals (and why their beliefs are superior to liberals’), and in doing so they think (in some cases blatantly unreflectively) to themselves, “I approach the issues like this, so liberals must think about them in the opposite way.” This reasoning, in addition to being blatantly unreflective (did I mention that already? sorry), heavily influenced by biases and preconceived notions that are drawn largely from partisan propaganda (this, I’m afraid, is something liberals are all too prone to as well – read, for example, Amanda Marcotte’s writings on libertarianism), some of which are silly and some of which are a bit more reasonable, but all or at least the bulk of which are clearly wrong. What makes it worse is that these inferred differences are the basis for the rest of the reasoning in each of the guest posts, rendering the entire posts pretty much pointless.
By the way, commodity fetishism, in its Adornoian incarnation: I think you might find it interesting, given some of what you write in this post.
Liberals, on the other hand, are typically only loosely committed to market economics. And that commitment tends to be merely political or instrumental rather than ideological, conceived in the recognition that mainstream America is precommitted to market economics, and thus there is little point in railing against it. Instead, liberals tend to wait for symptoms of large economies, like income disparity or recessions, to present opportunities to put certain economic decisions under the control of the government (from which, incidentally, they never return).
And
. Liberals, on the other hand, seek to circumvent the theoretical altogether and to establish, by fiat, the substantive nature of economic relationships, while ignoring the fact this implicitly results in procedural injustices.
Yet more evidence that conservatives have no idea what liberals actually think. At least no liberals I've ever met, or read in books or on blogs, or heard on television or the radio, from this country in this century (or most of the last). At some point, the League should have a forum in which the liberal writers and/or readers present their basic views and the conservatives theirs (and perhaps the libertarians as well, though as a small political minority they have more of a tendency to lay their basic views on the table than the two major groups do), so that these straw men stop showing up on the front page and actual dialogue might become possible. At this point, at least the conservative guest posters are mostly preaching to the choir with a prayer book full of prayers that they pulled out of their asses.
Since everyone (potentially) benefits both from parks and from a more educated populous, yes, I do think it’s “a judicious use/application of state power.”
Yeah, except nothing in that last paragraph is true of left liberals today, or really ever, in America, and isn't really true of left liberals in Europe, either.
Outside of a real dictatorship of the proletariat, in general the left's focus on labor, for example, hasn't been about controlling all capital for "supposedly socially valuable ends," but about insuring a fair share of the product of labor for the worker. Social safety nets, similarly, aren't about redistributing all wealth for "supposedly socially valuable ends," but about ensuring that the system that benefits us all doesn't leave anyone out in the cold (literally and figuratively). These are prototypical left-liberal aims in this country, and nothing you've said, or implied, suggests that they're unreasonable, much less impossible to acheive. And certainly nothing you've said implies that they can't be approximated through the sorts of social and economic programs that left-liberals in this country and in Europe regularly propose.
It might be better to call the people folk-Rawlsians than folk-Marxists, because these sorts of things certainly seem more Rawlsian. Or in the extreme, folk-Fichteans or something. Because there's not a lot of Marx in it, since a.) class warfare isn't much of an issue, and b.) there's nothing resembling the view that the proletariat should hold the power, economically or politically, in most left-liberal views in America or Europe (most are folk-technocrats, in fact).
Koz, a.) you should read some socialist writings from the last 20 years. There's not much non-market socialism anymore, and hasn't really been since the 70s or early 80s b.) social Democrats, as they exist in Europe (at least in politically viable entities), are pro-market to the core pretty much by definition. They may not want markets to be as free as American liberals tend to want, but that doesnt' mean that the basic structure on top of which they build their political and economic theories/policies isn't the market, and capitalism.
One of the straw men that you and others I've seen seem to draw is that the redistribution of some wealth, either to create a basic standard of living for the lowest socioeconomic rungs, or to strengthen the middle class, amounts to a complete redistributionist view. What's more, part of the redistributionist view in social democracy, and to a lesser extent, among American liberals, goes towards strengthening the middle class to strengthen the market economy. You may disagree with that, and there are reasons to do so, but they aren't the ones you've described, as the ones you've described don't really have anything to do with the actual positions.
On “How Responsible Are You for Where Your Taxes Go?”
Yeah, I know that study. I believe I wrote it up once or twice, a few years ago, in fact. There are more recent studies on dissonance and politics as well (e.g., this one).
Still, neither of those studies, or the many others, test your empirical claim.
"
and it’s something that afflicts political partisans more than most people
That's an interesting empirical claim, and one that would be remarkably difficult to test. What makes you think that's the case?
On “Do a Plurality of Mississippi Republicans Want to Ban Interracial Marriage?”
I like Collin's questions, because they show his biases more than those of any respondent.
"
Eh, sample size issues are generally, and this is a general case, only a problem for people who don't do statistics or social science research. The size of the sample is pretty much irrelevant after a certain point (and that point is well below 400), so long as the sample is representative and certain methodoligical issues are avoided (e.g., when I used to do survey research, I always did a follow-up non-response survey, though they take time so political surveys rarely use them).
"
I should add that the pdf to which both you and Res State link does not contain the words "weighted sampling." It mentions "weighting," but doesn't give context, and looks like part of a boilerplate disclaimer. A quick review of other PPP releases show that this is true.
So where did Red State get "weighted sampling?"
"
This is a great comment, perfectly devoid of substance.
"
Just so it's clear, "weighted sampling" is distinct from weighting results. Weighted sampling select subgroups (in this case, likely age and race demographics) based on some criteria (in this case, population, whether that population be the population of Mississippi or Mississippi Republican primary voters). It's used in almost all polls that us samples, which is almost all polls.
By the way, speculating that people might have misheard the question is one of the more unique responses to a poll result that I've seen. It's little more than speculation. I'd love to see real reasons for doubting these results, because let's face it, the results are disturbing. However, you haven't provided any such reasons.
On “Epictetus, Freedom, and Autonomia”
I did think of starting one with the words: “Are the Democrats or the Republicans responsible for the budget crisis? Read to the end to find out!”
Then you could end the post with, "Yes."
"
I read it. And hated it!
No, I kid.
It did remind me of the title of one of Montaigne's essays, "That to Study Philosophy Is to Learn to Die."
On “A Confession of Bias, Followed by a Bunch of Stuff You Should Probably Ignore”
You'll both enjoy them. I immediately put With Fire and Sword on my favorite books list, and The Deluge may be even better than it.
When you're done, all three books have pretty good Polish movie versions. Sienkiewicz is pretty much the Polish literary royalty, sort of like Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Chekov in Russia. You can't make it through a Polish education without reading his books.
"
Well, that depends on what you mean by "public sector." In the last two years, and particularly in the last few months, state and municipal employees have had real issues with job security.
"
Butanyway. Ordinarily, engineering and technical workers accept a tradeoff when they sign up to work for the government. They know that, relative to the private sector, their pay is going to be poor. In compensation, they get fantastic job security.
If you add in retirement benefits (the back end stuff) and health care, you're pretty much talking about all government employees. Since, in addition to the drop in job security, states and perhaps the feds are going after pensions and benefits, there is going to be very little incentive for anyone who can get a job in the private sector to work in the public sector, soon.
"
Well, not many trilogies end up winning their authors Nobel Prizes. This one did (plus Quo Vadis). Any of the books can be taken by themselves, though. The trilogy part comes less from the continuity of the series, though there are plot lines that run through them all (or at least characters who do), but because it tells of a particular period in Polish history over the course of 3 books, starting with the Cossack rebellion, through the Deluge, and the Russian invasion.
"
Eh, in the Commonwealth, it was the Poles who did most of the ruling. It's because they didn't like the Poles that the Dnieper Cossacks rebelled. I suspect they'd have been happier with a more Lithuanian dominated leadership (the Poles considered the Cossacks to be scum, or something slightly below it).
Have you read The Deluge? I just finished the trilogy about 6 months ago, and am still feeling blown away by it.
"
yeah, that's a really myopic take on the situation.
On “Why We Disagree About Taxes, Entitlements, and Economic Theory in General”
I must be, because I was describing what the guest posters were doing, and Heidegger thinks I was describing my own view. But then, being understood by Heidegger is not a good measure of comprehensibility. Or by you, to be honest (clearly someone else understood what I was getting at).
By the way, I've said several times that I suspect liberals are as mistaken about conservatives as conservatives are of them.
"
Logical positivism in economics? That’s a new one.
No, it's an old one.
"
I disagree to some extent with Haidt's characterization (and from the liberal end of the social science's, with Lakoff's as well), but the point they both make, that we're coming from entirely different moral and even epistemic perspectives, is definitely an important one.
"
Haidt is a social psychologist, and has done some really interesting research, but like most social psychologists, his theorizing goes way, way beyond his data. I used to jokingly call social psychology E! Psychology. Haidt, though he does interesting research, in his writings for the general public tends to justify that label.
"
Let me say more about this. What the recent conservative guest posters are clearly doing is trying to localize where their beliefs differ from those of liberals (and why their beliefs are superior to liberals’), and in doing so they think (in some cases blatantly unreflectively) to themselves, “I approach the issues like this, so liberals must think about them in the opposite way.” This reasoning, in addition to being blatantly unreflective (did I mention that already? sorry), heavily influenced by biases and preconceived notions that are drawn largely from partisan propaganda (this, I’m afraid, is something liberals are all too prone to as well – read, for example, Amanda Marcotte’s writings on libertarianism), some of which are silly and some of which are a bit more reasonable, but all or at least the bulk of which are clearly wrong. What makes it worse is that these inferred differences are the basis for the rest of the reasoning in each of the guest posts, rendering the entire posts pretty much pointless.
By the way, commodity fetishism, in its Adornoian incarnation: I think you might find it interesting, given some of what you write in this post.
"
Liberals, on the other hand, are typically only loosely committed to market economics. And that commitment tends to be merely political or instrumental rather than ideological, conceived in the recognition that mainstream America is precommitted to market economics, and thus there is little point in railing against it. Instead, liberals tend to wait for symptoms of large economies, like income disparity or recessions, to present opportunities to put certain economic decisions under the control of the government (from which, incidentally, they never return).
And
. Liberals, on the other hand, seek to circumvent the theoretical altogether and to establish, by fiat, the substantive nature of economic relationships, while ignoring the fact this implicitly results in procedural injustices.
Yet more evidence that conservatives have no idea what liberals actually think. At least no liberals I've ever met, or read in books or on blogs, or heard on television or the radio, from this country in this century (or most of the last). At some point, the League should have a forum in which the liberal writers and/or readers present their basic views and the conservatives theirs (and perhaps the libertarians as well, though as a small political minority they have more of a tendency to lay their basic views on the table than the two major groups do), so that these straw men stop showing up on the front page and actual dialogue might become possible. At this point, at least the conservative guest posters are mostly preaching to the choir with a prayer book full of prayers that they pulled out of their asses.
On “Closed Front Doors, Open Back Doors”
Since everyone (potentially) benefits both from parks and from a more educated populous, yes, I do think it’s “a judicious use/application of state power.”
On “I actually kind of like the notion of ‘folk Marxism’ but still…”
Yeah, except nothing in that last paragraph is true of left liberals today, or really ever, in America, and isn't really true of left liberals in Europe, either.
Outside of a real dictatorship of the proletariat, in general the left's focus on labor, for example, hasn't been about controlling all capital for "supposedly socially valuable ends," but about insuring a fair share of the product of labor for the worker. Social safety nets, similarly, aren't about redistributing all wealth for "supposedly socially valuable ends," but about ensuring that the system that benefits us all doesn't leave anyone out in the cold (literally and figuratively). These are prototypical left-liberal aims in this country, and nothing you've said, or implied, suggests that they're unreasonable, much less impossible to acheive. And certainly nothing you've said implies that they can't be approximated through the sorts of social and economic programs that left-liberals in this country and in Europe regularly propose.
It might be better to call the people folk-Rawlsians than folk-Marxists, because these sorts of things certainly seem more Rawlsian. Or in the extreme, folk-Fichteans or something. Because there's not a lot of Marx in it, since a.) class warfare isn't much of an issue, and b.) there's nothing resembling the view that the proletariat should hold the power, economically or politically, in most left-liberal views in America or Europe (most are folk-technocrats, in fact).
"
Koz, a.) you should read some socialist writings from the last 20 years. There's not much non-market socialism anymore, and hasn't really been since the 70s or early 80s b.) social Democrats, as they exist in Europe (at least in politically viable entities), are pro-market to the core pretty much by definition. They may not want markets to be as free as American liberals tend to want, but that doesnt' mean that the basic structure on top of which they build their political and economic theories/policies isn't the market, and capitalism.
One of the straw men that you and others I've seen seem to draw is that the redistribution of some wealth, either to create a basic standard of living for the lowest socioeconomic rungs, or to strengthen the middle class, amounts to a complete redistributionist view. What's more, part of the redistributionist view in social democracy, and to a lesser extent, among American liberals, goes towards strengthening the middle class to strengthen the market economy. You may disagree with that, and there are reasons to do so, but they aren't the ones you've described, as the ones you've described don't really have anything to do with the actual positions.
"
See, that was perfect.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.