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From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Whoa! WHAT propaganda campaign?
Message-ID: <269@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Oct-84 13:03:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: whuxl.269
Posted: Tue Oct  2 13:03:00 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Oct-84 19:41:19 EDT
References: <592@hou5a.UUCP> <29200150@uiucdcs.UUCP>, <258@whuxl.UUCP> <1011@pyuxa.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs
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> Whoa again, Sevener.  One more blast from the hip, huh?  You
> say wealth = conservative.  Where the hell have you been hiding
> all these years.  Wealth has nothing to do with political persuasion.
> If it did, Kennedy would have been a Republican Conservative.  How
> about Rockefeller?  About as liberal as they come.  How about his
> brothers?  Liberal to the core.  Keep repeating the BIG LIE
> Sevener.  Your learning well from the liberal establishment.
> T. C. Wheeler

I do not have the actual statistics at hand--however it is a wellknown
finding of every social survey I have ever seen that the wealthy
(top 10% of wealthholders) are overwhelmingly conservative.
The correlation between wealth and political leanings is not necessarily
linear and monotonic--i.e. as you go from the poor who have minus wealth
(namely debts) to the middle class, to the rich, slight increases in
wealth between the poor and the middle class for example, do not necessarily
lead to concommitant increases in conservatism.  There are also two
distinct dimensions (probably more, but these have had the most study)
to liberal-conservative distinctions-economic and social.
Thus blue-collar working class people are likely to be economically
liberal (they support progressive income taxes, social programs like
medicare) but socially conservative (they are more likely to be prejudiced
against blacks, favor traditional marriage arrangements,etc).
Upper-middle class professionals, on the other hand, are more likely to
be socially liberal (favoring women's liberation, integration,etc)
and economically conservative.  The wealthy may be socially liberal
(like the Rockefellers) but are very very much more likely to be
economically conservative--obviously they overwhelmingly applauded Reagan's
tax cuts which cut thousands of dollars from their tax bills and increased
the number of millionaires paying no taxes from 5 to 169 last year.
That there are some wealthy people who are both socially and economically
liberal does not prove that the overwhelming majority are not.
If you can present statistics to prove the wealthy are liberal or more
liberal than other groups I would be very interested.  As would political
and social scientists who have been studying these issues for decades
and found again and again that the wealthy are more conservative!!
Tim Sevener
whuxl!orb