Wednesday, October 30, 2024

This poll is disconcerning to me

 I find the poll below very disconcerting. I'll tell you why afterward.


See, here is the problem with this info.

What it means about Harris / Trump is not new information. However, broken out, it is evident that there is a glaring difference between college-educated voters and non-college voters.

It signals to me that there is a growing class divide in the United States. People do not like to admit that we have different "classes." We may believe people have different education or even income levels, but America is based on the idea that moving between income and education classes is possible. I am no longer sure that this is true, or even if Americans believe it.

Those who look at trends see that the easy ability to move up in income groups is less and less accurate. We have less social mobility now than nearly all of Europe. The ability to "pull yourself by your bootstraps" is less possible in the US than in 26 other countries (including Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and all the Nordic and Benelux nations).

Some of the "class divides." 

Note: I am NOT saying these are good. In fact, I think this is terrible for the nation. ALSO when I use the term "high class" or "higher class" I mean economically, not inherently or intelligence-wise. It is now usually the higher classes that believe it is still possible to move economically and socially. And so they feel less generous to those who haven't made it because they are "lazy."

  1. It is more expensive to go to college than ever. Either your parents have saved money, or you exit with very onerous loans. This reinforces our educated/uneducated divide.
  2. Economically, higher-class people can send their children to better private schools and pay for college prep. This reinforces the educational and income divide.
  3. Higher-class individuals have separated themselves from the lower and middle classes. As they move to exclusive neighborhoods, either gated or city-based, they have almost no incentive to improve schools and facilities for the majority of the area.
  4. Higher-class individuals pay to fly in business, to drive in toll lanes, or to avoid mixing with the public in general. (And yes, I know I am now in the higher economic class.)
  5. With the massive cutting of public money for education, most 4 year colleges or universities have priced themselves out of education for the public.
  6. Opportunities for those who did not go to college have shrunk. Even jobs that don't actually need a college education still require applicants to have a college degree.
  7. Employers have added benefits for college educated, even as the income of non-college educated has plummeted comparatively, and employers have discovered nefarious ways to avoid paying for healthcare and more.
    1. One way of avoiding benefit costs is to make employees work less than 30 hours, so they don't have to pay. This means people often have to work 2 jobs.
    2. Without health care from employers, the lower class has to use emergency rooms for any care.
  8. Inflation hit the lower and middle classes hard. It did little to monetarily affect the higher class.
  9. The United States has lowered the threshold on which to tax inheritances. And the money now flows down to the rich's children instead of the government.
    1. This was not always the case. We used to tax the hell out of inheritances with the idea that anyone could move into a different income group.
    2. From 1945 until 1980, inheritance taxes were 78% after a deduction of $670,000. Now it is 40% after a deduction of $13.7 million. This is a decrease in taxes by 50% and an increase in deductions of 190%. For comparison, the minimum wage has increased by 3.5%.
    3. There are also more legal ways to avoid this with trusts and other schemes.
So, governmentally and socially, the barriers to class movement have grown exponentially. And voters get it. The fact they are turning to a con man means that we have constrained other means of expressing ourselves. 
We have to fix this. Note just because it is the right thing to do, but because continued class differences never end well.

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