Conservative Economics and the Lower Class

Ezra Klein has a long post about the perennial question of why poor (white) people vote for Republicans. He contrasts Thomas Frank's famous thesis that they're distracted by cultural issues with his own hypothesis that they're distracted by security issues. But like most discussion of this question, his post makes a crucial assumption -- that Democratic economic policies are better for the poor, and therefore poor people voting on economic issues will rationally prefer the Democrats. But I think this is an unjustified assumption. I've listened to my share of lower-class Republicans, and they emphatically do not agree with a strong liberal economic program. In fact, I've heard far more negative commentary from these folks about Democrats economic policies than about their cultural or security policies, far more worry that Obama was a socialist than that he was a Muslim. Joe the Plumber wasn't enough to win the election for John McCain, but he clearly tapped a strong vein of support for conservative economic policy among a significant portion of the lower class.

Sometimes this arises from believing that they themselves are -- or may soon be -- above the cutoff such that they'll be among the people that money is being taken from in order to be redistributed down the scale. But there's also a powerful moral component. Many poorer people believe that liberal economic policies (particularly raw money redistribution, which is the first one to come to mind for such voters) are unjust, even if they benefit from them. "I've always worked hard; I don't need a handout from the government" is the mantra here.

Imagine a political party ran on a "give Stentor Danielson a million dollars" platform. I would not vote for that party, despite its clear economic benefit for me, because I think such a policy is unfair. Lower-class (white) voters often think the same thing about liberal economic policies in general.

The Frank, Klein, and Danielson hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, of course. But liberals would be better off if they admitted the possibility that conservative economics can appeal to lower class voters, and therefore were willing to make a moral rather than just self-interest appeal.