… it’s what we do ‘know’ that isn’t true. Thanks to commentor Stuck in the Funhouse for the Raw Story link, “Most Americans want wealth distribution similar to Sweden“:
… For decades, polls have shown that a plurality of Americans — around 40 percent — consider themselves conservative, while only around 20 percent self-identify as liberals. But a new study from two noted economists casts doubt on what values lie beneath those political labels.
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According to research (PDF) carried out by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, and flagged by Paul Kedrosky at the Infectious Greed blog, 92 percent of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the US, choosing Sweden’s model over that of the US.
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What’s more, the study’s authors say that this applies to people of all income levels and all political leanings: The poor and the rich, Democrats and Republicans are all equally likely to choose the Swedish model.
[…] __
“What is most striking” about the results, argue the authors, is that they show “more consensus than disagreement among … different demographic groups. All groups â even the wealthiest respondents â desired a more equal distribution of wealth than what they estimated the current United States level to be, while all groups also desired some inequality â even the poorest respondents.”
By all means, check out the whole study at the link. It’s pretty clear that keeping Heartland Americans(tm) ignorant of the increase in income disparity over the past 30 years has worked very nicely for the people at the top of the economic pyramid, so how do we combat this… short of pitchforks and torches?
fucen tarmal
the problem is, you have to trick them with phraseology to get them to say what they want, if you just ask them, and when they respond/not respond to political discussions, they would never say that is what they want….
so; you think educating real americans that what they want, when you erase all the dogma and programmed response, is to be more like sweden, or landing a person on mars, is more achievable in the next 40 years?
Nick
Make Swedish income disparity a “conservative” issue…dunno how, but if we make people feel like you can be conservative and think we need fairer disparity of income, the whole argument that “that may be what you want, but it’s what TEH GAY-LOVING, BABY-KILLING LIBRULS WANT!” will not send people packing.
pitchforks and torches may be a better choice though since all this requires actually having a media who has a desire to do its job and teach people about this stuff like this polling group did.
Davis X. Machina
It’s a marketing problem. In the first country in the world to make ‘Marketing’ an academic discipline. Where it’s legal to call Velveeta™ ‘cheese’ and Christine O’Donnell ‘a politican’. That bought George Bush for President — twice.
So yeah, it can be done. If it can be made to pay.
beltane
Laugh if you will, but this will have to be the job of novelists, filmmakers, songwriters and other artists. The so-called news the majority of people are exposed to is nothing more than propaganda serving the interests of the rich. We are never going to successfully “frame” any issue in this kind of environment so we will have to find a more direct path into people’s psyches. It can be done. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” changed the attitudes of more people towards slavery than all the combined efforts of more scholarly abolitionists did.
gbear
First step: Do all that we can to keep the current batch of republicans as far away from positions of power as possible.
As it stands now, we can’t even have the discussion and we’re standing on the edge of never being able to have that discussion again. The super-rich are buying up all the options.
KG
They key in that study, I think, is that the distribution that everyone – including the top 20% – believes to be true is so different from reality. That is the central issue, most people don’t believe that we have such a crazy distribution of wealth. Even those making more than $100k/yr, estimate that the top 20% only have 60% of the wealth, as opposed to the 85% that they actually have. If you want to deal with this issue, that’s where you start.
Nom de Plume
around 40 percentâconsider themselves conservative, while only around 20 percent self-identify as liberals
I dunno, do you think that could have anything to do with one of those words being relentlessly urinated upon for the past thirty years?
Nick
@beltane:
I’m trying to use my writing talents to do just that
Napoleon
Which is exactly why the right screams “class warfare” the second anyone brings it up in order to cause them to not make the argument.
HL_guy
How about this: the concept of ‘wealth distribution’ is too abstract for many people, and it has not been tied to race (yet). As soon as ‘wealth distribution’ is successfully tied to race, people will be against fixing that, too.
Believe me, when my relatives object to healthcare reform, or social services funding, they’re not complaining about ‘wealth’ or ‘income’ distribution- they know exactly how much they’ve benefitted from government loan guarantees (college, SBA)- they just don’t want Black folks in the parts of the city they don’t go to any more getting any of it.
walt
HL Guy keeps it short and simple. There is no problem with social democracy except the idea that the undeserving might benefit from it. Still, we’re not that far from either outliving the Homer Simpsons who find tribal allegiance with the Montgomery Burns of America, or from having direct evidence of that alliance inflicted on our Homers. Until then, travelogues of Scandanavian countries might open some eyes.
WyldPirate
The conversion to anything like a Swedish redistribution of wealth will not happen in the US without violence.
The reason(s)? Americans are too fucking stupid first and foremost. The second reason is that we are too culturally diverse and it is–and will remain–too easy to pit one group against the others for several more generations at least.
Nick
@HL_guy: @WyldPirate:
This.
This is why Republicans keep using Mexicans and Mosques as campaign issues…to keep us divided, to keep white people (and even some minorities) resentful of other minorities.
this is where I give Obama props. He didn’t have to take on the Arizona immigration law, he didn’t have to come out and take a stand for Muslim rights, of any Democrat, he’s the one who SHOULDN’T and he paid a price for it, but he did. He’s not interested in dividing us, and as long as we’re divided, progressive policies don’t go anywhere.
Gregory
Well, duh. Those labels — in particular as far as many self-identified conservatives are concerned — is less about ideology than branding. The GOP has been on a decades-long branding campaign (including demonizing the term “liberal” to the point that I’m surprised as many as 20% self-identify so) — while the Bush years, if nothing else, completely redefined what so-called “conservatives” actually did.
It’s about tribalism, not belief.
hitchhiker
@beltane:
Amen.
My sense is that the relentless attack on “Hollywood values” is functioning as a preemptive strike — not necessarily wearing a tinfoil hat here, just saying that it’s worked out that way.
Can’t have film-makers being seen as good Americans, no matter what the reality is. Novels can make a huge impact, though, because it’s hard to make somebody who toils away alone at a desk all day look like a self-indulgent fool.
One thing that’s given me hope lately is the sight of “Help” riding the bestseller lists for so many months. It’s impossible to forget those characters, and they make racism real in ways that even the best documentaries can’t.
We learn through story-telling . . . it’s in our DNA.
James E. Powell
@beltane:
While you are right that the “news” is the propaganda of the corporate ruling class, you are forgetting that the same people control the “arts,” including novels, songs, movies.
Movies like Rambo did more to make Americans forget that the Viet Nam War was a stupid tragedy than any scholarly works.
I also have grave doubts about the ability of works of art to move audiences to action. A movie or a novel is an event; the corporate propaganda is 24/7/365.
How many people watched the film “Super-Size Me” then stopped at McDonald’s in the next 72 hours?
How many people watched “Fahrenheit 911” then sat on their asses and watched Bush get elected?
There isn’t much that any artist can say or depict that isn’t already widely known freely available. The missing thing is whatever it is that gets people to take action, to change the way they live their lives.
I have no clue what that might be, but I fear that the only thing that works is disasters.
Nick
@hitchhiker:
Hence The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
The President himself sold himself through writing, his entire campaign came off his books. Sometimes I wish he had continued writing rather than run for office, but whatever.
Nick
@James E. Powell:
On that topic;
Did anyone see the Times article today that showed people are going to McDonalds more than ever despite healthy food initiatives.
People might very well just believe whatever they want. I think a major part of the problem is that progressives are asking Americans to sacrifice, while conservatives are telling them they shouldn’t have to, and this is a country that just doesn’t do sacrifice anymore.
Bill Murray
@Nick: well it might also be the big recession leading to eating out at cheap places
Nick
@Bill Murray:
you don’t need to eat out at cheap places. There are plenty of cheap farmers markets out there, you just need to want to go to them.
Allison W.
@Nick:
I didn’t read the article, but could it be because of stress levels? or having a lot to worry about? Most people reach for “comfort” foods when they are stressed.
Allison W.
@Bill Murray:
nah. McDonald’s is not cheap. Not where I live anyways.
WereBear
Precisely, and I couldn’t agree more. Appeal to the intellect and you get maybe 10-15% who are used to thinking that way; and have time to do so.
Appeal to the emotions, and you can scoop in almost everyone.
Pussin
I’ll tell you how we cobat it. We move to fucking Sweden.
Brachiator
The authors of this study haven’t been keeping up with current events. The Swedes don’t even want income distribution with the same fervor that they once did. And worse than the rise of tea party people here, the recent elections in Sweden has seen the unexpected rise of a racist, anti-immigrant party (The far right emerge as the big winners in Swedenâs election).
To be sure, Sweden still loves its welfare state, but an angry core scapegoats immigrants in order to gloss over persistent problems in relatively high unemployment and social benefits that hurt productivity. From another Economist article:
Even the Swedes understand that you have to have a healthy, productive economy before you can talk about income re-distribution. But the rise of the bigoted right in Sweden, as earlier in Denmark, is a worrisome reactionary trend.
Chris
@Napoleon:
Which in turn is why, when one is accused of “class warfare”, one should say: “why yes, I am fighting back in the class warfare the rich have been engaged in for the last three decades. Thank you for pointing that out.”
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Brachiator: I just read the main article in Raw Story, and the point it was trying to make, it seemed tome, was a relative one of basic knowledge Americans have about their own economic system and underestimating the imbalance of income distribution and an approval of the Swede model generally as preferable. Of course in real life, the Swede model when not adjusted to balance with levels of productivity, is going to cause problems for them, but the point is we are pretty far, as per political awareness, from the general public realizing just how far out of balance we are in the other direction. As per right wingers demagogueing “the welfare state” and liberal taxation to redistribute wealth more evenly in this country from top to bottom. With plenty of help in the media. That is the salient point here, imo.
And the social ills of far right politics in Sweden is a nats hair compared to ours, when comparing voting power in government, and theirs seems quite reactionary and small and economic related. Ours goes structurally much deeper into all sorts of dark places concerning race, religion, gender, region etc….
Nick
@Allison W.:
Maybe we need different comfort foods….for example, mine, is apples. or those Yoplait yogurts with the crazy flavors.
Brachiator
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
But the problem is that Americans are equally ignorant about their own economy as they are about Sweden’s. This makes it easy to look to other nation’s systems as worthy models, but it makes comparisons and rational conclusions more problematic.
The Brits, the Australians, and now the Swedes, have all had to deal with the rise of anti-immigrant political parties, and it has been a much bigger deal because these are all countries with parliamentary systems which have had to deal with no one party winning a clear majority. To suggest that our problems concerning race goes deeper than that of Australia or Sweden, which have had to deal with long histories of racism bigotry is an odd misreading of history.
John Bird
To try out any variation or hybrid model of successful Swedish programs, we have to shift the center of political discourse in the United States to the left – to the left of the Democratic leadership, in fact.
We are falling behind parts of Europe again in technology, in this case, social technology, just as we did with public administration in the 19th century.
Personally, as an American, I find this intolerable.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Brachiator:
The point of this article is a simple one, and all of the social issues concerning immigration and xenophobia comparisons are irrelevant to that point.
racism is everywhere, granted, the simple point is concerning levels of American income distribution and how it is explained to the people of America, in juxtapostion to a social democracy like Sweden, is wildly inaccurate. And it is because we have a much more powerful right wing in this country that opposes such redistribution, and has the voting power and wealth influence to coopt our means of informing the people, the media, and distorting our liberal citizens intentions for installing a rather meager welfare state/safety net and requisite taxation as compared to a social democracy.
That is really all the article on RS was implying imo. You do agree that America likely has the most politically viable right wing currently, of most western countries. And by a far margin, not only in elected reps, but also in relative position on the ideological scale as further right overall. don’t you?
John Bird
@Brachiator:
I agree with this wholeheartedly.
Europe is emphatically not where we want to look for solutions to narrow our divide in racial politics or discourse in America.
Most European countries have, in my opinion, worse problems than we do on issues of race: their political right is openly racist in a way ours is not and many of these countries are just now recovering from jus sanguinis.
Additionally, their own attempts to resolve these issues would usually not work for us, as many of them would be immediately subject to challenge under our 1st and 14th amendments, not to mention risible to a country that ostensibly recognizes the rights of individuals, not groups.
However, if we want to look at places comparable to the United States for ways to narrow the divide over issues involving public spending, European countries are pretty much all we have.
So far, the only one I’ve seen on the left who’s tried to bring in “what works in Europe” is Michael Lind, who has decided to inexplicably try importing right-wing European strategies into the American left by writing ominous columns about how we can’t defend our social safety net if we don’t also crack down hard on immigrants.
Which is pointless as a strategy, because the sort of people who worry about the social safety net in America are well aware that we don’t have much of one to defend, and that the effect of immigrants on something that doesn’t exist yet is not the biggest thing we have to worry about. Michael Lind is a ‘recovered’ neoconservative whose first major work denounced multiculturalism, though, so not a surprise.
Stuck in the Funhouse
I wasn’t reading past history, but more current conditions overall. Of course, western Europe and Australia have brutal and bloody histories, colonial and otherwise. But they are not those countries currently, though I am certain those sentiments remain in the national psyches of those countries.
But gaining 20 seats for the first time in Sweden’s history for far right wing ideology, in a leg that is over 300 hardly is comparable to our right wing and it’s voting power and generally mainstreaming of xenophobic impulses of a large percent of the country. See AZ recent, and the return of the GOP now pretty much controlled by the racists and xenophobes of the tea party and RW talk radio racists like Limbaugh et al. So currently, I still assert that relative volume of nativist and racist impulses have a much larger showing in our government than Sweden now does. Which the article you link to is mostly fueled by rural unemployed youths. So fueled by temp econ conditions.
John Bird
Additionally, for people not familiar with The Economist, they’ve been declaring social democracy in Europe dead for a couple of decades now.
A data-driven article about the death of social democracy in Sweden (ha!) in The Economist should be approached the same way as a data-driven article about Palestinian street opinion in Marty Peretz’s TNR.
Brachiator
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
This is absurd. Americans are too full of themselves if they think that the right wing here is more powerful or more heinous than the right wing regimes in other countries. And note that I say this as someone who absolutely detests American oligarchs.
But this also gets to my disappointment at American myopia, which sadly is seen in some of the most otherwise politically engaged people, including some Balloon Juice posters. For example, France expels the Roma, and there is not a peep here. I guess this is the new isolationism, but it seems incompatible to some degree with any assertions about caring about social justice.
All moderate or strongly developed countries have to deal with issues of public spending and can provide at least some ground for discussion, and this includes not only European countries, but also Venezuela and Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, India, etc.
John Bird
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
I don’t agree with Brachiator on much, but he is right about this. Our racial discourse in America is simmering and sometimes outright hostile, but it can’t compare to the racism that’s still very prevalent in Europe, including in countries where any expression of it has been outright banned.
Much of this has to do with the way that multiracial issues have been part of American discourse since its founding, while many of these issues remained unexamined in European countries until the 20th century.
As to Australia, I’m rather surprised that anyone would assume their discourse over race has a cooler tenor than ours. 2007’s Northern Territory National Emergency Response is one counterexample.
John Bird
@Brachiator: That’s a long list made up mostly of a lot of really goofy “examples” that we don’t want to follow, but avoid, proving my point.
I mean, we can also look at Sierra Leone or the Soviet Union as “examples” for social spending, or Greece as an “example” for the issue of sovereign debt, but that’s clearly not what I mean.
Stuck in the Funhouse
Our racism is also entwined in competing ideologies that is part of a vast chasm of world view, that I do not see in Europe or Australia, having much less divides in world view and basic governing philosophy. There is some, but not like ours.
I have no doubt the tone and tenor of those country’s racism is as strong, or stronger than ours. But our racism is invested deeply, largely between two large regions of the country that view the world and just about everything else from seeming different planets. And it is impossible to separate out the racism from the general sense of rebellion that still lives in the south region.
Brachiator brought racism into this conversation about a simple point the article made, and I corrected that . If you all want to debate the finer points of world history of racism, than have at it. It is irrelevant to this thread, imo.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@Brachiator:
I disagree, because my dick is longer that yours.
John Bird
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
1) No, it’s quite relevant to this thread.
There are things we want to emulate about Europe; there I agree. We have to pick them out of the things we do not want to emulate about Europe, though, because they are very intertwined. Otherwise Michael Lind would not have a strategy to adopt, as I described above.
Brachiator pointed out the French policy toward the Roma; I pointed out Australia’s policy toward indigenous Australians. Both are relevant and contemporary examples of how European politicans have used the issue of social spending to promote policies that are quite obviously racial at their core, and policies that I think would be impossible to implement in America’s political climate and system but that mustered a lot of support in their home countries.
2) European racism is also “entwined in competing ideologies”, of course. Look at their very public history of street protest and the attention paid to it. As far as a “vast chasm in worldview”, as I described, in America, the chasm is much wider on issues of social spending, but perhaps narrower on issues of race and racial purity. If we want to assume our interests are in narrowing both, Europe is a problematic example to follow unless we address both issues at once.
3) The other things you note about American racial strife are not unique, either. European racism is also regionalist within each country and part of a contentious urban/rural split, as a quick survey of the BNP vote in the UK will attest. This shouldn’t come as a surprise if you think about it – immigrants have to come from somewhere and they have to go somewhere, and that’s never uniform, even in smaller countries.
Stuck in the Funhouse
@John Bird:
Everything is politics is relative, and similar elements of social ills do exist in every country, to one degree or another. I am just too mentally exhausted from politics right now to engage in depth past the point that Americans are misinformed about degrees of social spending relative to other western democracies. You make good points and who knows where the end game of comparisons lie and how other systems would work here. It just would be nice if the media in this country actually educated our citizens, instead of putting a steady stream of wingnuts on teevee screaming Obama soshulism and the like. That is all I care about right now.
And all I cared about posting this article in comments yesterday.
Stuck in the Funhouse
And thanks Anne Laurie!
John Bird
@Stuck in the Funhouse:
I do agree on your larger point that we need to recenter American discourse on wealth/income disparity and public spending, that it’s a very high priority, and that it’s key to addressing racial divisions in the United States, perhaps even necessary.
I’m not Michael Lind, after all. :)
I remain at something at a loss how to do it, I’ll admit. The best way, I once thought, was the fiscal argument that the left in the U.S. made during HCR, which was that unless we addressed the problem through expanding public spending, we were going to all get screwed down the line and the government’s balance sheet was where we were going to see it first.
That went over like a lead balloon, though, even though the facts were really with us, so I don’t know whether we need to tweak it or abandon it. It’s hard to appeal to a vague but fiscally conservative worldview when you’re robbed of gut reactions you get from attacking social spending.
Peter J
I have no doubt that you know that Australia isn’t part of Europe. Which makes using what happens in Australia today as an example of European politicians a bit weird…
Peter J
The Sweden Democrats got 5.7% of the vote in Sweden. Listen to the hate spewed from republicans about for example Muslims and illegal immigrants. What percentage is going to vote for the GOP in November?
RalfW
â”It is easy to be angry. It is a far more difficult thing to be angry at the right things and with the right people…” Aristotle
MarkJ
I’m not sure where this idea that Sweden has a serious problem with racism is coming from. Per capita, they have taken in more refugees from our adventure in Iraq than any other country. If they were so prejudiced that wouldn’t be happening. Even in raw numbers they’ve accepted more refugees from our war of choice than we (who were responsible for starting said war and creating all those refugees as a tragic result) ourselves have. Yes, there is a legacy of racism in Europe, but I think Sweden has a pretty admirable record in that regard.
As far as how we change things – I don’t see why pitchforks and torches have to be completely ruled out. I wouldn’t make P&T the primary tactic, but use of said is warranted in some cases.
Brighton
There is a long history of fluctuation in the continuum between oligarchic economic management (royalism) and collectivism. We are now and will always be somewhere on that continuum. The Republicans fear Sweden, so they argue Stalin.