Today’s paper
politics
Graying Obama
New Bloomberg Businessweek cover, out today, imagines Obama’s appearance in 2016.
Homer votes
The Ignorance of Voters
The human mind is simply terrible at politics. Although we think we make political decisions based upon the facts, the reality is much more sordid. We are affiliation machines, editing the world to confirm our partisan ideologies.
Why working people vote Republican
A helpful if unsurprising explanation of a question that vexes liberals: why do ordinary working people consistently seem to vote against their own economic interests by voting for Republicans? At the Edge, psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains:
… the second rule of moral psychology is that morality is not just about how we treat each other (as most liberals think); it is also about binding groups together, supporting essential institutions, and living in a sanctified and noble way. When Republicans say that Democrats “just don’t get it,” this is the “it” to which they refer.
Check out the discussion of Haidt’s ideas as well.
JFK, 1960
New York City. October 19, 1960. (via)
Galbraith on modern conservatism
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Quote of the Day
We now live in a country in which the bottom 40 percent (120 million people) owns just 0.3 percent of the wealth. Data of this kind make one feel that one is participating in a vast psychological experiment: Just how much inequality can free people endure? Have you seen Ralph Lauren’s car collection? Yes, it is beautiful. It also cost hundreds of millions of dollars. “So what?” many people will say. “It’s his money. He earned it. He should be able to do whatever he wants with it.” In conservative circles, expressing any doubt on this point has long been synonymous with Marxism.
And yet over one million American children are now homeless. People on Medicare are being denied life-saving organ transplants that were routinely covered before the recession. Over one quarter of our nation’s bridges are structurally deficient. When might be a convenient time to ask the richest Americans to help solve problems of this kind? How about now?