How the Rich Are Different From You and Me: Places that went for Obama are richer and smarter than places that went for McCain. The subhead is critical here:
And it isn’t just about politics. The division is also between rich and poor, between those with college educations and those without. On average, Republican communities have lower incomes and less education than Democratic communities. And those differences are growing as people migrate.
Just a reminder from the Exit Polls:
Here is a clue for why this might be, from another piece in Slate, What’s the Matter With Greenwich?:
Perhaps most surprising was the result from Greenwich, Conn. The Versailles of the tri-state metro area, the most golden of the region’s gilded suburbs, the childhood home of George H.W. Bush, went for Obama by a 54-46 margin—the first time Greenwich went Democratic since 1964. Who knew the back-country estates and shoreline mansions were populated with so many traitors to their class? (In the 2004 cage match of New England-born, Yalie aristocrats, George W. Bush beat Kerry 53-47 in Greenwich.) Some towns in Fairfield County were clearly inoculated from Bushenfreude. In New Canaan and Darien, which ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in Money’s list of 25 wealthiest towns, McCain-Palin won by decent majorities. (In both towns, however, the Republican margins were down significantly from 2004.) What’s the difference between these towns and these neighbors? Well, New Canaan and Darien are wealthier than their sister towns in Fairfield County. (In both, the median income is well more than $200,000.) So perhaps the concern about taxes is more acute there. Another possible explanation is that these towns differ demographically from places like Greenwich and Westport, in that they are less Jewish, and Jews voted heavily for Obama.
Related: Conservatives are as smart as liberals.
too bad we can’t get the data comparing who paid for their own education
Does anyone pay for their own education anymore? Education is so expensive nowadays that it’s no longer a situation where the rich kids get funded by mommy and daddy and the poor kids have to work in the summer to pay tuition during the school year. Anyone who has been to college and grad school in the past couple of decades knows that EVERYONE is basically forced into taking out student loans in the five figure range, and some of us in the six figure range. One of the reasons I went from being an economic conservative to a secular centrist is that most conservatives still think we’re living in the 1960s, where folks who want help paying for college are just whiners who don’t want to work part-time while they’re studying. The reality is far different.
Centrist, you seem to be making some assumptions about the necessity of a college education that I don’t think would stand close analysis.
Caledonian:
It’s true that there are plenty of trades that don’t require a college education and that pay very well due to the fact that professionals in these trades develop skills that are difficult to learn and that everybody needs at some point. And I’m starting to wonder if the cost of an education, which is the door to White Collar America, will start to make Blue Collar America “cool” again. My grandfather was a barber all his life, and he became one because it was the Depression and it made sense to take up a profession that was indispensable to society no matter how bad things got (stock market crashes don’t stop hair from growing). If I had to do things over again, I would probably have spent four years in school becoming an engineer or CPA instead of seven becoming a lawyer. I’d have a fraction of the debt I incurred during school and would have earned income for an additional three years of my life, and my current income wouldn’t be lower due to the saturation of the legal market.
So I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t disagree that it’s necessarily a bad thing for folks to pass up grad school or even college if there are alternate avenues to the American Dream (and there are), but if we’re going to become the society that works “with our minds” the way the Neoliberal/Neoconservative set argues, that seems to suggest that we’re going to need to be a more educated society in the long run, in which case something needs to be done about the cost.
It would seem to me that more important than the cost of an education is its quality. A degree, even an advanced one, simply does not mean someone is educated, it means they jumped through the necessary hoops to get a piece of paper.
As a recent college grad, I’m going to have to go with Donna here. College is what you make of it, a degree means very little as to what you actually learned. In some classes that had no interest to me on bearing what I was going into, I did what I needed to, got As and Bs, but they did not further my education. I know many people who graduated with degrees who I wouldn’t trust to design a temprary pedestrian bridge over a pool, much less a wing for a plane. Thankfully, the market worked, and they are in a place where their talents of gettign by will work, even though they have the same degree that I do.
As far as debt, yes, I worked full-time every summer but one in which I was taking a class, I worked part-time for 7 of my 8 semesters plus that summer, and I still borrowed a few thousand from my parents and several thousand from the government. I just accepted this as part of college, and it is not an undue burden on me. I see nothing wrong with graduating with a bit of debt, it’s the price that must be paid by many to join the engineering profession.