White Working Class Paper

Incidentally, if you're looking for a detailed and sophisticated account of white working class voting behavior in recent decades this paper by Ruy Teixeira released last week is the place to go.

I would really only add one thing, which is a bit to one side of the main point of the paper, namely that discussion among coastal media elites of the white working class tends to sometimes implicitly conceptualize the WWC group as much poorer than it is. I believe, for example, that David Brooks once wrote a column on white working class conservatism where he referred to the people in question as "poorer folk" whereas Thomas Frank sometimes gives you the impression that the wretched of the earth are voting Republican. As I've pointed out in the past, "The median household income of non– college-educated whites was $47,500 in 2004, slightly above the national median."

This renders some of the allegedly paradoxical behavior of the white working class much less paradoxical. Non-college whites are about half of the population. So if you divided the public into two groups -- Group A and Group B -- and then I told you that all the non-white people are in Group B and Group B is also slightly poorer on average than Group A, nobody would find it strange to learn that Group A tends to support the Republicans.

Comments

what's strange isn't that group A supports the republicans. what's strange is that anyone does!

Posted by still confused | April 16, 2008 2:26 PM

Look -- Obama was talking about poor whites in a specific place, rural Pennsylvania. Dying mill and coal towns. Populations in rapid decline, no union jobs, lots of drugs these days, broken families, etc.

These people aren't doing well. Not at all.

I guess we have to wait for the Brookings Institute to issue a paper or HBO to make a series like 'The Wire' (evidently Matt's two sources for all info on the lower orders), before this blog picks up on some basic realities.

"Working class" white folks in much of former coal country and what once were mill towns in rural Pennsylvania are, indeed, really struggling. As are people in places like Warren, Youngstown and Steubenville in nearby Ohio. Same for West Virginia.

The industrial Midwest isn't Kansas. Not even Thomas Frank's. Nor, for that matter, is coal country. But some of Frank's points and ironies remain.

Matt's a smart kid, but as a progressive he's got to learn to at least fake an interest in struggling whites. And, yeah, the ones Obama was talking about (again: this is in former mill and coal towns in rural Pennsylvania!) are struggling. Big time.

I console myself with the knowledge that if Matt actually knew what their lives were like he'd have some genuine sympathy.

Posted by James | April 16, 2008 2:36 PM

Teixiera, was a member before I was during the 70's, in the early 80's of a socialist organization, NAM, founded by sds veterans with a leavening of ex-CPUSA'ers like Dorothy Healey. NAM, after long negotiations with Michael Harrington's Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, merged to create DSA, in '82, IIRC http://www.dsausa.org/dsa.html So, just because he works at Brookings, don't peg him as a, ahem, heh, aargh, elitist, "Enemy of the People."
Brookings, btw, didn't Nixon once declare to Colson that they should be bombed?

Posted by Michael Pugliese | April 16, 2008 3:07 PM

Like the Teixeira paper says "among non-college-educated whites with $30,000-$50,000 in household income, Bush beat Kerry by 24 points (62-38)". While the poorest of whites are still more Dem friendly, we're still talking about a chunk of people with rather modest means voting GOP.

Posted by Consumatopia | April 16, 2008 3:15 PM

Screw 'em?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/16/hillary-clinton-on-workin_n_97017.html

Tapper had this story in October, btw, but didn't think how it might give some context to Clinton's newly discovered working-class heroism:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2007/10/hillary-and-mis.html

Posted by David B. | April 16, 2008 3:37 PM

I wonder if Matt knows that 'household income' in working class families generally mean 2 full-time incomes.

People making 23k a year are poor. I hate to break it to him. Getting a bunch of poor people together doesn't actually make them richer.

Posted by soullite | April 16, 2008 3:46 PM

I can't believe the income levels are compared dollar for dollar. The dollar of 2005 was worth 10% of the dollar of 1965. Real income levels were inflated away during the 1970s.

Posted by wellbasically | April 16, 2008 4:24 PM

Even if the income is based on one h/hold earner, the money is directly tied to a specific sector (e.g., auto assembly) and once that factory goes, the job goes, and things fall apart. I grew up in Michigan in the '70s and '80s and folks are now reliving it in the '00s. My brother can't take a vacation b/c he fears that will put him on the next to lay off list. Not a union job, so no last to hire, first to fire stuff for him. My parents came through it all relatively unscathed, given that they will be able to die in their hometown unlike so many other folks who had to leave for "greener" pastures in Georgia, Texas, etc. I meet these folks when I travel: people who left Michigan in the '80s and never recovered. So much of our lives has to do with luck and being in the right place at the right time....

Posted by BEmama | April 16, 2008 4:38 PM

http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/obama_dogged_by_bitter_remarks?utm_source=slate_rss_1

Posted by Peter K. | April 16, 2008 4:51 PM

He reports his statistics pretty self-servingly. Among non college-educated whites the ones earning 50k to 75k (family income) supported Bush overwhelmingly, those earning 30 to 50k supported Bush solidly (23 points), and the ones earning less than 30k are not reported by Texeira.

This does not AT ALL support the conclusion that "the more voters looked like hardcore members of the working class, the less likely they were to vote for Kerry in the 2004 election". It supports the conclusion that the more money white working class people make, the more likely they were to support Bush. Certainly the best-off members of the white working class are not in anyway the "more hardcore" members of the white working class; they're the more middle-class members of the white working class.

You still have to explain Bush's 30k-50k support, but it's very hard not to believe that Texeira left out the sub-30k working class (many of them one-person families) because it would have damaged his point.

There are two germs of truth here: a lot of white non-college people are doing pretty well financially, and in the 30k-75k demographic, college-educated whites are much more likely than non-college-educated whites to vote for Democrats. I just wish that Texeira had reported his results a little more straightforwardly.

Posted by John Emerson | April 16, 2008 5:00 PM

Doesn't population density of where a voter lives have a stronger correlation to political opinion than education level or income group?

Posted by Doug | April 16, 2008 5:00 PM

It's worth noting that Hillary Clinton is running an ad here in Philadelphia's media market contrasting Wall Street financiers with truckers, teachers, and nurses making $50K a year. So her figure is comparable to Matt's median figure and she, too, is not making a claim of dual-earner household income.

Posted by Chris C | April 16, 2008 5:09 PM

Re: My brother can't take a vacation b/c he fears that will put him on the next to lay off list.

I don't know why people persist in the myth that if you take a vacation (one that is palnned and according to workplace benefits policy) you will end up on the lay-off list. It just doesn't work that way. In fact, the company ends up either owing the worker for vacation days not taken-- or owing the IRS since they already claimed employee PTO as a tax write-off. Now, if you get that money yourself, I suppose I can see people not taking vacations, but costing your employer a higher tax bill does not strike me as a job security move.

Re: You still have to explain Bush's 30k-50k support

In many parts of the country (just about anywhere away from the coasts except in a few pricey cities like Chicago) that's actually a modestly decent income, especially at the higher end. I lived on less than 50K right up through 2004. I had to watch my expenses (I still do at substantially more than that) but I certainly was not poor.

Posted by JonF | April 16, 2008 6:38 PM

JonF: That may be a myth philosophically, but the guy was thinking about his own job and the company he worked for. Companies who are downsizing do it all kinds of different ways.

Posted by John Emerson | April 16, 2008 7:01 PM

JonF #2:

Yeah, I live in an area where $30,000 is well off (and houses are almost all under $100,000). People don't compare their lives a lot to people they don't know.

Part of the genius of the Republican populist campaigns has been to get people around here to think of rich Hollywood liberals whenever they do get into a populist resentful mood. At the levels above $100,000 it's mostly Republican, but that's not the picture you get from the media. Whole blocs and genres of broadcast media is millionaires pretending to be regular guys and smearing rich Democrats.

Posted by John Emerson | April 16, 2008 7:10 PM

Re: That may be a myth philosophically, but the guy was thinking about his own job and the company he worked for.

I've been through this before, though the topic of vacations hasn't come round for a while. Still, companies do not lay off people just because they take vacations (again, assuming those vacations are taken according to company guidelines). They would not offer vacation time (since they donlt have to) if they didn't expect it to be taken, and budget accordingly. They do lay off people who goldbrick when they are at work, who consistently come in late, leave early and take long lunches. They may also lay off people who don't get along with their bosses or co-workers, who are getting too old (and driving up the rates on the group health plan), who complain too much or try to organize a union (if there isn't one already). If your employer had problems with you taking a vacation he wouldn't offer the benefit in ther first place.

Posted by JonF | April 16, 2008 9:41 PM

I think that you're just wrong, JonF. You're talking about "companies" in a philosophical sense and the guy his talking about his company. If a company's laying off, at a certain point they have to lay off good workers. And if the company's small enough to be face-to-face (and usually people doing layoffs know the guys they're laying off) if a guy's not around, he's easier to lay off.

Everything you say makes sense in itself, but you don't prove your point.

Posted by John Emerson | April 16, 2008 9:55 PM

Re: And if the company's small enough to be face-to-face (and usually people doing layoffs know the guys they're laying off) if a guy's not around, he's easier to lay off.

Have you ever laid anyone off? Employers don't enjoy doing so. They generally agonize over those decisions. I doubt anyone is so shallow and silly that they just take headcount of pink slip day and dump anyone not present. The gut referenced is being paranoid. If he's going to get laid off he will be laid off regardless of whether he at work that day or not. Meanwhile he's screwing himself out of a benefit his employer offers him, and setting a bad example for others. People like him are part of the problem.

Posted by JonF | April 17, 2008 6:27 AM

JonF, you're being silly.

Posted by John Emerson | April 17, 2008 8:38 AM

Re: JohF and John Emerson's debate - they're probably both right. A majority of companies will not rush to lay someone off the day they are gone (though I'm not sure JonF was arguing that). But, if you are in the middle of layoffs, all things are going to be taken into consideration when deciding who to lay off. Employees know this and choosing to take a vacation at a critical time may show a lack of devotion to the job, or at least a lack of savvyness.

Regarding John Emerson's question above on why whites earning less than $30k are left out of a study of the "white working class" Thomas Frank actually provides a good explanation here:

http://www.tcfrank.com/dismissd.pdf

To summarize, only a third of whites earning less than $35,000 a year are actually working, and half of those are under 30. As Frank shows whites earning less than $35,000 are mainly retirees, young/students, people on disability, or people not working / poor. The paper shows that these people do indeed vote Democrat, but they are not really what is considered "working class."

Posted by bjh | April 17, 2008 8:28 PM

Re: A majority of companies will not rush to lay someone off the day they are gone (though I'm not sure JonF was arguing that

My point was that companies do not lay off people for taking vacation days in accordance with company policy. They have already expensed the PTO and may take a tax hit if the woerker does not take those days (and the company also does not pay workers for days not taken at the end of the year). If companies do not want their employees taking vacation, they will not offer it as a benefit.
But my larger point is that workers are screwing themselves and each other when they behave as the original poster suggested. If workers really want their situation to improve they need to become more assertive. Acting like feudal serfs kowtowing to noble lords is NOT the way to improve one's lot in life. Our grandparents and great-grandparents risked not just losing their jobs (in an economy with almost no safety net) but also life and limb when they stood up to their employers. Today's workers just roll over and play dead-- they are strongly complicit in the degredation of working class pay, perks and conditions. Old Mother Jones would slap them silly.

Posted by JonF | April 18, 2008 6:33 AM