Poor Whites Vote Republican?

Another reason is that most of the "poor Americans" do not stay that way. They move up to the middle class. Why should someone vote for a candidate that is going to take pity on them on the one hand (and do little else) and then revile them when they make good?

Well, I don’t necessarily consider myself poor since my definition of poor is he/she who is unable to sustain him/herself or a family to the point of being out in the streets homeless and hungry or living in such terrible conditions because they are unable (for what ever reason ) to make enough money for the essentials and basics. I have a decent apartment, a 2007 vehicle, all the basic necessities and a bit more and between me and my wife make just enough money to maintain a decent lifestyle. We are just very bad at managing money, something we are working on and improving little by little. It’s just that we are not, currently, prepared for large problems such as the one I mentioned on my article.

I was once asked why I considered myself a Republican, now am a Conservative. Simple, I responded. I don’t believe in the Gov’t doing everything for me, I believe in keeping as much of my money as possible while still giving enough to run a decent Gov’t body, I believe people should earn they money and not have it given to them for free, I believe helping people during bad times is OK but the goal should be to help them get back up not maintain them for the rest of their lives (keep in mind I am not necessarily including handi-cap people in my opinions), I believe the Gov’t should stay out of my life as often as possible and only intervene when the need is dire. I believe it is those with money who move this country and they should not have their money taken to be given to those who refuse to work for it. While I agree there are those who abuse the system to make more money while those who work for them are underpaid, maybe we should we educating people so they do not get underpaid as oppose to forcing someone to pay them more when those being paid are not educated enough to earn it, in the process those who do pay decent wages are forced to pay more and therefore hurting their finances.

I do not believe in welfare the way it is today, I don’t believe in FEMA today, I don’t believe in Universal Healthcare, I don’t believe in more unemployment, I don’t believe in more taxes so the money can be given to a bunch of lazy people (not all people who benefit from Gov’t money is lazy but too many are) and I certainly do not believe we should be making friends with people who believe in death as the first means to solving a problem. But I also do not believe we should be world police or world savers. If we do not all agree to help a country in need, then let someone else make the first move. I tire of being insulted after our tax dollars are given away to ungrateful countries.

I may be in the poor to lower class in this country. But I will die first before I vote Democrat or Liberal. That is not what our Forefathers intended for this country.

And what DrGuy said. It would be very hypocritical of me, who wants to be more than I am and am willing to work for it, to vote for a Democrat, who spends most of their time insulting people with money, when I may be one of those people someday.

They probably just don't have an answer for it. 

 

Pulling yourself up is not an option for some, while a handout, no matter how small, will keep em coming back. That's why there are more Democrats than Republicans. After the Civil War they had to find a way to keep workers on the plantations, give them just a little to keep them from leaving. It was so effective that now it has become what it is today, you have to give them credit.

Damn! I like that! Have some Karma for a great thought!

lol

I always wondered why relatively poor Southern conservatives would vote for a party that encouraged the growth and prominence of big business. It simply didn’t make sense. But then I pieced it together. Northerners used to vote Republican and Southerners used to vote Democratic and it stayed this way all the way up to 1948, which was when Harry S Truman ran on a Civil Rights platform as a Democrat. Then, Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat (which means a Southern Democrat who is also racist) and won a bunch of Southern votes (4 States).

These Dixiecrats were obviously too numerous to stay a 3rd party for long, so the Republicans, in a particularly shrewd move, absorbed the racists and called it a ‘Southern Strategy‘. In another shrewd move, the Republicans then absorbed the Conservative Christians into the party to combine those who were anxious about racial issues with those who were anxious about religious issues to capture the votes of rural America. They sold ‘less government’ as ‘more freedom’ to them instead of how they sold it in the past: ‘less government’ as ‘better for business’. Absolutely… Brilliant.

And that, my friends, is how a small group of the super wealthy can push their free-market agenda onto the ballots of people who shouldn’t be voting for it: by using racism and religious fanaticism to get votes.

While families work harder, their wages continue to decline. Middle-class families are working harder and earning less today than they were at the start of the Bush Administration. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Since the end of the recession of 2001, a lot of the growth in GDP per person -- that is, productivity -- has gone to profits, not wages.” (Wall Street Journal, 3/27/06) Median household income has declined $1,273 from $47,599 in 2000 to $46,326 in 2005. The real median earnings of both male and female full-time, full-year workers declined between 2004 and 2005 by 1.8 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively. (U.S. Census Bureau, 8/29/06) Median weekly earnings have fallen 0.9 percent since 2000 compared with 7.3 percent growth in the last five years of the Clinton Administration. At the same time that families have seen their real earnings decline, the productivity of the American worker is up 18.4 percent. Therefore, Americans have worked harder -- and more productively -- over the past five years and received none of the benefits of their hard work. (Bureau of Labor Statistics; Joint Economic Committee Democrats, 9/06)

Ummm, yeah. Southerners are racists and there are no racists in the North. Uh huh. Sure thing.

Talk about a bigoted asshat!

Do you know what median means? Do you even have a clue?

Let me give you one.

What is the number 1 topic of the 2006 elections, and still hot today?

Illegal aliens.

And what do we know about illegal aliens? (as a general rule)

They are poor folk trying to come to America to earn a living. And how many of them are there? Best estimates are 12-20 million.

Next question: How many were here in 2000? Give up?

About 7-10 million. So what happened?

A whole bunch of poor people moved here in those 5 years. And so the MEDIAN income went down since you had an influx of 5-10 million poor people.

The only relationship with Bush is that he did nothing to stop it. But apparently what happened during Bush is that legal Americans got a whole lot richer!

So much for your theories. As stupid as they are.

As for your first post, read it again and then tell us why it is stupid and idiotic. If you can, great! You are thinking! If you cannot, then you are just a racist bigot trying to hide behind your sheet.

Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the U.S. Suuth. In the early 1800s, they were the definitive pro-slavery wing of the party, opposed to both the anti-slavery, Republicans (GOP) and the more liberal Northern Democrats. After the loss of their territory in the American Civil War and the Republican-led Reconstruction which followed, Southern Democrats regrouped into various vigilante organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White League; eventually "Redemption" was finalized in the Compromise of 1877 and the ensuing institutionalization of Redeemers throughout the South. As the New Deal began to liberalize Democrats as a whole, Southern Democrats largely stayed as conservative as they had always been, with some even breaking off to form farther right-wing splinters like the Dixiecrats. After the civil rights movement successfully challenged Jim Crow and other forms of institutionalized racism, and Democrats as a whole became the symbol of the mainstream left of the United States, the form, if not the content, of Southern Democratic politics began to change. Most Southern Democrats defected to the Republican Party at that point and helped accelerate the latter's transformation into more progressive party Republican organization.

After World War II, the civil rights movement took hold by Republicans. Democratics in the South, however, still voted loyally for their party. The old conservative stalwarts were trying to resist the changes that were sweeping the nation. With the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was the final straw for many Southern Democrats, who began voting against Democratic incumbents for GOP candidates. The Republicans carried many Southern states for the first time since before the Great Depression.

When Richard Nixon courted voters with his Southern Strategy, many Democrats became Republicans and the South became fertile ground for the GOP, which conversely was becoming more conservative as the Democrats were becoming more liberal. However, Democratic incumbents still held sway over voters in many states, especially those of the Deep South. In fact, until the 1980s, Democrats still had much control over Southern politics. It wasn't until the 1990s that Democratic control collapsed, starting with the elections of 1994, in which Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress, through the rest of the decade. Southern Democrats of today who vote the Democratic ticket are mostly urban liberals. Rural residents tend to vote the Republican ticket, although there are a sizable number of conservative Democrats. However, most Southerners are still registered Democrats but tend to vote Republican in national and some state elections.

A huge portion of Representatives, Senators, and voters who were referred to as Reagan Democrats in the 1980s were conservative Southern Democrats. An interesting exception to this trend is Arkansas, where to this day all statewide elected officials are Democrats (although the state has given its electoral votes to the GOP in the past two Presidential elections).

Worst job creation record since Hoover Administration.

A growing economy should be good news for those seeking jobs. But over the course of President Bush’s five years in office, his Administration has the worst overall job creation record since Herbert Hoover more than 70 years ago. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 9/1/06) Overall non-farm payroll employment has increased by 3 million during the Bush presidency compared with 22.7 million during the Clinton presidency. Overall employment growth has averaged just 45,000 per month under President Bush—much lower than the approximately 150,000 jobs needed each month to keep up with population growth. It was not uncommon to see monthly job gains of 300,000 and even 400,000 during economic expansions under previous Administrations. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 9/1/06; Joint Economic Committee Democrats, 9/06; Economic Policy Institute, The Boom That Wasn’t, 12/19/05)
Private sector job creation has been especially poor during the Bush presidency, with an average annual job growth rate of just 0.3 percent per year since 2001. Just 1.9 million private sector jobs have been created during the Bush presidency, compared with over 20 million private sector jobs during the Clinton presidency. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 9/1/06; Joint Economic Committee Democrats, 9/06) The manufacturing sector, often the source of jobs with good pay and benefits, has lost nearly 3 million jobs since the start of the Bush Administration. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 9/1/06) Nearly half of the jobs created since 2001 were part-time and freelance positions without benefits.

Over the whole of the Clinton administration, the economy added 22.7 million jobs – 237,000 per month.

Over the whole of the Bush administration to date, the economy added only 5.8 million jobs – 72,000 per month.

"Republicans believe every day is 4th of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15."

                                                                                    -Ronald Reagan

Yea,lets go create a bunch of dot com jobs again that disappear over night! Wow What a plan!

April 15 , 1947 - Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line.

April 15, 1865 - Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by John Wilkes Booth. Andrew Johnson is then sworn in as the 17th President of the United States.

United States - April 15 is the official deadline for filing an individual tax return (or requesting an extension) in most areas of the country.

Republicans Do Nothing As U.S. Jobs Move Overseas

Overall private sector employment was hurt by job losses at U.S. multinational companies who shifted more jobs to their overseas operations.

These firms reduced their U.S. workforce by 2.1 percent in 2003, following a 3.0 percent reduction in 2002 and a 4.1 percent reduction in 2001. (Bureau of Economic Analysis, April 2005)

At the same time, employment at their foreign affiliates based overseas increased by 1.2 percent in 2003, following a 1.0 percent increase in 2002 and a 0.1 percent increase in 2001. (Bureau of Economic Analysis, April 2005)

So from my understanding, Republican prefer to tax less, which means the middle class house hold does great as they are generally the ones that get taxed the most (proportional to their income). On the other hand the poor more social dependant class suffer as there is less goverment money.

The democrats on the other hand prefer to tax more, meaning the middle class take the biggest hit, while providing more money for the poorer classes.

In all of this big corporate buisness gets away scot-free as they 'move' the economy. This is no doubt true, we are dependant of the inovation that is a result of extreme competition amongst corporations and industry to drive us forward as nations.

Such a shame, as you could probably eliviate the stress placed on the middle class while still providing services for the poor if you could only come up with a means of getting a very small minority to give it up a little, without them jumping ship and moving to somewhere else.

Good! I see that you , little-whip and the rest, have done your homework. Now, since you have listed your reasons why “poor whites vote republican,” perhaps, we can have a reasonable and sensible conversation without hurling insults toward one another. Correct me if I’m wrong, your reason for voting republican is based on the following: taxes and welfare. Now, let us debate these issues separately and hopefully we may find some common ground.

As for me, I have never met a person who didn’t want a tax cut - democrat or republican. Where we may differ is you are satisfied with an unequal tax cut and I am in favor of an equal tax cut for the rich and the middle class.

Now, let us take a look at the next issue, welfare. Some of you incorrectly associate poor people with slavery; however, statistics show that the majority of recipients of welfare are white even though "welfare" is frequently treated as a governmental program for people of color.

In economics welfare is defined as (1)government programs which seek to provide a minimum level of income, service or other support for disadvantaged peoples, (2)financial assistance paid by taxpayers to people who are unable to support themselves, (3)social welfare service concerned with social protection.

I think what I have most often heard is that many people view poverty as a black, urban underclass phenomenon and, by extension, assume the same of welfare. And welfare is most often understood as food stamps, SSI, WIC, Head-Start, various forms of housing assistance, medicare and medicaid, etc. Every now and then someone (as you have done) will choose to make an issue of state-run general assistance programs. These definitions, as I note above, are not necessarily the only ones possible and I would strongly urge you to pay attention to them when people start making any sorts of claims about social policy. Poverty, of course, is not exclusively a black urban underclass phenomenon - au contraire. There are zillions of sources you can look to to confirm this. See, for instance: the Underclass", Harvard U Press, 1992 and Christopher Jencks' "Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty. However, what we find is that while there are far more poor white people than poor black people, poverty rates are higher among black people than among white people. Among white people the poverty rate is only around 11% or 12% (approximately 25.2 million) while among black people it is over 24% (approximately 9.36 million).

As for division according to who receives welfare, the division of aid recipients by "race" varies widely from place to place - where the majority of the population is white, say, in rural Minnesota, the majority of aid recipients are as well. Its a big country, after all, and policy is not necessarily best served by broad sweeping statement about who gets what aid. In fact, if we redefine social welfare spending to include all the programs I cited above, aimed primarily at poor people (except Medicare), as well as things like college loans and military pensions, social security, various forms of home loan assistance, etc., the majority of such spending goes to the middle classes. Jencks' writes (p.76), "In 1980, only a fifth of all social-welfare spending was explicitly aimed at low-income families, and only a tenth was for programs providing cash, food, or housing to such families." Which of course suggests that overall social spending is oriented towards white folks, since more of them are middle-class.

At least you are not friends with Pelosi, Reid or Obama then.



And how would you equalize it? Let's take an easy example. You make $50k, I make $80k. We are both middle class. I paid $16k in taxes, and you only paid $10k (again I am making this easy). We get a tax cut. I pay $800 less, you pay $500 less. So is that fair?

Proverbs 1:22
"How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?

Look it up!

Sorry - they removed Gullible from the dictionary.

Besides, I did not ask you for facts, just your opinion. Dont you have one?

Last year, Warren Buffett said (you know him, the world’s second richest), he was taxed at 17.7 percent on his taxable income of more than $46 million. His receptionist was taxed at about 30 percent.

Inference is defined as: 1. conclusion: a conclusion drawn from evidence or reasoning 2. logic reasoning process: the process of reasoning from a premise to a conclusion 3. implication: something that is implied

Based on the above quote, I believe one could safely draw a conclusion that you were referring to a particular race.

Yes