Do you vote your self-interest?

An article in Bloomberg Businessweek got me thinking.  For the past three years, the stock of Ruger (gun manufacturer) has skyrocketed.  The article quotes some gun experts who speculate that in 2008 it was because Obama got elected and gun owners wanted to make sure they had their guns before he potentially made it harder to get them.  Then, when there were riots in Greece and then London, people may have purchased guns out of fear that something similar could happen here considering how bad the economy is. 

There are socially responsible mutual funds that won’t invest in companies that make guns like Ruger.  But I was thinking about the reverse case.  What if you were a gun company owner and a conservative?  Would you listen to your conscience and vote for the conservative candidate because you think he/she would be the best for the country?  Or would you go with your own self-interest and vote for a liberal, predicting that it would spike gun sales and improve your business?  Do you vote your conscience or your self-interest (if they diverge)?

This may seem like a rare case, but not really.  For a moment, accept the generalization that liberal policies are generally better for people of low income (minimum wage, health care, safety) and conservative policies are better for people of high income (tax cuts, low capital gains taxes, deregulation).  I know this always true, but we vote a President in for four years, not policy by policy), so a generalization is important.  In this case, every low income conservative and high income liberal is making this tradeoff – voting their conscience over their self-interest.

How do you vote?

How the world has changed.

There were some very insightful comments made on one of the 9/11 shows I heard today.  One person remarked that half of the commentators claim that religion has become more radicalized (all religions, not just Islam) and the other half of the commentators claim that the religious have become more liberal and accepting.  How can both be true?  Just like in our politics and economics, we are losing the middle.  No more political moderates - we have progressives and Tea Partiers.  No income equality, we have the rich and the stagnant (which is erasing the middle class).  And also with religion.  People  are either fundamentalist or have given up religion altogether.  We are losing the people who are religious, have faith, but are also accepting and tolerant of others.  We need to find people who say “You know what?  You believe in G-d in one way, I believe in G-d in another way, but we both want to fight poverty, or help the environment, so let’s put our differences aside and work together on these problems.”

The other insight I thought as very relevant was talking about politics and the media. A century ago, the politicians told us what to think because the masses weren’t educated enough to really understand policy decisions.  The media told us who to believe. 

Now, we have politicians using political consultants to create emotional appeals that circumvent rationality and the media is half made up of commentators who do more of the same.  Blather blather.  There are so few sources we can go to now that give us the costs and benefits of each opinion and encourage us to make up our own mind. Fair and Balanced may be a good slogan, but it doesn't exist in the mainstream media any more.

Gridlock

George McGovern (former Democratic Congressman and presidential candidate) was on the Diane Rheim

show this morning (a repeat, but my first time hearing it).

She introduced him by saying “He knows how to lose, he lost 49 states to Richard Nixon, but he says it is better to lose an election than lose your soul.”  And she added that he thinks Obama’s recent compromises are to win in 2012, but risk his soul.   

He talked extensively about Congressional compromise and civility back in his days and the extreme lack of both of these now.  He said Bob Dole (former Republican Senator and Presidential candidate) was his best friend.  That could never happen any more.  He also noted that political consultants are creating ads and messages based on nuances of human psychology that evoke visceral reactions of fear and disgust (see my Human Factors blog posts) and pick on the opponent’s character rather than debate issues. He wondered if Washington could get anything done anymore.

I heard a similar interview with Alan Simpson on the Michael Smerconish show a few weeks ago.  He is a former Republican Senator and still very active (he led the Simpson Bowles task force on deficit reduction).  And he very eloquently threw up his hands in frustration at the lack of civility and compromise too.  He wondered if Washington could get anything done anymore.

Taking these two interviews together, it is very depressing.  We always say it’s worse now because we don’t remember history very well.  The arguments in Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson’s day got personal, were vindictive, and unproductive and that was 150-200 years ago.   But Simpson and McGovern are two very experienced politicians.  If they think there is a fundamental order of magnitude difference between now and the 60-70s, it is really worrisome. 

We need something to get done NOW to fix our three big problems (health care entitlements, government debt, international competitiveness/innovation).   When the government got stuck in 1830, we could just develop the territories in the west and grow anyway.  In the 1910s we could exploit Latin America and SE Asia (not that this is a good thing, but it worked.  What to do we do now?  Space and the deep blue sea are the only frontiers left.  We had the Arctic, but it seems Russia and Norway have already beaten us there.  And we are cutting horribly the budgets for NASA, NAOA, and NSF.  The kinds of innovation startups and venturists like Paul Allen and Jeff Bezos don’t have quite the budgets or long term views to do real exploration.  It is a little harder now than putting together a wagon train and “head west young man.”

Anyway, I'm worried.