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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (90922)	10/21/2008 12:04:19 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541732

I don't think they will always vote as a block. But as more and more people get benefits that are paid for by fewer and fewer you set up a potentially problematic future. The bottom half, or any large sized chunk picked out by income, has diverse ideas, ideologies, and political ideas, but while I don't expect their votes to overwhelmingly be determined by their narrow short term self interest, there is a good chance that it will be biased by it. They don't have to vote as a block, only be relatively consistently biased towards expansion of government transfers, taxes on those with high incomes, and social programs. Actually it doesn't even need to be that consistent, it just has to work strongly at times, since there is a bit of a ratchet effect on new government social and transfer programs. They are much easier to start or expand, than they are to shrink or end, esp. if they get established as entitlement programs, but even when they don't.