This post is not about Scott Alexander and Trump
Scott Alexander has a new post out about Trump, and it’s everything this blog is not. (I.e. it’s intelligent and non-hysterical)
A commenter on here the other day quoted an Atlantic article complaining that “The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally”. Well, count me in that second group. I don’t think he’s literal. I think when he talks about building a wall and keeping out Muslims, he’s metaphorically saying “I’m going to fight for you, the real Americans”. When he talks about tariffs and trade deals, he’s metaphorically saying “I’m going to fight for you, the real Americans”. Fine. But neither of those two things are a plan. The problem with getting every American a job isn’t that nobody has been fighting for them, the problem with getting every American a job is that getting 100% employment in a modern economy is a really hard problem.
Donald Trump not only has no solution to that problem, he doesn’t even understand the question. He lives in a world where there is no such thing as intelligence, only loyalty. If we haven’t solved all of our problems yet, it’s because the Department of Problem-Solving was insufficiently loyal, and didn’t try hard enough. His only promise is to fill that department with loyal people who really want the problem solved.
I’ve never been fully comfortable with the Left because I feel like they often make the same error – the only reason there’s still poverty is because the corporate-run government is full of traitors who refuse to make the completely great, no-downsides policy of raising the minimum wage. One of the right’s great redeeming feature has been an awareness of these kinds of tradeoffs. But this election, it’s Hillary who sounds restrained and realistic, and Trump who wants the moon on a silver platter (“It will be the best moon you’ve ever seen. And the silver platter is going to be yuuuuuge!”)
Read the whole thing.
But this post is not about Scott Alexander and Trump; it’s about cognitive illusions involving numbers. This appeared in the same post:
If Trump fails, then the situation is – much the same, really, but conservatives can at least get started right now picking up the pieces instead of having to wait four years. There’s a fundamental problem, which is that about 30% of the US population is religious poor southern whites who are generally not very educated, mostly not involved in US intellectual life, but form the biggest and most solid voting bloc in the country. If you try to form two parties with 50% of the vote each, then whichever party gets the religious poor southern whites is going to be dominated by them and end up vulnerable to populism. Since the religious poor southern whites are conservative, that’s always going to be the conservative party’s cross to bear and conservatism is always going to be less intellectual than liberalism in this country. I don’t know how to solve this. But there have been previous incarnations of American conservatism that have been better at dealing with the problem than this one, and maybe if Trumpism gets decisively defeated it will encourage people to work on the problem.
This isn’t accurate. I don’t know the correct figure, but the following explains how my brain works. Without looking up any of the numbers, here’s what I’d guess:
1. About 14% of Americans are poor.
2. About 7% of Americans are poor whites. The rest are poor blacks, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans.
3. About 3% (at most) of Americans are poor white southerners. The rest of the poor whites live in the East, Midwest, or West.
4. About 2% of Americans are religious poor southern whites.
There’s a big difference between 2% and 30%, and this affects Scott’s argument. There’s a tendency (which I sometimes fall into) of assuming that the most distinctive characteristic of a candidate’s supporters is also the majority of the candidate’s supporters. The whites of West Virginia form a more distinctive part of Trump’s base than the whites of affluent suburbs in Southern California. But Trump will win far more votes in suburban Southern California. He’ll get more votes from college grads than high school dropouts, even while being the first GOP candidate in ages to (narrowly) lose the college vote. I have commenters who are extremely intelligent, and plan to vote for Trump.
A conservative might argue that the 2% of religious poor southern white voters who are mindlessly supporting the right is offset by an equal or greater number of poor black and Hispanic voters who mindlessly support the left. Those two groups don’t decide elections. If Trump wins, it will be because millions of highly educated professionals also voted for him. Let’s not blame “stupid” poor people.
PS. Even if you define “poor” more generously, assuming that Scott meant to also include lower middle class workers, you still don’t get past 10% of the electorate, probably not even 7%.
PPS. Keep in mind that “the South” includes millions of affluent whites in the vast Texas triangle of metro areas, and Florida (which has more people than New York State), and the triangle region of North Carolina, and the Virginia suburbs of DC, and the affluent Atlanta suburbs and lots of other areas like that. I’d guess there are more “atypical southern areas” than typical southern areas.
PPPS. Tom sent me a great youtube of Sam Harris discussing Trump’s mind. Trump’s suggestion that we should have taken Iraq’s oil has been weirdly overlooked. If it’s not the most disgusting thing said by a presidential candidate since the Civil War, it’s surely in the top 5.
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30. September 2016 at 13:57
Everyone in the press thinks Trump is crazy.. They marvel over how completely unhinged he is…
But none of them are willing to venture that maybe this 70 year old man is acting crazy because he is in the early stages of dementia ?
After Trump’s 3 AM “Sex Tape ” tweets how can that possibly not be taken seriously ? Why is it taboo?
Trump has set the bar so low on a taboo any thing should be game….but especially something that has a fairly high probability of being true…
14% of Americans 71 and older have dementia…By 85 that goes up to 32 %.
sure Hill is old too… but she not acting insanely or erratically… even her opponents say she is programmed and scripted…She is exercising amazing discipline…
https://www.alz.org/documents_custom/2016-facts-and-figures.pdf
30. September 2016 at 14:03
Bill Ellis is right: Trump is unhinged, not ‘metaphorical’. He’s bat sh it crazy. Bring back the old Sumner! Please. Sumner has gone off the deep end now and loves Trump? Crazier and crazier.
30. September 2016 at 14:16
I think “Poor” is poorly defined in this discussion… Scott seems to be using poverty level figures which is what I would default to too…
but is Alexander ? ( Is the link in this post to this article working for others ? Not for me… )
maybe he’s using white households that live in census poverty tracks…
maybe he’s talking about Lower-income households…( incomes less than 67% of the median ) ? Or something else, even…
30. September 2016 at 14:17
Bill, Did Trump at least do us the favor of linking to the sex tape, so voters can get informed about the campaign without searching all over the internet?
Seriously, I love how Trump excuses his insults by pointing to the fact that she has a shady past, something he did not know when he insulted her. But then nothing with Trump ever makes any sense.
I have no idea whether Trump is actually demented, or actually holds racist views in private, all I know is what I see, how he behaves publicly.
30. September 2016 at 14:19
Bill, Even if you define “poor” generously, it’d be tough to get beyond 7%. And that would be balanced by an equal number of poor minority voters, on the other side.
30. September 2016 at 14:19
Link works now…
30. September 2016 at 14:19
On taking the oil:
Several Canadian friends offered to sponsor us to immigrate. I always reply that if Trump wins, he’ll annex Canada and take their oil, so it wouldn’t be much of an improvement.
30. September 2016 at 14:32
“If it’s not the most disgusting thing said by a presidential candidate since the Civil War, it’s surely in the top 5.”
-Holy sh*t, is Trump actually suggesting that foreign interventions should be to benefit Americans instead of maiming thousands of Americans for a giant boatload of nothing? How dare he?! This makes me reconsider my entire support for Trump throughout the year, including my vote for him in the primary! Instead of voting for a man who actually wants to [gasp!] benefit the people of this country if they happen to go to war, I will surely vote for the Destroyer of Libya and Syria, the co-founder of ISIS, the woman who did not renounce Her Iraq War vote for over a decade, the very emblem of such sensible and diplomatic foreign policy as alleging Putin is the “great godfather” of Brexit and Trump and that Putin’s Russia deserves to be treated the same as Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
30. September 2016 at 14:43
S, you wrote on a previous thread re: Trump
“But man, how can anyone defend Trump? Is there any way a person could be bad, that does not apply to Trump? Intellectually lazy, a bully, a bigot, a liar even by politician standards, a xenophobe, a protectionist, a conspiracy nut, an authoritarian, an admirer of Putin, vindictive, emotionally immature, etc. Plus he’s surrounded by incompetent advisers, so he doesn’t even know enough to know how to get good advice.”
People have been propagandized by the TV for decades now to vote on emotion, specifically fear and anger, rather than on issues. Trump recognizes this and takes full advantage.
How else can you so very easily get people to vote against their best interests, except by stirring people up with fear and anger? Most of the characteristics you listed are ones that scared people desire in their protector and leader. They want a bully who is on their side.
And as for angry people, Trump hates the people they hate, thus rewarding and justifying their hatred, as if it’s a good thing. It doesn’t get better than that, as far as the angry are concerned.
Scott Adams is a Trump supporter. Look at his blog at Dilbert.com He will explain what someone with a huuuuge man crush on Trump thinks– I mean feels– about Trump. Adams bends over backwards and ties himself in knots, trying to appear rational in his reasons why he thinks– I mean feels– that Trump is so wonderful. See? Even an educated person can do this.
Just forget you have a brain, and get carried away with fear and anger. See how it works?
30. September 2016 at 14:56
If you read Scott Alexander’s other post about the book Albion’s Seed by David Fischer
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/
it’s more clear what his intent is. The phrase “30% of the US population is religious poor southern whites” is technically wrong, but his intent is what Fischer calls Borderers. These are people originally springing from Scots-Irish stock who settled Appalachia but then pushed west. So Alexander should have left out the “poor”, since that’s misleading. Causally he might have used “Trump voters”, and that’d be easier to understand. But that loses the intent of saying there’s a demographic group in america that’s persisted to the present, and that group has certain culturally tendencies which make them Trump supporters. And we should not expect this group to change it’s fundamental culture which has persisted into the present.
His full post on Albion’s Seed is worth reading of course. If you read that, there are also other points in his post on the election that become more clear.
30. September 2016 at 15:04
E Harding, you have a point. Trump pretends to be on the people’s sie, even if what he says he’ll do is illegal or unworkable. He does have a gift for telling people what they want to hear, whether it makes any sense or not. He’s seen people elect candidates who give out false and nonsensical promises, so he knows this works and takes full advantage.
30. September 2016 at 15:24
Might point out here, aside from remarking that ‘Scott Alexander’ is a snobby prick, that he wasn’t confusing one metric with another or answering a question verbally on-the-fly. Cannot help that you’re awfully charitable in your assessment of the writings of a man who thinks 30% of the population are ‘poor Southern whites’ when the South comprehends…30% of the population.
There’s a reason people might not want to be ‘involved with intellectual life’. Much of that life is humbug.
30. September 2016 at 16:13
Some parts of the text were changed to avoid some unnecessary controversy.
The original version talked about 30% of the population being Borderers. (See Albion’s Seed; http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/)
That’s probably still not 30%, but is probably a significantly larger percentage than just “poor southern whites” which it was changed to.
30. September 2016 at 16:14
Off-topic, but any thoughts on this post by Larry Summers? In particular, the fact that he seems to support pro-cyclical inflation? It seems many people either do not interpret the dual mandate the way you do (and which I agree is the only way it makes sense), or they prioritise symmetric expectations around the 2% target over counter-cyclical monetary policy. http://on.ft.com/2dJXcGK
30. September 2016 at 16:22
(Hi. If you don’t post my comment, can you let me know what’s your problem with it, via email?)
Can S, you wrote on a previous thread re: Trump
“But man, how can anyone defend Trump? Is there any way a person could be bad, that does not apply to Trump? Intellectually lazy, a bully, a bigot, a liar even by politician standards, a xenophobe, a protectionist, a conspiracy nut, an authoritarian, an admirer of Putin, vindictive, emotionally immature, etc. Plus he’s surrounded by incompetent advisers, so he doesn’t even know enough to know how to get good advice.”
People have been propagandized by the TV for decades now to vote on emotion, specifically fear and anger, rather than on issues. Trump recognizes this and takes full advantage.
How else can you so very easily get people to vote against their best interests, except by stirring people up with fear and anger? Most of the characteristics you listed are ones that scared people desire in their protector and leader. They want a bully who is on their side.
And as for angry people, Trump hates the people they hate, thus rewarding and justifying their hatred, as if it’s a good thing. It doesn’t get better than that, as far as the angry are concerned.
Scott Adams is a Trump supporter. Look at his blog at Dilbert.com He will explain what someone with a huuuuge man crush on Trump thinks– I mean feels– about Trump. Adams bends over backwards and ties himself in knots, trying to appear rational in his reasons why he thinks– I mean feels– that Trump is so wonderful. See? Even an educated person can do this.
Just forget you have a brain, and get carried away with fear and anger. See how it works?
30. September 2016 at 16:28
Nathan, Yes, I read it. But that group is a small share of the US population.
Thanks Kylind.
Rajat, I recently did a post criticizing him for supporting pro-cyclical inflation.
30. September 2016 at 16:49
Excellent blogging. The stereotypes of “dumb white people” or “racist” or “xenophobes” are tossed around easily.
BTW, it is snotty frizzy-haired white dumb liberals who foist property zoning on America.
30. September 2016 at 18:12
OT- where is Sumner’s evidence that printing money (money growth) and NGDP are correlated? From Mishkin’s textbook, “The Economics of Money…” (2004) Chap. 1, fig. 6, it shows the following, for 1992-2002: (Inflation, Money Growth rate) for USA vs UK: USA had higher inflation but a *lower* money growth rate than the UK (the opposite of what you might expect); Ecuador, Columbia, Argentina, Chile had roughly the same 20%/yr money growth rate but inflation (respectively, in the same order) ranging from 45% (Ecuador) to less than 10% (Chile). Is there a hidden variable bias that makes cross-country comparisons inapplicable? If so, why does Mishkin invite comparison by putting all these countries in a scatter diagram? More importantly, where is Sumner’s evidence that printing money causes NGDP to increase? The only thing I can see is during times of expansion, and during those normal golden Friedman years where velocity was constant, the Fed accommodates the economy so the ‘quantity theory of money’ is satisfied (let’s leave aside my other contentious contention that the Fed follows the market rather than leads it). But we are not in normal ‘golden years’ now, so where is Sumner’s evidence, other than by faith? Show me the money Dr. Sumner.
30. September 2016 at 18:29
Another way to see the innumeracy here is to note that non-Hispanic whites comprise only 64% of the population. So, claiming that 30% of Americans are religious poor, Southern (I assume non-Hispanic) whites is equivalent to saying that 47% of non-Hispanic whites are religious, poor Southerners, meaning that much more than half of whites are poor (since not all poor whites are religious Southerners). There is no definition of poor, Borderers, etc. that will match with the 30% number.
This also shows the innumeracy of the “deplorables” assertion. Trump’s support is about 44% (two-way polling), so if half of Trump supporters are deplorable, racist non-Hispanic whites, then that would mean 22% of voters, or about 1 out of 3 non-Hispanic whites, is a deplorable racist, and that’s assuming no deplorable racists support Clinton. Yet, there were many Clinton supporters that insisted her deplorable comments were accurate, even if politically inadvisable.
Ironically, one of Trump’s many disqualifications is that he makes many of these same types of generalizations. One can imagine him starting an argument, if he ever made serious arguments, with “30% of immigrants are rapists and murderers, therefore…” or “half of Muslims are terrorists, thus…” Ironic that his critics make this same mistake when thinking about the majority of Trump supporters or majority of Republicans.
30. September 2016 at 20:19
The post originally read “Borderers” in place of “poor religious Southern whites”, but I got a lot of pushback that this was racist (see http://slatestarscratchpad.tumblr.com/post/151155728181/theopjones-slatestarscratchpad ) so I changed it to an inappropriate and metaphorical term that would make everyone nevertheless understand what I meant. I accept your chastisement for being technically incorrect.
30. September 2016 at 20:28
Scott, taking Iraq’s oil was the classic neocon position. Big oil said NO!!!! So, Trump is a neocon just like Hillary, but Trump would be a much more radical and aggressive neocon. He hates Muslims.
And he is an Aryan. You don’t take it seriously, people, but you should. You really should. And you too, Harding. What is wrong with you to love an Aryan genetically superior idiot racists like Trump, so much?
Again, the proof is on video. It is absolute proof and explains why he has Mein Kampf on his nightstand according to his ex wife.
Wake up America. It is not acceptable to vote for Trump as an American patriot.
30. September 2016 at 20:53
Gary, intellectual rational proof is not important to Trump supporters. See my previous comment above. Trump tells scared and angry people what they want to hear, and makes promises to be their protector, to be on their side. Such promises feel warm and fuzzy and like safe comfort from Big Daddy, to them. It’s all emotional.
Rational arguments, facts, quotes from the candidate showing how ignorant he is– None of this will put a dent in Trump’s 100% emotional appeal. Fox News and other Right Wing media have trained these people to vote on emotions for many years now. Trump could see that and takes full advantage of it.
30. September 2016 at 21:16
Hi,
I think you and Scott may be missing a more important point.
Here are a few big picture things I think you missed
-You base your conclusion on accuracy. Neat categories can be misleading because political power is not distributed equally. Scott does touch on that distinction with his cost calculation. Voter turn out is hard to predict and Non-White voters turn out is inconsistent.
-I do not think there is a cognitive illusion. Elderly white people is the image of the GOP but its accurate. Old white people are the only ones that vote in congressional elections. That is why we have congress showing symptoms of dementia.Here is a YouTube clip of the Republican Convention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGbWHb3Ryi4
That is 14 minutes of people that represent the party. It is not a mathematical mistake or an illusion. Every Trump rally video also contains the same white hair and wrinkles.
-Non-Hispanic Whites in 2010 made up 72% of the US population a big chunk even after removing non-eligible voters from that pool.
-Non-Hispanic Whites have always turned out between 60%-70% on election day(1988-2000)
-I think you are wasting time trying to define poor. A few thousand bucks is not going to change how America views race.
I hope that helps.
1. October 2016 at 04:20
This also shows the innumeracy of the “deplorables” assertion. Trump’s support is about 44% (two-way polling), so if half of Trump supporters are deplorable, racist non-Hispanic whites, then that would mean 22% of voters, or about 1 out of 3 non-Hispanic whites, is a deplorable racist, and that’s assuming no deplorable racists support Clinton. Yet, there were many Clinton supporters that insisted her deplorable comments were accurate, even if politically inadvisable.
I have little doubt that if you asked a sample of faculty (from the arts-and-sciences, the visual and performing arts, the law school, the social work program, and the teacher-training program), a sample of mental health tradesmen and social workers, and a sample of school administrators (primary, secondary or tertiary) and you just asked for an on-the-fly response w/o research, they’d estimate that 1/3 of white Anglos were deplorable people. I’d be surprised if they did not set the figure higher. The policies and the procedures of student affairs apparatchicks incorporate disdain for their clientele (white males especially). I would not be surprised if you got that response from the registered Democrats among this nation’s lawyers and corporation executives, either.
1. October 2016 at 04:22
Old white people are the only ones that vote in congressional elections. That is why we have congress showing symptoms of dementia.
Bored lawyer, you need to look in the mirror, and contact a neurologist.
1. October 2016 at 06:43
Census Bureau Data show that, as of 2014, 20% of households classified as white have income less than the official poverty threshold of some $27K per year. Those making less than median income are 42%. What percentage of the broader population that is, or where they live, I do not know. But a data-informed speculation might be that whites earning less than the median income make up more than 2 or 3 percent of the broader population considering whites are still a majority.
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo/tables/p60/252/table3.pdf
1. October 2016 at 07:27
Scott, Thanks for commenting, and great post. It’s interesting that “Borderers” is viewed as more racist than “poor religious souther whites”, where religious clearly means Christian.
But then I’ve always found the rules of political correctness to be a bit arbitrary.
Everyone, Clinton’s deplorables comment was silly and not helpful. Most people (including me) are deplorable in some respects and admirable in others. It would be ok to say a vote for Trump in the primaries was deplorable, but that doesn’t even apply in the general election, where lots of people are voting for Trump merely because they dislike Hillary even more.
1. October 2016 at 08:12
I only ever blogged daily for a couple years during Iraq War in a blog called Winning the Oil War.
Taking the oil is both smart and morally justified!
First, taking the oil doesn’t mean taking it and sending it to the U.S. There are oil markets, Iraq NEEDS the money to grow up.
What Trump is talking about is the Status of Forces Agreement that was put in place that let Chinese and Russian companies run the oil fields, so we didn’t look like we invaded for oil.
But we DID. What Trump is doing is simply making the implicit, explicit – which is ALWAYS A MORAL GOOD.
The PROBLEM with China and Russia handling the oil fields is that they are state run companies and SYPHONING oil to alter local politics is happening.
INSTEAD, the US sets up American companies and SHRUGS when when people complain… THEN, the US forces are used ONLY to protect the oil fields /refineries.
This ALLOWS us to syphon oil to control the politics on the ground and starve out the Jihadis. TRUMP IS RIGHT IF WE CONTROLLED THE OIL THERE WOULD BE NO ISIS.
IT ALSO ALLOWS US TO DISRUPT OPEC BY ESTABLISHING A POLCIY OF MAX PRODUCTION IN IRAQ NO MATTER WHAT. OVERBUILD AND PUMP UNTIL IRAQ BLOWS OUT SAUDI IN PRODUCTION.
As a utilitarian, taking the oil was the CLEARLY smartest, most moral thing, AND ONLY A NAIVE CHILD LIKE SCOTT would act as if it is disgusting.
1. Iraq gets MOST $$$.
2. No ISIS
3. LESS US MILITARY INVOLVEMENT
4. Iran weaker
5. Less Chinese / Russian meddling
6. Less chance of refugee crisis, less chance of needing a Trump.
Trump is a state of mind. Being a milquetoast p*ssy afraid of what other people think HAS COSTS that get paid in future by being more trump like.
With enough terror attacks with enough heroin deaths, Hillary will build a wall.
It took one year for Merkel to become Trump.
Scott, we never let your kind run things. In America, Brahmin sit in back and ride b*tch.
1. October 2016 at 08:43
Hey ArtDeco,
I’m just going to drop a link. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p20-577.pdf
It’s a report on who votes in congressional elections. You can see that since the 1970’s old white people run the show. They show up. Before then I think the data is fuzzy because of the whole racism thing from the 60’s. I’m a millennial so I don’t remember.
Last week congress turned over a presidential veto. Then 24 hours later said shit we could get sued again in international. I think you are the only one who thinks congress is normal. Dudes throw snowballs and won’t fund Zika prevention in Florida a place all old white people go to to die.
1. October 2016 at 09:02
Glad you liked that video Scott.
O/T: In your opinion, should Europeans or Greeks be concerned about Chinese companies buying Greek ports?
https://www.rt.com/business/338949-greece-china-port-sale/
1. October 2016 at 11:03
Bored Lawyer,
You said, “Old white people are the only ones that vote in congressional elections.”
There is a core electorate (about 37% of the total) and a peripheral electorate (roughly 15% of the total, though more in certain situations) as regards general elections. These proportions have been stable for more than 40 years. The core electorate vote as a matter of course, the peripheral electorate only in presidential elections and in odd circumstances. This has been the case for over 40 years. The Census Bureau will tell you that there are 49 million citizens who are non-hispanic, white, and over the age of 60. Now, 81.7 million people voted in the 2014 congressional elections, exceeding the number of ‘old, white people’ by more than 32 million. For even half that electorate to consist of ‘old, white’ people, you’d have to have a turnout of about 85% among ‘old, white’ people. Which, of course, you never do except in countries where voting is compulsory.
I’m a millennial so I don’t remember.
I’m sorry the bar exam in recent decades allows the innumerate to practice law.
1. October 2016 at 19:08
Bonnie, Only about 10% of whites are poor.
Tom, They should be begging the Chinese to buy.
1. October 2016 at 21:32
Jill, you said: “Fox News and other Right Wing media have trained these people to vote on emotions for many years now. Trump could see that and takes full advantage of it.”
True, so Fox News stands for the master race too, I guess. Roger Ailes does too.
Morgan, Trump is scum of the earth because he believes, publicly, in the master race, and that he has that master race gene. Any other moral understanding he has is rendered null and void, by his master race thesis.
Scott Sumner, you are being way too generous. I have notified friends of the master race beliefs of Trump. Hating Hillary, knowing she is a crook, does not trump Trump’s master race beliefs. That disqualifies him from being president alone.
Notice our main stream media not talking about the master race idea. Well, the video has only been out on you tube for 3 days. We will see if it teaches us the truth about Trump or if will just continue to be the useless piece of crap that it has been since the ’80’s, when consolidation of the globalist media put 5 or 6 families in charge of 90 percent of the media.