Wealth differences DO define the first major distinctions. But the reason you get wealthy on the 'non-conservative' side at all is due to how one defines the significant minorities they favor. By this I mean that to those wealthy and IN CONTROL of the general left-wing ideologies, they interpret groups rather than individuals as what matters. As such, these people can be 'conservative' with respect to what they might want of specific groups, ...like some identity factor they believe are distinct of themselves in respect to others.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 9:05 pmToo simplistic, Gary. If what you were saying is true, then rich people would always be conservatives, and poor ones would be progressives. But New York and Hollywood are two of the most Progressivist places in the US...and neither of the Progressivists groups there is reputedly poor. Likewise, how does one explain that the "flyover states," as the Progressives derisively term them, are mostly poorer than the states that call them that?Gary Childress wrote: ↑Mon Jan 27, 2020 7:08 am As Scott points out, there is a tendency in some cases for the haves to want to preserve the status quo and the have nots to want to change it--depending on whatever degree the status quo can be shown to represent a justified state of affairs versus an unjustified one.
Hollywood, for instance, may be mostly 'progressive' in appearance. But this is due to the nature of the means of HOW one gets and stays wealthy. Hollywood is dependent on appeal by larger populations to be competitive. But such success then requires respect of the 'majority of fans' who represent their significant minority of interest. It wouldn't go over well to assert that your success in the arts is due to your own innate worthiness or 'supremacy' by nature (even if they MAY believe this).
If you DEPEND on majorities to survive who come from ANY arbitrary background, then you will require means to credit those populations. Thus, the rich people who are more overtly successful DUE to voluntary appeal by the masses REGARDLESS of the individual makeup or economic classes [like media related entities, will tend to favor VARIATION. Since this variation is often about 'cultural' distincts and NOT the individuals apart from this artificial distinction, this proves to me that they are still 'conservative' in that they favor some interests in saving cultural factors of their OWN but still dependent upon the coexistence of others that are NOT their OWN. So they favor the 'democratic' vote of the culturally defined groups as who represent the smallest member of voting power rather than the individual.
So I think that the word, 'conservative' is not sufficient to describe distinctions of 'moral' differences between people not found in all of us innately. We are all 'greedy'. What makes the right-wing come across as MORE greedy than those who think similar on the left-wing supporters is only about a combination of things that not only relate to WEALTH, but to HOW their wealth is CONSERVED. If you are inherently wealthy due to an economic fortune NOT dependent upon variations of cultural distinction, you favor the right-wing politics to assure you persist; if your fortune is dependent upon the essential appeal of a broader class of cultural distinctions, you favor the left-wing politics to conserve your power.
Families who are wealthy due to banking or finance, will tend towards right-wing politics while those who are wealthy due to art will tend towards left-wing politics. Thus, the wealthy classes CAN have distinction of interests AND, given politics still requires money, regardless of the interests of the poor who side for either, it is the wealthy who define what ACTUAL party definitions exist in politics.
The poor who are best favored by 'cultural' distinctions will tend towards the left if it EMPOWERS them as a member of some cultural group that also happens to be less independently wealthy. If you are black and poor, for instance, you benefit more if you support identity politics that would enhance your likely success in a community where most blacks are contemporarily less representative of the wealthy and more plurally distinct among the poor. Given whites are presumed representative of the 'wealth', those who are poor often lose access to any benefits the 'progressive' left might leave out of them as a class among the poor. That is, they get forcefully selected out of any 'progressive' changes because the left treats people based upon identity as what CAUSES poverty. So those who are both poor and white are then also being forced to either accept themselves as sacrifices for some greater 'good' or align themselves with the very same but opposing cultural identity groups that believe in using cultural identity as a marker of success or failure. The poor whites who align with the contemporary 'right' are those who ONLY benefit BY embracing the stereotypes assumed of the wealthy stereotypes about white people as a whole WITHIN the poorer communities regardless of the facts. As such, you either are invisible (if you align with the left-wing politics among your poor community) OR you are visible ONLY where you are EXTREMELY representative of what is presumed of whiteness and success.
And there is also similar but opposing reasons why there are 'invisible' classes on the right-wing side who benefit best where they just KEEP QUIET. As such, even if they happen to embrace similar potential cultural identity stereotypes as strong as the more overt white-supremacists, they LET society think of them as a part of the left-wing classes or get isolated as rogues.
Wealth is thus a major factor of where you fit in politics but it also has to have some cross (or 'intersectional') coinciding factors, like race, that will always inevitably be present as some majority or plurality of either class defined by wealth.
