Based on the glee that a significant proportion of Americans seem to derive from cutting social safety nets, that appears to be exactly the path we seem to be heading down.
> Why do low-income individuals often oppose redistribution? We hypothesize that an aversion to being in "last place" undercuts support for redistribution, with low-income individuals punishing those slightly below themselves to keep someone "beneath" them. In laboratory experiments, we find support for "last-place aversion" in the contexts of risk aversion and redistributive preferences. Participants choose gambles with the potential to move them out of last place that they reject when randomly placed in other parts of the distribution. Similarly, in money- transfer games, those randomly placed in second-to-last place are the least likely to costlessly give money to the player one rank below. Last-place aversion predicts that those earning just above the minimum wage will be most likely to oppose minimum-wage increases as they would no longer have a lower-wage group beneath them, a prediction we confirm using survey data.
Wow. That's exactly it. Having spent most of my adult life below the Mason-Dixon line, that is exactly it. That and the comments noting that people receiving a benefit fail to recognize that program as an entitlement program.
This is too true. Here in Minnesota, we had a state representative equate food stamp recipients to animals in two separate speeches. In her rural district, almost twenty percent are on welfare programs and most residents are under the poverty line and qualify for food stamps. They still vote for her in spite of statewide coverage of her statements.
The attitude that everyone else is lazy and abusing the system seems most common in poor rural regions that depend the most on benefits. It usually has racial, anti-urban overtones that imply "we're only suffering because of THOSE people who don't look like us." It's a form of scapegoating.
That's an interesting point and I notice similar behaviour in the UK. People will talk up a politician who promises to "end the benefits culture" despite being on benefits themselves.
The reasoning is usually along the lines of "oh he's just talking about those other people on benefits who don't deserve them. Not good hard-nonworking folks like us"
That's a bit of an incomplete description you give, though.
Poorer regions that more benefits do tend to vote for people to cut those benefits. But as Andrew Gelman has demonstrated, it's not really the people getting the benefits who want to cut them: it's the professional and ruling class in the area who do.
Nearly everywhere the lower classes do want more benefits, but the big difference between regions is what the powerful people want.
Perhaps those who are receiving entitlement (and advocating for its abolition), may be using reasoning that you don't recognize. For example, could some of these recipients be very guilty about their use, and, are voting to end them because they don't see any other way out for themselves? Accepting a free handout is a very hard thing in our culture, especially for those that know the gift they receive was forcibly taken from others.
Take a glance at the comments - apart from the usual anti-lawyer screeds, the other main theme is that it'll be way too expensive and they're not worth it. There are some impressively nasty opinions, and a regrettably large number of people who think that way.
