
Why Are the Highly Educated So Liberal? - xvirk
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/why-are-the-highly-educated-so-liberal.html?_r=0
======
fab13n
I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm strongly
liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of social
peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of
solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening
competitive mindset.

So sure, one way is to protect myself and those I love behind a gated
community. But that's pretty much voluntarily throwing myself to jail, I'd
rather make it less necessary for others to be aggressive against my kin. I
believe it requires more (and smarter) redistribution.

Another reason why it's my selfish interest, as a professional expert, to
continuously reshuffle wealth, is that my social value resides in what I know
and in my ability to learn, not in my family's accumulated wealth. Stabilising
accumulated wealth, especially across generations, would make it harder to use
my skills in order to climb higher on the social ladder.

Is my education a factor in this view? Probably.

* It helps me grasping some sociological insights which ought to be obvious. For instance, while hearing political speeches about wealth (re)distribution, I stay aware that the property laws are a social construct that must be agreed upon and can be altered at will by society, not a natural (let alone a God-given) law.

* It exposed me to a lot of competition, in school then at work, and although I've been a winner on average, I aspire to more fulfilling activities than turning others into losers. I have no revenge to take on others people, I don't enjoy crushing them.

* Having gone from penniless undergrad to minimum-wage PhD student to well-paid junior then senior specialist, I've experienced a variety of wealth levels. As a result I'm convinced that once basic needs are addressed, monetary incentives don't work the way Adam Smith' sycophants pretend they do. Money's meaningful as a way to keep score, and to compare myself among my social peers; but taxes don't affect that much, as long as they don't reverse relative wealth between potential peers.

~~~
Kurtz79
"I'm an upper-middle class, over-educated professional expert, and I'm
strongly liberal for selfish reasons: mostly, I want to live in a climate of
social peace, and would prefer to be surrounded by people who foster a mood of
solidarity and benevolence, rather than a cut-throat and ever-worsening
competitive mindset."

That's mostly my rationale for being in favor of (moderate) wealth
redistribution, which on surface would be against my interests, as someone by
no means wealthy but with an above-median income.

What's the point of having money if you cannot walk safely among people ?

~~~
rubyfan
Is resource redistribution the only way to solve income inequality? I always
believed we weren't playing a zero sum game. It's likely that when we are all
working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little more. I don't
believe that means someone rich has to lose a little more so someone poor can
win.

~~~
antisthenes
> I always believed we weren't playing a zero sum game. It's likely that when
> we are all working for a living and prospering then we all prosper a little
> more. I don't believe that means someone rich has to lose a little more so
> someone poor can win.

If you studied economics, you'd very quickly realize that many areas that
people compete for and responsible for inequality are zero-sum (at least in
the short-run and medium-run). It is more tricky for wealth, since once person
owning something more esoteric, like a portfolio does not necessarily preclude
anyone else from doing so.

The most notable example, of course, is real estate, especially in the areas
where zoning laws prohibit from building upwards. You might also know it as a
NIMBY suburban sprawl, which is one of the biggest factors in creating
inequality and misery in the US.

Another example that I haven't explored fully is political influence. The
attention and decision-making of policymakers is definitely zero-sum by virtue
of there being a fixed amount of them.

~~~
rubyfan
I don't believe that the laborer and the software developer are competing for
the same resources in most cases. They are not playing a zero sum game. Their
resource accumulations are based on market conditions, the market allocates
toward value of utility in a mostly efficient manner.

Why would we move from a set of natural laws that govern allocation to a
central authority based one? Ie, why should government take from the software
developer some of his resource so that the laborer has more than what the
market would allocate?

------
newacct23
51% of college graduates voted for Romney in 2012 while only 48% for Obama

Romney actually lost with highschool educated only and he lost significantly
with postgraduate studies only getting 42% of the vote with Obama getting 55%.

So really the trend is that academics are liberal, not the highly educated.

(That 3% gap in college grads likely accounts for a larger percentage of the
population than the massive 13% gap among grad degree holders)

[http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-
groups...](http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-
voted/how-groups-voted-2012/)

edit: another source that adds evidence to my argument

Professors in humanities that identify as Republican range from 6 to 11
percent.

Social Sciences 7 and 9 percent

2% of English professors are Republican.

Meanwhile 18% of social scientists are Marxists.

This evidence leads me to believe that Academics self select to be liberal and
that people with a conservative mindset do not find academia appealing for
whatever reason. The reason I rule it has little to do with intelligence of
the groups is the prevalence of Marxism amongst academics. Intelligent people
that use evidence to reason about their beliefs wouldn't be Marxist.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessio...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-
of-liberal-intolerance.html)

~~~
pron
The article defines highly educated as people with advanced degrees. They are
not academics. I doubt anyone would classify the general population of all
college graduates (i.e. from all colleges) in the US as _highly_ educated.

~~~
newacct23
>The article defines highly educated as people with advanced degrees. They are
not academics

Definition from article:

>But the most highly educated Americans — those who have attended graduate or
professional school — are starting to come together as a political bloc.

Doctors make up 1/3 of a percent of the US population (they don't necessarily
have Phds)

[http://www.wisegeek.org/what-percent-of-the-us-population-
do...](http://www.wisegeek.org/what-percent-of-the-us-population-do-doctors-
comprise.htm)

Doctors chose Romney over Obama 55% to 36%.

[http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/01/survey-doctors-choose-
romn...](http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/01/survey-doctors-choose-romney-over-
obama/)

1.68% of Americans have a Phd (actually significantly more than I expected and
significantly more than I think deserve to be handed out). I really wonder how
many of these people do practical work. I can't find statistics to prove my
bias so we will have to leave it as is unless someone can find some.

~~~
hellofunk
Doctors are also among the highest-paid members of American society and, along
with wealthy financial professionals, you will typically find them siding more
with the Republican Party often out of concern for their tax bracket.

~~~
newacct23
I modified my main post with some more evidence in support of my theory which
I'm posting here so you can see it as a response.

Professors in humanities that identify as Republican range from 6 to 11
percent.

Social Sciences 7 and 9 percent

2% of English professors are Republican.

Meanwhile 18% of social scientists are Marxists.

This evidence leads me to believe that Academics self select to be liberal and
that people with a conservative mindset do not find academia appealing for
whatever reason. The reason I rule it has little to do with intelligence of
the groups is the prevalence of Marxism amongst academics. Intelligent people
that use evidence to reason about their beliefs wouldn't be Marxist.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessio...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-
of-liberal-intolerance.html)

~~~
panglott
I don't think social scientists are Marxist in perhaps the sense you
understand it. Social scientists don't want to overthrow the bourgeosie so
much as they interpret social systems through the machinery of gender, race,
and social class. Gender, race, and social class are absolutely necessary to
understand contemporary social structures.

------
wrgrossman
I worked at a private University (as a conservative leaning independent) for 7
years. I found the University to be a hostile work environment for
conservatives. In my case as well as others, that I met while there, it was
enough to dissuade us from pursuing an advanced degree.

I worked with many wonderful academics, they are people that I still count
among the smartest and kindest people that I have ever met. At the same time,
they could be absolutely vicious towards conservative or religious ideals or
individuals. There was regular conflict over the Catholic University's
traditional masses and other gatherings. They would wrap themselves in a cloak
of "Academic Freedom" as they denounced anything that they viewed as religious
infringing on their positions.

It wasn't just religious issues that brought out the worst of them. I still
remember how on the first anniversary of 9/11 a number of professors refused
to participate in the memorial ceremony because the University's ROTC would be
the color guard. They deemed their presence to be sending the wrong message
and a validation of the war in Afghanistan.

All in all, it left a bad taste in my mouth and as time grew on it was no
longer a place that I wished to be. If it wasn't for an online option at a
different school, then I never would have pursued my masters degree.

~~~
tim333
Re the 9/11 thing, if you are someone who dislikes the killing of innocent
people it seems reasonable to be horrified by the original 9/11 killings of
three thousand odd people and also horrified by Bush/Cheney using that as a
justification to do stuff leading to the deaths of many times as many innocent
people. It seems quite reasonable to avoid condoning that.

~~~
wrgrossman
I won't disagree that that feeling is reasonable or justified. I've worked at
a number of places where someone who felt that way would have been supported
if they chose not to participate.

That being said, Academia is the only place where I have worked that it was
considered okay to demand that others not be allowed to participate.
Especially, demanding that students who may or may not feel the same way be
barred from attending.

------
vowelless
This has always confused me. There are some rich texts based on beautiful
rigor on the side of the conservatives like freidman and Hayek. Goldwater also
approaches things in a very principled manner. Arthur brooks' latest book is
similar.

On the other than, I have not come across any liberal text, yet, that makes a
good convincing case for liberalism. I would love to get some recommendations.
I'm interested in principled arguments for liberalism. If there are so many
highly educated people who are liberal, I would assume there are certain
foundational texts that argue their position. Basically, I'm looking for
"freedom to choose" of the left.

~~~
lake99
Your post confuses me, no offense intended. Friedman and Hayek called
themselves liberals, not conservatives. The American progressive movement co-
opted the word "liberalism". Before that, they called themselves
"progressives". Is that what you're looking for?

Todd8's comment below confuses me for the same reason. Rawls could be
considered to be on the US-left. The other people he mentioned, except Gross
and Levitt, all opposed Rawls, and called themselves "liberals".

~~~
mindcrime
_Your post confuses me, no offense intended._

Hopefully vowelless won't take offense, because that's probably just a side-
effect of how overloaded (and thus meaningless) words like "liberal" and
"conservative" and "right" and "left" are in modern American politics. Modern
"liberals" are more properly "progressives" (or something), the actual
liberals are mostly people who call themselves "libertarian" and
"conservatives" are split between the uneducated redneck snake handling
fundamentalist types, and the more educated, "fiscally conservative, small
government" types. And I'm sure somebody will shoot all sorts of holes in what
I just said, which just furthers my point. It's hard to talk about any of this
stuff, because we don't have a consistent lingo.

~~~
wahern
The vast majority of Americans lean "fiscally conservative, small government".

When Bernie Sanders won his mayoral election many years ago, the town council
thought he was going to institute a Marxist-Leninist state. They were shocked
when he streamlined budgets. (I'm not a Bernie supporter; it's just an
anecdote I recently heard on the radio.)

Many consider San Francisco to be one of the most "liberal", "progressive"
cities in the United States. But during the California fiscal crisis recently,
at the depths of the national recession, San Francisco was the only major city
in the state (IIRC) that kept a balanced budget the whole time. They did that
by relying on savings (the city keeps billions stashed away for emergencies),
and by rapidly instituting furloughs and budget cuts. This wasn't by fiat--all
components of government, as well as the special interests, were on board. LA
and other major cities couldn't accomplish that. And that's ignoring the rest
of the country. Similarly, when Democrats obtained a super-majority in
California, capable of overriding Republican tax and budget filibustering,
they didn't open the flood gates of taxes and spending.

The only politicians in recent memory who flat-out stated that they didn't
care about fiscal conservatism was Dick Cheney and a substantial minority of
similarly-minded politicians and pundits, almost all dedicated Republicans. To
quote Dick Cheney, "deficits don't matter".

Ignoring social issues, the divide in America isn't about fiscal conservatism
and small government versus a gargantuan state. The conflict is over emphasis
(social services vs military and police), and small percentage point changes
in the taxation rate.

------
panglott
These kinds of threads tend to be self-congratulatory, and obviously the
answer is "self-selection". But I'll bite. Most of the conservative professors
I have known in the Humanities have been in (military) history and classics,
where they are likely drawn to classical or martial virtues. Economics
professors are generally some variety of libertarian. Many Humanities
professors are devout Christians.

But I've never known a professor to be an intolerant, hard-core social
conservative. And perhaps that's because the only personality trait that has a
correlation with intelligence is "openness to experience". A certain kind of
liberality is necessary in academia.

------
blowski
And I guess the converse question which has vexed socialists for decades - why
do so many of the poor vote for centre-right, business-friendly parties? For
example, why did so many working class people vote for Thatcher in UK in the
1980s? Why are they not massively in favour of Jeremy Corbyn right now?

I'm not saying it's irrational. But sometimes it's odd to hear people who need
the government to subsidise their minimum wage zero-hours income just for
basic survival defending the Conservative Party's economic manifesto. I read
"The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" some years ago, and this question
really stuck with me.

~~~
unlinker
I guess they found out liberal economical policies lead to unemployment, and
the poor loathe unemployment.

By the way Corbyn is a very bad example. He's a walking train wreck.

~~~
blowski
Your comment about Corbyn is essentially tautology - he's unelectable because
he's unelectable. Why? Why don't the working class want a leader who's
promising to end policies which continue to hit the working class the hardest?

And why do the poor loathe unemployment? Why don't they loathe being poor more
than being unemployed? Working minimum wage on zero-hour contracts means
they're still poor.

~~~
ionised
He's so unelectable he was elected leader of the opposition.

------
patrickg_zill
It never seems to occur to anyone that maybe, just maybe ... there is an anti-
conservative selection pressure or bias?

Look at the "nomenklatura" in USSR times - they were all good Party members,
and they too, had the higher university degrees.

If you weren't a Party member or in other ways, indicated disloyalty to the
prevailing political worldview ... you didn't get admitted to the choice
spots.

How many "Western-style free market" (however defined) professors with tenure,
were there in Moscow, in 1987? Must mean that as an economic perspective it
was wholly discredited, right?

~~~
gozur88
This. It boils down to tenure. An open conservative is not going to get tenure
outside the hard sciences, so there's not much reason to get a PhD.

------
realusername
Unpopular opinion on HN, but people are mostly liberals when the current
system works for them and it's even more visible as observe the political
spectrum outside the US. It's easier to say "the market solves everything"
when it works for you. When it does not work for them, they turn either to the
right or the left side. As the current system is mostly falling apart for the
middle class, you then have a raising far-left and far-right as a consequence.
That's also why the vast majority of rich people are liberals.

~~~
tehwalrus
What do you think Liberal means? In the UK, as well as in the USA, it
generally doesn't mean "the market solves everything" (You might be thinking
of Libertarianism[1]).

The article explicitly references _redistributive_ economic views, quite the
reverse of the market-centric view you attach to the label.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism)

~~~
eivarv
Generally, when people say "liberal" in Europe they mean "economically
liberal", while people mean "socially liberal" in the US.

~~~
ionised
I've always used 'liberal' in the socially liberal sense (I'm from the UK).

Here we tend to use 'neo-liberal' to describe the laissez-faire attitude
towards economics.

~~~
eivarv
If so, the UK is different from mainland Europe in this regard.

I do find it peculiar, though, that "neo-liberalism" is of a different form
than "liberalism", and hence not really "new liberalism":P

~~~
tehwalrus
If anything, it's very old Liberalism.

Way back when, (Whigs and Tories era), the "Liberals" we're the ones arguing
for free markets as opposed to Feudalism. This is where attachment of the word
"Liberal" to free market-ists originates, I think.

------
13years
Higher education both attracts and produces mindsets which solve problems
through planning, engineering and designing.

There is a natural tendency to use your methodology of problem solving on all
problems. So we tend to produce a greater collection of social engineering and
central economic planning advocates. We want to design a greater society. We
want to design a greater economy.

Even when you look at highly educated vs slightly more highly educated in the
same field you see the same shift in mindset. The divergence between Fellow,
Architect, Engineer is that at each higher level there is a greater degree if
centralization mindset of design.

There is a potential fallacy that should be evident that you can not
necessarily and simply equate more education with always producing the correct
perspectives and therefore liberal view points are the correct positions. As
in the above, we in engineering fields know the value higher levels of
discipline, yet we also are fully aware of the problems resulting from high
level engineers and architects who design their perfect systems which don't
work in the real world.

Higher education produces problem solving disciplines that are very useful and
powerful, yet these same disciplines also are subject to error as well as they
typically can't quantify the numerous variables in large systems thinking

For more around this topic, this was a great talk working with systems greater
than our human capacity to understand them.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaFcI2UNrI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGaFcI2UNrI)

~~~
internaut
> There is a potential fallacy that should be evident that you can not
> necessarily and simply equate more education with always producing the
> correct perspectives and therefore liberal view points are the correct
> positions.

This. If there existed a world in which only liberals were right all the time
conservatism would have been selected out of the gene pool by now. That's not
a metaphor. Political tribes have been battling for probably tens of thousands
of years.

There is too much world for one true path.

~~~
Joof
Honestly, there is too much world for 2 true paths. A multiparty system sounds
nice from here.

~~~
internaut
Even this is probably not enough.

Republicanism is definitely on its way out as a way to structure human
governance.

It's the same problem that caused the Boston Tea Party. Increasing lack of
representativeness. I think it has taken the full powers of the media to
synchronize the people this far but with the Net there is too much dissenting
opinion, too much expression for a party system to work.

If the Net generation was represented in parliament, then political parties
would have a half-life similar to Boy Bands.

------
r2dnb
I think I'll be heavily down-voted for posting that on HN but in my opinion
the reason most college graduates are liberal is that - whether we want to
admit or not - colleges teach liberalism. I'm not saying that Big Brother is
behind this, I think it "just happened" for many reasons.

As a consequence while most liberals think that they have the answer for life,
the universe and everything and that they are objective, independent and
"scientific" thinkers, they are more often than not just regurgitating
packaged values that have been impressed on them.

You'll always see that 80% of the people are followers. The system teaches
liberalism, so 80% of the people going through the system will be liberal just
by following - often unconsciously. 10% of the remaining will choose to be
liberal out of true critical thinking while the 10 remaining percents won't
be. Those who haven't been through the system (drop outs, high school
graduates, etc.) are more likely to have more diverse opinions. Which are then
dismissed by flagging them as "opinions mostly held by uneducated people".

But what I've found is that education systems barely teach anything. For all
the knowledge we've been presented, we just "really know" a ridiculous tiny
fraction of it. This is why nowadays, you don't even need to be "smart" in the
academical sense of the term to be in the top 5%, you just need to be a
critical thinker in your field and think out of the box. Because it is indeed
an extremely hard thing to do once you've been through college, as you've been
nurturing the illusion that you learned most of the things you actually
memorized. Many packaged values and referentials have thereby been patterned
on your mind.

For all these reasons, it is in my opinion unlikely that most people won't
feel liberal after going through college.

------
sandworm101
For perspective, what in the US is called "liberal" in the rest of the world
is rather to the right of centre. The two parties are pulling apart from each
other but to outsiders they remain very similar both in policy and ideology,
at least at the national level. Neither is talking of actual reform, only
incremental change.

~~~
lake99
> in the rest of the world is rather to the right of centre

I find "rest of the world" hard to justify. The Indian right-wing are Hindu
hardliners, but economically not all that different from the "center-left"
INC, both of which, are IMO, way more left-wing than the US Democratic party
when it comes to economics. Socially, all parties here pander to their
regional (as opposed to national) voterbases. The Pakistani right-wing also
seems to oppose economic liberalism (i.e. capitalism). Looking beyond this
region, each country seems to have its own "left-right" divide, while not
sharing much in the ideology of another country's "left-right" divide.

~~~
ionised
Rest of the western/developed world perhaps.

~~~
lake99
No, on this very page, we seem to have a couple of Australians and a few
Europeans, expressing how these terms mean something else in their countries.
I don't know how South Americans use these terms, but I expect them to be
closer to the European sense.

------
Fej
The two parties have been getting more polarized, that much is clear. The
problem with the GOP from an educated person's perspective is that many, if
not most of its politicians get elected through anti-intellectual rhetoric.
Trump is the most extreme example of this. He makes no actual arguments and
just attacks his detractors.

An educated group taught to embrace science will certainly take issue with
leaders who ignore it.

Additionally, the GOP is the party of creationists and climate deniers. That
is just too extreme of an anti-intellectual slant to tolerate.

~~~
gallonofmilk
> GOP is the party of creationists and climate deniers...

how is this statement different than e.g. "the democratic party is the party
of socialists and communists"?

they're both bold assertions on a large group of people that are unlikely to
be true for the majority...

to be honest it just sounds smug

~~~
sandworm101
Except that you do not see democrats stumping about the benefits of communism.
You do see GOP candidates openly denying climate change and denouncing
Darwinism as a left-wing plot. One has decided to become more extreme than the
other.

~~~
vixen99
Climate change? What does that mean? It used to be global warming but the
facts were so blatantly unsupportive that the sly shift to 'climate change'
was adopted. Now it's a mantra for unthinking people. But it works because
heads I win, tails you lose. The climate is always changing. Temperature
changes are slight and hedged with ifs and buts. Now if you mean that the CO2
level in the atmosphere has increased from the pre-industrial levels of around
270 parts per million to 400 parts per million today then I'm with you.
Recalling that life on earth would be impossible were the level to reduce to
less than around 120 ppm, let's get this into perspective. Meanwhile Arctic
Greenland is indeed turning green (NASA study).
[https://youtu.be/Yi8SFOJffFA](https://youtu.be/Yi8SFOJffFA) while the
temperature in that area has remained unchanged over the past 16 years prior
to this year's El Nino.

Anyway, I'm sure that the greening of the Arctic and of many places elsewhere
as evidenced by satellite imagery is a disastrous phenomenon we should
discourage.

“An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is
now exposed to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years.". An
observation probably invented by some imaginative climate denier?

As Judith Curry has said: "Efforts to link dangerous impacts of extreme
weather events to human-caused warming are misleading and unsupported by
evidence. Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ and ill-suited to a ‘command
and control’ solution. It has been estimated that the U.S. national
commitments to the UN to reduce emissions by 28% will prevent three hundredths
of a degree centigrade in warming by 2100...".

~~~
sandworm101
>> ... is a disastrous phenomenon we should discourage.

Yes. Google methane and permafrost melting.

------
vegancap
Probably because the education system, in most western countries is largely
subsidised by government. So the professors, and the teachers who are largely
on public payroll, are bound to be less critical of government, than, say
someone in the private sector. Which in turn will permeate those who they
teach. It's in their best interest to then spread ideals which uphold their
government funding.

~~~
psychometry
Well that's...a reach. There's more to the American liberal outlook than
support for government programs. I'm guessing you didn't read the article; you
might want to do that first and attempt a more substantial comment later.

~~~
jessaustin
If there were "more to the American liberal outlook than support for
government programs", a thoughtful ("substantial"?) comment would have given
us some examples of such, and then related those examples somehow to the
proposition under discussion. Your comment, instead, amounts to "RTFA!"

------
syats
The article isn't very well written, but it does raise an interesting
question. However, this question requires a clear definition of what is meant
by liberal, which is a non trivial matter:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-
orig...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-origin-of-
liberalism/283780/)

My to cents: Let's start by defining "liberal" as those who hold the belief
that the current Trend in social, economic or political developments will
result in them having a better life. The opposite of that is the
quintessential "conservative" adagio that "things are getting worse and
worse". What exactly constitutes that trend is up for debate, but I think a
precise definition isn't essential for this argument.

Since the percentage of the population that is highly educated is increasing
(for whatever definition of "highly"), we can infer that access to education
isn't only hereditary. That is, there are some of us who are now highly
educated but who's parents were not (yes, it still is mostly hereditary, and
almost for sure we will inherit that to our children). This, in turn, results
in better standards of living for us than for our parents. So, locally, the
trend, seems for us to be moving in the right direction. We vote for
continuing this trend of more education for more people, of more access to
healthcare for more people, and so on, because if it weren't for that trend
we'd be struggling like our parents did.

Compound to that the rich-get-richer phenomena, and then our children will
probably keep benefiting from this, so they will most likely also be
"liberal". Only when a social revolution removes our now-hereditary privileges
will we turn into "conservatives".

~~~
burfog
"some of us who are now highly educated but who's parents were not [...]
results in better standards of living for us than for our parents. So,
locally, the trend, seems for us to be moving in the right direction."

Say what?

In the 1950s, you graduated from high school (or even dropped out) and then
went to work in the steel mill or car factory. (there were no robots and we
didn't trade with China) You could support a family on that one income: house,
car, wife, kids, etc.

Lately, you get your BA and then work 3 different part-time jobs. If you get
the MA, and find somebody else who does, then the two of you can both work
jobs and get a place of your own. Your student loans will be huge. Forget
about kids.

------
arjun1296
I believe myself to be a liberal. However, I still believe that the question
asked "Why are the highly educated so liberal?" in itself is a loaded
question.

------
drexel
Here's an alternative perspective from the nytimes:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessio...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-
of-liberal-intolerance.html)

------
perilous333
There is a curious (albeit incomplete) parallel here to Moldbug's theory of
the five castes of the United States.

~~~
internaut
Funny you should mention He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, because in this very
thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11829796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11829796)

I love watching Mr Bug's thought percolate through the Net. I can only imagine
this is what it must have been like for the first proto-Communists as Karl
Marx went to town.

~~~
vlehto
I kind of went to deep end of the pool. The dude points out widely believed
lies. The argues that because they we're lies, complete opposite must be true.
And because you believe opposite is true, then you ought to take opposite
political stance than the lying people.

But because the opposite is weak ass conservative party that only defines
itself as opposite of the democratic party, you need to go back in time to
find genuine alternative.

So you go back to monarchists. Which surprisingly fits snuggly with hard core
libertarian views. Libertarian monarchism with attitude of "Lets cut the crap,
someone is anyhow pulling all the strings, might as well be public knowledge.
It's going to be pretty much like nowadays, except you're not going to be lied
to."

The whole thing is incredibly anglocentric, mostly doesn't take into account
geopolitics and gets into weirdly pacifist streak. Which only suits monarchism
if you pick the period of 1840 - 1910. (As if war/violence is the only problem
of human kind.)

It's exactly what U.S. needs if it's going to follow the footsteps of roman
republic. You guys are still way too fervent with this democracy thing if you
aim for Imperial future.

------
back_beyond
The highly educated can afford to be liberal.

This demographic tends to be wealthier. Greater wealth means less required
assistance and, therefore, greater opportunity to advocate on the behalf of
others.

Such is my experience.

~~~
back_beyond
However, that isn't to say it's the sole factor. Not by a long ways.

------
whatok
Superiority complex leading to a savior complex.

------
pete_b
Pithy answer 2: because they are economically privileged.

The headline is a broad generalisation, and as another broad generalisation
poorer people are more religious and more conservative because they have
harder lives, bleaker temporal outlooks and hope for a better life 'beyond'.

~~~
MagnumOpus
I think your "pithy answer" won't stand up to actuall polling.

Highly educated low-wealth/low-income people tend to be socially liberal and
probably skew socially leftist (think postdocs, school teachers, humanities
PhDs).

High-wealth low-education people probably skew to the right (self-employed
craftsmen, sports people, "old money" heirs).

------
ilaksh
The short answer is 'watch Game of Thrones'.

Liberal means different things in different countries.

Generally speaking people's beliefs follow their group association rather than
the other way. In many US groups this means adopting 'liberal' ideas.

There is also the history of conflict between religious traditions that are
Judeo-Christian-Islamic and more pagan or Satanic belief systems.

------
norea-armozel
I would say that I'm liberal, but not what most people consider liberal by
some standards since my politics are closer to mutualism crossed with
geolibertarianism. So, I get the occasional "huh" from people when explaining
what govt policies I support like LVT, promotion of unions and/or worker owned
businesses, and the like.

------
peterashford
I'd question the other side: why are conservatives so stupid? They aren't all,
of course, but there's a strong correlation between low IQ and holding a
conservative world view.

------
ryall
Because empathy requires effort and a certain level of intellect. My personal
experience is that less educated people tend to view the world through a
filter of their own experiences and don't realise (or choose to ignore) the
possibility of a situation vastly different to their own. Highly educated
people are exposed to philosophies and opinions that provoke thought and
analysis. They are used to engaging in thought experiments and utilising
imagination to consider many facets of an issue. I suppose you could say that
they are trained to think rather than view something at face value.

------
known
1\. They're less susceptible to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

2\. They like to explore
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_interdependence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_interdependence)

------
nickysielicki
This question doesn't get enough attention. I thought this article was pretty
shoddy, though.

> The growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-
> educated women tend to be especially left-leaning.

"Why are the highly educated so liberal?"... "Because highly educated women
are liberal, and there are more highly-educated women."

Well that explains everything. /s

~~~
tempestn
Certainly if you only read one third of one paragraph of the article it would
seem shoddy. You even paraphrased that snippet to delete the part that clearly
states it's only a partial explanation: "The growing number of women with
advanced degrees _is part of it_ , as well-educated women tend to be
especially left-leaning."

~~~
nickysielicki
I didn't edit the snippet at all. But let's look at the whole paragraph:

    
    
        What explains the consolidation of the highly educated into a liberal bloc? The
        growing number of women with advanced degrees is part of it, as well-educated
        women tend to be especially left-leaning. Equally important is the Republican
        Party’s move to the right since the 1980s — at odds with the social liberalism
        that has long characterized the well educated — alongside the perception that
        conservatives are anti-intellectual, hostile to science and at war with the
        university.
    

He posed the question "What explains the consolidation of the highly educated
into a liberal bloc?"

Then answered it by saying that it could be because of more highly-educated
women, because they tend to be particularly left-leaning.

What does that "explain"? The core question is why education tends towards
left political views. A related question is why this is seen moreso in women.
But suggesting that this tendency is explained, even partially, by the
demographics on which the tenancy is seen is tautological... Unless there's
some obvious reason I'm missing that women should be more susceptible to this
bias?

------
SixSigma
The most question begging headline you will see this week.

------
ljw1001
Because they're highly educated.

------
petewailes
Pithy answer: because you aren't going to be afraid of something when you
understand that it's not something you need to fear.

When you have a simple world view, nuance is always going to escape you. An
educated person can understand that the world isn't simple, which will lead to
a more liberal view, as liberal views tend to be based on the assumption that
angry, narrow world view responses aren't a good thing. Someone who sees
things in black and white, ignoring the complexities of life, will respond
with simple, ignorant answers.

Examples: climate change denial, anti-vax, religion... They're the
intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting,
rather than seeking to actually understand anything.

It's worth noting that all these things are driven by fear of things people
don't understand. Someone who understands how vaccinations work, why we do
them, why they're made the way they are can't be afraid of them, and thus
won't be against them. But most people aren't in that camp, which opens the
door for people to make bad choices.

It's hard getting people to be want to be informed and right, when it means
they might have to disagree with their social group.

~~~
gaius
_because you aren 't going to be afraid of something when you understand that
it's not something you need to fear_

Such as a highly educated media worker, has no fear of the factory closing
because the company has found somewhere with lower taxes and relaxed pollution
laws?

This is the appeal of Trump: he is the only candidate who doesn't want to send
his demographics jobs offshore. It absolutely makes perfect sense for a
significant number of voters to prefer him. I am really astonished at how many
"liberals" despite their "high intellect" don't seem to get that there is a
whole world outside their little bubble.

~~~
petewailes
Or maybe the factory closing is a net benefit long term. Was losing millions
of jobs in the farming sector a bad thing? Or the automation of the glass
industry in the 1930's and 1940's that increased production and cleaned up
emissions? Is the move to driverless vehicles and what that'll do to the
logistics industry bad?

There's lots of examples of people losing jobs. That's sad for the individual,
but long term it's generally good for the country. It'd be easy to say no to
those forms of progress that hurt workers, but it'd be the wrong decision in
the long run.

No-one said making the right choice has to be victimless, or that the wrong
one has to be hard.

~~~
gaius
Sure, but telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their
livelihood in the now, for a net long term benefit that he or she may not live
to see, is a hard sell.

~~~
avz
> telling an ordinary worker that they need to give up their livelihood

What you need to tell the worker is not that they need to give up their
livelihood, but that they need to retrain. Still painful, but much less. Also,
there are ways to reduce and relieve the pain of retraining. And who knows for
many people acquiring new skills and contacts may even turn out to be exciting
and fun.

We need a politician with the guts to openly explain to the public that
retraining is a necessity instead of fostering delusions that the old jobs can
be kept. In fact, the progress in the development of self-driving cars
combined with the fact that the most common job in most states is a truck
driver [1] make this something of an emergency.

[1]
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-
the-most-common-job-in-every-state)

------
zxcvcxz
Just like to point out the members of the T9 lean libertarian.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150226234712/http://www.triple...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150226234712/http://www.triplenine.org/poll/)

T9 (Triple 9) is a high IQ society similar to Mensa, but which only accepts
members whose IQ is in the .999 percentile.

It's a non-scientific poll, but in my experience while lots of my college
friends were liberal, lots of my professors and the smartest people I know
lean libertarian.

~~~
psychometry
IQ societies aren't representative of the IQ range they require. I have a
feeling people who feel the need to join one of those groups are more socially
disaffected and have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers, which
certainly correlates with a libertarian outlook.

And I haven't found your comment about libertarianism being rampant among
professors to be true _at all_. Where did you go to school? That would be very
much outside the norm.

~~~
brbsix
> have lower empathy than the their non-member IQ peers, which certainly
> correlates with a libertarian outlook

I frequently hear this sentiment from the left, and it's terribly
disheartening. It's something akin to "You don't want the government to
provide everyone with a car? You must not like people having cars!" or "You
don't want the government to arrest people for drinking soda? You must want
everyone to die of obesity!". Libertarians aren't unemphatic, they simply have
different solutions.

------
Criticism123
>nytimes.com

You might as well post from Pravda.

