What do you think of the articles that have been posted to HN about how people make worse decisions when they're under financial stress?
I think it's true and can explain behavior that is both self-destructive and selfish. To solve the problem you have to figure out how someone like that can get themselves out of the vicious cycle. Even if they are morally deaf I don't think much gets accomplished by focusing on that point.
Add to this the fact that certain behavioral strategies may seem self-destructive from one perspective but necessary from another. Drug use for example has nasty consequences but is frequently a mechanism for coping with some other very nasty problem. And you have... well, I don't know what, but a complicated world.
I am not saying Trump supporters are all jobless drug addicts but I absolutely think lower education, lower income demographics swung toward him because they have more direct experience with the dark side of modernization and the political establishment was tone deaf to this.
(Also, of the factors I mentioned I think the lack of college degree is the one most heavily correlated to lower income, lower employment, higher addiction, higher unintended pregnancy etc. not which city they're in.)
The Indian and Chinese ones are easy to explain - you get the best of those countries. Those countries in turn have suffered from brain drain for the past several decades.
You seem to be suggesting humans have an intrinsic quality - some are the "best", others are the presumably the worst. This intrinsic quality is then what drives behavior.
Of course, if people internationally can be "the best", then perhaps domestically people can be "the best" (or not) as well. For example, perhaps bad inner cities and Trump-voting rust belt regions are full of people who are very much NOT the best.
Your conclusion does not logically follow. Sure, some people may not be "the best", but that does not mean that an entire group of people (your "bad inner cities and Trump-voting rust belt regions") can be grouped into best or not-best. There will be a ranking of people (based on any criteria) in any region.
A charitable interpretation of both my comment and the comment I'm replying to is that the groups we are describing have a higher/lower proportion of people who are "the best" and "the worst".
Well 1) is easy to explain: children of upper class parents get supported financially; they also have a social safety net, so if they are out of work, their social circle will help them get one.
I think it's true and can explain behavior that is both self-destructive and selfish. To solve the problem you have to figure out how someone like that can get themselves out of the vicious cycle. Even if they are morally deaf I don't think much gets accomplished by focusing on that point.
Add to this the fact that certain behavioral strategies may seem self-destructive from one perspective but necessary from another. Drug use for example has nasty consequences but is frequently a mechanism for coping with some other very nasty problem. And you have... well, I don't know what, but a complicated world.
I am not saying Trump supporters are all jobless drug addicts but I absolutely think lower education, lower income demographics swung toward him because they have more direct experience with the dark side of modernization and the political establishment was tone deaf to this.
(Also, of the factors I mentioned I think the lack of college degree is the one most heavily correlated to lower income, lower employment, higher addiction, higher unintended pregnancy etc. not which city they're in.)