[Political Interest]

To what extent are your political or ideological choices influenced by your socioeconomic status?

In your answers I would be interested to hear what your socioeconomic status is and what ideology you hold. Please explain the relationship between your politics and socioeconomic status, if any.

Is ideology always determined by these things? For example, if you are the son of a bourgeois magnate who owns several factories and lives in a mansion with servants and a driver, can you really be a communist?

If you are upper middle class or middle class can you be a communist?

If you are working class can you support the free market or conservatism?

[ingliz]

socioeconomic status

Working class.

ideology

Socialism.

Is ideology always determined by these things?

No, but why people act against their interest is beyond me. Maybe it's because the rich know they will always be protected by their wealth and the poor, aspire to riches.

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

If you are upper middle class or middle class can you be a communist?

Yes.

If you are working class can you support the free market or conservatism?

Yes.

[fuser]

What ingliz said.

[Goldberk]

your socioeconomic status

Working class

ideology

Socialist (of the anarchist variant)

relationship between your politics and socioeconomic status

there is a relationship in the sense that it's in my interest to be a socialist, but I don't think it was the reason I became a socialist.

Is ideology always determined by these things?

No.

[spodi]

I do find it very interesting when you have rich liberals and poor capitalists. In my opinion they're both oblivious. Rich liberals, most likely the trust fund babies of capitalists who are supported by uneducated poor conservatives who think liberals want to take the money that they don't have from them. It's a great example of irony and more so the stupidity of some people. On me, I'm just fascinated with politics in general and view it more as entertainment vs letting it effect my life. I'm middle class.

[LehmanB]

They are heavily influenced by them.

I can say that as I'm in a heterogenous society and educated, I have more ability to explore and set off my own political views. If I were born in a more close-minded serrounding, with less access to foreign data and Egnlish, or more homogenous society it would have been much harder to float above the water.

EDIT:

I'm upper middle class.

Ideology: more to capitalism than socialism -70% capitalist, 30% socialist. And 80% into individualism, 20% collectivism (and here I prefer nationalism over 'social solidarity').

[Soulflytribe]

I do find it very interesting when you have rich liberals and poor capitalists. In my opinion they're both oblivious. Rich liberals, most likely the trust fund babies of capitalists who are supported by uneducated poor conservatives who think liberals want to take the money that they don't have from them. It's a great example of irony and more so the stupidity of some people. On me, I'm just fascinated with politics in general and view it more as entertainment vs letting it effect my life. I'm middle class.

Actually, to be poor while supporting capitalism makes all sense in the world.

Because only capitalism will be able to provide the poor with wages and improve their lives. For instance, if you live in a miserable place and a multinational wants to invest there and create, say, 1000 jobs, besides paying an incredible amount of taxes to the city hall, you should welcome that. But if you are a rich snob liberal who doesn't need money, then it would also make sense to be against job-creation in such case.

[Far-Right Sage]

To what extent are your political or ideological choices influenced by your socioeconomic status?

They are minorly influenced by them.

I am not a materialist and I will stress that again. I am not a materialist, whether politically or personally.

socioeconomic status

Middle class to upper middle class. Troublesome to quantify as the spectrum of middle class is relative to your location, but in my case middle class but potentially classified as upper if in poorer regions.

ideology

Fascism

[mikema63]

There is an interesting effect that has been observed about lottery winners, those who voted leftwing tended to vote more right wing immediately after winning. I'm on my phone so I cant really link it or write a lot.

I do think socioeconomic status influences people's politics a good bit.

[LehmanB]

There are two points here:
Your economic status may influence your interests.
And your economic status may indicate what people will serround you and what education you way get.
I put a weight on the second point, that economic status reflects the society and education. The amount of money I have alone doesn't influences my political views that much.

[Saeko]

socioeconomic status: middle class (certainly not upper middle)

ideology: fascist

My socioeconomic status has a minor influence on my politics. I think it's the same for most other people. Studies have shown that there is no correlation between socioeconomic class and political views (caveat: the dimensions measured were liberal/conservative).

[Lexington]

I am a gay 29 year old Upper East Side, Manhattan-living reasonably well off programmer working in finance currently enjoying a salad that has both kale and quinoa with a cup of green tea. Fake statistically that makes me 120% likely to be a liberal and the fake statistics are correct.

But I am also watching football because obviously.

I like to think that my socioeconomic status doesn't affect my politics much (so I answered "minorly"). They haven't changed much over time.

[Soulflytribe]

I believe that the place you were raised might be more preponderant to determine your political convictions than your own social class. If a person comes from a place with good work ethic, where welfare and the government are seen with distrust, hard work is seen as a good thing and even encouraged, and the people who are successful are admired, the chances that this person (be him rich or poor) is more identified with the right-wing are higher.

But in contrast, if you come from a place where the government is 100% trusted and entitled to solve everyone's problems, welfare is seen as a right, the people have poor work ethic, jealousy toward the rich is the norm, the people are too weak to believe that they can improve their lives with their own hands, then there's a higher chance that you will fall into the left-wing trap.

If you are European, you can use this map to check if you are in accord with the place you were raised.

[mikema63]

A lot goes into political beliefs, it would be silly to say it all comes from one factor. I do however think the experiences we have due to our economic status effect our politics a lot. Especially when were growing up.

[Groves]

I am a gay 29 year old Upper East Side, Manhattan-living reasonably well off programmer working in finance currently enjoying a salad that has both kale and quinoa with a cup of green tea

Gay yuppies (guppies) were the original modern yuppies as they were the first to introduce dual household incomes and fashion sense to the preppy haute bourgeoisie. Your predilection for quinoa and liberalism confirms your guppie status. I am impressed.

I am an erzatz yuppie. I view politics as an elaborate fraud with 2 main objectives: 1) convince the labouring class that revolution is unneccesary, and 2) assuage the guilt of liberals in the ruling class by providing a means of superficial solidarity with the poor. As my net wealth increases the enormous hoax of organized political movements becomes increasingly apparent.

I vote for technocratic green parties. There is no other logical choice.

[Rei Murasame]

They are minorly influenced by them.

Socioeconomic status is only one of several factors that influence my choices. Ethnic interests and religious considerations also influence me. But these all ultimately rest on economic considerations.

your socioeconomic status

Middle class (petty-bourgeoisie).

ideology

Third Position (right-socialism, fascism, etc).

the relationship between your politics and socioeconomic status

See here for the present: [Link]

See for inspiration from the past: [Link]

See also how 'nothing is outside the economy': [Link]

And let's not forget Karl Pearson's view of it:

Pearson accused the early Darwinists, like Spencer and Haeckel and Huxley, of having 'obscured' the issue when they 'painted evolution as the survival of the fittest individual and spoke of his struggle against his fellows.' Man was a 'gregarious animal' whose safety depended upon his 'social instinct.' The truly elevating struggle was not that between individuals but 'the struggle of tribe against tribe, of race against race.' Spencer and Huxley had forgotten 'that the herd exists owing to its social instincts, and that human sympathy and racial and national feelings are strong natural forces controlling individual conduct', stronger, indeed, than economic forces emerging from the laws of supply and demand. Pearson upheld 'the scientific view of a nation,' a 'natural history view of mankind.' A nation, he said, was 'an organized whole,' which was 'kept up to a high pitch of external efficiency by contest, chiefly by way of war with inferior races, and with equal races by the struggle for trade-routes and for the sources of raw material and of food supply.'

Pearson's socialism found its full place in the compound. The nation, in order for it to be properly organized for struggle, had to be a 'homogeneous whole,' not 'a mixture of superior and inferior races,' he said, writing as a good nationalist, and equally important, 'we must not have class differences and wealth differences so great within the community that we lose the sense of common interest.' 'No tribe of men work together,' Pearson maintained, 'unless the tribal interest dominates the personal and individual interest at all points where they come into conflict.' Class oppression could be disastrous in case of war since 'the oppressed' may feel that they 'will hardly get worse terms from a new master.'[...]

In 1894, he wrote in a fortnightly journal: 'No thoughtful socialist, so far as I am aware, would object to cultivate Uganda at the expense of its present occupiers if Lancashire were starving. Only he would have done this directly and consciously, and not by way of missionaries and exploiting companies.'

In a conclusion and summation of his position, Pearson repeated his Darwinist assertion that 'science realizes that the nation is an organized whole, in continual struggle with its competitors.' 'You cannot get a strong and effective nation,' admonished the [right-]socialist Pearson, 'if many of its stomachs are half fed and many of its brains untrained.' It was the duty of 'the true statesmen' to 'treat class needs and group cries from the standpoint of the efficiency of the herd at large.' The duty of a nation's leaders was 'to lessen, if not to suspend, the internal struggle, that the nation may be strong externally.'

Pearson does not use the exact phrase 'group selection', but does use the terms 'intra-group selection' and 'extra-group selection'. Intra-group selection is selection within a group resulting from competition between its members. Extra-group selection (meaning literally outside-group selection) could mean selection between individual members of different groups, but it is clear from the context that Pearson intended it to mean primarily selection between groups as a whole. Pearson regarded himself as a socialist as well as a good Darwinian, and was keen to rebut claims that socialism was incompatible with natural selection. Pearson argued that as human society becomes more advanced, competition and selection within groups becomes less important, as it gives way to co-operation and collective action, whereas competition and selection between groups (tribes, nations or races) becomes even stronger.

These early writers on group selection seldom gave much attention to the problem raised, but not solved, by Charles Darwin in the Descent of Man: if the qualities promoting group success, such as co-operation and self-sacrifice, conflict with individual success within the group, how is the conflict resolved? Bernard Bosanquet's essay does however at least address the problem. His answer is essentially that there is no conflict. As society evolves, it creates a new selective environment for individuals, and this favours co-operation: 'the struggle for existence has, in short, become a struggle for a place in the community; and these places are reserved for those individuals which in the highest degree possess the co-operative qualities demanded by circumstances' (p.294).

Karl Pearson FRS[1] (27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936[2]) was an influential English mathematician who has been credited for establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics.[3]

In 1911 he founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London. He was a proponent of eugenics, and a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton.

A sesquicentenary conference was held in London on 23 March 2007, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth.[3]

[KlassWar]

Socioeconomic Status: Originally lower middle class, effectively proletarian.
Ideology: Marxism-Leninism.

I support Marxism because a classless society is the only way out the capitalist rat race, and getting out of the rat race is very much in my interest.

[Old_Hat]

They are minorly influenced by them.

your socioeconomic status

I agree with LehmanB that social status takes precidence over wealth. I was raised in a working class household and i'm now a small business owner. I'm not particularly materialistic and don't aspire to be rich. I work for self-respect and to maintain what i have at present. In the words of Rodney Dangerfield: "Class is stepping out of the shower to take a leak".

ideology

One Nation Conservatism/Right-Socialism (i think).

[SolarCross]

Vaishya - but near the bottom in terms of wealth. If we must use the marxist style classification despite its flaws then I am working class (self employed).

I am not bothered by variations in wealth and am happy with what I have even though it is relatively little. My interest is in being free to make my own choices. This leads me to love the market and hate big gov. I seriously don't need any middle-class poser bureaucrat telling me what to do and what to pay him for doing nothing I want him to do. I'd like to kill him for his impudence actually, but I won't because backing him up are 100,000 soldiers and 130,000 police.

So I am a free-market monarchist. (Monarchist because I would like to see gov do only what it does best which is head a military and nothing else.) If the tax rate is more than the 3 to 6% of GDP that is needed to pay for a flash military then that is too much.

[J Oswald]

Minorly influenced.

Socioeconomic Status: Whatever class one would place a graduate student in professional school. By birth, middle class.

Ideology: Currently in a state of flux, decidedly illiberal.