{"id":942,"date":"2011-08-17T21:27:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T04:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/?p=942"},"modified":"2011-08-17T21:27:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T04:27:37","slug":"near-the-bottom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/near-the-bottom\/","title":{"rendered":"Near the bottom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/21525851\" target=\"_blank\">interesting new theory<\/a> on <a title=\"This is what happens when voters don\u2019t understand economics\" href=\"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/this-is-what-happens-when-voters-dont-understand-economics\/\">&#8220;what&#8217;s the matter with Kansas&#8221;<\/a>: voters who feel they are near the bottom of the economic pyramid worry that income redistribution will help those who are even worse off (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/21525851\" target=\"_blank\">based on a study discussed by The Economist<\/a>;\u00a0via <a href=\"http:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2011\/08\/17\/last-place-aversion\" target=\"_blank\">daringfireball<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>But this is not really so different than the idea that no one wants to admit (to themselves or anyone) that they&#8217;re amongst the worst off in America.<\/p>\n<p>The nuance here is that if you suspect you&#8217;re near the bottom, your situation feels the most precarious, because a re-shuffling could easily put you <em>at<\/em> the bottom. For the middle class, that&#8217;s less of a worry. But it&#8217;s there. After all, any change to the status quo is scary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting new theory on &#8220;what&#8217;s the matter with Kansas&#8221;: voters who feel they are near the bottom of the economic pyramid worry that income redistribution will help those who are even worse off (based on a study discussed by The Economist;\u00a0via daringfireball.) But this is not really so different than the idea that no &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/near-the-bottom\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Near the bottom&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robinstewart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}