Thomas Sowell has written that a growing population of university-educated middle-class is nearly always the catalyst for destabilising a society. Consider, after all, the bloodiest revolutionary dictators of the 20th century: nearly all were bourgeois “intellectuals” (Hitler was a rare exception, of sorts). Orwell, too, noted the attraction for the “intelligentsia” of radical politics, especially socialism.
Despite their pretensions of labouring on behalf of “the common man” and “the worker”, left-wing politics is always almost exclusively the preserve of the upper and middle-classes.
Today, that divide is most starkly demonstrated in electoral outcomes. In Australia, the wealthiest suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane vote Green/Teal and Labor. In the US, the Democrat vote is strongly correlated with wealth, and in the UK, Labour’s vote has mostly retreated to the well-off boroughs of London.
The Economist, with its usual acuity, naturally interprets this as “right-wing populism”.
The relationship between education and ideology began to reverse as early as the 1960s. Every year, the 10 per cent of voters with the most years of schooling gravitated towards left-wing parties, while the remaining 90 per cent slid the other way. By 2000, this had gone on for so long that, as a group, the most educated voters became more left-wing than their less-educated peers. The gap has only grown since then.
Of course, Economist types are just better than you – and they know it.
Although the authors do not identify a cause for this trend, the simplest explanation is that it stems from growing educational attainment.
The Economist
But not just any “educational attainment”. As both Orwell and Sowell point out, “progressives” are almost always a well-educated but essentially useless class. Gender Studies majors, rather than tradesmen (when it comes to Jihadism, engineers are an intriguing exception).
Political scientist Matt Grossman clarifies:
Across 21 countries, the left has lost most support among low education, high income voters. Left gained most among high education, high income votes, but only reached parity there. So left support is now concentrated among high education low income voters.
As a Twitter user commented on Grossman’s tweet:
Writers, artists, designers, and other creative types searching for their purpose in life while yearning for UBI.
Academic Wilfred Reilly concludes the same:
The base for the modern left, across all races, is people with high education and low income. No surprise these folXX love redistribution.
Consider the most radically Marxist, pro-socialist people you know: are they builders or Sociology graduates? Factory workers or Gender Studies majors? Who are you most likely to see at a climate change rally? A sanitation worker or an arts/law graduate?
Or just look to your own Dear Leader: Bachelor of Communication Studies.
