Ugh, I destroyed most of my reply with a cut-and-paste error. Anyway, I completely agree, but I don’t think it helps Franc’s argument. Since you don’t have to restrict your donations to local politicans, the representative from Poorsville has every incentive to chase donations from the population of Richton, just as the representative from Richton does; so it doesn’t make sense for Franc to talk about where the rich live. I also suspect that Franc would not be too comfortable with the argument “The Democrats have trouble passing economically progressive policies because the wealthiest people have the power to buy off politicians.”

I also think your point works against Thomas’s reading of Franc’s argument. In how many districts, let alone states, are the wealthiest people a decisive voting bloc? Damn few, I’d guess. Again, what we want to look at is not “What percentage of rich people live in district X?” but “What percent of district X’s constituents are rich people?”

[FWIW, according to this page the 10 richest districts (measured by overall federal income tax) are represented by 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans. Democratic-represented and Republican-represented districts have exactly the same effective tax rate.]

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/blog/

His most recent post on party affiliation vs income is here:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/11/do_the_democrat.html

Actually, my point is that the way you present things, the important issue appears to be the rather irrelevant fact that this claim was published in the Financial Times. But each to his own.

Your interpretation of “party of the rich” is no better than your reading of the rest of the piece. It seems clear enough that “party of the rich” is meant to be understood as meaning what follows. You attacked what followed as being in error, but obviously it isn’t. The only error is yours.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/10/rich-state-poor.html#comments

Thomas – given that Franc writes specifically about the Democrats being the “party of the rich” it is eminently and abundantly clear what sense of the word “constituency” he is using here. Please don’t be silly.

either that, or

the people in Blue states are good with the economy because we are Democratic.

Well, first of all the rich are increasingly likely to vote Democratic—and the trend is stronger than with poor voters for the simple reason that poor voters already were in the Democratic camp whereas rich voters have been changing their party identifications.

Furthermore, it should go without saying, but politicians care about the rich and poor for different reasons—the poor for their votes alone, but the rich more for their contributions than their votes. So the rich don’t have to form a large percentage of the Democratic base in order for the Democratic politicians to cater to them (in fact, rather obviously, the top 10% richest voters can’t form a large percentage of anybody’s base—there aren’t enough of them).

The Democrats have particular bases of support among the rich (Hollywood, trial lawyers, Silicon Valley) and they take care of them. And what about hedge fund managers? Hedge fund managers tend to be the types who contribute lavishly to both parties (and especially to whoever’s in power) so they have chits to call. Hence the inability of Congress to pass the votes to close the hedge fund ‘loophole’.

And consider AMT reform, which is linked to closing the hedge fund loophole. Democrats are keenly interested in reforming the AMT even though it affects upper income voters—because it tends to hit their upper income voters more heavily than Republican upper income voters:

“The focus on the AMT is hardly surprising, given that victims of the tax have been concentrated in high-cost urban areas such as Washington, New York and San Francisco—places that tend to vote Democratic. Rangel, Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the presumptive House speaker, all represent states hit hard by the AMT, which is sometimes called the “blue-state tax.” To map states with the highest concentrations of AMT taxpayers is to draw bull’s-eyes over California and the Northeastern seaboard”.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/10/AR2006111001800.html

Addendum: Unproductive.

Also, there is a legitimate question about whether the Democrats are indeed being Wobbled By Wealth.

And surely, the worst aspect of this entire issue is the fact that the Democrats are indeed protecting the mega-millionaire hedge fund managers’ unreasonable, illogical, unjustified whopping tax privilege.

It’s also been noted that the talent tends not to be as allergic to taxation as the rest of the rich, due perhaps to their perception that their good fortune had as much to do with birth or luck as virtue. (Cite needed)

We can define the Democrats negatively as the party of those who are not greedy, racist, sexist, or fearful, which doesn’t exclude a lot of fairly affluent folks.