Researchers Find a 'Liberal Gene' 841
An anonymous reader writes "Liberals may owe their political outlook partly to their genetic make-up, according to new research from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. Ideology is affected not just by social factors, but also by a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4. The study's authors say this is the first research to identify a specific gene that predisposes people to certain political views."
Re:Whew... So there is hope for a cure? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Informative)
That's actually kind of offensive. The liberals in this country have done most of the freedom-damaging legislating in this country. Big government etc.
The conservative base is about all we have protecting our freedom at this point.
Re:Whew... So there is hope for a cure? (Score:2, Informative)
Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as "very liberal" have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as "very conservative" have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence.
Except it holds true even before university.
Re:Looking at this another way: (Score:4, Informative)
Active Social Life is Key (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, they had friends and fun times growing up which leads them to be adventurous and outgoing.
Re:Yay! (Score:2, Informative)
No, we haven't. For the last two years we've had deadlock between liberal democrats and moderate democrats. With a super-minority, Republicans have had little to no influence on legislation. Hell, they can't even sit in on drafting sessions.
Re:there is a cure for it (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. All rich people are rich because they worked hard and all poor people are poor because they did not. And yes, how much you earn is perfectly proportional to how much you contribute to society. This explains Wall Street, the best and brightest of your great nation, perfectly.
After all, it makes much more sense to let the country's infrastructure fall apart and the children of the working poor be left uneducated, than to pay taxes to invest in the country you live in. The tax money you save can be used to pay for a business class flight out of the country when it turns into shit. You can then retire and enjoy functioning infrastructure built with other people's tax money.
It really does make complete sense from an individual perspective. I guess progressivism fails because it assumes that people can actually care about anyone but themselves.
Re:Oh, just great (Score:5, Informative)
From the discussion section at the end (emphasis mine):
For most traits, the effects of individual genes are too small to stand out against the combined influence of all other genes and environmental factors. Thus, our p-value of 0.02 on a sample of 2,000 individuals should be treated cautiously. The expectation in genetics is that only repeated efforts to replicate associations on independent samples by several research teams will verify initial findings like these. Thus, perhaps the most valuable contribution of this study is not to declare that ‘‘a gene was found’’ for anything, but rather, to provide the first evidence for a possible gene-environment interaction for political ideology.
Contrast this with TFA:
The study's authors say this is the first research to identify a specific gene that predisposes people to certain political views.
I hate it when this happens, makes people dumb.
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)
And all the Patriot Act sunsets removed by who? OH! Right! Obama.
George Bush was no more conservative than Obama is. Stop thinking in terms of Donkeys and Elephants. Think more government and less government.
Expand your political spectrum a bit to actually include liberty. Nothing that George Bush did, with the exception of striking back at the people that attacked us on 9/11, had anything to do with liberty and less government.
You are right to identify Obama as a conservative, he is moderate conservative, well to the right in many areas compared with, say, Richard Nixon. His health care reform plan is very similar to Mitt Romney's for example, and much more conservative than Nixon's plan (not enacted due to the collapse of his presidency). In the Eisenhower era he might well have been a Republican. (Which puts paid to the utterly-disconnected-from-reality ranting about him being a "socialist" much less a Marxist).
Bush was/is however far more right wing than Obama. Being right-wing is not the same thing as being conservative. The right wing radicalism of the "Tea Party" (seeking to remove constitutional amendments, or else suspend their effect?) is not conservative at all.
Re:Oh, just great (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Informative)
I just read Richard Nixon's proposal for health care reform. It's not at all conservative and I don't see how you can use it as a marker for the division between conservative and liberal.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/September/03/nixon-proposal.aspx [kaiserhealthnews.org]
Re:Looking at this another way: (Score:4, Informative)
Wow. First, I'm impressed that you make enough money to lose 40% to taxes. I've never known anyone to pay more than about 25% of their income in federal taxes (they made well over $500,000/yr). You probably have state taxes. MD was pretty rough at ~5-6% of actual gross income. Cali might be the worst - it's close to 8% (top bracket is 11% iirc).
Note: When I lived in CA a decade ago - before the Bush tax cuts - My wife and I made $120k+/- and had no deductions (renters, no kids). We paid 10% federal and 5-6% state on our gross income.
So you've got 25% fed, 8% state, and 7.5% FICA (I'm assuming you count that as a tax) - but that doesn't jive, 'cause once you hit $80-100k, FICA drops to just medicare which is only 1.5%. What else is getting taken out?
Here's what I don't understand. You asked for:
In this world I want something back that affects me directly and personally, i.e. a retirement plan that is immune from market manipulation, health care even when I'm unemployed, etc.
Well, the 7.5% you pay (and the 7.5% your employer pays) for FICA goes to the retirement plan that is immune from market manipulation known as Social Security. You also seem to want health care even when you're unemployed, and that's called medicaid. The check you get when you're unemployed? That's part of FUTA (and SUTA) which is a tax paid by your employer.
Before those taxes, nobody footed the bill. The rich and powerful didn't give a shot about the little guy. You were at the mercy of local charities, and people died of malnutrition and illnesses which were easily curable.
What bugs me is people who think they pay too much, but use an inordinate amount of taxpayer resources. People with children: I'm looking at you. Every child that gets sent to a public school costs about $10,000 a year. Attend an in-state college? That counts, too. I know very few people who actually pay more than $20,000 in taxes, but a lot of people who have 2 or more kids. And to top it off, for each kid you have, you actually get a tax *reduction*. One of my employees makes $50k, has two kids (not in school yet), and pays essentially zero federal and state income taxes. But I digress...
Re:there is a cure for it (Score:4, Informative)
A young teenage girl was about to finish her first year of college. She considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat but her father was a rather staunch Republican.
One day she was challenging her father on his beliefs and his opposition to taxes and welfare programs. He stopped her and asked her how she was doing in school.
She answered that she had a 4.0 GPA but it was really tough. She had to study most of the time, and she seldom had time to go out and party. She didn't have time for a boyfriend and didn't really have many college friends because of spending so much time studying.
He asked, "How is your friend Mary?" She replied that Mary was barely getting by. She had a 2.0 GPA and studied harder than her, but couldn't study as much because she had to work for money. Between working and studying she never had time to go out and party. She didn't have time for a boyfriend and didn't really have many college friends because of spending all her time working to pay her tuition and books.
Dad then asked his daughter why she didn't help her friend out with her tuition and books, since her grandfather's inheritance had left her well off.
The daughter angrily fired back, "That wouldn't be fair! It's MY money!
The father slowly smiled and said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."
Re:Whew... So there is hope for a cure? (Score:3, Informative)
Taxis and buses could do the exact-same job, and they are profitable.
No, they don't do the exact-same job. I can't reasonably take a taxi from Boston to Washington DC, and taking that trip on a train vs a bus is a pretty different experience in terms of reliability, comfort, and throughput.
Yeah I've looked at the numbers for my area (Baltimore). The number of Amtrak riders is 0.1% of the total number of daily commuters
Yeah, but you're talking about commuters in Baltimore. What are you going to do when the Amtrak train lets you out in Penn Station, take the light rail? The problem isn't the train, the problem is that you live in fricken Baltimore.
I agree with this point, but you'll notice those routes never get shutdown.
Yes, and part of the reason is because the point isn't necessarily to be profitable, but to provide a public transportation option.
The C64 is an old obsolete technology, and so too is the train, because it's tied to steel rails and can't go anywhere but where the rails lead it.
That's madness, frankly. It's like saying planes are an obsolete form of transportation because you can only go to other airports. Or saying Internet backbones are obsolete because they don't cover the last mile. Aside from shipping on water, rail is the most energy efficient form of travel. Newer trains can go hundreds of miles per hour much more safely than anything on a road.
I can hop in my car right now, and drive to the beach, without having to check schedules. I can even do it in the middle of the night, when trains do run.
I can hop on a train and go to the beach right now, without having to check schedules. I can do it in the middle of the night, because the trains run 24/7. And I can do it without spending tens of thousands of dollars on a car, paying for gas and maintenance, and buying car insurance. And if I get drunk on the beach, I can get back home without driving drunk. Don't blame the technology because your city sucks.
Re:there is a cure for it (Score:2, Informative)
And then she shot back, "these two things aren't even remotely comparable, you nitwit." The father's smile quickly vanished from his face.
She never spoke to her father again, due to his poorly reasoned attempts to control her.
--Jeremy