The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics

by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

From the perspective of this book, so-called liberals and so-called conservatives appear simply to have carved out separate electoral niches that give them a good chance of winning office. Democrats in the United States like to raise taxes on the rich, improve welfare for the poor, and seek heavy doses of benefits for the middle-class swing voters. Republicans in the United States like to reduce taxes on the rich, decrease welfare for the poor, relying on back-to-work programs instead, and, similarly, look for a heavy dose of benefits for the swing middle voters. Many of the taxing and spending policies, pork-barrel programs and the like, are simply private goods distributed to the relevant party’s coalition of essentials. Both parties pay special attention to the middle-class because there are an awful lot of middle class voters and they can be tipped either way. They like to define the rich—those who might be asked to pay higher taxes—as anyone whose income is higher than their own. They like to think of welfare payments as rife with fraud and cheating that needs to be ferreted out. And they are very happy to have government programs that disproportionately benefit them—no surprise there—such as tax deductions on mortgage interest, expanding Medicare benefits, subsidies for university tuition for their children, and increases in social security payments even in the absence of inflation.