No Stupid Questions

This is a complex question, but up front first and foremost in any Capitalist country, voting will always benefit the rich, even FDR style Social Democracy came about as concessions to prevent revolution in the context of a decimated working class and a rising USSR.

People, generally, vote along their class interests, but these are handled in a different manner depending on which country you are in. Using the US as an example, the DNC caters to social progressivism, while the GOP caters to social conservativism. On foreign policy, the GOP and DNC are near identical, and when it comes to domestic economic policy, the DNC caters slightly more to urban voters while the GOP caters to rural voters.

This is all, however, in the context of parties that function as businesses that sell policy to Capitalists. Both parties serve Capital, because Capital is what holds real power. It holds power over the media, the state, everything.

The answer to how to fix this is getting workers to organize. When workers organize, they raise their social and class awareness and can accomplish far more than atomized individuals can.

Since I didn't see it listed yet, fear of change.

Some folks are just fearful of change.

Rarely is a change proposal black and white. We can show you good data to support the change. We can look at it from a reputable source. We can look at how the change affected others. We can agree it's most likely a good change.

But sometimes we fear it.

What if we're wrong?

The rich are clever and very well coordinated

Do we actually vote to benefit the rich?

Many vote for leaders that openly cater to the rich, but I don’t know that we actually consciously vote to deliberately help the rich.

Those elected people are the ones telling everyone that the rich are the job creators. They used to feed us the farce that trickle-down was viable, they don’t even bother with the lie anymore. The rich are just squatters on wealth. They get that wealth by consolidating businesses, hoarding assets like real estate, creating artificial scarcity, enshittifying everything, and squeezing labor for more productivity while expending massive effort to minimize overall compensation.

And they own the media. All of it. Even the “liberal” media is mealy at best about taxing wealth or anything critical of the uber-wealthy, anything right of center is openly against tax, particularly of anyone with wealth, making the wealthy the “victims” of the left’s ideas while the wealthy are just parasites victimizing us all.

All that aside, the real crux of the issue is identity politics. Being a sycophant of the rich is no longer any different than being a evangelical supply-side Jesus CINO, pro-gun, anti-government, anti-tax, anti-environmental regs, blah blah and all the rest of the mulish conservative BS.

They don’t actually care if we cater to the rich. They care that their team says we should bend over and give the rich everything. Just like their team says school shootings are an acceptable price for having your own personal arsenal, or spreading a potentially deadly disease is better than being inconvenienced by closed restaurants.

Obstinate tribalism has gleefully supplanted critical thought.

People get more upset about a bad friend than a real enemy.

They get manipulated about and distracted by certain issues. The people who want power know this and exploit topics such as guns, abortion, fear of crime, racism/nationalism, sexism, economic issues and taxes. Plenty of people vote republican because they have been convinced that Democrats will take their guns, allow in too many immigrants (with the implicit idea that immigrants are bad somehow), be worse on the economy, lower taxes, let criminals get off easy, reduce the influence of Christianity, and so forth.

There’s also the decades of propaganda about socialism and communism, and against social safety nets as well as government and anything run by the government vs a private entity. So basically, because they’re not very aware or well informed and all themselves to be convinced by propaganda.

They believe it will benefit them one day.

Two camps

1. They don't know any better.

Basically leftists-in-training that haven't read enough wikipedia articles on Reagan yet.

2. People voting and believing political opinions with their gut instinct

Don't bother, and if you see one with a nazi flag, punch them in the face.

Because our brains are not wired for the modern complex world. Most decisions we make, we make thanks to heuristics that are heavily exploited by other people.

Here are a few examples of what I've seen them do in the time I've been alive.

• Lowering the amount of educated people by various means such as cutting (on not properly increasing) funding, restricting access to it,...
• Limiting access to (somewhat) correct information by buying up news media outlets, severely influencing social media, telling people that their "alternative media" is the only way to get correct information, and so much more
• Actively pitting groups of people against each other, black vs white, immigrants vs citizens, women vs men,...

One reason I have not read yet: scapegoating. In my country, back in the early 2000s it was the "terrorists" who made it possible to enforce a few unpopular and unconstitutional policies. Nowadays, it is the "immigrants" who take our jobs (we have a job shortage), housing (which was sold off to investors) and health care (which was sold off to investors). Point to a group that cannot defend itself and people will vote in your favor.

What would be an example of this? It's not obvious to me that by simply voting in a manner that benefits "the rich" then also means it's against your own interests. When someone gains something it doesn't mean I must lose something in exchange.

It's hard to vote for one candidate that represents all your values or interests. Typically every candidate will be against your own interests in some manner. Preferential voting systems mostly curb this issue by allowing you to select many candidates in order of preference.

Because the rich do a LOT to make it turn out that way.

• News is largely controlled by capitalists.

• Education has been gutted in a lot of places to make way for private schools.

• Corporations can contribute tons of money to candidates. Setting aside the possibility that these are effectively bribes, even if that weren't the case, the candidates who get that money get to put out more ads and have more campaign infrastructure such as travel funds, staffers, etc.

• Various kinds of voter suppression.

• From the very founding of the country, the election system and government has been set up to hamper political participation. Obviously there was the fairly narrow franchise at the start. But even with that expanded, we have the electoral college, unequal apportionment, gerrymandering, first past the post, closed primaries, a court that's specifically there to slow down popular will, etc.

• Just being a representative "democracy" puts a barrier between people and the policies they want. You rarely if ever get to vote on policies. You have to vote for a candidate. And the candidate is a whole bundle of policies, but also a record, a personality, etc. So there can be all sorts of political messaging about candidates which has nothing to do with what their policies are. Because of the duopoly party system that is all but ensured by the aforementioned voting system, you aren't even going to have a candidate you can vote for that will represent your interests. And after all that, even if you manage to vote for someone who says they'll do the things you want... then they get into office and you're back on the sidelines. They go and do whatever it was they actually wanted to do, and you have fairly limited recourse for holding them accountable. The most you can do is decide to vote against them next election, but now you're back to square one.

• Broader, more participatory forms of political organizing have been violently repressed. Just look at the history of union busting or the police violence during the civil rights movement or even now, etc. In the workplace, where you're most likely to find others who share your class interests, your boss has a lot of control over you and it's in their interest to make sure employees don't talk politics and view each other as competition rather than potential allies.

• Along similar lines, racism has been used as a tool to divide people who would otherwise share class interests so they wouldn't focus their attention on capitalists.

Moral of the story: There is a long history of people struggling against capitalists for a better life and an equally long history of capitalists using every trick in the book to keep them from that goal. The political landscape you see today is the result of that history. Learn from it.

The root of it is that we don't teach skepticism or critical thinking in public schools. Seriously.

Question authority. Question everything. But especially question authority. They rarely have your best interests in mind.

Something to consider is not everyone's interests are aligned. I'm not American so I can't comment on that specific area of the world, but that sort of question comes up a lot in my country and one of the biggest reasons is one party wants to make my hobbies/job harder and the other doesn't. So I don't think I'll vote for them. Now you, someone who doesn't have said job or hobbies, probably doesn't give a fuck about that. So you support said positions.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

--Lyndon B. Johnson

Manufactured consent

Bexause you have a two party system where both sides are corrupt

Kind of an indirect answer, but I've heard people state that they vote against their own personal beliefs because they think that there needs to be a balance between "good and bad". Obviously, this is complete bullshit. Even if there should be a "balance", we already have enough problems as is, we don't need the government making it worse.