Not voting self interest

I have a friend who is single, 45 years old and has a five-year-old daughter. Mary and all her friends vote Democratic.

Mary lives in the poorer section of a large California urban area because that is where she could afford to buy a home. She comes from a middle-class, well educated family. She went to a first-rate university and got her CPA license years later. She worked for a large CPA firm before venturing out to do her own work out of her house.

Mary earns between $60 and $80,000 a year. She pays roughly $600 a month for health insurance and $800 in taxes for Social Security. She also pays several thousand dollars a month in property taxes and her combined federal and state income taxes.

Mary knows that the Democrats have not voted to fix Social Security in the past five years. Social Security will be bankrupt before Mary collects. Mary and all her friends vote Democratic.

Mary knows that the Obamacare will not and cannot reduce her health care costs. Insurance based on actuarial costs for a person her age would be $90 a month. The rest of the insurance cost is for old people. Mary is middle-class and would never take her daughter or herself to public clinics which will be the alternative under Obama care. Mary and all her friends vote Democratic.

When Mary goes with her clients to IRS meetings she is confronted with an IRS agent who earns nearly twice as much as she does, has retirement benefits that exceed Mary’s current income, has lifetime health care and lifetime employment. Mary and all her friends vote Democratic.

Since Mary’s daughter was born she has paid over $1200 a month for part-time childcare so she can work during the day and will soon be paying even more for private schooling.  She cannot send her child to a public school since most are inadequate and dangerous.  Teachers unions, the most important supporters of the Democratic party, have stood in the way of school improvement for decades and in California are supporting more extreme progressive taxation on wealthy people which makes state tax revenue more volatile and schools more subject to severe cutbacks every time stock markets decline. Mary and all her friends vote Democratic.

The final blow, in my opinion, is that Mary has been, for professional reasons, expected to advise several of her clients to leave California because of their high tax liability. She lost those clients who also closed their small businesses because of California’s high personal income tax on high earners.  Mary and all her friends vote Democratic.