One-Two-Three-Four….Do More Declare A Class War?

ThisIsNotAFeistSong

GordonCampbell’sTrueLegacyVille

At least a couple of more folks in the Lotuslandian Bloggodome today began to wonder if, perhaps, the HST referendum vote breakdown was all about class.

****

First it was Ian Reid, who used the recent Ipsos-(no relation)Reid poll numbers to make his point:

Ipsos Reid released a poll this morning on the HST Referendum. The first question perfectly describes why the yes side carried the day, despite being outspent about 40 to 1.

1. In your opinion, what will be the impact of scrapping the HST and returning to the GST/PST system on each of the following? Select one response per row.

	Positive Impact	Negative Impact	Neutral/No real impact	Don’t Know
You and your family	43%	25%	24%	8%
The overall BC economy	17%	49%	20%	14%

43% said scrapping the tax would be good for them and their family. And a similar 49% said it would be bad for business. In other words those voting to scrap the tax voted for their personal economic interests ahead of the BC economy……

{snippety doo-dah}

…People didn’t vote against BC’s eonomy, They didn’t vote against “economic experts” as the Globe suggested this morning. They didn’t vote against rich people.

They voted in their own interest.

And isn’t that what you are supposed to do?

Now I get what Ian is saying.

But even if they did it only in isolation, in terms of their own situations and interests (ie. no one was out to deliberately ‘screw’ someone else), it still means that a whole lot of folks were voting by socio-economic class.

Paul Willcocks, who invoked both the riding income level/voter preference correlation and the I-R poll results cited by Mr. Reid above, to come to the conclusion that this just might signal a seismic shift in public opinion:

The HST referendum result might signal a greater political shift, something beyond a tax revolt or anger over an arrogant, untrusted government.

The idea of class-based politics, for want of a better term, after being considered largely irrelevant for the last 60 years, could matter once again…

****

Now.

This is all fine and good.

And as I’ve already said a bunch of times, I really do think it mattered in this specific instance where the folks who were personally affected most did vote to get rid of an egregious tax shift while the more well-off, who the tax shift was affecting the least, were happy to vote to keep it even if their reasons for doing so was the fact that they perceived to be a greater ‘government revenue enhancement’ issue.

So…..

It is going to be interesting to see if the majority of British Columbians in the middle (class?) can still be, like our brethern to the South, bamboozled into voting in their own worst interests in the future.

Because if they refuse to head back over to the ‘screw me, please!’ side of the fence I do think it could really affect general election voting patterns.

To be honest, though, I dunno which way it will go.

However, a number of folks in the Lotuslandian bloggodome including now, Harvey Oberfeld, have noted that the propaganda pushback has truly begun in earnest to try and push folks back towards that mystical corp-friendly swamp-land where their own worst interests lie.

Which is encouraging.

What is more discouraging, however, is the fact that this transparent propaganda pushback is not being called out for what it is by the proPundits who are most able to move (or stabilize) public opinion in this province.

Which, I suppose, in and of itself, probably says something pretty important.

OK?

Latest

By RossK