[mason240]

>What makes progressive social policies (ignoring loaded issues like reproductive options and gun control) so distasteful to some of those who would most benefit?

The unsupported assumption here is that those policies would be beneficial.

[nitrogen]

Let's look at a specific policy, then, such as a universal basic income (that means no means testing, no policing of morality, no step-wise dropoffs in benefit as income changes). Most of the working class would receive the same net income, or more. There would be no more income-driven involuntary homelessness. There would be less incentive to avoid working part time because UBI benefits would still be paid. The UBI would be funded by the surplus productivity that results from automation and consolidation (i.e. professionals and corporations pay higher taxes).

What factors (emotional, moral, intellectual, cultural, derived from propaganda, whatever) feed into a decision to support or not to support UBI, as an example?

[dragonwriter]

> There would be no more income-driven involuntary homelessness.

Well, I strongly doubt that a UBI that could actually achieve that is actually sustainable in the near term, especially absent a concrete policy that prevents zoning and other related policies from being used to prevent adequate housing affordable to those made more theoretically able to afford it by the UBI from being produced.

And I'm kind of an enthusiastic backer of UBI as a general concept after spending considerable time looking into it and thinking about how to make it work; I suspect that a lot of the working class is going to be even more skeptical of "free money" promises to start with.

[Kalium]

Often the policies ignore basic differences in expressed values. UBI is cast as a change to improve their lives. The problem is that we're talking about populations whose political memories can be neatly summarized as "Someone promised to improve my life with a policy, then things got worse".

At the core of it, they don't trust you. Nothing you can say matters after that.

[mason240]

UBI isn't a policy being discussed by anyone in the mainstream, most people wouldn't even know what it is.