[losteric]

I blame the Cold War and decades of counter-collectivism propaganda.

An entire generation grew up in that atmosphere... they became the nation's teachers and leaders, influencing the opinions of subsequent generations. Game theory shows small changes in behaviors and opinions can have massive downstream impact, as demonstrated by this interactive demo: http://ncase.me/trust/ (HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14864183).

I haven't had any luck finding studies or data on this topic. The key would be voter turn-out for each party bucketed by age for the past few decades of elections.

If my propaganda theory holds true, the Republicans would see a popularity boost that ages at roughly 1 year per year. That segment would be ~50-80 around now, which does match recent voting data (older voters consistently skew conservative) - but historical data is needed to track a bulge over time and disprove the "naive youngsters vote liberal" narrative.

[cmurf]

This is fair. My dad grew up in the Great Depression in farmland, and the Federal government stepping in is what prevented widespread starvation. And during the dust bowl, again the Federal government came in and taugh everyone better soil management techniques. And from that, most people in that time and place were Democrats and expected that the government helped fund and organize the things that needed to be done on a grand scale that individuals couldn't do, nor did insurance.

Reagan did a lot of damage to the perception of what government should do and how citizens need to hold it accountable. Instead he described it in terms of being inherently bad, which is demonstrably b.s. but the country pretty much bought it as evidenced by his election, the ensuing cut in taxes, the near total stop in investments made to large scale private and and public infrastructure spending, and a shift to hoarding wealth rather than keeping it moving so that everyone benefits from it.

[pm90]

Its hard for people like me to imagine what Reagan was as a president since his presidency cam before my birth. From what I've read though, it sounds like he had little understanding of how economics and government really worked and played on the fears of whites against the "welfare queen" phenomena, leading to significant defunding of mental health institutions leaving a lot of those people on the streets (i.e. homeless).

If he also caused a step back from large scale public investments... wow, this man has certainly done a lot of damage.

[cmurf]

In my view Trump has already done more damage in 8 months than 8 years of Reagan, and in the end will far exceed it. The sheer damage being done at the State Department alone will take a decade to recover from already.

[SpikeDad]

If you think State has been damaged you really don't want to see what's happening at EPA.

[cmurf]

I'm aware. But the damage EPA can do in the short term is limited compared to what's already happening as dictator think Trump is on their side, and we pull back from generations of aggressive rhetoric and policies supporting free speech, free press, due process, minority rights, and so on. Non-combatant will lose their lives because the U.S. is turning its backs on problem areas of the world, and it's not going to result in some incentive for those people to violently overthrow their dictator.

[summer_steven]

> [I blame the lack of] decades of counter-collectivism propaganda.

How do Eastern European countries fare then? How about China?

[losteric]

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure what comparison you're drawing here.

(Note: I specifically said collectivism, not Communism)