Why do wealthy, single women vote for Democrats?

R.R. Reno observes:

“Thus we have the seemingly odd political instincts of a single, 35-year-old McKinsey consultant living in suburban Chicago who thinks of herself as vulnerable and votes for enhanced social programs designed to protect against the dangers and uncertainties of life. Why would a woman whose 401K already exceeds $1,000,000 and who owns a condo worth almost as much be so concerned to expand public support for in-home care of the elderly? It’s because she’s not married and feels as though she’s going to have to take on all the responsibilities of life on her own—a prospect that is indeed daunting."
 
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/08/the-dilemma-facing-social-conservatives

She seems to think that if Republicans are in office they will somehow take away programs that help her?  She cares about the poor and thinks the GOP will slash benefits? 

I’d like to see the evidence that Republicans have ever NOT supported massive government spending (Obamacare was the first ever that didn’t have a single Republican vote). It’s a campaign lie that women and minorities are told to keep their vote. If they didn’t, all our debt and deficit would be only on the shoulders of the Democrats. Do you really want that responsibility? The best (and least) they’ve done is to vote against huge increases, but nothing ever decreases. The biggest social services president was GW Bush, until Barack Obama came along. His ARRA added $100 billion in federal aid to education in 2009, and yet when it wasn’t continued or increased, it’s called a cut and blamed on Republicans. Race to the Top is Obama’s program, but No Child Left Behind was Bush’s, both extravagant, wasteful interference in local education systems which now have to teach to the test.

If wealthy, white educated women are worried about their futures as they age, because they aren’t married, they need to be studying investments, markets, tax loop holes, etc., not supporting a president who cavorts with Hollywood celebs, lobbyists for banks, and Union officials and wants to take more of their hard earned money by raising tax rates or contemplating a wealth tax.

The federal government alone currently funds and operates 126 different welfare or anti-poverty programs. If even one is “cut” or “combined” there are screams of mean and stingy GOP, yet obviously they are not moving people up the ladder of prosperity (nor are they even included in studies of income, which they should be).

Medicaid and CHIP are the biggest with about 65,000,000 participants, and SNAP is next with about 46,500,000 (Oct. 2014)—and those don’t include Indian tribes who get cradle to grave medical support and a different type of nutrition support. SNAP has never come down after the big push of ARRA money to increase the rolls with more money for recruiting.  SNAP doesn’t include school lunch programs, or summer lunch programs, or breakfast programs, or WIC, or emergency food assistance, or commodity foods assistance, or special milk program (I think they had that even when I was in school) or farmers’ market programs, or community food projects. But name one that the woman in Reno’s example with a million in her 401-k would ever use, or even know anyone who used them. But she’s still afraid not to vote Democrat!

What happened from 1950 to 1965 was economic growth and big increases in family income. The transfers actually had a small effect on the rate of poverty in the War on Poverty. It just grew the government bureaucracy. The largest gains ever for the bottom quintile was before the War on Poverty. What happened after the War on Poverty was the slide in marriages and children being left in poverty.

By 1965 only 13.9 percent of American families were officially classified as poor, down from 32 percent in 1947 and 18.5 percent in 1959. The recession has been over for 5.5 years, yet the government is supplying about 32% of the income (in transfers) for the poor and the rate is still higher than in 1965. Lack of marriage of the parents is probably the biggest reason for children in poverty. Two adults working full time at minimum wage are well above the poverty line (although they might not get as much as those earning less because they might lose their eligibility for gov’t programs). Norma

http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato- journal/1985/5/cj5n1-1.pdf

http://www.heritage.org/childpoverty/united-states

http://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/rpt/2010-R-0235.htm

http://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/research/public_policy_institute/econ_sec/2013/income-and-poverty-of-older-americans-AARP-ppi-econ-sec.pdf