Will the parties switch economically?

[Kamala's side hoe]

GOP winning the middle 50% of the income distribution while Dems win the bottom and top 25% in a populiberal vs liberaltarian alignment doesn’t really involve this.

Would be trippy to see Dems win small business owners on top of big corporate interests in a full economic realignment though.

[Kamala's side hoe]

2. Another factor is family situation. Both in America and comparable western democracies, married people invariably vote to the right of single people. Family size is also a predictor, with larger families generally correlating with social conservatism and religiosity. But make no mistake, this also factors into economics. Married people are more likely to own a house, have more savings, etc even if their individual incomes are less than that of a college-educated professional who is single. Not only that, big families are an economic support system in their own right, reducing the appeal of a state-funded social safety net. It also creates a more inward focus. Again, a single, childless person living in the city may be more concerned about social welfare, but a married couple with three kids is more focused on the welfare of their own kids. So whereas person 1 might say "we need to spend more to help the homeless", person 2 might say "we need to tax less so I can better provide for my kids".

To this point btw, I think one of the genuinely worrying social trends is a decline in both romantic cohabitation and fertility among millennials and Gen Z, compared to previous generations. Ostensibly, this is bad for conservatives, if you accept my premise that married people with children are more right-wing than their single, childless counterparts. But what I worry more about is that this will just worsen polarization, particularly on gender lines. The stereotypical example (thinking especially about zoomers) would be like Andrew Tate fans who think women are stupid or whatever, and blue-haired feminists who think all men are horrible. If that's how single and childless people end up in this generation, it won't shift politics to the left or the right, it will only pour fuel on the culture war fires.

Part of why I want kids someday is not wanting the next generation of US citizens (and voters) to be dominated by religious conservatives a la Israel. I doubt any of my close (male, nonwhite, US-raised) friends feel the same way, but that might partly have to do with them not being the kind of person who would be part of this forum.

[Kamala's side hoe]

2. Another factor is family situation. Both in America and comparable western democracies, married people invariably vote to the right of single people. Family size is also a predictor, with larger families generally correlating with social conservatism and religiosity. But make no mistake, this also factors into economics. Married people are more likely to own a house, have more savings, etc even if their individual incomes are less than that of a college-educated professional who is single. Not only that, big families are an economic support system in their own right, reducing the appeal of a state-funded social safety net. It also creates a more inward focus. Again, a single, childless person living in the city may be more concerned about social welfare, but a married couple with three kids is more focused on the welfare of their own kids. So whereas person 1 might say "we need to spend more to help the homeless", person 2 might say "we need to tax less so I can better provide for my kids".

To this point btw, I think one of the genuinely worrying social trends is a decline in both romantic cohabitation and fertility among millennials and Gen Z, compared to previous generations. Ostensibly, this is bad for conservatives, if you accept my premise that married people with children are more right-wing than their single, childless counterparts. But what I worry more about is that this will just worsen polarization, particularly on gender lines. The stereotypical example (thinking especially about zoomers) would be like Andrew Tate fans who think women are stupid or whatever, and blue-haired feminists who think all men are horrible. If that's how single and childless people end up in this generation, it won't shift politics to the left or the right, it will only pour fuel on the culture war fires.

Part of why I want kids someday is not wanting the next generation of US citizens (and voters) to be dominated by religious conservatives a la Israel. I doubt any of my close (male, nonwhite, US-raised) friends feel the same way, but that might partly have to do with them not being the kind of person who would be part of this forum.

I get what you're saying, but it's not like kids always take up their parents' politics.  I'm sure a lot of good old fashioned Congregationalist Yankee Republicans thought their Puritan values would be passed on to their kids in the mid-20th Century.

I'm aware of how partisan realignments work, and I won't pretend to know what the parties will look like in 20-40 years time. I expect my hypothetical future children to disagree with me on some things by the time they're my age.

Re: laddicus finch's point- having and caring for children is probably a conservatizing force on the individual level, but given how strong polarization along educational attainment and population density is right now, I'm not sure how much this will affect partisanship among newer and future parents. The green urbanist in me would like to see a resurgence of families moving into denser, more walkable urban communities, regardless of what effect this might have on electoral trends in big city urban cores.

[Kamala's side hoe]

GOP winning the middle 50% of the income distribution while Dems win the bottom and top 25% in a populiberal vs liberaltarian alignment doesn’t really involve this.

Would be trippy to see Dems win small business owners on top of big corporate interests in a full economic realignment though.

I think this old forum Republican, JJ, once argued to me when I tried to categorize class structure in America that there really isn't "class" any more and that most decisions are now being made on a decentralized basis by an educated middle and upper-middle class. What this could mean is that we could face a future where there is still probably a class system, but with it being less of a ladder and more of a monkey bars type of deal with various groups enjoying various different types of privileges and responsibilities and the political discourse revolving around balancing their responsibilities in privileges in a way that keeps society stable and advancing.

What do you and JJ think this would look like in terms of how the parties would differ from each other?

[Kamala's side hoe]

GOP winning the middle 50% of the income distribution while Dems win the bottom and top 25% in a populiberal vs liberaltarian alignment doesn’t really involve this.

Would be trippy to see Dems win small business owners on top of big corporate interests in a full economic realignment though.

yeah, the very fact that Democrats do win the bottom 25% IMO is an argument that there's only so far Democrats can go in terms of being liberaltarian.

Liberaltarianism basically means an economic platform that appeals to both the top 25% and the bottom 25%, at the expense of the middle 50%. This already kind of exists with the blue state-red state divide; Solidly D states generally have more severe intra-state income inequality that reinforces left-of-center economic talking points.

[Kamala's side hoe]

GOP winning the middle 50% of the income distribution while Dems win the bottom and top 25% in a populiberal vs liberaltarian alignment doesn’t really involve this.

Would be trippy to see Dems win small business owners on top of big corporate interests in a full economic realignment though.

yeah, the very fact that Democrats do win the bottom 25% IMO is an argument that there's only so far Democrats can go in terms of being liberaltarian.

Liberaltarianism basically means an economic platform that appeals to both the top 25% and the bottom 25%, at the expense of the middle 50%. This already kind of exists with the blue state-red state divide; Solidly D states generally have more severe intra-state income inequality that reinforces left-of-center economic talking points.

But the wealthy people in states with high economic inequality are still more Republican than average for those states

Probably true but it depends on how you define "wealthy". Easier to make the case for $500k annual household income than $100k or $200k.

[Kamala's side hoe]

I think the Democratic establishment subconsciously wants the Democratic coalition to be led by and designed for affluent, college-educated whites, with black voters in a passive auxiliary role, with Hispanics, Asians, and younger and less affluent whites basically ignored. Such a coalition would allow them to cement their role as the small-c conservative, institutionalist role in American politics.

Maybe if this prediction (which would subvert the Democratic party’s brand of standing up for the less fortunate and standing up against nativism) comes to pass. Educational and occupational/industrial realignment alone don’t necessarily predict this.