Politics of highly materialistic Americans?

[ProgressiveModerate]

I'm talking about people who spend tons if not all their money on things like flashy designer clothes, expensive meals, sports cars, flashy modern homes, yatchs, the "best" and "most exclusive" parties ect for some sort of social status or approval. To be clear, one can be wealthy and not be materialistic or poor and materialistic, it really comes down to *how* you spend your money.

I feel like traditionally, when people think of materialistic folks they think of Hollywood celebrities, various types of musicians, and Social Media Influencers. As a whole these groups are traditionally associated with left-wing politics, though there def are tons of prominent right-wing and Trump-supporting celebrities.

However, when I think of places most associated with materialism, I think of Miami which definitely has a Conservative culture in recent years. Las Vegas also strikes me similarly. Tbf though, both cities as a whole still Lean D, but many of their wealthier enclaves are pretty Republican. Also you still have places like Hollywood, though even in LA, the collection of some of the wealthiest Beverly Hill precincts voted outright for Trump in 2020 and have generally been shifting right. Another place I think of (though it's not in the US) is Dubai, which tends to be associated with more Conservative politics, but again it's hard to gauge cause it's not in the US.

Again though, it's important to remember most materialistic people are not wealthy, the wealthy are just the most sensational cases, and I think the aforementioned places are moreso associated with the wealthy materialistic.

There's def an argument Trump himself has made highly materialistic people associate more with the Republican Party than in the past.

As a group, how do the most highly materialistic Americans vote?

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

When it comes to having money, "What did I do to deserve this?" = left, while "I busted my butt for 25 years to build this business!" and "I never once ate in a restaurant until I had paid off my 6 figure school debt and saved up enough to buy a house in NYC" = right.

I would argue they're more likely to be apolitical than not highly materialistic Americans, all else being equal.

I used to think of Skill and Chance's response to one of your PG&D threads as reflecting inherited vs self-made wealth, but upon rereading his post it sounds more like an explanation of the psychology behind having a certain political orientation than anything about how people got rich.

[mileslunn]

Logic would suggest Republican as at least of voting on purely self interest Republicans would be better for them as GOP has long been big on tax cuts for rich and one of the few GOP policies you can almost guarantee is lower taxes for wealthy.  By contrast Democrats tend to want to raise them or at least there is a risk of that.  On other hand a lot come from very blue areas so two probably mean its a mixed.

Beverly Hills may be a good place to look as while Biden won it, Trump got over 40% which was way higher than he got in neighboring municipalities and more in line with results in Orange County.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Logic would suggest Republican as at least of voting on purely self interest Republicans would be better for them as GOP has long been big on tax cuts for rich and one of the few GOP policies you can almost guarantee is lower taxes for wealthy.  By contrast Democrats tend to want to raise them or at least there is a risk of that.  On other hand a lot come from very blue areas so two probably mean its a mixed.

Beverly Hills may be a good place to look as while Biden won it, Trump got over 40% which was way higher than he got in neighboring municipalities and more in line with results in Orange County.

I feel like your sort of confounding wealth for materialistic, though the Beverly Hills example is good. I think trying to gauge the lower income hyper-materialistic types is harder because they don't really self-sort into different neighborhoods and also have a lot of conflicting incentives economically.

[Sol]

Beverly Hills voted the way it did because it has a very large and Republican voting Iranian Jewish community.