| -Caveat Lector-
US out of UN,
UN out of US.
Publication date: 10/04/2002
Who, us, conservative?
BY MICHAEL STOLL Of The Examiner Staff San Francisco, apparently, isn't as liberal as it
thinks it is.
Or at least it isn't as liberal as it used to be --
Tinseltown now wears the liberal crown, according to a recent survey by the
University of California.
How did the Bay Area lose its political claim to
fame? Researchers suggest the high-tech boom made all the nouveau riche here
forget about folks just struggling to get by.
In Los Angeles, by contrast, the growth in low-wage
jobs has led the poor and Latino immigrants to press for unions and government
programs.
Sure, San Francisco may get labeled as one of the
most left wing places on Earth. And it still may be on social issues such as
abortion, gay rights or affirmative action -- but not on economic ones.
Printer-friendly version In a telephone survey of
1,398 people held between July 2001 and January, 36 percent of Bay Area
residents put themselves in the top three most-liberal categories on a scale of
1 to 7. In the L.A. area, self-described liberals amounted to only 28 percent.
But on question after question, we scored less liberal than Angelinos:
-- Would you vote to be in a union? L.A.: 56
percent said yes. S.F.: Just 40 percent.
-- Should California increase the minimum wage from
$13,000 a year? L.A.: 82 percent agreed. S.F.: 74 percent.
-- Should California government do more to provide
adequate healthcare? L.A.: 74 percent thought so. S.F.: Only 67 percent did.
"It goes against the stereotype of Southern
California being really conservative," said Ruth Milkman, director of the UC
Institute for Labor and Employment, which produced the report. "And it certainly
goes against the conventional wisdom that liberalism is concentrated in the Bay
Area."
Milkman said income trends show why attitudes would
change.
The bottom fifth of California income earners saw
wages fall by 5.5 percent in the past decade, while the top fifth got an average
raise of 37.4 percent. Only in the past two years, since the Internet bubble
burst, have sky-high incomes started to come back to earth.
But there is a stark regional disparity. In L.A.,
the top fifth earned on average 25 times more than the bottom fifth. In the Bay
Area, that ratio was only 13.
That is what Milkman calls a "highly unusual labor
market." The Bay Area, including Silicon Valley, supports many high-paying jobs,
but the New Economy has been geographically isolated.
A spokeswoman for the California Republican party
eschewed the whole notion of "conservative" and "liberal" labels. Latinos, for
example, tend to be socially conservative and economically conservative, but
"see a bigger role for government in people's lives," Karen Hanretty said.
Margaret Weir, director of the Institute of
Industrial Relations at UC Berkeley, who thought up the study, she said the
results surprised her.
"Northern California has so much more of a
reputation of political liberalism," she said, but seems less attuned to the
need for government social programs.
But it's still all the Left Coast to most political
observers.
"I wouldn't read into these results that Northern
California is going to become sort of prime hunting territory for Republicans,"
Weir said.
"A nation without borders is not a nation."
--President Reagan
ab
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