You ask, I answer– part deux

Non-partisan before 5pm, Damon writes:

You, being a [social] scientist, would know better… but are political attitudes stable over time? what about all those hippies who were for RFK in their 20′s but then got mortgages etc, and bought into Reaganomics?

The whole people get more conservative as the age and pay taxes is largely a myth.  Admittedly, we’ve only got one really good longitudinal study of American’s political attitudes over the life cycle, but there’s very strong stability after attitudes become more firm one’s 20’s.  Sure, people change as they age, but mostly there’s a lot of stability.  Most of those 1960’s hippies grew up to be Elise and Stephen Keaton– not Reagan voters.

I think there’s a tendency to think people get more conservative as the age because old people always seem to be more conservative than young people.  But the old people haven’t really changed, society– certainly when it comes to things like race and social issues– just keeps getting more liberal.