Martin, the problem I have with those studies is how they define a conservative. As a person who took econometrics in college, I know how easily flawed that data is. For example, many people might think I'm conservative because I'm NOT liberal. But I'm no where near conservative but I would be defined that way in that study simply because I'm "against" the use of misallocation towards welfare. Those studies are rather useless and usually are generated to serve some political end. Logically we can deduce that "being" liberal is actually more optimal for most billionaires in terms of their own personal utility. Once you are rich, you want the government to protect you and you are indifferent if others can become rich themselves. It's only when you are in the middle class that you hope to have all the resources to become rich hence why there is such a strong lean in this country for the middle class towards the right. Usually the extreme ends of the spectrum are going to be center left as they should be, it's the most optimal strategy.
But measuring who qualifies as a conservative or liberal in terms of studies is completely bogus. I would wager Martin that if you looked at the coefficients used in that study and looked at their p-values individually you would see all of them showing little to no statistical significance. I know because I actually have DONE those regression studies.
As to making government better....LOL. Martin, I always applaud people with good intentions but talk about wasteful efforts. Don't try to make gov't better, just try to make the game more fair. Usually that means distributing power away from the gov't back to the people. But not through the means of the gov't. In other words, don't let the gov't allocate power back to the people by their own proxy. Because they will just give power to those that will hand it back to them and round and round we go.
