Yahoo Answers - for James

I can understand your frustration, James, though perhaps you are a little hypocritical to go and talk trash about your liberal friends on Yahoo! Answers. I suppose I will start this by answering your actual question.

Why are academics so liberal?
I am hoping here you aren't using the word 'liberal' as an insult, James. But the fact is that academia is a place of knowledge and learning, and attracts people who solve their problems with logic, reason, and experimentation, treat others equally and with respect, and often live on meagre means (see the stereotypical ramen-eating college student).

What's the deal with the 1%?
While you said that the people you research with make out just fine, this isn't true for everyone, and it's not wrong to defend the people who are not as well off as you or them. And they're not wrong about there being a richest 1% of people, James, the richest 1% in America owns 37% of its total wealth. The Koch brothers are literally worth $21.5 /billion/ dollars, each. That's $43 billion dollars total. In 2007, the top 1% of America owned 42.7% of its total income, and the top 20% owned 93%. That means that 80% of /the entire population of the country/ earned only 7% of the wealth made in it. It's not hard to understand why people who have to struggle to put food on the table are resentful of people like Mitt Romney, who has millions of dollars in offshores accounts so that he doesn't have to pay his fair share of taxes on it (which are extremely low for him, and I might note that the times of highest economic prosperity in the US were the times when the taxes on the rich were greatest), and was planning on putting an elevator for his cars in his house at a time when many Americans could not even afford one (a house, that is). Or you could look at the billionaire co-founder of Facebook: Eduardo Savarin, who came to the United States to avoid a kidnapping plot by a ransom gang, went to some of the best schools in the country, made billions of dollars off his shares in Facebook, then moved to Singapore and renounced his U.S. citizenship so that he would not have to pay taxes on it all when Facebook went public. It was so appalling that the Ex-Patriot Act was proposed, to ban people like him from ever entering the country again. He came to America, learned what we could teach him, took as much money as he could get, and then bailed out before he would have to give some of it back in return. That's not to mention the current conservative campaign to undermine the economy and put a Republican in power in order to pass ridiculous laws favoring the richest people in the country and oppressing everyone else. In Michigan, Governer Rick Snyder implemented the emergency manager law, which essentially allows him to declare a fiscal emergency in a city or board and appoint an emergency manager, who is given absolute and total control over it, including rezoning it at will or even dissolving it completely if he chooses. To clarify, the people ruled by the emergency manager have absolutely no say in the matter; democracy is suspended. Or you could look at Representative John Boehner of Ohio, who, while jumping on the conservative Obama-hassling bandwagon, has yet to propose a single jobs bill during his term, and as far as I know, for his 27 years in office. In fact, Christ Matthews used to sign off his show by asking, 'Where are the jobs, Speaker Boehner?' It's also worth noting that if Republicans weren't dead set on denying every. single. last. thing. that Democrats dare to propose, we would have been out of the recession a long time ago (but of course, they are doing it intentionally, because having a poor economy is a death sentence for a president trying to get re-elected. It's a common theme of Republican politics to work towards their own interests and not care who gets hurt). There is so much more of this stuff out there, this is only what I remember off the cuff, and not even touching on Bain Capital, or oil companies, or Wall Street, which are fantastic examples of why government regulation is badly needed. Do your research, James!

Why do they make fun of religious people?
I, too, believe that those who choose to follow a religion have the right to do so, and I am glad that they do so if it brings them happiness and meaning. However, I think the problem with religion is summed up well in the first link in the sources box.
Frankly, it sounds like your communist, atheist research-mates are just a bunch of posers. Hopefully you can remind them that every single implementation of communism was a horrible failure, and every communist government has oppressed its people in appalling ways. Not that it's likely they actually believe in it, they sound like hipsters (do they wear glasses they don't need? scarves in any weather? silly hairstyles? do they use words like "sheeple"?) As for not working, you should remind them that communism revolves around /everyone/ working, and the common people taking control of production to provide for everyone. It's entirely about fairness and equality and doing your fair share, which, considering human nature, is probably why it's failed again and again.

In conclusion, James, I doubt it's the ideas of those people that makes them jerks, nor their "liberalness", but rather the fact that they are big fat losers and belong to the same class as all the other big fat losers, regardless of what they believe in or spout at every opportunity. Hopefully I have answered your question thoroughly and you can walk away from this big long block of text enlightened, wanting to make a difference. I could never fit everything I'd want to tell you in a single answer, and I shouldn't hand all these things to you anyway. Good luck in your search for the truth, and with whatever you're researching, too.