Liberals Only Why Do Republicans Misunderstand Economic Fairness

Do liberals understand conservatives better than conservatives understand liberals?

No.There are probably a lot of ways to break this question down. One of them has been studied, and it’s the other way around,with conservatives on average much better at understanding liberals:(1) When asked to fill out a survey about their values, and then fill out another survey describing what your political opposite says they value, conservatives are better than liberals. This doesn’t get into underlying subtleties, it doesn’t weed out misinformation — even at the surface level, liberals tend not to understand conservative values.Conservatives tend to have a large set of values than liberals: liberals stick to compassion, fairness and a particular definition of freedom. Conservatives also directly value leadership/followership, loyalty to your community, and sanctity (it’s hard to label these, but the surveys show clear patterns even if the labels aren’t clear). Liberals tend to misunderstand those values.See Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, p.287, orLiberals Don’t Understand ConservativesIt’s quite likely that this lack of knowing your opponent is part of why on surveys that are issue-by-issue liberals tend to do better than election-by-election: in surveys significant majorities generally want pre-existing health issues covered, don’t want kids separated from their families, are fine with very minimal gun regulation, but Democrats can’t seem to build this into winning campaigns.(2) A second way that liberals or conservatives could misunderstand each other is the difference between voters (like family members) and political leaders.I think, again, conservatives are better at understanding liberals than vice-versa, partly because there is less of a division between candidates and voters on the left: at least so far, the psychological studies of Obama, the Clintons or Sanders are likely to show up broadly similar patterns as their voters. For conservatives, there is often a big gulf: for example, it’s pretty easy to imagine that Trump wouldn’t have voted for a candidate like Trump, he might well hate a similar person who beat him out to the role of being leader.When liberals decide that their conservative uncle has Trump’s values because he voted for Trump, this tends to be a misunderstanding; again, much of why Trump is in office is from Democrats not figuring out the real values of voters who are frustrated with Democrats.See: The Authoritarians by Bob AltemeyerThere are probably lots of other ways to understand and misunderstand each other…

Do liberals care more for the environment than the economy?

I can't speak for all liberals, but as I understand it, generally liberals care about both.Many conservatives care about both as well.Liberals differ generally in one or both of these ways:Liberals do not trust private industry to self regulate their practices enough to preserve the environment to an acceptable degree. “Acceptable” being a subjective term depending in the individual. They support more government regulation to enforce standards. Conservatives believe industry should have greater flexibility to self regulate. They see this as more efficient and thus stimulating for the economy. Government regulation is viewed as cumbersome and wasteful of resources in execution.Liberals can accept slower economic growth (or sometimes temporary decline) as an acceptable price to society if it will ensure proper stewardship of the environment. Conservatives can accept more (than most liberals) environmental degradation if the economy can be grown at a faster pace.A friend of mine who is a liberal once explained his view of it this way…“If a liberal owned Energy Inc. they would gladly accept a 20% margin down from 25% to cut emissions in half. A conservative would gladly raise his emissions by half if he could boost his margins from 25% to 30%”.A mutual friend and conservative countered…“If a liberal could reduce his emissions by half he'd gladly put 20% of his employees out of a job. If a conservative could give 20% more people a job, he'd gladly raise his emissions by half “.My takeaway from their views was essentially conservatives see economic growth as the best way to improve people's quality of life, and to do it for people RIGHT NOW. Liberals see unchecked pursuit of economic growth as the path to eventual environmental disaster and thus damaging to people's quality of life. Liberals would rather accept some economic sacrifice now for the good of people in the long term.Obviously, sometimes the “green option” can be the most economic option. The disagreements usually start when the “dirty option” is the most economic option.

Is the statement “Liberals think conservatives are evil. Conservatives think liberals are stupid” accurate?

Accurate, but over-simplified.I think Jonathan Haidt does a good job when he discusses the differences in moral reasoning between those that, in the United States, we call liberals and conservatives. (The Righteous Mind - Wikipedia) Basically, while liberals base their morality on two foundations: Harm and Fairness. Conservatives use those two as well (though they tend to view fairness as proportionality rather than equality) but also consider loyalty, sanctity, and authority.So, what ends up happening a lot of time is liberals and conservatives generally want to reduce harm and encourage fairness. However, a liberal might view an a policy that does those two things good, while a conservative also weighs the policy through the filter of loyalty, sanctity, and authority. So, the liberal may end up thinking the conservative is evil for not the helping the individual and the conservative considers the liberal stupid because for trading a individual benefit for an injury to an authority providing support to many others.Take, very simply, the most charitable view from the left and the right about welfare payments. Liberals support them because they promote fairness by offering a boost to people who have generally been left behind by our economic system. Conservatives oppose them because they often damage other institutions—family and community, specifically—that offer support to far more people. But, because liberals and conservatives are often unable to understand the motivations of the other side, they often characterize their opponents arguments in the least charitable way. Conservatives see liberals as damaging more people by hurting the institutions than they help by direct payments: stupid. Liberals see conservatives denying help to those who have so little to support those who have a lot: evil.Personally, I think this has gotten worse as our culture has fragmented. It’s becoming easier and easier to only encounter those with whom you already agree. Watch the cable news network you agree with. Read the newspapers and magazines that you agree with. Live in neighborhoods full of similar people, follow similar people on social media, only visit web pages that you already agree with.