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>Poster is crazy to think liberals will EVER support a hugely regressive tax scheme. I just want to make one glib comment here about liberals and regressive ta

>Poster is crazy to think liberals will EVER support a hugely regressive tax scheme. I just want to make one glib comment here about liberals and regressive taxes. The Northeast is generally thought of as the most liberal part of America (aside from coastal California maybe). So why is it that I've seen far more toll roads and bridges there than in any "red state"? I think some liberals make some good points about regressive taxes, but in practice, it seems like the liberals who actually get to power just love them.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> The Northeast is generally thought of as the most liberal part of America (aside from coastal California maybe). So why is it that I've seen far more toll roads and bridges there than in any "red state"? Because the Northeast was also the most heavily developed area of the country before the Interstate Highway System came about with a funding system that made non-toll roads the norm for new limited-access highways (funding rules which have since changed, weakening the financial incentive against new toll roads.) Modern political orientation has little to do with it: outside the Northeast, the people trying to introduce toll roads where they haven't been in the past are conservatives, the people opposing them are liberals.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Ok, but that was well over a half century ago. The liberals have had more than enough time to eliminate these horribly regressive tolls which only hurt working class people, so why haven't they? Why are we still paying ridiculously-high tolls on bridges that are falling apart because they're so old?
xiaoma 11y ago
>The Northeast is generally thought of as the most liberal part of America (aside from coastal California maybe). I sure don't think of the northeast that way. I see it as fairly conservative both in politics and business. One data point is that it wasn't anywhere in the northeast that first legalized weed. It was Colorado and Washington, followed by Oregon and Alaska. Another data point is that people wear jeans or shorts at work in Silicon Valley (or Socal, Oregon, Colorado, etc) whereas they're far more likely to be required to wear suits in the north east. The northeast is very urban, which has some overlapping effects with but is still very different from actually being liberal. Change is mostly driven by the west. It's just that the change reaches the dense cities of the northeast more quickly than the rural areas in between.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Excellent point, but good luck convincing all the Hillary-voting, suit-wearing Democrats in the northeast that they're not "liberal". Just look at the other responses to my post here even. But agreed, there's absolutely a huge difference between west coast liberals and east coast "liberals". The marijuana issue is an interesting thing to look at too, when you compare to red-vs-blue state maps. The "liberal" northeast still hasn't legalized weed (not even Vermont), whereas Colorado was one of the first two, and CO is a rather purple state (CO Springs is a ridiculously conservative place), and Alaska is very much a red state, being the place that elected Palin governor. It really seems to come down to social libertarianism versus authoritarianism. The "liberals" in the northeast want to ban sodas for your health, whereas the liberals in the west want to legalize drugs.
  - zardo 11y ago
    That just gets to how silly the idea is that you can map policy opinions onto a single principal component and get good separation.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      Exactly; we try to distill everything political in this country into two "teams", but the problem is that the teams are not even remotely homogeneous or agreed on policies. Trump vs. establishment GOP and Bernie vs. establishment DNC show this.
criley2 11y ago
Could you compare Toll Roads and Population Density? Then, when you realize that toll roads are correlated with population density, perhaps you could realize that toll roads are then only also correlated with politics of state, not caused by them. For example: If liberals loved toll roads, then California, Oregon and Washington would be full of them. But only the NorthEast is, right? So your hypothesis falls apart here anyway.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  No, my hypothesis is correct. West coast liberals are nothing like east coast liberals. East coast liberals are authoritarians; west coast liberals are not. There's a reason all the states which have legalized marijuana are west coast states, and not northeast ones. This also happens to correlate with toll roads, and it's not a coincidence. BTW, the population density of metro areas in California is higher than most places in the northeast.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> The Northeast is generally thought of as the most liberal part of America (aside from coastal California maybe). So why is it that I've seen far more toll roads and bridges there than in any "red state"? Because the Northeast was also the most heavily developed area of the country before the Interstate Highway System came about with a funding system that made non-toll roads the norm for new limited-access highways (funding rules which have since changed, weakening the financial incentive against new toll roads.) Modern political orientation has little to do with it: outside the Northeast, the people trying to introduce toll roads where they haven't been in the past are conservatives, the people opposing them are liberals.

Grishnakh 11y ago
Ok, but that was well over a half century ago. The liberals have had more than enough time to eliminate these horribly regressive tolls which only hurt working class people, so why haven't they? Why are we still paying ridiculously-high tolls on bridges that are falling apart because they're so old?

xiaoma 11y ago

>The Northeast is generally thought of as the most liberal part of America (aside from coastal California maybe). I sure don't think of the northeast that way. I see it as fairly conservative both in politics and business. One data point is that it wasn't anywhere in the northeast that first legalized weed. It was Colorado and Washington, followed by Oregon and Alaska. Another data point is that people wear jeans or shorts at work in Silicon Valley (or Socal, Oregon, Colorado, etc) whereas they're far more likely to be required to wear suits in the north east. The northeast is very urban, which has some overlapping effects with but is still very different from actually being liberal. Change is mostly driven by the west. It's just that the change reaches the dense cities of the northeast more quickly than the rural areas in between.

Grishnakh 11y ago
Excellent point, but good luck convincing all the Hillary-voting, suit-wearing Democrats in the northeast that they're not "liberal". Just look at the other responses to my post here even. But agreed, there's absolutely a huge difference between west coast liberals and east coast "liberals". The marijuana issue is an interesting thing to look at too, when you compare to red-vs-blue state maps. The "liberal" northeast still hasn't legalized weed (not even Vermont), whereas Colorado was one of the first two, and CO is a rather purple state (CO Springs is a ridiculously conservative place), and Alaska is very much a red state, being the place that elected Palin governor. It really seems to come down to social libertarianism versus authoritarianism. The "liberals" in the northeast want to ban sodas for your health, whereas the liberals in the west want to legalize drugs.
- zardo 11y ago
  That just gets to how silly the idea is that you can map policy opinions onto a single principal component and get good separation.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Exactly; we try to distill everything political in this country into two "teams", but the problem is that the teams are not even remotely homogeneous or agreed on policies. Trump vs. establishment GOP and Bernie vs. establishment DNC show this.

criley2 11y ago

Could you compare Toll Roads and Population Density? Then, when you realize that toll roads are correlated with population density, perhaps you could realize that toll roads are then only also correlated with politics of state, not caused by them. For example: If liberals loved toll roads, then California, Oregon and Washington would be full of them. But only the NorthEast is, right? So your hypothesis falls apart here anyway.

Grishnakh 11y ago
No, my hypothesis is correct. West coast liberals are nothing like east coast liberals. East coast liberals are authoritarians; west coast liberals are not. There's a reason all the states which have legalized marijuana are west coast states, and not northeast ones. This also happens to correlate with toll roads, and it's not a coincidence. BTW, the population density of metro areas in California is higher than most places in the northeast.