7 ms·

Those would solely be rural problems, and we have a long tradition of support the urbanite and crush the ruralite whenever possible, so it would be politically

by VLM 10y ago

Those would solely be rural problems, and we have a long tradition of support the urbanite and crush the ruralite whenever possible, so it would be politically consistent to do exactly that.

c3534l 10y ago
Eh, rural areas actually receive more in federal funding than they pay in taxes while paying less in taxes anyway due to decreased costs of living. Additionally, the US heavily subsidizes farming and funds infrastructure development for rural areas that are not available to more populated states and areas, such as gas, electric, and internet services. Economically speaking, rural areas also disproportionately benefit from projects like interstate highways, public water infrastructure, and bridges. Additionally, rural areas also consume, by far, the most in entitlement resources. And finally, rural areas are disproportionately represented in government, to the point that someone in a city like New York gets nearly half the amount of votes as someone in Montana, and also greatly suffering in the Senate which is not awarded on the basis of population. To sum up, rural areas pay no net taxes, receive economically beneficial subsidies and policies, and are given more political rights than people who live in urban areas. The idea that they're being screwed in a nation where they're the ones with all the control is absurd.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  I think the key observation is this: everything you say is true, and yet many rural areas still have terrible economies. It's hard to square that circle -- that rural areas are heavily subsidized but yet still economically depressed and under-served. Hence, comments like the one from VLM above. Of course, it all boils down to economic fundamentals: cities and metro areas create a network effect that's difficult or impossible to compete with, no matter how well subsidized rural areas are. The fact that rural areas suffer in spite of their greater representation and massive economic subsidies is a difficult pill for a person from a rural area to swallow. A "they are screwing us" mentality is a much more compelling narrative.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Are the subsidies over-rated? We have energy coops (which we pay for entirely); we have a road system (the most expensive parts used by everybody); there are some agricultural supports (insurance programs?) but only a tiny fraction of rural residents are in farming. What else?
    - throwaway729 10y ago
      > Are the subsidies over-rated? First, I don't think so. Second, an over-rated subsidy is still a subsidy. So even if they are over-rated, that's still no proof of VLM's statement -- it's more just looking the gift horse in the mouth. > We have energy coops (which we pay for entirely) This isn't true everywhere. > we have a road system (the most expensive parts used by everybody) Perhaps for the interstate system you could make this case. I'm not sure. Certainly there are cases where the interstate system inconvenience cities for the benefit of an extremely tiny but politically powerful rural district. The same happens with state highways. But at the state level, rural roads are heavily subsidized. State highways are typically extremely important to rural areas, and those are mostly funded by urban and suburban tax bases. > but only a tiny fraction of rural residents are in farming But farming is still very important to local economies in rural areas, even if it's no longer a major employer. Also, "some" is a bit of an understatement -- half a trillion in federal funds over half a decade. And that's just the main farm bill -- excluding other federal and state assistance programs. > What else? * Schools for sure. Most states heavily subsidize rural schools in their funding formulas. States and the federal gov't also subsidize rural schools through programs that are not even accounted for by these funding formulas -- e.g. tuition waivers and sometimes even salaries for teachers that teach in rural schools. * Federal and state entitlement programs -- this one isn't even close to debatable. * Political representation. Again, not even close to debatable. I consider this independently of all of the other indirect economic benefits that stem from the representation for a lot of reasons. To give one, the conservative social agenda disproportionately targets and complicates the lives of the non-white non-christians concentrated within cities.
      - stonemetal 10y ago
- VLM 10y ago
  Yet there's more to life than mere balance of transfer payments and related economic policy. How does your average Boston Clinton voting university academic look at, socially and culturally, someone like a Iowa Trump voting corn farmer? This is rhetorical, I know its with a level of disdain and hate and superiority complex like hasn't been seen since Jim Crow laws were a thing. And note before discussion subject escape velocity was reached, the sub topic was we can't gerrymander rural people into crazy new rules every time the map is redrawn because that would be unfair to them and there is no higher social caste in the USA than the highly respected rural hillbilly so obviously that's a non starter. Back to that topic, I'm surprised there's any opposition at all to some kind of gerrymandering of state borders.
  - srtjstjsj 10y ago
    You are drawing a parallel between (a) legalized discrimination and violence against people based on color of their skin, and (b) not caring enough to give even larger handouts to people who claim to be fiercely proud of their independence.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  > rural areas actually receive more in federal funding than they pay in taxes Citation needed. Inner cities consistently have higher poverty rates than rural or suburban areas.
  - cowsandmilk 10y ago
    > Inner cities consistently have higher poverty rates than rural or suburban areas. Citation needed. Urban areas consistently have more millionaires than rural areas. As to poverty rates, in the US, they are definitely higher in rural areas. For a citation, from the abstract of [1]: > Although a larger portion of the poor population resides in urban areas, poverty rates are higher and more persistent in rural areas, and research suggests poverty rates increase as rural areas become increasingly remote. Basically, urban areas have more poor people, but really they have more of all classes of people. If you go to Figure 1, you'll even see that the rate of poverty in category 0 (most urban) is lower than the rate of poverty in all rural categories (4-9)[1]. [1] https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/2942 https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/2942
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  A lot of the infrastructure in rural areas benefits cities, anyways. Having a good freeway between Chicago and Indianapolis helps those cities much more than the random cornfields the freeway happens to go through.
beachstartup 10y ago
> we have a long tradition of support the urbanite and crush the ruralite whenever possible er, what? the opposite is true. at the federal level we generally give more consideration to sub-urban and rural needs, which i agree with, because cities are social and economic bubbles.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  > cities are social and economic bubbles In what sense do you mean this? Taken as a comparative statement, I find it a pretty dubious assertion. Suburbs are sort of the ultimate bubble. They suffer from all of the typical things that make cities economic bubbles (a few major employers, geographic clustering based on income, ...), without any of the social or (typically but not always) racial diversity that's common in many cities. Oblig PG link is the one about schooling: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html The social bubble of rural areas is rather extreme -- white Christians are massively over-represented compared to the rest of the country and certainly compared to the rest of the world. The economic bubble of rural areas tends to be far worse than the economic bubble of cities, IMO. Cities can certainly be economic bubbles, but at least those bubbles are typically made up of multiple fairly large sectors. Rural areas tend to have between one and three non-service industries -- farming, maybe some natural resource extraction, once in a while a small hospital, and in very rare cases a major white collar employer in a single sector. The echo chamber is real. If we think in terms of politics, I never have a hard time finding conservatives talking politics in a bar in a city, but I've never once found a group of (US-style) liberals have a political conversation in a country bar. Cities might be as dark blue as the countryside is dark red, but the sheer size of cities means there are still far more conservatives in a given city than a typical rural area of similar size. Basically, my impression is that cities are only bubbles in-so-far as they contain representation of almost every cross-section of society -- including the cross-sections that dominate rural areas! Calling that a bubble when compared to suburban and rural areas bubbles seems... dishonest.
unethical_ban 10y ago
Besides it being a bad idea anyway, nothing you describe is a) backed up by fact or b) necessarily ethical, if true. Were the United States government to add a second sub-national set of borders for enumerated purposes such as infrastructure planning, etc., I expect a Constitutional amendment.
- gliese1337 10y ago
  > Were the United States government to add a second sub-national set of borders for enumerated purposes such as infrastructure planning, etc., I expect a Constitutional amendment. Those kind of already exist... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_district_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_district_(United_State... Special districts don't normally cross state lines, but they can.
op00to 10y ago
No, we don't. Source: Detroit, Newark, Camden, Hartford...
ap22213 10y ago
We urbanites call it gentrification. And, it's unavoidable under a market system.
Grishnakh 10y ago
No, if we redraw all the state borders, it should actually benefit the ruralites on average. The problem is, right now, the ruralites are lumped in with urbanites they don't agree with, and redrawing the borders would fix this. I'll give some examples: 1) New York. "Upstaters" are always complaining about NYC's influence on their politics and laws. With sensibly redrawn borders, NYC would be in its own state, combined with northern NJ, much of CT, etc. People in the rest of the state north of White Plains or so would now be in their own state. So they'd be able to make their own laws without any influence from people in NYC and its suburbs. 2) Chicago. People in southern Illinois have long complained about Chicago's influence on their laws. A redrawing of borders would probably group Chicago together with Gary IN, maybe Milwaukee, and southern IL would be a separate state (maybe combined with Cincinnati or other cities near there). 3) DC. What do the ruralites in far-west Maryland have in common with people in Baltimore or DC? Redrawing state borders would probably group that region in with WV or southwest PA, which they'd probably prefer. Also, people in southern and southwest Virginia complain about the people in NoVA. A redrawing of boundaries would surely group NoVA in with DC (and probably Baltimore), separating it from the rural parts of VA. So instead, the main urbanites the rural Virginians would have controlling their politics would be in Richmond, Roanoke, maybe Bristol, Charlottesville, and maybe the Hampton-Roads area (if that doesn't get combined with eastern NC instead). These are all cities that are much more reflective of rural Virginians' values than the DC area, and they'd probably be happier with the governance they'd get without NoVA voters.

by VLM 10y ago

Those would solely be rural problems, and we have a long tradition of support the urbanite and crush the ruralite whenever possible, so it would be politically consistent to do exactly that.

c3534l 10y ago

Eh, rural areas actually receive more in federal funding than they pay in taxes while paying less in taxes anyway due to decreased costs of living. Additionally, the US heavily subsidizes farming and funds infrastructure development for rural areas that are not available to more populated states and areas, such as gas, electric, and internet services. Economically speaking, rural areas also disproportionately benefit from projects like interstate highways, public water infrastructure, and bridges. Additionally, rural areas also consume, by far, the most in entitlement resources. And finally, rural areas are disproportionately represented in government, to the point that someone in a city like New York gets nearly half the amount of votes as someone in Montana, and also greatly suffering in the Senate which is not awarded on the basis of population. To sum up, rural areas pay no net taxes, receive economically beneficial subsidies and policies, and are given more political rights than people who live in urban areas. The idea that they're being screwed in a nation where they're the ones with all the control is absurd.

throwaway729 10y ago
I think the key observation is this: everything you say is true, and yet many rural areas still have terrible economies. It's hard to square that circle -- that rural areas are heavily subsidized but yet still economically depressed and under-served. Hence, comments like the one from VLM above. Of course, it all boils down to economic fundamentals: cities and metro areas create a network effect that's difficult or impossible to compete with, no matter how well subsidized rural areas are. The fact that rural areas suffer in spite of their greater representation and massive economic subsidies is a difficult pill for a person from a rural area to swallow. A "they are screwing us" mentality is a much more compelling narrative.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Are the subsidies over-rated? We have energy coops (which we pay for entirely); we have a road system (the most expensive parts used by everybody); there are some agricultural supports (insurance programs?) but only a tiny fraction of rural residents are in farming. What else?
  - throwaway729 10y ago
    > Are the subsidies over-rated? First, I don't think so. Second, an over-rated subsidy is still a subsidy. So even if they are over-rated, that's still no proof of VLM's statement -- it's more just looking the gift horse in the mouth. > We have energy coops (which we pay for entirely) This isn't true everywhere. > we have a road system (the most expensive parts used by everybody) Perhaps for the interstate system you could make this case. I'm not sure. Certainly there are cases where the interstate system inconvenience cities for the benefit of an extremely tiny but politically powerful rural district. The same happens with state highways. But at the state level, rural roads are heavily subsidized. State highways are typically extremely important to rural areas, and those are mostly funded by urban and suburban tax bases. > but only a tiny fraction of rural residents are in farming But farming is still very important to local economies in rural areas, even if it's no longer a major employer. Also, "some" is a bit of an understatement -- half a trillion in federal funds over half a decade. And that's just the main farm bill -- excluding other federal and state assistance programs. > What else? * Schools for sure. Most states heavily subsidize rural schools in their funding formulas. States and the federal gov't also subsidize rural schools through programs that are not even accounted for by these funding formulas -- e.g. tuition waivers and sometimes even salaries for teachers that teach in rural schools. * Federal and state entitlement programs -- this one isn't even close to debatable. * Political representation. Again, not even close to debatable. I consider this independently of all of the other indirect economic benefits that stem from the representation for a lot of reasons. To give one, the conservative social agenda disproportionately targets and complicates the lives of the non-white non-christians concentrated within cities.
    - stonemetal 10y ago
VLM 10y ago
Yet there's more to life than mere balance of transfer payments and related economic policy. How does your average Boston Clinton voting university academic look at, socially and culturally, someone like a Iowa Trump voting corn farmer? This is rhetorical, I know its with a level of disdain and hate and superiority complex like hasn't been seen since Jim Crow laws were a thing. And note before discussion subject escape velocity was reached, the sub topic was we can't gerrymander rural people into crazy new rules every time the map is redrawn because that would be unfair to them and there is no higher social caste in the USA than the highly respected rural hillbilly so obviously that's a non starter. Back to that topic, I'm surprised there's any opposition at all to some kind of gerrymandering of state borders.
- srtjstjsj 10y ago
  You are drawing a parallel between (a) legalized discrimination and violence against people based on color of their skin, and (b) not caring enough to give even larger handouts to people who claim to be fiercely proud of their independence.
paulddraper 10y ago
> rural areas actually receive more in federal funding than they pay in taxes Citation needed. Inner cities consistently have higher poverty rates than rural or suburban areas.
- cowsandmilk 10y ago
  > Inner cities consistently have higher poverty rates than rural or suburban areas. Citation needed. Urban areas consistently have more millionaires than rural areas. As to poverty rates, in the US, they are definitely higher in rural areas. For a citation, from the abstract of [1]: > Although a larger portion of the poor population resides in urban areas, poverty rates are higher and more persistent in rural areas, and research suggests poverty rates increase as rural areas become increasingly remote. Basically, urban areas have more poor people, but really they have more of all classes of people. If you go to Figure 1, you'll even see that the rate of poverty in category 0 (most urban) is lower than the rate of poverty in all rural categories (4-9)[1]. [1] https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/2942 https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/2942
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
A lot of the infrastructure in rural areas benefits cities, anyways. Having a good freeway between Chicago and Indianapolis helps those cities much more than the random cornfields the freeway happens to go through.

beachstartup 10y ago

> we have a long tradition of support the urbanite and crush the ruralite whenever possible er, what? the opposite is true. at the federal level we generally give more consideration to sub-urban and rural needs, which i agree with, because cities are social and economic bubbles.

throwaway729 10y ago
> cities are social and economic bubbles In what sense do you mean this? Taken as a comparative statement, I find it a pretty dubious assertion. Suburbs are sort of the ultimate bubble. They suffer from all of the typical things that make cities economic bubbles (a few major employers, geographic clustering based on income, ...), without any of the social or (typically but not always) racial diversity that's common in many cities. Oblig PG link is the one about schooling: http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html The social bubble of rural areas is rather extreme -- white Christians are massively over-represented compared to the rest of the country and certainly compared to the rest of the world. The economic bubble of rural areas tends to be far worse than the economic bubble of cities, IMO. Cities can certainly be economic bubbles, but at least those bubbles are typically made up of multiple fairly large sectors. Rural areas tend to have between one and three non-service industries -- farming, maybe some natural resource extraction, once in a while a small hospital, and in very rare cases a major white collar employer in a single sector. The echo chamber is real. If we think in terms of politics, I never have a hard time finding conservatives talking politics in a bar in a city, but I've never once found a group of (US-style) liberals have a political conversation in a country bar. Cities might be as dark blue as the countryside is dark red, but the sheer size of cities means there are still far more conservatives in a given city than a typical rural area of similar size. Basically, my impression is that cities are only bubbles in-so-far as they contain representation of almost every cross-section of society -- including the cross-sections that dominate rural areas! Calling that a bubble when compared to suburban and rural areas bubbles seems... dishonest.

unethical_ban 10y ago

Besides it being a bad idea anyway, nothing you describe is a) backed up by fact or b) necessarily ethical, if true. Were the United States government to add a second sub-national set of borders for enumerated purposes such as infrastructure planning, etc., I expect a Constitutional amendment.

gliese1337 10y ago
> Were the United States government to add a second sub-national set of borders for enumerated purposes such as infrastructure planning, etc., I expect a Constitutional amendment. Those kind of already exist... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_district_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_district_(United_State... Special districts don't normally cross state lines, but they can.

op00to 10y ago

No, we don't. Source: Detroit, Newark, Camden, Hartford...

ap22213 10y ago

We urbanites call it gentrification. And, it's unavoidable under a market system.

Grishnakh 10y ago

No, if we redraw all the state borders, it should actually benefit the ruralites on average. The problem is, right now, the ruralites are lumped in with urbanites they don't agree with, and redrawing the borders would fix this. I'll give some examples: 1) New York. "Upstaters" are always complaining about NYC's influence on their politics and laws. With sensibly redrawn borders, NYC would be in its own state, combined with northern NJ, much of CT, etc. People in the rest of the state north of White Plains or so would now be in their own state. So they'd be able to make their own laws without any influence from people in NYC and its suburbs. 2) Chicago. People in southern Illinois have long complained about Chicago's influence on their laws. A redrawing of borders would probably group Chicago together with Gary IN, maybe Milwaukee, and southern IL would be a separate state (maybe combined with Cincinnati or other cities near there). 3) DC. What do the ruralites in far-west Maryland have in common with people in Baltimore or DC? Redrawing state borders would probably group that region in with WV or southwest PA, which they'd probably prefer. Also, people in southern and southwest Virginia complain about the people in NoVA. A redrawing of boundaries would surely group NoVA in with DC (and probably Baltimore), separating it from the rural parts of VA. So instead, the main urbanites the rural Virginians would have controlling their politics would be in Richmond, Roanoke, maybe Bristol, Charlottesville, and maybe the Hampton-Roads area (if that doesn't get combined with eastern NC instead). These are all cities that are much more reflective of rural Virginians' values than the DC area, and they'd probably be happier with the governance they'd get without NoVA voters.