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While I'm happy that the states are picking up the slack, are you really insinuating that the Red states are leading to their own self-destruction, going on to

While I'm happy that the states are picking up the slack, are you really insinuating that the Red states are leading to their own self-destruction, going on to "languish"? I'm saddened that people have this viewpoint over such a large swath of the country.

deleted 9y ago
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zaksoup 9y ago
Red states have lower GDP, higher poverty, lower education, and are largely subsidized by blue states through federal grants. I am not implying causation and there are other interesting facts (lower cost of living relative to wages in red states) but as it stands now if blue and red split it doesn't seem like it's all that controversial to imply red would suffer. A little bit of googling turns up many interesting articles and interpretations of this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/01/04/solved-why-poor-states-are-red-and-rich-states-are-blue/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/timworstal...
- trendia 9y ago
  Of course, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the article, but it's always funny when someone posts an article they didn't read. It directly contradicts what you're claiming: > The red states aren't in fact poorer than the blue states. They're richer: that's why they vote more conservative and more right wing. The article argues that people who make less move to areas with lower costs of living, because they have more purchasing power in those areas: > Because those lower income places have even lower prices, making consumption standards higher. That is, red states aren't poor because of red policies, they're poor because they're cheaper to live in. Further, the article claims that blue policies hurt the poor! > What we now need to go on and explain is why those nominally left policies, those blue ones, are so to the disadvantage of the poor they're supposedly helping....
  - zaksoup 9y ago
    I read the article. I don't think you read my comment. I posted the article to cite a positive interpretation of the statistics I claimed. I made no claims about which policies were better or worse. If you have issues with the one claim I did make, that the implication that red states would fare poorly without blue states is not farfetched, I do not believe you have adequately articulated them. From the article: > Red state economies based on energy extraction, agriculture and suburban sprawl may have lower wages, higher poverty rates and lower levels of education on average than those of blue states
- muninn_ 9y ago
  You missed his/her point. We go on and on about this difference between the coast and, as those on the coast have dubbed them, the "flyover states" and then people act all smug about how they are leading to their own destruction and what not instead of being responsible and trying to educate and help. It's, frankly, pretty pathetic that this attitude is so pervasive. I'm not sure what you (not you specifically) are thinking, but if you think that these impoverished areas are somehow just going to go away or that (and seriously lol at this) somehow California is going to merge with Canada, you're (not you specifically) incredibly naive.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    While I agree that many coastal liberals are often smug, the notion that people in other areas are groaning in the throes of oppression is not really founded in fact. Large parts of the country have great contempt for the more liberal enclaves on the coast and pour scorn on the people and civic societies established there. Try spending some time reading a conservative forum like freerepublic.com, though you might need eye bleach after you're done. There are a lot of decent, hardworking, and hard-done-by people in the midwest, South, other inland regions etc. etc. who don't want their economies exploited or their dignity insulted, and there are also some vicious mean-spirited people who habitually wish horrible suffering on others.
    - muninn_ 9y ago
      >the notion that people in other areas are groaning in the throes of oppression is not really founded in fact Sure, that's not something I would believe so I don't disagree. >Large parts of the country have great contempt for the more liberal enclaves on the coast Wonder why that is? >who don't want their economies exploited or their dignity insulted Yet here we are. With their economies being exploited and their dignity being insulted.
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        You don't seem to be responding to my comment so much as random phrases from it, without making any substantive argument of your own.
- ebfe 9y ago
  Doesn't the south have far greater numbers of black people?
michaelchisari 9y ago
Except that there is overwhelming truth to it. There are now, effectively, two economic models for states to follow, and they're very partisan models. There is the California model (high taxes, high minimum wage, strong environmental standards, strong labor protections, etc) and the Kansas model (cut taxes, privatization, gutting protections). California's growth rate compared to Kansas' growth rate is a matter of night and day. California is by no means a utopia, but if you're using the standard metrics of a healthy economy, blue states like it are doing things right, and red states like Kansas simply are not.
- pat2man 9y ago
  What about Texas?
  - michaelchisari 9y ago
    I had a caveat in there about Texas that I decided to remove, should have kept it, but I'll respond here instead. I think Texas' situation is too unique. They're effectively a petrostate right now. Now, they seem to be doing the right thing with things like the PSF and PUF, so I'd say that their approach, like their politics, is deeply purple, and it's not a terrible approach. But it's very specific, and not necessarily a model that other states can use.
    - jandrewrogers 9y ago
      Oil is only about 15% of the Texas economy, I would hardly classify it as a "petrostate". Real estate is a larger percentage of California's economy.
      - deleted 9y ago
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    - velodrome 9y ago
      > I think Texas' situation is too unique. They're effectively a petrostate right now. Conveniently ignoring the fact that California is ALSO a petrostate. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/03/the-most-oil-rich-states/2613497/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/03/the...
tmh79 9y ago
Background: I am a [former] republican, grew up in flyover country, from a family full of trump supporters, now I live in California. I believe that the red states are going to languish for the following reasons: 1) Brain drain as young ambitious people leave 2) Public services (education, roads, etc) decrease in quality, increase in expense 3) Older folks increasingly capture all of the economic gains allowed in small towns through consolidation of local political power It was once possible to be young and ambitious and moderately wealthy in middle America by starting and expanding a small business like a franchise or a car dealership, but if you try to do that now, you'll get crushed in city hall pretty much every step of the way. I am very open to discussion/debate on this topic if anyone has differing views or questions.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  there are enough example states to refute it. hell Illinois is poster child for failed Democratic policies and their debt is now junk status. Quite a few other blue states are in the same boat with exploding debt. blue states tend to be such only because of dense city populations in super cities; discounting California. Get outside those big metropolis with their outsides voting power and it shifts. I am a decidedly red state and not one of the claims is valid so I seriously doubt its valid all places. thousands of successful small businesses are started each year. Where you will get crushed in big city blue states where regulation protects incumbent businsses even more than in rural areas (let alone taxes)
  - tmh79 9y ago
    Yea, TBH, this is more of a view about "cities" vs "rural area" and less about "red state" vs "blue state". Id much rather live in the most densely populated county in Nebraska than the least densely populated county of NY/CA in terms of health/opportunity/economy/etc.
- iamacynic 9y ago
  do you think your analysis applies to states like texas, virginia, arizona, north carolina, georgia, utah, etc? even the in-between states such as colorado and florida were doing fine before the blue takeover of 2005+. i've been to all of these places in the last 10 years and they're all doing more than fine. it seems to me only a handful of states over-whelmingly tied to particularly depressed sectors of the economy are the ones losing their people and tax revenue. and a lot of those were blue states just 5 years ago!
Pyxl101 9y ago
There was an interesting analysis a while back that showed US states and presented which ones contributed the most federal taxes, and which received the most federal aid -- and then showed that breakdown according to political affiliation. From what I recall, many of the "red" (majority Republican) states receive significantly more federal aid than they contribute in taxes, and many "blue" (majority Democrat) states contribute much more than they receive. I can't find the exact analysis I'm thinking of, but here are some articles with similar data: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-s... > The reddest states on that map at the top—Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, New Mexico, Maine—have exceptionally high poverty rates and thus receive disproportionately large shares of federal dollars. Through a variety of social programs, the federal government disburses hundreds of billions of dollars each year [...] http://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-are-welfare-queens-2011-8#!IpqnG http://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-are-welfare-queens... > As it turns out, it is red states that are overwhelmingly the Welfare Queen States. Yes, that's right. Red States — the ones governed by folks who think government is too big and spending needs to be cut — are a net drain on the economy, taking in more federal spending than they pay out in federal taxes. > Take a look at the difference between federal spending on any given state and the federal taxes received from that state. We measure the difference as a dollar amount: Federal Spending per Dollar of Federal Taxes. [...] Of the twenty worst states, 16 are either Republican dominated or conservative states. https://taxfoundation.org/states-rely-most-federal-aid/ https://taxfoundation.org/states-rely-most-federal-aid/
- awinder 9y ago
  Yep. The Democratic states not only enjoy diminished influence through a representation sham, they're also forced to finance bad ideas & issues that are morally diametric to their own. This is really a story as old as time when you think about it in that light, it's a powder keg.
- toehead2000 9y ago
  I'd be interested to see this broken down by category, but at least some of this disproportionate money is for transportation (maintenance of the national highway system) which is a benefit to the whole country (you're not going to get your steaks trucked into your whole foods without an interstate highway system) as well as necessary for national defense. Many of these states also have large amounts of BLM land, and it's not clear from these articles how money to maintain that land is accounted for.
davesque 9y ago
I'm from Louisiana and I'm not saddened to see this at all. It's the god damned truth. Just try taking a road trip down there some time.
jacquesm 9y ago
It's not really their 'own self-destruction' in so much as that the world over coastal regions tend to be a lot richer than inland areas. If you took a 300 Km swath of all the land bordering the oceans world wide you'd have captured a very large portion of the wealth. Of course there are some exception (Switzerland comes to mind) and large inland cities tend to be at least a lot wealthier than the surrounding country side but as a rule it is a pretty good one. Yes, it is sad. But people in the developed countries are relatively free to move around and it can be a conscious choice to live in a place that is a bit slower paced and has a different landscape.
- lacampbell 9y ago
  I think a lot of left-wingers have difficulty reconciling the fact that poor people often don't vote left - and in the case of their two largest recent defeats, Trump and Brexit - they overwhelmingly did not. The barely concealed contempt against those ignorant working class people who didn't vote the right way is fascinating - especially since the left consistently takes the moral high ground on the working class.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Needlessly polarizing comment. Trump managed to lie his way into power, no politician in recorded history has said so many things that were patently un-true in order to get to where he is today. Those 'left-wingers' you refer to are also right wing, the United States doesn't currently have a left wing, all it has is right wing and elitist (or maybe slightly more right wing). A functioning left would probably take more votes away from the Republicans than from the Democrats. Good luck getting that off the ground with the electoral college and the influence of money the way things are today.
  - SapphireSun 9y ago
    Don't forget all that poor people vote at far lower rates than middle class and rich people. Rich & middle class white people and culture war evangelicals with a small but relatively unusually large smattering of poor people in a few key states put Trump over the top.
colechristensen 9y ago
Well if you sort the states by per-capita income and compare electoral votes in the last election: * Top 25 states 213 D / 52 R * Bottom 25 states 11 D / 252 R so it might seem like there's believable evidence that red states are behind and it correlates with political affinity.
- rjdagost 9y ago
  If you adjust incomes for cost of living, the notion of which states are "behind" has much less correlation to political voting patterns. Here's a comparison from the Bureau of Economic Analysis: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/10/05/which-states-residents-have-the-most-cash-to-spend.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/10/05/which-stat... According to this comparison, after accounting for cost of living the average Arkansas resident has more disposable income than the average Californian. Having lived in both states, I agree with this (but my friends in California can't fathom this).

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zaksoup 9y ago

Red states have lower GDP, higher poverty, lower education, and are largely subsidized by blue states through federal grants. I am not implying causation and there are other interesting facts (lower cost of living relative to wages in red states) but as it stands now if blue and red split it doesn't seem like it's all that controversial to imply red would suffer. A little bit of googling turns up many interesting articles and interpretations of this: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/01/04/solved-why-poor-states-are-red-and-rich-states-are-blue/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/timworstal...

trendia 9y ago
Of course, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the article, but it's always funny when someone posts an article they didn't read. It directly contradicts what you're claiming: > The red states aren't in fact poorer than the blue states. They're richer: that's why they vote more conservative and more right wing. The article argues that people who make less move to areas with lower costs of living, because they have more purchasing power in those areas: > Because those lower income places have even lower prices, making consumption standards higher. That is, red states aren't poor because of red policies, they're poor because they're cheaper to live in. Further, the article claims that blue policies hurt the poor! > What we now need to go on and explain is why those nominally left policies, those blue ones, are so to the disadvantage of the poor they're supposedly helping....
- zaksoup 9y ago
  I read the article. I don't think you read my comment. I posted the article to cite a positive interpretation of the statistics I claimed. I made no claims about which policies were better or worse. If you have issues with the one claim I did make, that the implication that red states would fare poorly without blue states is not farfetched, I do not believe you have adequately articulated them. From the article: > Red state economies based on energy extraction, agriculture and suburban sprawl may have lower wages, higher poverty rates and lower levels of education on average than those of blue states
muninn_ 9y ago
You missed his/her point. We go on and on about this difference between the coast and, as those on the coast have dubbed them, the "flyover states" and then people act all smug about how they are leading to their own destruction and what not instead of being responsible and trying to educate and help. It's, frankly, pretty pathetic that this attitude is so pervasive. I'm not sure what you (not you specifically) are thinking, but if you think that these impoverished areas are somehow just going to go away or that (and seriously lol at this) somehow California is going to merge with Canada, you're (not you specifically) incredibly naive.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  While I agree that many coastal liberals are often smug, the notion that people in other areas are groaning in the throes of oppression is not really founded in fact. Large parts of the country have great contempt for the more liberal enclaves on the coast and pour scorn on the people and civic societies established there. Try spending some time reading a conservative forum like freerepublic.com, though you might need eye bleach after you're done. There are a lot of decent, hardworking, and hard-done-by people in the midwest, South, other inland regions etc. etc. who don't want their economies exploited or their dignity insulted, and there are also some vicious mean-spirited people who habitually wish horrible suffering on others.
  - muninn_ 9y ago
    >the notion that people in other areas are groaning in the throes of oppression is not really founded in fact Sure, that's not something I would believe so I don't disagree. >Large parts of the country have great contempt for the more liberal enclaves on the coast Wonder why that is? >who don't want their economies exploited or their dignity insulted Yet here we are. With their economies being exploited and their dignity being insulted.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      You don't seem to be responding to my comment so much as random phrases from it, without making any substantive argument of your own.
ebfe 9y ago
Doesn't the south have far greater numbers of black people?

michaelchisari 9y ago

Except that there is overwhelming truth to it. There are now, effectively, two economic models for states to follow, and they're very partisan models. There is the California model (high taxes, high minimum wage, strong environmental standards, strong labor protections, etc) and the Kansas model (cut taxes, privatization, gutting protections). California's growth rate compared to Kansas' growth rate is a matter of night and day. California is by no means a utopia, but if you're using the standard metrics of a healthy economy, blue states like it are doing things right, and red states like Kansas simply are not.

pat2man 9y ago
What about Texas?
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  I had a caveat in there about Texas that I decided to remove, should have kept it, but I'll respond here instead. I think Texas' situation is too unique. They're effectively a petrostate right now. Now, they seem to be doing the right thing with things like the PSF and PUF, so I'd say that their approach, like their politics, is deeply purple, and it's not a terrible approach. But it's very specific, and not necessarily a model that other states can use.
  - jandrewrogers 9y ago
    Oil is only about 15% of the Texas economy, I would hardly classify it as a "petrostate". Real estate is a larger percentage of California's economy.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - velodrome 9y ago
    > I think Texas' situation is too unique. They're effectively a petrostate right now. Conveniently ignoring the fact that California is ALSO a petrostate. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/03/the-most-oil-rich-states/2613497/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/03/the...

tmh79 9y ago

Background: I am a [former] republican, grew up in flyover country, from a family full of trump supporters, now I live in California. I believe that the red states are going to languish for the following reasons: 1) Brain drain as young ambitious people leave 2) Public services (education, roads, etc) decrease in quality, increase in expense 3) Older folks increasingly capture all of the economic gains allowed in small towns through consolidation of local political power It was once possible to be young and ambitious and moderately wealthy in middle America by starting and expanding a small business like a franchise or a car dealership, but if you try to do that now, you'll get crushed in city hall pretty much every step of the way. I am very open to discussion/debate on this topic if anyone has differing views or questions.

Shivetya 9y ago
there are enough example states to refute it. hell Illinois is poster child for failed Democratic policies and their debt is now junk status. Quite a few other blue states are in the same boat with exploding debt. blue states tend to be such only because of dense city populations in super cities; discounting California. Get outside those big metropolis with their outsides voting power and it shifts. I am a decidedly red state and not one of the claims is valid so I seriously doubt its valid all places. thousands of successful small businesses are started each year. Where you will get crushed in big city blue states where regulation protects incumbent businsses even more than in rural areas (let alone taxes)
- tmh79 9y ago
  Yea, TBH, this is more of a view about "cities" vs "rural area" and less about "red state" vs "blue state". Id much rather live in the most densely populated county in Nebraska than the least densely populated county of NY/CA in terms of health/opportunity/economy/etc.
iamacynic 9y ago
do you think your analysis applies to states like texas, virginia, arizona, north carolina, georgia, utah, etc? even the in-between states such as colorado and florida were doing fine before the blue takeover of 2005+. i've been to all of these places in the last 10 years and they're all doing more than fine. it seems to me only a handful of states over-whelmingly tied to particularly depressed sectors of the economy are the ones losing their people and tax revenue. and a lot of those were blue states just 5 years ago!

Pyxl101 9y ago

There was an interesting analysis a while back that showed US states and presented which ones contributed the most federal taxes, and which received the most federal aid -- and then showed that breakdown according to political affiliation. From what I recall, many of the "red" (majority Republican) states receive significantly more federal aid than they contribute in taxes, and many "blue" (majority Democrat) states contribute much more than they receive. I can't find the exact analysis I'm thinking of, but here are some articles with similar data: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-states-are-givers-and-which-are-takers/361668/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-s... > The reddest states on that map at the top—Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, New Mexico, Maine—have exceptionally high poverty rates and thus receive disproportionately large shares of federal dollars. Through a variety of social programs, the federal government disburses hundreds of billions of dollars each year [...] http://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-are-welfare-queens-2011-8#!IpqnG http://www.businessinsider.com/red-states-are-welfare-queens... > As it turns out, it is red states that are overwhelmingly the Welfare Queen States. Yes, that's right. Red States — the ones governed by folks who think government is too big and spending needs to be cut — are a net drain on the economy, taking in more federal spending than they pay out in federal taxes. > Take a look at the difference between federal spending on any given state and the federal taxes received from that state. We measure the difference as a dollar amount: Federal Spending per Dollar of Federal Taxes. [...] Of the twenty worst states, 16 are either Republican dominated or conservative states. https://taxfoundation.org/states-rely-most-federal-aid/ https://taxfoundation.org/states-rely-most-federal-aid/

awinder 9y ago
Yep. The Democratic states not only enjoy diminished influence through a representation sham, they're also forced to finance bad ideas & issues that are morally diametric to their own. This is really a story as old as time when you think about it in that light, it's a powder keg.
toehead2000 9y ago
I'd be interested to see this broken down by category, but at least some of this disproportionate money is for transportation (maintenance of the national highway system) which is a benefit to the whole country (you're not going to get your steaks trucked into your whole foods without an interstate highway system) as well as necessary for national defense. Many of these states also have large amounts of BLM land, and it's not clear from these articles how money to maintain that land is accounted for.

davesque 9y ago

I'm from Louisiana and I'm not saddened to see this at all. It's the god damned truth. Just try taking a road trip down there some time.

jacquesm 9y ago

It's not really their 'own self-destruction' in so much as that the world over coastal regions tend to be a lot richer than inland areas. If you took a 300 Km swath of all the land bordering the oceans world wide you'd have captured a very large portion of the wealth. Of course there are some exception (Switzerland comes to mind) and large inland cities tend to be at least a lot wealthier than the surrounding country side but as a rule it is a pretty good one. Yes, it is sad. But people in the developed countries are relatively free to move around and it can be a conscious choice to live in a place that is a bit slower paced and has a different landscape.

lacampbell 9y ago
I think a lot of left-wingers have difficulty reconciling the fact that poor people often don't vote left - and in the case of their two largest recent defeats, Trump and Brexit - they overwhelmingly did not. The barely concealed contempt against those ignorant working class people who didn't vote the right way is fascinating - especially since the left consistently takes the moral high ground on the working class.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Needlessly polarizing comment. Trump managed to lie his way into power, no politician in recorded history has said so many things that were patently un-true in order to get to where he is today. Those 'left-wingers' you refer to are also right wing, the United States doesn't currently have a left wing, all it has is right wing and elitist (or maybe slightly more right wing). A functioning left would probably take more votes away from the Republicans than from the Democrats. Good luck getting that off the ground with the electoral college and the influence of money the way things are today.
- SapphireSun 9y ago
  Don't forget all that poor people vote at far lower rates than middle class and rich people. Rich & middle class white people and culture war evangelicals with a small but relatively unusually large smattering of poor people in a few key states put Trump over the top.

colechristensen 9y ago

Well if you sort the states by per-capita income and compare electoral votes in the last election: * Top 25 states 213 D / 52 R * Bottom 25 states 11 D / 252 R so it might seem like there's believable evidence that red states are behind and it correlates with political affinity.

rjdagost 9y ago
If you adjust incomes for cost of living, the notion of which states are "behind" has much less correlation to political voting patterns. Here's a comparison from the Bureau of Economic Analysis: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/10/05/which-states-residents-have-the-most-cash-to-spend.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/10/05/which-stat... According to this comparison, after accounting for cost of living the average Arkansas resident has more disposable income than the average Californian. Having lived in both states, I agree with this (but my friends in California can't fathom this).