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Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a

Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the government of the people serves the people. More precisely how taxes and math work. The GAO and similar offices should do a better job of preparing reports on where every collected tax dollar is being spent; both in the physical sense as well as in the sourced income sense. A citizen should be able to approach this from either the government side (pick a city or unincorporated area) or enter their zipcode and approximate income and see where the money is flowing from and to. Of particular interest would be trying to categorize areas with positive or negative contributions to a person's or region's productivity. Investments in infrastructure, such as education or for transport (of various things), should also be given special categorization as they are some combination of a shared burden and long term payoff. Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive. My personal believe is presently, for lack of data that I can digest, that the far right is probably focused around emotions. # Possibly religious, in that some interpretation of ancient values systems drives them to desire a simple world in which those are imposed upon others? # Possibly anarchist, in the sense of some romantic fantasy of self reliance (minimal government) and true grit; while forgetting or being ignorant of how society and government provide benefits (E.G. civil services such as fire, medical, and security aid). # Possibly just believing the lies of people that say things they want to hear. Or maybe the driving force is something different entirely that I haven't realized because it's just so obvious to someone that believes in it that it doesn't get said. Offhand I don't think it's likely to be religiously based, and if it's charismatic attraction based I'm not sure what siren song is luring the voters. I wonder if the interactive report on government spending and tax effectiveness might help find a common ground, or at least salient points to discuss for those who don't understand the benefits of buying in bulk and enriching the commons.

jpttsn 5y ago
What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater good, is shown to be wrong? Let alone the difficulty of tracing it: assume it’s possible to show where every tax dollar went. Would you still favor this trnsparency if it’s shown to sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of their would be constituents? Just hypothetically?
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Would you still favor this trnsparency [sp] if it’s shown to sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of their would be constituents? Just Devil's Advocate, but wouldn't that be the best outcome? If it showed to which company every tax dollar went. Who the principals are in those companies. And the connections those principals have to politicians allocating the dollars? Especially if it showed this for every dollar, I'm finding it hard to see a downside. Am I missing something?
- wvenable 5y ago
  > What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater good, is shown to be wrong? Wouldn't we call that a success? You can't fix something that isn't measured. If nobody knows anything concrete then all people have to go on is vague feelings.
paxys 5y ago
The biggest driving factor is overexposure to news & social media which convinces otherwise well-off and content people that the "other side" is out to destroy their lives, so they must do something about it.
shaftoe 5y ago
Do you notice that you've defined your own viewpoint as rational and supported by data and the viewpoint of others as "probably focused around emotions"?
- joshka 5y ago
  Do you have rational data that would present this viewpoint as otherwise? How about helping us liberals understand the conservative viewpoint better if you have insight on this. Edit: please don't downvote based on disagreement - write something instead. This is a reasonable question asking to further understand the conservative viewpoint. Case in point, I'm upvoting buzzert's comments because they present a contrary, but interesting perspective.
  - buzzert 5y ago
    One particular example might be Oregon’s decision to decriminalize all drugs[0] during a time when overdoses are at an all time high[1] and increasing over 40% in just the last year. You might say the political party who calls the war on drugs “cruel and inhumane” is acting on emotion rather than reason in spite of all the statistics. [0]: https://drugpolicy.org/press-release/2021/02/drug-decriminalization-oregon-officially-begins-today https://drugpolicy.org/press-release/2021/02/drug-decriminal... [1]: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ERD/Pages/Oregon-trends-with-U.S.-in-accelerated-drug-overdoses.aspx https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ERD/Pages/Oregon-trends-with-U.S....
    - 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
      Is there evidence that criminalizing drugs decreases the incidence of addiction/overdose?
    - listless 5y ago
      Another _could_ be letting people in Portland tear the city apart with impunity.
      - yesBoot 5y ago
marricks 5y ago
Having good information accessibly presented is helpful but when local news outlets are owned by Sinclair Media[1] and Fox News is the most watched cable outlet for the conservatives that live there the facts really don't matter. We can bend over backwards to explain how helpful the valley is to them but it's going to fall on ears which don't want to listen. I'm not saying they shouldn't be provided for, they 100% should, just them actually leaving will do more to show them the inefficiencies of a conservative super state. Short of that the most effective way to change the information disconnect is actually address the source of the issue: media. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Political_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Polit...
URSpider94 5y ago
I would love to see the data, but from the data I have seen, the data conflict with the popular (populist) narrative. A lot of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves. In reality, the money almost always flows in the other direction; taxpayers in cities are subsidizing the rural-dwellers. This has nothing to do with work ethic, it's just a hard fact that a lot of costs scale with square miles instead of with people (roads, emergency services), and that lower cost of living in the country leads to lower incomes which lead to lower tax revenue.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  Part of this has to do with how we've been able to drive down agricultural costs by means of automation over the last century which has driven a move away from family farms to larger corporate farms. In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20 percent.[1] Sure the coasts are creating more economic output by far, but people need to eat food. Agriculture is always going to be important, but lot less people are involved in it than ever before. This is part of what's led to the urban/rural divide where the rural folks feel left out - there just aren't as many of them as populations have migrated to cities. This is why people in rural areas feel increasingly left out. It's mostly due to economic forces that are out of their control. [1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-american-agriculture http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-americ...
  - URSpider94 5y ago
    I definitely don't think we should ignore or minimize the contributions of rural Americans. I do think we need to do a better job of making the costs associated with rural life more explicit. This is a big deal in California, where people have pushed further and further into the wilderness, putting themselves at huge risk for wildfires while also increasing the number of miles of power lines that need to be built and maintained; these very power lines are one of the main causes of wildfires.
GongOfFour 5y ago
Here is the website for one of the groups pushing for this: https://www.greateridaho.org/ https://www.greateridaho.org/ Taxes are just one part of this. They list these other issues of concern: > 1. American Values: Oregon will continue to violate more and more American values and American freedoms because normal rural Americans are outnumbered in Oregon. Not in Idaho. Addicts will be attracted to Oregon from all over the world by the 2020 drug decriminalization law. > 2. Law and Order: Oregon refuses to protect citizens from criminals, rioters, wildfire arsonists, illegals, and the homeless, but then infringes your right to defend your family with firearms. Idaho enforces the law. > 3. Low Tax: Idaho is the state with the 8th smallest tax burden, and Oregon ranks 33rd, according to https://taxfoundation.org/tax-freedom-day-2019 https://taxfoundation.org/tax-freedom-day-2019 . Combining all taxes together, including sales tax, the average Idahoan pays $1722 less in taxes per year than the average Oregonian. That’s averaging together every adult or child, employed, retired or unemployed. And cost of living is 39% higher in Oregon than in Idaho. Oregon tax rates will continue to go up due to a lack of willingness to control spending. > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires. > 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any other state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural industries to revive and employ us again. > 6. Representation: The ruling party in the Oregon Legislature doesn’t have a single representative from a rural district or from eastern or southern Oregon, except one Ashland representative. But our reps would be in the ruling party in Idaho, where our concerns and needs would be heard.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires. If that's true then they'd be better off moving to Idaho, right? Given the vast area involved it's difficult to imagine that in a span of even a decade or more that the forests would be transformed so as to prevent wildfires. Staying where they are would only leave them in harms way for quite some years.
- Pfhreak 5y ago
  > Oregon will continue to violate more and more American values and American freedoms Haha, what? If Oregon is doing stuff, it's definitionally an American value and American Freedom, right? Who gets to decide what an "American *" is? > > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires. They do realize that Idaho and Oregon have different climates and different precipitation amounts, right? The Western Rockies and Eastern Cascades are different biomes. > > 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any other state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural industries to revive and employ us again. Is there any data that backs this up? This feels like a pipe dream to me that's totally unfounded.
kingsuper20 5y ago
>Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the government of the people serves the people. More precisely how taxes and math work. Given the metastasizing of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sections of the economy, and their typical concentration in urban areas, I'd say that rural areas are basically in the same position as a colony to a colonial power. Shipping cheap raw materials to the cities, who in turn own the shares, banks, and mortgages, has always been pretty common. Of course, if you are in favor of colonialism....
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  A different lens to view this through has to do with economic and population shifts over the last century. Specifically the huge increase in agricultural productivity. "In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20 percent." [1] That's a large erosion of political and economic power in those rural areas as more people moved out of agriculture into other industries that tend to be located in population centers. Not sure how that changes unless we move away from large corporate farms back to smaller family farms (See various Wendall Berry essays and novels where he lays out what's happened to rural areas over the last century as family farms have dwindled), however, that seems very unlikely. [1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-american-agriculture http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-americ...
  - teclordphrack2 5y ago
    The current definition of what is urban vs rural is very shaky. I don't think when theses numbers are brought up there is an understanding of what counted as rural then and what counts as rural now.
    - kingsuper20 5y ago
      In addition there's urban and there's urban. Remove the imperial capitals (DC or London) or financial capitals (London or New York) and the next tier down ain't so much.
vixen99 5y ago
Not to understand the benefits of buying in bulk and enriching the commons - what can one say about such people! But at least you do.
oogabooga123 5y ago
What a patronizing take. No wonder they want to leave, if they’re governed by people with your attitude.
- Enginerrrd 5y ago
  You're being downvoted because your statement is a bit inflammatory and leaps to condemnation. However, it is otherwise a very accurate take in my opinion. OP has presented their view as inherently rational, correct, and moral, and presented conservative views as "emotional" or "lacking understanding". That type of moral assertion absolutely IS one of the main complaints I see from rural conservatives about urban liberals.
mc32 5y ago
Note that this movement isn’t recent and I think I’d traced to the proposed state of Jefferson[1] (in the NorCal, south and east Oregon areas), which was going to get a vote in Congress but WWII got in the way and never happened. It comes up from time to time; you’ll see banners for it in rural areas. So it should not be framed as a pushback to current politics. They feel they’ve had reasons for a while. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_...
- cratermoon 5y ago
  You can trace it all the way back to the Mormons and their idea of the State of Deseret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret
cratermoon 5y ago
You can understand what's going on in eastern Oregon (and Idaho and Nevada) a bit better with some background. It's not especially about taxes. https://longreads.com/bundyville/season-one/ https://longreads.com/bundyville/season-one/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BobbyJo 5y ago
>My personal believe is presently, for lack of data that I can digest, that the far right is probably focused around emotions Both sides have appeals to emotion and appeals to logic in their platform. For instance, what basis is there for universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'? You can't make the argument that it would 'save the government money' to the right, because, in their opinion, the government should be spending any money on it, other than maybe paying for employees' insurance. Every dollar the government spends on it now is just an example of how the government can't do anything right. I think it's common for people on opposite ends of the spectrum see the other side as 'not grounded in data'. After all, if they saw the reason in the opinions of the other side, they'd be in the middle instead of the end they're on. All that being said, I think more clarity in government spending would go a long way in creating more/less trust in government's handling of certain operations. Maybe the right sees less inefficiency than they imagined, maybe the left sees more, but we'd at least have some real data to compare.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  > Both sides have appeals to emotion and appeals to logic in their platform. For instance, what basis is there for universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'? You can't make the argument that it would 'save the government money' to the right ... You're right, you don't say it would save the government money. You make the argument that it would save everyone money. No one has any incentive to care about the price of healthcare, currently. Not the suppliers, not the providers, not the insurers. And the consumers simply have no choice.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    >No one has any incentive to care about the price of healthcare, currently That's a problem that can be fixed without making the government the sole customer: Make people pay for their own healthcare. >Not the suppliers, not the providers, not the insurers That's simply not true. They all have profit motive. >And the consumers simply have no choice. That's only true in emergency medicine, which is the minority of care most people receive.
rhacker 5y ago
I own land in a rural area (house coming in maybe a year) and I have spoken to the neighbors. For the most part it's little things actually. Rules that the major cities deal with, like not being allowed to put up a specific kind of fence because the bureaucrats in the city look at .1 acre plots of land and don't like how certain fences look - where out here we're dealing with 5 to 100 acres (and in some cases a 40000 acres of land). Or that we should be required to pay "school fees" when we build a house because there's "no fucking school" out here! One guy had to dismantle a building he erected (he's a builder) because he maxed out on "how much roof" he can have. There was one guy talking about Jesus but for the most part we're pretty sure he wasn't an anti-masker. Actually all of our neighbors have told us they wear a mask by the way. So yeah, it's really just getting away from the legal requirements that the populated places need but forget to loosen the rules far away. Now every county is different so take my input as a grain of salt.
- 0xB31B1B 5y ago
  yea, thats not really the story in idaho/oregon area. A lot of the issue there is that lots of the land is owned by the federal government, and the people who live near by and are in ranching/mining/logging don't want to follow the rules the fed gov puts on operations in BLM land. There is a bit of "some guy 4k miles away in washington isn't allowed to tell me I can't ride my dirt bike here" attitude.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  > One guy had to dismantle a building he erected (he's a builder) because he maxed out on "how much roof" he can have. Please tell me what part of the country this is so I can avoid it.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    If I were living in that state, I would build a fractal roof for my dog house that had close to an infinite surface area and then I would sue myself to teach people how dumb that rule is.
  - jpollock 5y ago
teclordphrack2 5y ago
The main driving force is that the rural residence are the remnants of the racist that moved to that area even pre-statehood. They don't like that their white power is fading and they want control.
- Enginerrrd 5y ago
  This is not only baseless, but incredibly inflammatory and dehumanizing. Hackernews is not the place for this type of comment.
  - teclordphrack2 5y ago
    https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-white-history-racist-foundations-black-exclusion-laws/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-white-history-racist... How are facts baseless?
kolbe 5y ago
Why would you spend so much time writing so much about people who you admitted to knowing nothing about? Go visit rural America. Talk to people. Getting upvotes on Hacker News for presumptuous rants is no way to actually learn what’s happening.
belorn 5y ago
> Of particular interest would be trying to categorize areas with positive or negative contributions to a person's or region's productivity Having a map which highlight regions which has a negative balance sheet in terms of taxes vs government costs would mostly just be a map of segregation of class, which in turn would be a map showing segregation of different demographics. Illustrating which demographics are costing the government more than they pay in taxes is not something the left in my country are very happy to do, and I doubt it is that much different in the USA.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
It is always about power. No reason to make it so complicated.
chmod600 5y ago
"Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive." It's not a big mystery. A lot of politicians are making their careers by dividing people. Some policies are just downright mean, and seem to serve little purpose other than division. Conservative/rural people are often on the receiving end, because they just don't have a large enough constituency to fight it. Sure, they are winning some battles, but each one is uphill and the slope is steepening rapidly. Sadly, the country will suffer greatly. The left is wrong on a lot of things (or at least too extreme), but they are in control and there will be little pushback going forward. Even moderate democrats are being trampled.
- andrei_says_ 5y ago
  What are some things that are too extreme? And what are they extreme in relationship to?
kardianos 5y ago
The last 30 years in Oregon, Both D's and R's have dis-empowered rural communities (Bill Sizemore comes to mind). The cultural assumptions present in rural Oregon, Suburban Oregon, and Portland are vast. Go out to Christmas Valley. Go there. Then walk around the Pearl district in Portland. You're trying to use pure reason. Go get some experience.
AndrewBissell 5y ago
I think Covid is driving a great deal of this division now. People in rural Oregon see red states like Idaho almost entirely back to normal, without the promised piles of dead bodies in the streets, and feel like they could have that for themselves if not for Governor Kate Brown and the state's ridiculous protocols and mandates, which even include masking for outdoor youth sports.
mrcartmenez 5y ago
It’s simply that lower childhood IQ at age 5 is an indicator of conservatism in adults. One might interpret this as people who find it hard to understand the world are often easier to fool into thinking their problems are because of someone else, or to scare into believing that what they do have is at risk from “others”.
- kbelder 5y ago
  Remember, there are conservatives who are smarter than you. (And this goes the other way, for conservatives.) It's just something to keep in mind whenever you feel like making dumb generalizations about large groups.
- throwaway00127 5y ago
  Lower IQ in adults is linked to voting liberal and Democrat [1]. [1] https://www.unz.com/anepigone/politics-and-iq-conservative-democrats/ https://www.unz.com/anepigone/politics-and-iq-conservative-d...
ImprovedSilence 5y ago
I think a lot of the momentum of the right is around the view that the left wants to take away their freedoms and make a big nanny state where big brother knows best. To a degree this is probably driven by the fact that due to “urban” areas having denser populations, and thus requireing more rules to keep people from stepping all over each other. The rural sees this and says get off my lawn, I don’t want your rules here. (Guns, taxes, envy concerns, business law, etc etc) I see this as one place where the far right comes from, but by no means does this encompass everything.
austincheney 5y ago
> Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive. Self induced tribalism.
jl2718 5y ago
Or maybe you are the one that doesn’t understand their situation. These are government professionals that live and work there, and are intimately involved with all of the legal proceedings between county and state. You called them out as ignorant, and provided zero facts to back it up. Now let’s hear your credentials and experience with regional government in the rural Pacific Northwest. And wouldn’t it be great if there were GAO reports on where every collected tax dollar is spent. Maybe if you had that, you would be able to address this with facts instead of your assumption that you must be right because you are smarter than them, and that means you don’t need facts to know you are right. But given that you have presented zero facts, and zero experience, and may actually benefit from disinformation, I’m going to go with the opinions of the people that have all the facts, and all the experience, and actually have to pay the cost of their decision. But instead of psychoanalyzing them, let’s hear your opinion on a simple yes/no question: Should they be allowed to exit?

jpttsn 5y ago

What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater good, is shown to be wrong? Let alone the difficulty of tracing it: assume it’s possible to show where every tax dollar went. Would you still favor this trnsparency if it’s shown to sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of their would be constituents? Just hypothetically?

bilbo0s 5y ago
Would you still favor this trnsparency [sp] if it’s shown to sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of their would be constituents? Just Devil's Advocate, but wouldn't that be the best outcome? If it showed to which company every tax dollar went. Who the principals are in those companies. And the connections those principals have to politicians allocating the dollars? Especially if it showed this for every dollar, I'm finding it hard to see a downside. Am I missing something?
wvenable 5y ago
> What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater good, is shown to be wrong? Wouldn't we call that a success? You can't fix something that isn't measured. If nobody knows anything concrete then all people have to go on is vague feelings.

paxys 5y ago

The biggest driving factor is overexposure to news & social media which convinces otherwise well-off and content people that the "other side" is out to destroy their lives, so they must do something about it.

shaftoe 5y ago

Do you notice that you've defined your own viewpoint as rational and supported by data and the viewpoint of others as "probably focused around emotions"?

joshka 5y ago
Do you have rational data that would present this viewpoint as otherwise? How about helping us liberals understand the conservative viewpoint better if you have insight on this. Edit: please don't downvote based on disagreement - write something instead. This is a reasonable question asking to further understand the conservative viewpoint. Case in point, I'm upvoting buzzert's comments because they present a contrary, but interesting perspective.
- buzzert 5y ago
  One particular example might be Oregon’s decision to decriminalize all drugs[0] during a time when overdoses are at an all time high[1] and increasing over 40% in just the last year. You might say the political party who calls the war on drugs “cruel and inhumane” is acting on emotion rather than reason in spite of all the statistics. [0]: https://drugpolicy.org/press-release/2021/02/drug-decriminalization-oregon-officially-begins-today https://drugpolicy.org/press-release/2021/02/drug-decriminal... [1]: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ERD/Pages/Oregon-trends-with-U.S.-in-accelerated-drug-overdoses.aspx https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ERD/Pages/Oregon-trends-with-U.S....
  - 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
    Is there evidence that criminalizing drugs decreases the incidence of addiction/overdose?
  - listless 5y ago
    Another _could_ be letting people in Portland tear the city apart with impunity.
    - yesBoot 5y ago

marricks 5y ago

Having good information accessibly presented is helpful but when local news outlets are owned by Sinclair Media[1] and Fox News is the most watched cable outlet for the conservatives that live there the facts really don't matter. We can bend over backwards to explain how helpful the valley is to them but it's going to fall on ears which don't want to listen. I'm not saying they shouldn't be provided for, they 100% should, just them actually leaving will do more to show them the inefficiencies of a conservative super state. Short of that the most effective way to change the information disconnect is actually address the source of the issue: media. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Political_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Polit...

URSpider94 5y ago

I would love to see the data, but from the data I have seen, the data conflict with the popular (populist) narrative. A lot of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves. In reality, the money almost always flows in the other direction; taxpayers in cities are subsidizing the rural-dwellers. This has nothing to do with work ethic, it's just a hard fact that a lot of costs scale with square miles instead of with people (roads, emergency services), and that lower cost of living in the country leads to lower incomes which lead to lower tax revenue.

UncleOxidant 5y ago
Part of this has to do with how we've been able to drive down agricultural costs by means of automation over the last century which has driven a move away from family farms to larger corporate farms. In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20 percent.[1] Sure the coasts are creating more economic output by far, but people need to eat food. Agriculture is always going to be important, but lot less people are involved in it than ever before. This is part of what's led to the urban/rural divide where the rural folks feel left out - there just aren't as many of them as populations have migrated to cities. This is why people in rural areas feel increasingly left out. It's mostly due to economic forces that are out of their control. [1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-american-agriculture http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-americ...
- URSpider94 5y ago
  I definitely don't think we should ignore or minimize the contributions of rural Americans. I do think we need to do a better job of making the costs associated with rural life more explicit. This is a big deal in California, where people have pushed further and further into the wilderness, putting themselves at huge risk for wildfires while also increasing the number of miles of power lines that need to be built and maintained; these very power lines are one of the main causes of wildfires.

GongOfFour 5y ago

Here is the website for one of the groups pushing for this: https://www.greateridaho.org/ https://www.greateridaho.org/ Taxes are just one part of this. They list these other issues of concern: > 1. American Values: Oregon will continue to violate more and more American values and American freedoms because normal rural Americans are outnumbered in Oregon. Not in Idaho. Addicts will be attracted to Oregon from all over the world by the 2020 drug decriminalization law. > 2. Law and Order: Oregon refuses to protect citizens from criminals, rioters, wildfire arsonists, illegals, and the homeless, but then infringes your right to defend your family with firearms. Idaho enforces the law. > 3. Low Tax: Idaho is the state with the 8th smallest tax burden, and Oregon ranks 33rd, according to https://taxfoundation.org/tax-freedom-day-2019 https://taxfoundation.org/tax-freedom-day-2019 . Combining all taxes together, including sales tax, the average Idahoan pays $1722 less in taxes per year than the average Oregonian. That’s averaging together every adult or child, employed, retired or unemployed. And cost of living is 39% higher in Oregon than in Idaho. Oregon tax rates will continue to go up due to a lack of willingness to control spending. > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires. > 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any other state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural industries to revive and employ us again. > 6. Representation: The ruling party in the Oregon Legislature doesn’t have a single representative from a rural district or from eastern or southern Oregon, except one Ashland representative. But our reps would be in the ruling party in Idaho, where our concerns and needs would be heard.

UncleOxidant 5y ago
> 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires. If that's true then they'd be better off moving to Idaho, right? Given the vast area involved it's difficult to imagine that in a span of even a decade or more that the forests would be transformed so as to prevent wildfires. Staying where they are would only leave them in harms way for quite some years.
Pfhreak 5y ago
> Oregon will continue to violate more and more American values and American freedoms Haha, what? If Oregon is doing stuff, it's definitionally an American value and American Freedom, right? Who gets to decide what an "American *" is? > > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires. They do realize that Idaho and Oregon have different climates and different precipitation amounts, right? The Western Rockies and Eastern Cascades are different biomes. > > 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any other state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural industries to revive and employ us again. Is there any data that backs this up? This feels like a pipe dream to me that's totally unfounded.

kingsuper20 5y ago

>Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the government of the people serves the people. More precisely how taxes and math work. Given the metastasizing of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sections of the economy, and their typical concentration in urban areas, I'd say that rural areas are basically in the same position as a colony to a colonial power. Shipping cheap raw materials to the cities, who in turn own the shares, banks, and mortgages, has always been pretty common. Of course, if you are in favor of colonialism....

UncleOxidant 5y ago
A different lens to view this through has to do with economic and population shifts over the last century. Specifically the huge increase in agricultural productivity. "In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20 percent." [1] That's a large erosion of political and economic power in those rural areas as more people moved out of agriculture into other industries that tend to be located in population centers. Not sure how that changes unless we move away from large corporate farms back to smaller family farms (See various Wendall Berry essays and novels where he lays out what's happened to rural areas over the last century as family farms have dwindled), however, that seems very unlikely. [1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-american-agriculture http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-americ...
- teclordphrack2 5y ago
  The current definition of what is urban vs rural is very shaky. I don't think when theses numbers are brought up there is an understanding of what counted as rural then and what counts as rural now.
  - kingsuper20 5y ago
    In addition there's urban and there's urban. Remove the imperial capitals (DC or London) or financial capitals (London or New York) and the next tier down ain't so much.

vixen99 5y ago

Not to understand the benefits of buying in bulk and enriching the commons - what can one say about such people! But at least you do.

oogabooga123 5y ago

What a patronizing take. No wonder they want to leave, if they’re governed by people with your attitude.

Enginerrrd 5y ago
You're being downvoted because your statement is a bit inflammatory and leaps to condemnation. However, it is otherwise a very accurate take in my opinion. OP has presented their view as inherently rational, correct, and moral, and presented conservative views as "emotional" or "lacking understanding". That type of moral assertion absolutely IS one of the main complaints I see from rural conservatives about urban liberals.

mc32 5y ago

Note that this movement isn’t recent and I think I’d traced to the proposed state of Jefferson[1] (in the NorCal, south and east Oregon areas), which was going to get a vote in Congress but WWII got in the way and never happened. It comes up from time to time; you’ll see banners for it in rural areas. So it should not be framed as a pushback to current politics. They feel they’ve had reasons for a while. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_...

cratermoon 5y ago
You can trace it all the way back to the Mormons and their idea of the State of Deseret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret

cratermoon 5y ago

You can understand what's going on in eastern Oregon (and Idaho and Nevada) a bit better with some background. It's not especially about taxes. https://longreads.com/bundyville/season-one/ https://longreads.com/bundyville/season-one/

deleted 5y ago

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BobbyJo 5y ago

>My personal believe is presently, for lack of data that I can digest, that the far right is probably focused around emotions Both sides have appeals to emotion and appeals to logic in their platform. For instance, what basis is there for universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'? You can't make the argument that it would 'save the government money' to the right, because, in their opinion, the government should be spending any money on it, other than maybe paying for employees' insurance. Every dollar the government spends on it now is just an example of how the government can't do anything right. I think it's common for people on opposite ends of the spectrum see the other side as 'not grounded in data'. After all, if they saw the reason in the opinions of the other side, they'd be in the middle instead of the end they're on. All that being said, I think more clarity in government spending would go a long way in creating more/less trust in government's handling of certain operations. Maybe the right sees less inefficiency than they imagined, maybe the left sees more, but we'd at least have some real data to compare.

jfrunyon 5y ago
> Both sides have appeals to emotion and appeals to logic in their platform. For instance, what basis is there for universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'? You can't make the argument that it would 'save the government money' to the right ... You're right, you don't say it would save the government money. You make the argument that it would save everyone money. No one has any incentive to care about the price of healthcare, currently. Not the suppliers, not the providers, not the insurers. And the consumers simply have no choice.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  >No one has any incentive to care about the price of healthcare, currently That's a problem that can be fixed without making the government the sole customer: Make people pay for their own healthcare. >Not the suppliers, not the providers, not the insurers That's simply not true. They all have profit motive. >And the consumers simply have no choice. That's only true in emergency medicine, which is the minority of care most people receive.

rhacker 5y ago

I own land in a rural area (house coming in maybe a year) and I have spoken to the neighbors. For the most part it's little things actually. Rules that the major cities deal with, like not being allowed to put up a specific kind of fence because the bureaucrats in the city look at .1 acre plots of land and don't like how certain fences look - where out here we're dealing with 5 to 100 acres (and in some cases a 40000 acres of land). Or that we should be required to pay "school fees" when we build a house because there's "no fucking school" out here! One guy had to dismantle a building he erected (he's a builder) because he maxed out on "how much roof" he can have. There was one guy talking about Jesus but for the most part we're pretty sure he wasn't an anti-masker. Actually all of our neighbors have told us they wear a mask by the way. So yeah, it's really just getting away from the legal requirements that the populated places need but forget to loosen the rules far away. Now every county is different so take my input as a grain of salt.

0xB31B1B 5y ago
yea, thats not really the story in idaho/oregon area. A lot of the issue there is that lots of the land is owned by the federal government, and the people who live near by and are in ranching/mining/logging don't want to follow the rules the fed gov puts on operations in BLM land. There is a bit of "some guy 4k miles away in washington isn't allowed to tell me I can't ride my dirt bike here" attitude.
ed25519FUUU 5y ago
> One guy had to dismantle a building he erected (he's a builder) because he maxed out on "how much roof" he can have. Please tell me what part of the country this is so I can avoid it.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  If I were living in that state, I would build a fractal roof for my dog house that had close to an infinite surface area and then I would sue myself to teach people how dumb that rule is.
- jpollock 5y ago

teclordphrack2 5y ago

The main driving force is that the rural residence are the remnants of the racist that moved to that area even pre-statehood. They don't like that their white power is fading and they want control.

Enginerrrd 5y ago
This is not only baseless, but incredibly inflammatory and dehumanizing. Hackernews is not the place for this type of comment.
- teclordphrack2 5y ago
  https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-white-history-racist-foundations-black-exclusion-laws/ https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-white-history-racist... How are facts baseless?

kolbe 5y ago

Why would you spend so much time writing so much about people who you admitted to knowing nothing about? Go visit rural America. Talk to people. Getting upvotes on Hacker News for presumptuous rants is no way to actually learn what’s happening.

belorn 5y ago

> Of particular interest would be trying to categorize areas with positive or negative contributions to a person's or region's productivity Having a map which highlight regions which has a negative balance sheet in terms of taxes vs government costs would mostly just be a map of segregation of class, which in turn would be a map showing segregation of different demographics. Illustrating which demographics are costing the government more than they pay in taxes is not something the left in my country are very happy to do, and I doubt it is that much different in the USA.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

It is always about power. No reason to make it so complicated.

chmod600 5y ago

"Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive." It's not a big mystery. A lot of politicians are making their careers by dividing people. Some policies are just downright mean, and seem to serve little purpose other than division. Conservative/rural people are often on the receiving end, because they just don't have a large enough constituency to fight it. Sure, they are winning some battles, but each one is uphill and the slope is steepening rapidly. Sadly, the country will suffer greatly. The left is wrong on a lot of things (or at least too extreme), but they are in control and there will be little pushback going forward. Even moderate democrats are being trampled.

andrei_says_ 5y ago
What are some things that are too extreme? And what are they extreme in relationship to?

kardianos 5y ago

The last 30 years in Oregon, Both D's and R's have dis-empowered rural communities (Bill Sizemore comes to mind). The cultural assumptions present in rural Oregon, Suburban Oregon, and Portland are vast. Go out to Christmas Valley. Go there. Then walk around the Pearl district in Portland. You're trying to use pure reason. Go get some experience.

AndrewBissell 5y ago

I think Covid is driving a great deal of this division now. People in rural Oregon see red states like Idaho almost entirely back to normal, without the promised piles of dead bodies in the streets, and feel like they could have that for themselves if not for Governor Kate Brown and the state's ridiculous protocols and mandates, which even include masking for outdoor youth sports.

mrcartmenez 5y ago

It’s simply that lower childhood IQ at age 5 is an indicator of conservatism in adults. One might interpret this as people who find it hard to understand the world are often easier to fool into thinking their problems are because of someone else, or to scare into believing that what they do have is at risk from “others”.

kbelder 5y ago
Remember, there are conservatives who are smarter than you. (And this goes the other way, for conservatives.) It's just something to keep in mind whenever you feel like making dumb generalizations about large groups.
throwaway00127 5y ago
Lower IQ in adults is linked to voting liberal and Democrat [1]. [1] https://www.unz.com/anepigone/politics-and-iq-conservative-democrats/ https://www.unz.com/anepigone/politics-and-iq-conservative-d...

ImprovedSilence 5y ago

I think a lot of the momentum of the right is around the view that the left wants to take away their freedoms and make a big nanny state where big brother knows best. To a degree this is probably driven by the fact that due to “urban” areas having denser populations, and thus requireing more rules to keep people from stepping all over each other. The rural sees this and says get off my lawn, I don’t want your rules here. (Guns, taxes, envy concerns, business law, etc etc) I see this as one place where the far right comes from, but by no means does this encompass everything.

austincheney 5y ago

> Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive. Self induced tribalism.

jl2718 5y ago

Or maybe you are the one that doesn’t understand their situation. These are government professionals that live and work there, and are intimately involved with all of the legal proceedings between county and state. You called them out as ignorant, and provided zero facts to back it up. Now let’s hear your credentials and experience with regional government in the rural Pacific Northwest. And wouldn’t it be great if there were GAO reports on where every collected tax dollar is spent. Maybe if you had that, you would be able to address this with facts instead of your assumption that you must be right because you are smarter than them, and that means you don’t need facts to know you are right. But given that you have presented zero facts, and zero experience, and may actually benefit from disinformation, I’m going to go with the opinions of the people that have all the facts, and all the experience, and actually have to pay the cost of their decision. But instead of psychoanalyzing them, let’s hear your opinion on a simple yes/no question: Should they be allowed to exit?