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> All you really need to do is look at how the South collects more federal aid than blue states, It's extremely misleading to portray the dichotomy as between

by wyager 4y ago

> All you really need to do is look at how the South collects more federal aid than blue states, It's extremely misleading to portray the dichotomy as between "the south" and "blue states". Note that red states outside of the south generally score very highly on metrics like income, educational outcomes, quality of life, quality of infrastructure, net tax receipts, etc. The thing that makes southern states shitty is not the fact that they're red. You can tease out the Simpson's paradox here - go ahead and check average federal aid receipts in southern states after splitting the population by political affiliation. There's a very blue subpopulation in southern states that accounts for a vastly disproportionate fraction of federal spending. > yet Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi routinely rank in the bottom ten for public education by states Why do you qualify this with "yet"? This is perfectly expected if you understand the causal factors here.

jcksmabx 4y ago
> This is perfectly expected if you understand the causal factors here. What are the causal factors?
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
Um, the causal factors being decades of republican control that is hostile to public education? You are generally correct on why and to whom the money goes to in these states, but the fact remains that money goes to these states and not a lot of progress happens. You can say it's the usual intractability of poverty, but at some point you take "Republican State/Local Government" + "Federal Funds" and see they get squandered. And thus, black water from faucets. There are lots of federal funds (thanks to congress) that isn't directly dispensed to citizens. Instead it gets granted to the states for their oversight and control, I believe Medicaid works like this, or it did at some point. I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to what happens to state-allocated federal funds in a deeply racist state with gerrymandering specifically designed to maintain white control of government.

by wyager 4y ago

jcksmabx 4y ago

> This is perfectly expected if you understand the causal factors here. What are the causal factors?

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

Um, the causal factors being decades of republican control that is hostile to public education? You are generally correct on why and to whom the money goes to in these states, but the fact remains that money goes to these states and not a lot of progress happens. You can say it's the usual intractability of poverty, but at some point you take "Republican State/Local Government" + "Federal Funds" and see they get squandered. And thus, black water from faucets. There are lots of federal funds (thanks to congress) that isn't directly dispensed to citizens. Instead it gets granted to the states for their oversight and control, I believe Medicaid works like this, or it did at some point. I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to what happens to state-allocated federal funds in a deeply racist state with gerrymandering specifically designed to maintain white control of government.