[OC] heart disease mortality, with GDP and life expectancy –– 2020 electionSubmitted by terrykrohe t3_10go1zc in dataisbeautiful
RybosWorld t1_j55z31k wrote
Reply to comment by Libertas-Vel-Mors in [OC] heart disease mortality, with GDP and life expectancy –– 2020 election by terrykrohe
Whenever there’s a chicken vs egg type question the answer is almost always both.
Poor states are red because red states are poor.
Libertas-Vel-Mors t1_j5609kj wrote
Definitely agree that is partly true.
But then it also begs the question...does every American have to believe generating wealth is the biggest priority for government? Meaning does everyone see drawing wealth to a state a meaningful measurement of success for a state government?
I would suggest the state governments generally reflect the desires of the people. In a largely rural state with mostly blue collar people and jobs...are the people going to place a high value on education beyond high school? Are people in urban areas that own little or no actual property going to care about high property taxes to the same degree someone who lives on 5 acres will?
Red voters judge blue states against their own priorities, and blue voters judge red states against their own values. And I guess my thought is who cares? If you state is doing okay, why do you care what they other 49 do? And if your state is not doing okay, fix it before worrying about the other 49.
With 330 million people in this country there's going to be a lot of variation in political beliefs and values and what people consider important. And the states should reflect that variation, and they do.
RybosWorld t1_j5675u3 wrote
> why do you care what they other 49 do?
Well we don’t live in a vaccuum. What happens in one state affects the others.
Most obvious example is federal funding. Red states disproportionately take more than they contribute. Blue states are the reverse.
This is one of the reasons it feels particularly frustrating that the electoral college is a thing. I.e. minority opinions can dominate and take take take.
Libertas-Vel-Mors t1_j56hjzf wrote
And that is exactly what Democrats vote for with social welfare.
If you want the poorer states to stop receiving federal money, there's an easy solution. You don't have to send money to Red States.
But you are disingenuous even using that statistic because you know as well as I do there is so much that goes into that that it isn't simple red versus blue. Do you want a lot of the states That supply agricultural and food products for the rest of the country to stop doing that in search of bringing in a big IT sector? Start getting rid of farming and move to health care or insurance?
Small scale farming is not profitable, but the country depends on it. If you're going to start a culture war by telling poorer states they're sucking federal resources, you might not like how that turns out. Ranching is another one that isn't particularly profitable unless you're a large-scale commercial operation.
But let's do that, let's transition all the rural agricultural heavy red states in the south to something like IT or insurance. Let's destroy the generally lower paying manual labor jobs in the rural communities that represent half the country. Let's move all those people to the cities to get better higher paying jobs. All those blue states can depend on their own agricultural production and watch prices skyrocket. It's what the red states produce that keep prices reasonable in blue states.
Libertas-Vel-Mors t1_j56kz6p wrote
Oh, and 4 of the 10 states with the highest percentage of the population receiving federal benefits are blue states.
A higher percentage of the population in Oregon, Illinois, New York, and Rhode Island receive welfare benefits than in the state of Texas.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/welfare-recipients-by-state
But states like Illinois and New York have a huge wealth gap. They have a lot of poor people receiving benefits but they also have a disproportionate number of really wealthy people paying a lot of taxes.
So it's not a blue state sending money to a red state, it's a small minority of the population of the blue state that is insanely wealthy sending money to red states. Which is precisely how Democrats designed the federal budget, tax the wealthy at a higher rate and redistribute that money to the less wealthy.
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