Census Bureau: Majority of Affluent Counties In Northeast US

An anonymous reader writes "I'm not a big fan of heat maps, but the US Census Bureau has just released a set of maps that succinctly capture average income distribution across the US. BusinessInsider points out that well over half of the most affluent counties in the US are concentrated in the Northeast (counting Virginia, presumably for the suburbs of Washington, D.C. located in that southern state). Of course, the cost of living is higher in those counties as well. Meanwhile, poor counties tend to be clustered in the southeast and in southwestern states on the Mexican border. There is good news for the northern prarie states, though, particularly North and South Dakota, as they lead in the number of counties with gains in household income over the past five years."

Comments

red v blue

[Jack Griffin]

I'm not from the US, so I never understood why poor people vote conservative? All the red states seem to be poorer yet these are the people that would benefit most from a "socialist" left govt. In every western democracy I've been in there's a clear cut bias, rich white people vote right and all the multi-coloured worker-bees vote left. Why is the US the opposite?

Re:red v blue

[Attila Dimedici]

The key difference between the U.S. and other countries in this regard is that in most countries your choice is between a "left" and "right" that both favor increased government power over the economy. In the U.S. the "right" actually proposes reducing government power and, to the extent it actually does so, thus opens greater opportunities for those who are not yet wealthy. As government power increases and it regulates ever more minutely the opportunities for those who do not have wealth and/or political connections are diminished.

Re:red v blue

[Anonymous Coward]

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” --Steinbeck

Re:red v blue

[mjm1231]

Or look at it the other way around. Overlay the blue state/red state voting patterns. Now tell me which party's economic policies lead to more favorable outcomes.

Re:red v blue

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really believe what you just wrote (that the "right" actually proposes reducing government and that less government opens greater opportunities for the poor), then your comment explains the situation perfectly, but not in the way you intended.

Re:red v blue

[djmurdoch]

I'm not from the US, so I never understood why poor people vote conservative?

They don't. In each state, the poorer people are more likely to vote Democrat, the richer people are more likely to vote Republican.

However, richer states are more likely to vote Democrat, and poorer states are more likely to vote Republican.

So perhaps the question should be posed the other way: if your state votes Republican, why is it poorer?

Re:red v blue

[BasilBrush]

The reason why some poor people vote conservative is because they are still independent-minded.

Far from it. They believe whatever Fox News or Talk Radio tells them to think.

Re:red v blue

[peragrin]

Bullshit the "right" wants to reduce power.

The "right" only say they want to reduce prower, but in reality want to expand it as much as the "Left"

Take the TSA, Dept of Homeland Security, etc. Or if you want something more recent the "right" republican author of the patriot is pissed the law is being used the way it is. He thinks it is gross over step and proposed a law to change it. His solution? Spend tens of millions of dollars annually on high priced lawyers with top secret clearances to act as a legal advocate for the people so it wouldn't just be the NSA and the judge in FISA court room.

If you actually believe in the bullshit about power reduction then you are a fucking idiot. Because not one of their laws actually will reduce government power. They just want to push that power to the corporations. The "spending" cuts basically only take away services that the poor use. while taxing them for the privilege of being able to use the remaining. If the "Right" really wanted smaller government the the DHS, TSA, and DOD each need to be cut in half. Cut those down and i will agree to cut equal cuts elsewhere.

But no one on the "right" will ever actually make the government smaller just shuffle it around so their Rich friends gets all the benefits.

Re:red v blue

[immaterial]

As an AC pointed out, your (delusional) reply illustrates the problem perfectly.

Common sense and hard data both point to strong social safety nets improving opportunity, and increasing entrepreneurship and the number of small businesses. There are two main reasons for this:
1. The safety net makes it much more possible to take the chance of starting your own business. Failure means you may lose your investment capital, but your family won't starve, won't lose their healthcare, won't lose their retirement, and won't lose access to a thorough education.
2. The safety net levels the "benefits" playing field between small business and large corporations. Not only does the US's system of employer-based healthcare make it more difficult and risky for those who try to start a small business, but it gives large, established companies an advantage because they have the size and weight to push for better deals.

The ONLY people whose economic opportunities are strengthened by the lack of a social safety net are the people who are already on top, who already own large companies and already make loads of money. They don't want competition from employees who can easily quit and start their own company. But even the rich would probably benefit in the long run, because pushing your customer base into abject poverty is not a way to increase sales (IMO right now they're coasting along on their ability to make goods dirty cheap by using third-world labor).

Re:red v blue

[Attila Dimedici]

Of course, the flip side of that is that the increased regulations of every kind of business that are implemented alongside of those "safety nets" make it harder to start a business. You are correct that employer based health insurance (not actually health care itself, but merely the way that it is paid for) make it more difficult to start your own business. Of course, the solution to that is NOT the government taking control of health care and being the only source of a way to pay for health care. Rather the solution is to eliminate the tax preferences given for employer provided health insurance.
The question I have is, if the only people who benefit from times when the political philosophy of reducing government power are those already on top, why does income inequality increase when the President favors income redistribution (such as currently) and decrease when the President favors empowering people to take control of their own lives by reducing federal regulations (such as when Ronald Reagan was President)?

Re: red v blue

[peragrin]

You would rather vote for some one who would lie to you about their Intention's?
The first thing republicans do in office isn't to make a smaller government. It is to force Christian values on everyone. Usually in government run and paid for systems.

Re:red v blue

[mjm1231]

If you are looking for empirical evidence, maybe instead of looking at the wish lists of Presidents, you might want to look at what was actually implemented by the congress at the same time.

Re:red v blue

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, if your post is true then nobody would be a conservative. Many people, including intelligent ones (and most doctorate level people outside of academia) are conservative. QED you didn't answer the question but instead substituted your own rationale for being liberal, which is somewhat irrelevant.

Southerners traditionally favor autonomy and distrust the government for various historic reasons. Those who rise out of poverty often overly value initiative and hard work, and would rather keep more of their earnings than to support those without it. Finally, from my experience in living in ground zero for poverty, welfare doesn't do much except make you dependant on the government. My home county has lost essentially all non-government jobs due to the free money, so people live a humiliating and destitute existance on $710 per month.

Re:red v blue

[tranquilidad]

We just started a training business last year.

It cost us about $10,000 to start that business. $4,000 was spent on the material we needed, web site, logos, etc.

$6,000 was spent, mostly on legal fees, on licenses and making sure we adhered to government regulations at multiple levels.

Those things we needed to build the business that came from private parties (bank accounts, uniforms, office supplies, etc.) could be satisfied in a matter of days. The longest and most difficult was getting an extended validation SSL for our web site - that took two weeks because we needed a letter from our attorney.

Anything we needed from a government agency took months with multiple calls.

All items that came from the private sector came from companies that wanted our business and we had choices of providers. This created an incentive for good service and responsiveness.

All items that came from regulatory agencies generally came from organizations that said this is how it is, live with it and you better not fail any of the steps or you, literally, won't be in business.

I can say that there was one agency that approached the problem like the private sector and that was a state agency responsible for issuing state-level trade and service marks. This particular state had a web-site and 24 hour response to our applications.

We used a particular service to walk us through the various government regulations at a total cost of about $1,500. Without that service it would have taken months and months just to figure out what regulations we needed to follow and, frankly, we probably wouldn't have even attempted the exercise.

Re: red v blue

[jmac_the_man]

You have a $150k/yr job in NJ with no college education? What are you, a state legislator?

Seriously, though, I graduated from a public high school in Morris County. (This is Slashdot, so I'm guessing at what TFA says rather than reading it, but I bet Morris County, NJ is on this list.) The public schools were set up to defend the New Jersey Education Association. You give 90% of the teachers I had in high school half a chance, and they'd shoehorn pro-teachers' union propaganda into whatever they were supposed to be teaching us.

On issues of politics (civics and history classes, but also tangentially related classes like English, which was taught by the head of the union), expressing any opinion other than the approved doctrinal opinion of the teacher would get you shouted down.

A few years ago, I was going to donate money to a candidate who wanted to take a harder line in the upcoming negotiations with the NJEA

I live and work in Morris County today, but my wife and I are going to move before we have kids, because there's no way I would send my kids through that.

Re: red v blue

[jedidiah]

> As opposed to Democrats who proceed to make Christian values illegal?

Democrats do nothing of the kind.

What you are talking about are the mindless hysterics of the theocrat fringe that define oppression as the inability to impose their views on the rest of us. These are people with benign sounding names like "Famiy Research Council".

The GOP needs to stop pandering to and aligning themselves with these American Talibans.

Re:red v blue

[tranquilidad]

A company that provides a service for money I consider a business. I've built more than one and fully understand the IRS issues.

But then again, isn't the IRS is just the face of more regulations making it difficult to start a business?

Re:red v blue

[tranquilidad]

Multiple jurisdictions doing things differently. One state demands one set of documents and another state demands another. Same thing happens at the county/parish levels and at the town levels.

The $1,500 wasn't spent to "figure out the gov't stuff", it was to expedite it. Any particular regulatory requirement is easy to understand and, with time, compliance isn't difficult. Getting ALL regulatory components managed in an efficient manner and, in particular, making sure none are missed is another story entirely.

If the regulations weren't a burden then why do the states need to establish the SBTDC organizations to begin with?

Re:red v blue

[EmagGeek]

It's simple, really.

They believe more in personal responsibility than shared responsibility. I live in the South, and the overwhelming majority of people I know would rather work hard for what they earn than take it from someone else without working for it. They believe that you must earn what you have, rather than simply be given it. And, they are okay with the fact that they don't have as much as others. They are happy with what they have.

I've lived in ultra-liberal and ultra-conservative parts of the country, and everywhere in between. The liberals I know are miserable. They can never be happy with what they have - they always see the grass being always greener elsewhere. They are also overwhelmingly underachievers with expectations that their slack will be taken up by "someone else."

Also, you have to take the data with a grain of salt. I live in a "poor" area by national standards - the median individual income in my city is approximately $30,000. However, the median home price is only about 2.5x. You can buy a "nice" home for $120-140k. My wife and I recently purchased a 2000 square foot home on 2 acres for $140k.

So, it's important not to confuse "poor" with "behind in the inflation race."

As far as my personal beliefs, I would rather shovel shit for minimum wage that reach into your wallet and steal your money. That is wrong, and I won't do it. So, it's not about voting in my own self interest, it is about voting for what is right.

Re:red v blue

[mjm1231]

Well, considering that a significant factor in the increased income inequality under our current President is a result of laws passed during his first two years

Well, if you accept as axioms things which have no support in fact or evidence, then sure, you can prove whatever you want. But why even bother with the pretense of proof if you take that route?

Or, for a starting point, try here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2013/03/28/the-mystery-of-income-inequality-broken-down-to-one-simple-chart/

Re:red v blue

[ganjadude]

Talk about hypocracy, you got flaming liberals that are all for killing unborn humans but are aghast that we would kill someone for something like , i dont know shooting up a school. This is why Im not a democrat or a republican, they are both hypocrites, and until one can take the blinders off and see it from both sides, you always will think "the other side" is the bad guy, because "your side" conditioned you that way

Re: red v blue

[readin]

You point out a huge dilemma for conservatives. Do we vote for the people who promise to save the country and then try to destroy it? Or do we vote for the people who promise to destroy the country and keep their promise?

This dilemma was made most apparent during the years the Republicans controlled the House and Senate during the Bush the Younger years and spent like Democrats. They were punished at the polls in the mid-term elections by many conservatives staying away or voting third-party.

Fortunately a solution to the problem arose from the grass-roots, we have the tea parties. The Republican establish hates them of course. The Democrats and their media hate them of course. The monied interests who rent-seek from both parties hate them of course. As such they are demonized by all those groups and the ignorant believe those demonizations. But at the moment, they're the only ones who seem to be honestly seeking to expand freedom by limiting government spending and government regulation.

Re:red v blue

[ShanghaiBill]

Talk about hypocracy, you got flaming liberals that are all for killing unborn humans but are aghast that we would kill someone for something like , i dont know shooting up a school.

Liberals are not "for" killing unborn humans. They are for someone other than politicians making the decision. I see no hypocrisy in being both pro-choice and anti-death-penalty: In both cases, I am opposed to government officials having life and death power over the citizenry.

Re:red v blue

[hey!]

Having done business with local governments around the country, I can tell you that the stereotypes about southerners or northeasterners are inaccurate. It's not like everyone from Georgia is a conservative and everyone from Massachusetts is a liberal. You find the same *kinds* of people everywhere, but in slightly different mixes.

Control of most states happens at the margins. If you have slightly more conservatives in a state, you get consistent conservative victories and if you have slightly more liberals you get consistent liberal victories. Incumbents tend to get re-elected too; that gives the ascendant fringe leverage over the low-information middle voters, and puts the weaker side in an up-hill battle for success. Lack of success for a minority party powerfully weakens that party, and it may have difficulty fielding strong candidates. Things tend to *look* hopeless after several decades of dominance by one party, but I think that's an illusion. A strong centrist candidate can win anywhere against a weak majority party candidate, as with Scott Brown who won the Ted Kennedy Senate seat in Massachusetts 2010.

Red states tend to have a history of hard luck and social upheaval, and this produces marginally more skepticism about government. By contrast Massachusetts, indisputably the bluest state in the nation, has enjoyed remarkable good fortune since the founding of the nation, and that produces *marginally* less skepticism about government here. But it's still there. In Massachusetts you still hear *exactly* the same range of opinions as you would in a red state. It's just that minority parties are structurally disadvantaged in states where one party has had a long record of success.

We just had a special election here to fill Ed Markey's congressional seat. The Democratic winner walked away with 65.9% to the Republican's 31.7%. That may seem like a landslide, but consider this. Almost a third of the voters came out for a totally unknown Republican, a political neophyte who nobody thought had a chance of winning against a well-known and popular politician. That strikes me as a remarkable showing, and I think it shows that even the bluest state is more purple than we imagine.

Re:red v blue

[Attila Dimedici]

No, I am saying that in the U.S., the definition of "right" in politics is reducing government power over private citizens. The definition of "left" is wishing to increase government power over private citizens. Therefore anyone who increases government power is on the left.

Re:red v blue

[BitterOak]

In the U.S. the "right" actually proposes reducing government power

Like when they impose laws requiring [completely irrelevant] vaginal ultrasounds prior to aborts, or outlawing sodomy? Or when they act in order to increase military spending?

Although I disagree with the parent, I think he/she was modded down unfairly, as some valid points are raised. The problem is, in America, there are two right wings: the libertarian wing and the social conservative wing. They agree on some issues and disagree a great deal on others. It is the libertarian wing that favors smaller, less powerful federal government, and the social conservative wing that favors restrictions on abortions, restrictions on gay rights, etc. Their positions on those types of issues are often opposed. So, in America at least, it isn't so simple as a right vs left or liberal vs conservative split.

Re: red v blue

[shutdown -p now]

They aren't forced to pay for birth control - they are forced to pay for insurance, which, among other things, provides for birth control.

Indirectly paying for something that you don't like is not at all new, and all of us have been in that situation. For example, I don't like the US foreign policy in the Middle East, but my income taxes still fund it.

Re:red v blue

[ultranova]

I think that abortion, adultery, prostitution, violent pornography, and smoking pot are all morally wrong, but I don't think any of them should be illegal.

Just out of curiosity, what's morally wrong with smoking pot?

Speaking as a non-American

[arcite]

But I have observed that whether there is a big D or R as POTUS, it doesn't really affect political outcomes as much as it may seem. Take for example the relatively new in vogue maneuver of 'redistricting' and 'gerrymandering', perhaps the true root of systemic dysfunction. Essentially a practice of 'divide and conquer', where private interests successfully co-opt larger societal movements. Witness the dysfunction in Congress --- the power players love it! All those political lobbyists, media manipulators, spin doctors, fringe politicians preaching destruction of the government, fat cat hedgefunders, and sycophants of every political and religious affiliation ect... Who would want to change the status quo when they're making so much money from it?

Re:Speaking as a non-American

[Attila Dimedici]

Take for example the relatively new in vogue maneuver of 'redistricting' and 'gerrymandering',...

Considering that the term "gerrymander" was coined in 1812, I am not sure how you conclude that it is relatively new. I remember reading in the 1980s about a Congressional District that snaked its way across a state. The district was 1 or 2 miles wide and about 100 miles long. This practice has been going on for basically as long as the United States has been around.

Re:Speaking as a non-American

[Anonymous Coward]

It's as if it was named after someone....

The Bakken Oil Patch Is the Plains Income Source

[jfischersupercollid]

The counties with the sudden increase in income match up with the Bakken oil patch. This is a decent article with a map to illustrate

Sadly, the oil will be extracted, the land will be poisoned, and the workers will leave for another boom and/or gold rush elsewhere, so the counties will be no better off unless they tax the oil extraction effort now.

Re:The Bakken Oil Patch Is the Plains Income Sourc

[Anonymous Coward]

"so the counties will be no better off unless they tax the oil extraction effort now."

And they don't really. The area of Dickinson already went through an oil boom in the late 70s early 80s.
They didn't learn from their mistakes. Most of the area around Villard and to the west was a testament to what happens when you think the money will never stop flowing.

Urban versus rural [Re:red v blue]

[Geoffrey.landis]

I'm not from the US, so I never understood why poor people vote conservative?

Liberals don't understand this either, so your lack of understanding doesn't stem from not being from the US.

Liberalism is, overall, the urban and suburban political philosophy; conservatism is typically the rural political philosophy. Rural counties are poorer than urban ones, resulting in the political split you see.

Liberalism is not really marketed to people outside of the urban centers. Most liberals don't seem to have much interest in what people in those areas think, other than making quips like that one: "We have a very very very stupid population". (The people in rural areas think exactly the same thing.)

Re:Urban versus rural [Re:red v blue]

[Applehu Akbar]

If there were no New York City, we would to import half of our snottiness from Europe.

Re:Urban versus rural [Re:red v blue]

[Anonymous Coward]

Amusing to know that most people in the Urban centers would starve to death of not for the Rual areas.

No, they wouldn't. If the Rural areas didn't exist, the people in those Urban Centers would then need to be producing their own food. Since the rural areas do exist, though, there is food importation. Paid for with money from the economic activities Urban areas do have.

Which is what they export.

Of course, if New York was wiped off the face of the planet, people would have to do without....um...what?

Well, New York is the 16th largest economy in the world, behind South Korea, so the state probably produces a lot of things you don't realize you buy. Lots of cabbage, apples, cherries, as well as dairy products and honey.

Or did you mean New York City? Well, besides the obvious Stock exchange, there's plenty of research in the fields of information technology and healthcare, but also manufacturing. Garments, food products (there's a reason why that Picante sauce commercial referenced another brand being made in New York City, that's where a ton of factories are). New York City is also a major center of film and television production. Not to mention book publishing and journalism.

Of course, you, in your snobby rural superiority kick, may not value such things, you may decide to dismiss all of this as unimportant and unnecessary, all the while deriding urbanites for their arrogance, as they aren't the plain and simple folk of the rural areas who do what's important.

Re:Urban versus rural [Re:red v blue]

[gmhowell]

If there were no New York City, we would to import half of our snottiness from Europe.

I have faith in the ability of LA to pick up the slack.