Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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?
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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).
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.
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.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
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.
> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
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.