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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.
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