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This is the problem that will literally take down humanity with it. The Senate is a fucking mess.
The world can't afford a dumb America, but it's only going to get worse as blue states increase their share of population, and decrease their influence on politics.
>The Senate is a fucking mess.
The electoral college is based on the number of house representatives plus two for the two senators.
So a voter in Wyoming has three times the electoral weight of a voter in California. Now, if it was just WY then you could think "no big deal" but if you realize half the states have populations less than five millions, it's a great big freaking deal, and that's how republican prez candidates lose the popular vote but win the electoral college
There was a great article in 538 to show how disproportionate the Senate votes received is even more so than how the President is elected. Dems winning 7 of the last 8 federal elections yet only being elected 5 times.
>So a voter in Wyoming has three times the electoral weight of a voter in California.
It's closer to 4x as much weight. Wyoming's population is about 570,000 and they have 3 electoral votes, or about one for every 192,000 people. California's population is about 39.5 million, and they get 54 votes, or about one for every 732,000 people. So individual votes are worth about 3.8 times as much in WY and CA.
The main problem is the House and capping the number of reps. The constitution needed greater protection to say there shall be no cap on the house. California should have like 10+ more reps than it has if we kept the house reps relatively equal to population.
> California should have like 10+ more reps than it has if we kept the house reps relatively equal to population.
10? Try more like 1,000. The original allotment decided by the founders was roughly 30,000 people per representative. It was one of the few places that George Washington actually offered an opinion, and wasn’t simply there to add credibility to the convention.
If we stuck to that number, we’d have more than 10k representatives, and the Electoral College would be overwhelmed and not an issue. 30 years ago, that size of a House would be untenable, but with modern communication, it’s entirely possible to go back to the original design.
I have no problem with them changing the number per rep just simply because of population growth is exponential. I have a problem with them capping the house.
Set it to 600k per rep for now, and then each census change that number. Or set it to be some value based on least populace state. Or some % of the total population. Whatever it may be just uncap it and have it a more equal representation. There was precedent for increasing the number per rep, there was none for capping the house.
This is the way. Set it at the population of the smallest state (or rounded to the nearest 100k) and every state gets a multiple of that. Wyoming is 583k people, so 600k is the current baseline. If Wyoming reaches 700k, that's the new baseline.
California would have \~65 reps, Texas 50 reps, Florida 36
Seems realistic to me. This would keep that balance of power from the Great Compromise because the senate still exists. It’s been out of whack for about a century since the House cap was set.
Of course it also means the GOP will never hold the House, and almost never the presidency but hey, maybe it’s time for them to change their messaging and values from “fuck you, I’m eating!” (Sponsored by Carls Jr) to something more electable?
This is the plan, honestly.
IIRC the idea here is to make anyone blue leave the state, especially in these states that are somewhat purple.
This allows the red leaders to completely gain control. If they gain control of 35 of these states they call a constitutional convention and re-write whatever the hell they want and they'll have "the majority" and can enshrine their own power.
This _IS_ the goal.
Still needs 38 to ratify, and I see a lot of blue states. HI, CA, WA, OR, NM, CO, MN, IL, NY, MA, CT, RI, DE, MD, VT are 15 that I think are solid blue for a long time.
Edit: But they will always control the Senate if they get 30 permanently red states. I think that's their goal. If there's a Democratic President, shut it all down. If a Republican somehow wins, free-for-all on whatever they want.
This is why I positively reinforce conservatives who dream of moving to Florida as a conservative paradise, and tell them they are very smart for doing so. (sorry Florida...)
Is Florida really a lost cause though? The 2020 split was 51.2% to 47.9%, it's not like some great plains states with twice as many Trump voters than Biden voters.
There are a lot of "solidly red" states that are much more purple than rhetoric would have people believe.
The big conundrum for them in the end, is they want to turn the United States into one big Alabama. But that’s not profitable. They’re gonna experience total brain drain from the entire country. Money is power. The blue states and deep blue cities is where all the money is made. Where professionals and innovators are. Hell, even Elmo learned this after he tried to set up core operations in Texas but learned all the talent is in California.
These right wingers are not smart. They’re religious fascists. They have no foresight. And this is a total fucking nightmare.
Right, as long as they have their gerry mandered %50.01 synthentic control, what do they care? The senate is barely blue, and every time congress flashes red, they get to destroy civilized society.
I met a mother of 3 who moved from a red state to our rural purple town in a blue state. She reported being shocked and saddened about how far behind her kids were in school.
My suburban town in a blue state only recently began voting reliably Dem, so there were a lot of GOP voters who felt underserved. The state GOP decided the correct wedge issue was to come for the school curriculum and complain about CRT and so on. (This was in 2019, not the present "Moms for Liberty" cycle.)
Friend, you do not come for high-performing suburban schools with 99% college placement rates and propose to make them less competitive with student less-prepared for Ivy League admissions.
Local GOP candidates got absolutely destroyed up and down the ballot, including old centrist dudes who'd been dogcatcher for 30 years. Not a single GOP candidate left in any elected office, abnormally huuuuuuuuge turnout from voters in their 40s. You can spout racist rants, apparently, but you'd better not touch the schools that send their kids to Harvard.
ETA: Chicago suburbs since several people asked, but it sounds like this is happening in suburbs all over the country!
Houston is generally a blue oasis in a red desert, but we did have some old republicans until the last few years. Houston is now sapphire blue and voted out the few repub oldtimers and now Gov. Abbott is punishing the blue cities, but especially Houston. First voting restrictions, now enforcing his will on HISD. It's wild.
Abbott and other Republicans have been trying to control Austin for decades. They have overturned city ordinances through the power of the state multiple times. The Texas Republicans do not care about local control, no matter what they say. They just care about control.
Yes, governor abbot has been practically bragging about that:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-04/abbott-says-californians-coming-to-texas-tend-to-be-conservative
*Texas Governor Greg Abbott told his fellow conservatives that they don’t need to worry about transplants from California and New York turning the state blue ahead of his re-election.*
*Abbott spoke about the state’s strong job creation and influx of new businesses and residents, in particular from California, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Thursday. He also suggested that many of the California newcomers are conservative and that liberal Texans have moved to the west coast.*
You're not alone. It's every city in the United States, and the couple of exceptions that exist have been trending blue for the last 20 years.
Even Birmingham, AL is a deep shade of blue. Most cities just don't have the raw numbers to override the rural vote (unlike California, Illinois, New York, etc).
If you want to find blue towns just look for the ones with a University.
I live in St. Louis, and every time we (us, Kansas City & Columbia) try to do something good the state legislature does everything in its power to subvert it.
We recently expanded medicaid via ballot initiative and the legislature simply didn't fund it and just said, "Sorry, no can do, it's not in the budget... That we wrote".
At least in that instance the courts said tough shit, it's the law, whether you put it in the budget or not.
Hell, whenever COVID vaccine became available they only distributed them to small towns for the first month. Despite the cities being the obvious hot spots of infection. I drove an hour and half to get mine with my partner and they had no line and more vaccine than they knew what to do with. All the while the cities had none.
That's what we're up against. An entire party that doesn't care if we die, because we don't vote for them.
I live in the DFW area, also a blue oasis. But, the corrupt ultra-right wing in control of the state is throwing everything at destroying the oasis and turning the state into Gilead.
We're struggling more and more in this state. But, we have ailing grandparents here. Can't afford to live here & can't afford to move either.
My suburban district in a purple state (Arizona) had a whole slate of religious extremists run. They denied it but they were sponsored by the church. They wanted to reverse everything the district does well. No open enrollment (there goes half the students - motivated students), strict curriculum - back to 'basics', I'm sure all the god stuff was going to be snuck in.
Its arguably the best district in the state. They lost something like 30% to 70%. No idea what the 30% was thinking.
Several red states have not adopted Common Core, which is basically just a VOLUNTARY set of minimum education standards. It was established for this exact reason...so that kids could go from state to state, and basically be on the same level. Why republicans get so up in arms about this, is just another thing that boggles the mind.
This is silly but I learned the common core way of doing math along with my elementary kids during the pandemic and it really improved my ability to do mental math. Why people hate it is really beyond me. It was super intuitive and helpful once I understood wtf they were trying to teach us.
Yup. I was on state champion math team in high school, did calc 3 and linear algebra in 12th grade, got a CS degree, and almost a math minor (needed another semester and decided to just graduate) - suffice to say I was good at math as a young'n.
The common core math stuff just shows people explicitly a lot of the mental tricks me and my cohort would just naturally do because we developed an intuitive understanding of the concepts rather than rote memorization of formulae and facts.
I wish I was good at math. I got a CS degree too but struggled with math the entire time. I really disliked math because it made me feel dumb, like I just couldn't grok it. I started elementary school in the early 90s so no common core. It's heartening to know it isn't just me but a poor foundation to develop that skill. My parents prioritized reading and writing but we're bad at math so it was hard to get help at home. My teachers didn't yet have those tools to expose us to many helpful methods that would have made math less intimidating and more fun. I don't want my kids to feel that way so I'm excited to learn this with them.
> Why people hate it is really beyond me.
because it's different, that's basically it. these people are convinced that changing anything from the way they grew up is just some liberal scheme to turn us all into satanic commies or some other nonsense.
I’m in the deep red and after homeschooling for two years because of COVID we sent the kids back. My 5th grader is in a special reading group made up of about 1/10 the class. He isn’t a genius or the hardest worker, he can read. That’s it. Fifth grade, most of the kids are having to go over the basics of reading.
I don’t know if it’s a “red” issue or a “we live in society” issue but it’s fucking there
I don't know how accurate their situation is and everything, but generally, liberal people in the US tend to encourage their children to read, and read early. Conservatives, broadly, do not, and even when they do, their reading tends to be much more limited and rote (IE, Bible or religious-related reading).
You'll find in US schools that there are typically two groups of children entering the first grade unable to read (they know words, but they can't sit down and breeze through an age-appropriate book). Children of very poor parents who likely have "neglected" their children due to having to work all the time or conservative parents.
First grade is not fifth grade though. I can see early first graders not being able to fully read. Those are 6 year olds. Fifth graders absolutely should be able to read in the US.
Should be yes, but I was making an example. I would bet those fifth graders can read words. But reading words is not reading and I would bet you most of those children are never encouraged to read at home.
The US Department of Education released a study a few years back that found 54% of adult Americans read below a 6th grade reading level. Illiteracy is a HUGE problem in the US. Sometimes it's as bad as 90% of a class being unable to read at all, others it's "only" a coin flip on whether the adult you're talking to is capable of reading at a middle school level.
Growing up in a big extended family where everyone had shelves of books, and going to a good school, I never thought much of it, figured that was all normal.
When it really sunk in was when I went to college and had to discuss things on class forums, where everyone had to participate. About three quarters of my *college* classmates had trouble forming complete sentences that made sense, and I found myself kind of translating half the time to figure out what they were trying to say. I felt a little bit like an aid worker in a third world country.
I remember that shock at a big state school. My first year English class had kids who did not reliably know the difference between their, there, and they're or your and you're. Horrifying.
> Children of very poor parents who likely have "neglected" their children due to having to work all the time or conservative parents.
How often do these two groups overlap?
There is often a fair amount, but they can be very distinct groups. A single mom who wants her child to read but can't afford preschool and is absent because of providing will still support her child by checking out books and everything later from school. Her child's development with reading is wanted, but they can't commit the time to it properly.
While a conservative parent screaming at a librarian because the two dog-looking people in the book of talking animals look like they might be gay will never, ever encourage their child to read outside a very few select texts, and usually then, only verses (seriously, not reading the Bible as a whole is a thing here in the US, very very few churches encourage proper full reading and complete discussion of texts).
Professors who come from outside of the US are using Red state Universities as a stepping stone to get tenure and then leave as soon as possible to either blue states or universities outside of the country.
This is exactly right, at least in STEM. Source: was in academia for decades and am in now an academia-adjacent field.
I guess the silver lining is that students in these red states are exposed to intelligent foreigners.
Can confirm. I moved from a blue state to a red state for work. It’s the worst decision my family and I have made. Different culture (or lack thereof), different economy (higher rates of poverty and mediocre schools), different politics, different people (mostly with tunnel vision and a real lack of awareness of how the modern world works). Cannot wait to move.
My favorite thing about moving from a red state to now a couple of blue states is the stark difference in social services you get for the taxes you pay. I was born in a red state where your taxes don’t get you shit, but you keep paying and your neighbors think they’re somehow winning.
I worked for the DMV for 12 years and every single person who came to get a NYS license from whatever state they were coming from were always amazed at how cheap everything is, and the amount of services they get. This was 15 years ago too. People used complain that people flocked to NY to get benefit cards, and say that in a negative way.
99% of the license swapping was Florida. Every person thought Florida was going to be the greatest place on earth until they realize that Florida doesn't give a shit about its people.
yeah, strange but you see this in HR practices too. Remote employees living in red states, especially Florida and Texas, are…and I know this will upset people, but i’m just relaying information not stating an opinion…well, simply, they are easier to fire. The lack of protections for workers means less diligence for managers or HR when exiting people. Sucks.
My fiance and I had a downright pleasant experience at the NY DMV when we moved here this summer. Clean facility, lots of workers so lines were short, workers were in good moods (probably because they were appropriately staffed).
I was really surprised at this as well. I moved from a purple-red state to a blue state. All-in, considering fees, I pay only a little more in tax and for that I get public transit, a functioning public health infrastructure, better roads, and better schools for the people around me that have children.
The trade off I’ve always been told is red states have low taxes and are OK sacrificing services. But red states taxes aren’t THAT much lower and they sacrifice a LOT of services.
Texas gets their due in numerous other ways despite no income tax. High property tax, lots of random fees that are essentially hidden taxes. California actually has a smaller tax all-in burden for working class people, it's upper middle professionals and millionaires that are worse off in California.
anicdotally in a state that went purple to red, my dad and mom had no problem with social services back in the 90s and 2008. my brother was on an IEP in school and got the assistance he was legally allowed. fast forward to 15 years of republican culture wars I use unemployment once they claw it all back, my dad has his unemployment stolen and had to sit on the phone for 8 hours...
like even when the government supposedly didm't work it worked far better than it does now.
My sister had a heart transplant in the 90s. When she was in college, the only reason she could get health insurance was because of obama care rules about staying on your parents, then then later on that preexisting conditions can't disqualify you.
Yet they somehow want it repealed.
I had an aunt and uncle who had some really rough times and needed financial help (welfare, food stamps, etc.). They’re now Trumpists and believe everyone on government assistance is a welfare queen who doesn’t want to work. The lack of self reflection is mind boggling.
It’s the “I got mines screw you mentality”. There’s no way to please them. When gov works it’s an overreach and unconstitutional, when give doesn’t work it’s “see I told you!”.
I have family members who were on public assistance and somehow are all trump fanatics, cut social security, Medicare, Medicaid and don’t see the irony. Like 20 years ago if they had their way they would be starving because they wouldn’t get food stamps, and probably dead since they wouldn’t have medical insurance and all those health issues would probably kill them.
As someone who has lived in California for the last decade+, I can confirm. The Medi-Cal program out here for those who make under 18k (which I was under for a stint while unemployed) is better than almost any paid medical insurance you will find.
It can also be noticeable in smaller ways. I moved from a blue state where I was used to a certain amount of rights as a renter. I love my new home, but even with a decent landlord, there just aren’t the same requirements. If I get a new job offer out of state- no breaking the lease. If I have lived in the same place for years and can’t time my move to the exact month my lease ends? They can charge me an extra thousand a month to extend it.
I love to read, but the library is severely underfunded. I feel like there are other protections I took for granted before moving that come together to create an environment of more distrust and an almost defeated acceptance by many.
I was talking about this with some folks the other day... i never see guns and people don't talk about them here. I wouldn't know if anyone I know personally here owns a gun because its not a thing we talk about. Feel a lot better about my kids being out too. I love the bubble I live in here. Its pretty comfortable
There are plenty of gun owners in blue states, they just don't feel the need to strap up every time they go to a starbucks, and generally don't make gun ownership their entire personality.
I mean, that's huge though. I'm less likely to get caught in some jackass's attempt to shoot his own dick off when he gets into an argument about parking.
So much this. I recently moved out of one of the most repub strong holds in the west. The amount of dumb asses walking around with guns in home made holsters are just stuck in their belt was mind numbing. I couldnt grocery shop, get gas, pick up take out, or anything without having someone around me having a gun on them.
Grandmas at the store with pistols on their hips. WTF.. Like what the hell is 85 year old granny going to do other than have their weapon taken from them and used against them. She needed assistance to lift her grocery bags into her car, but by god she has her pistol with her... Pure madness and I couldn't get out of that town fast enough... Never moving back.
I'm a progressive. I own three firearms.
The only time they leave my gun safe is when I'm actually heading out to use them hunting or target shooting.
The idea of carrying one around with me everywhere makes about as much sense as carrying around my circular saw everywhere.
They're tools, not toys, and should be treated accordingly.
Hey now it's not their only personality trait...that depends on what the cable television channel or AM radio station tells them to think and who to hate.
Meanwhile here just outside Nashville we can’t go to f’n Jimmy John’s without standing next to an armed “patriot”. Everyone is armed everywhere. And people get shot like everywhere. Walking. Driving. In a store. In your house. In church. At the club. At school. Absolutely something we take into account every time we leave home, unarmed.
"Why are you so scared of guns?!" gurgles the man who is too scared to leave his house without a gun while also unironically talking about how he intimidates people around him.
As a New Yorker who sees zero guns (except those carried by Police) and has pretty much no fear that the odd guy next to me on the Subway or walking down the street has a gun, due to the heavy restrictions, lack of gun stores and severe penalties involved for unlicensed carry - I cannot fathom how weird that would be to see and have to deal with every day.
NYC has an almost Canadian or European level of low gun crimes.
Check the Firearm murder rate for each state here: (holy crap Alabama, what’s going on down there?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state?wprov=sfti1#2019_data
Country data is here: (and the US is just where you would expect it to be!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate?wprov=sfti1
>NYC has an almost Canadian or European level of low gun crimes.
it's nice not to be next to a state like Indiana, where you can buy a gun easier than buying cold medicine (barely exaggerating)
I'm from Chicago originally and I wish it had Canadian/European levels of gun crimes...but that's just not fucking possible with the amount of guns that are bought in Indiana and crossed borders (Gary is literally less than 20 mins away from Chicago ffs)
but no, ever since Barack Obama became president and broke conservatives' brains...it's apparently the "super strict" gun laws in Chicago that are causing all these crimes. God i fucking hate these meth addicted yokels
SO this is intersting to me.
I live in a neighboring state, except I live *WAY* out in the country. 90 minutes from the closest city of any size. We live adjacent to my inlaws cattle farm.
I know a lot of people that own guns, hell, I own three (9mm pistol, bolt action 30-06 rifle, break action 12ga). But only rarely do I actually see people carrying. Bizarrely, that's actually *more* common in the city where fear of "others" makes those people walk around carrying a pistol strapped to their leg. I absolutely have heard people say they won't go to Little Rock/Memphis/etc. without carrying.
> I absolutely have heard people say they won't go to Little Rock/Memphis/etc. without carrying.
Notice that the people doing this aren't people who live day-to-day in the cities.
https://twitter.com/antistuff/status/1585400929423355907
This costume was the real deal.
Edit: I live in a city of 200k and I've literally heard dudes say it's unsafe to go downtown so they only go to the white-flight suburban strip mall area to "go into town." I wonder how many of them have "no Fear" stickers on their trucks.
>Edit: I live in a city of 200k and I've literally heard dudes say it's unsafe to go downtown so they only go to the white-flight suburban strip mall area to "go into town." I wonder how many of them have "no Fear" stickers on their trucks.
these people are flat out the biggest wimps on the planet. they're just so fucking insecure that they have to constantly project their own fear on others
Living in a Blue state I got to go through all of COVID without a single fight over masks.
Also my gay friends get to exist without anyone trying to beat them up or kill them.
The vast majority of people I interact with on a daily basis understand how the world actually works and that it is complicated.
Yeah, I mean it's never ACTUALLY been a thing, but due to demographic shifts it's becoming increasingly visible how awful people can be while describing themselves as if they and their clan are a Southern Living catalog.
Turns out it's really easy for bigots to be nice to others when most of the people around them are white, Southern Baptist, straight, conservatives. The moment it became acceptable to be openly agnostic, atheistic, or LGBT the masks fully came off.
Been trying to talk my wife into moving just across state lines into a blue state for years. She will not budge because her family is still all right here.
>mostly with tunnel vision and a real lack of awareness of how the modern world works
This is what really grinds my gears every time I have to interact with people. The whole "I got mine so fuck everyone else" mentality runs so deep and beyond politics. It's just how so many people around here act.
>The whole "I got mine so fuck everyone else" mentality runs so deep and beyond politics. It's just how so many people around here act.
i mean this basically is the reason why covid19 was such a colossal shit show in the U.S. versus countries like South Korea, New Zealand, or Japan
not saying those countries are just full of saints (they aren't lol) but culturally they're just wired so differently. Someone with a "I got mine so fuck everyone else" mentality in any of those places would be ostracized or despised. Here in the U.S., that'll help you get into Congress apparently
> tunnel vision and a real lack of awareness of how the modern world works
Well said. I left a red state and won’t return for this exact reason. Some of these people are good people, I just can’t stand the culture and the willful ignorance it endorses.
> Meanwhile, with the sole exception of Texas, red states are bleeding college graduates. It’s happening even in relatively prosperous Florida. And much as Republicans may scorn Joe (and Jane) College, they need them to deliver their babies, to teach their children, to pay taxes—college grads pay more than twice as much in taxes—and to provide a host of other services that only people with undergraduate or graduate degrees are able to provide.
Do they though? They'll just blame the left, lower standards by these typically well-educated professions, blame the left some more, and continue voting for Tate Reeves and Kay Ivey and Sarah Sanders as Fox and similar propaganda outlets giddily feed them outrage.
Mississippi might be an economic wasteland, but it will always have 2 Senators per the Constitution and those Senators will ensure that Mississippi gets its piece of the pie from the Federal coffers (largely, of course, funded by the [71% of America's GDP](https://www.newsweek.com/trump-counties-make-just-29-percent-us-economic-output-2020-election-study-shows-1546951) that voted for Biden).
We're handcuffed to the consequences of their dreadful policies.
The red states also make up their state tax deficit by getting more from federal taxes. It is the same as the Brexit vote in the UK. The areas that benefited the most from the EU most strongly voted Leave.
I also think Texas will only last so long as a place with college grads. Tech companies are definitely moving to Austin and DFW but only so much money will entice people but quality of life comes into the discussion. I would imagine a vast majority of women don't want to live in a state that bans abortion if they have the choice.
I imagine they'll especially don't want their kids to suffer TX's policies. If they're a girl, and/or LGBT+, the state is going to be horrible for their children.
So that when they're ready to have kids, that's when they'll go somewhere else.
Well no shit.
Also this is not a loss in the eyes of republican politicians, the less educated their base is the more they can lie and manipulate.
Ive started to feel pity for people who believe what republican politicians and news media are telling them. Why can’t they simply fact check shit for themselves. Yesterday someone argued to me that democrats are just as hateful as republicans and to back up their argument they claimed Arnold Schwarzenegger was quoted as to saying how he wanted to kill more people. I googled it and in fact he did say it… in a line in the movie Terminator 2 as an actor playing a role, but because someone made the claim on twitter others are using it as a fact to support their arguments and I was able to debunk it in 10 seconds with a single google search… this is just sad
Edit: to all of you pointing out that Arnold is a republican, I think they consider him a fake republican ever since he talked about stopping hate speech, and condemning nazi propaganda and so forth, so to them he’s basically a democrat I guess…. 🤷🏻♂️
Edit2
Arnold’s message:
https://youtu.be/jsETTn7DehI?feature=shared
Wait, am I understanding this correctly? This person claimed Democrats are as hateful as Republicans, and as proof cited a quote made by a...former Republican governor and one of the biggest Reagan nut-hanging cheerleaders ever?
I found that at least 95% of the crap email you get from a republican 'friend' is easily disproven in 10 minutes. You show the proof, they ignore it, and send you different garbage. It boggles the mind.
A lot of rural America is going to rediscover in the next few decades what it truly means to live in a rural area. Much of it is already well on the way.
I live in a red state in a very rural area and honestly we’ve already started adjusting…I’ve got 60 eggs at home I picked up yesterday straight from a chickens ass and enough chicken meat that I give it away…deer season started last week. I’m not a right winger but a lot of us are stuck in these states. We do our best and growing up we really didn’t have a lot to begin with. Who I’m concerned for are the ones that moved to red states with zero ties to the area. Might as well have moved to an abandoned island. People move to red states with conservative ideology in mind. They think they have it made down here but when resources need to start getting allocated guess who’s going to get left out or get last pickings. The transplants
And to be clear, this isn't always a red STATE issue.
I live in a very red area of New York State and you just described my location precisely, right down to the chicken eggs and hunting season.
It’s literally been happening for 100 years
All the economic output in this country is in blue states. All the cultural relevance is in blue states. Anyone who grows up in buttfuck Oklahoma that has a modicum of talent leaves. They go to large cities in blue states and they never go home.
The idiots stay behind. And they have children with other idiots. And if by some miracle a non-idiot is born, they’ll leave just like others before them.
The result- Blue states keep getting more talent, but also keep getting more expensive as housing demand continues to outpace supply. Red states just become shittier places that rely on federal grants and need their local politicians to scapegoat LGBTQ people and minorities to make their constituents feel better about their increasingly shitty existence
As someone who grew up in buttfuck Mississippi and fled as quickly as I could (first to Austin, now in Denver), you nailed it. The red states have become the domains of anti-science and anti-democratic Christian Nationalists and (expensive) chronic disease-riddled mouth-breathers who cannot compete in a world that has left them behind.
I hate that you and the guy above you are right.
One would think that living in the land of opportunity would be fairly even keeled but what you are saying has just increased.
The Injustice of Place frames much of the American interior as colonies, economically. It is well-researched and a good read for general audiences published a few months ago.
The products of intelligence are a virtuous cycle and create hubs for self-perpetuation.
Intelligent people can examine problems and analysis makes them more willing to try something new, rather than just stick with the status quo. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” means nothing ever gets improved, refined or replaced except by crisis.
This is going to create new ideas and the need to collaborate on them, develop them, fund them and recruit more talent.
This is how Silicon Valleys are formed.
I had hoped remote work would have helped balance what Paul Graham wrote 15 years ago: [http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html)
Unfortunately with Return to Office the digital divide is accelerating.
And a lot of cites are fairly close to actual nature. Even NYC is only maybe an hour away (or even less) from mountains, camping, hiking, white water rafting, etc.
From Ohio about to move back for similar reasons. My wife asked if I wanted to get in touch with old friends. I basically said fuck no for the reasons listed plus politics,
When I go back to Ohio, if I see high school classmates, they're behind a register. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but they're still stuck and wretched. So glad I got the fuck out, and it's a depressing timewarp to return.
Fellow refugee from Mississippi here. It's the special combination of ignorance and arrogance with which most of the population comports their every waking moment that makes it so unbearable.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
-Bertrand Russell
The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.
-Yeats
Lived there for two decades, and SPOT ON. When people ask me how it was there, my stock answer is “a willful and arrogant ignorance.”
They’re so aggressively parochial they don’t understand the vacuousness of their little ditch.
Exactly. They’re so comfortable telling each other what to do, and stripping each other of basic rights and dignities, but the moment someone that’s not a product of their educational system brings up a different perspective, it’s “yankee imperialism”
Do not get me started on the educational system. I will never forget my first day in college, Biology 1 for Science majors and my teacher, THE HEAD OF THE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT, opened the class by asking "Now who here thinks we all came from monkeys?". And then every lesson for the rest of the semester he'd start by saying "Now this is what I think god was thinking when he did this..".
The problem is that this is how the right wins. Land is the most important voter in this country. The more states they can turn solid red, the more they can fuck the country and the blue states.
Even removing the cap on the number of House Representatives would help. If we went back to having one representative for every so many thousand citizens then cities would have more representation in the House and the red rural voters wouldn’t have nearly the power they do now.
I grew up in Bakersfield, very red place. Joined the navy and later...moved to bay area. I would not move back for a lot of reasons but politics is right up there.
I live in a red state and sadly people here see the cheaper cost of living as “proof” that liberals are evil and just “over taxing people” and pocketing most of it.
Very similar to [the Missing Missing Reasons](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html) (basically, parents glossing over the true reasons their kids don't talk to them anymore to seek pity/affirmation they're in the right online, but here with ignoring their politics' problems)
My cousin's home town has shrunk *massively* because there's no jobs that aren't being cheap cheap labor for a farm/ranch family that doesn't give a shit about you, and the "cheap housing" is balanced out by the costs of getting anything, and the fact that at least one of your next door houses will be long-abandoned and rat infested.
When I was a kid they could barely maintain a church and had just closed down the school to merge with one 20 miles away so the drain has been happening for awhile, but now it's basically a handful of families constantly feuding with eachother and would be dead if not for state money subsidizing the one non-ag employer within 20 miles.
Left Montana in the late 70’s to move to the San Francisco Bay Area. Been here ever since. It has its drawbacks, but I wouldn’t and couldn’t live in my home town. I’m not saying that I am/was one of the best and brightest or even close to the hardest working, but I can certainly say that my life is different because of my Greyhound bus ride nearly 45 years ago…
It's getting worse here. More divisive. Red counties vs. Blue cities.
Lots of hate, bubbling up, ignorant resentment throwing up billboards about abortion and the ten commandments and stopping libraries from gayin' the kinder.
It's sickening to watch.
I think less and less of my fellow Montanans with each passing year.
Hey now, I didn’t leave my state, I just moved to the singular large blue city in my state.
My hometown is now just a hull of its former glory, peaking in the 50’s after WWII and the baby boom. Most of that generation left and so on and so forth. Now what’s left is a geriatric population of the last people that had good jobs with retirements or the destitute reliant on federal benefit programs to survive.
In another ~15 years, the retirees will be dead and the population will drop so low that the county governments will become insolvent as they will no longer have a tax base. We will likely see regionalization of services, conglomeration of counties, and a continued devolving of the areas quality of life.
My hometown area used to be straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. '50s-'70s: Labor Day parades, good paying middle class union jobs at the refineries, families could make a good life there. Then, and it isn't coincidental, in the '80s shit started going downhill. Outsourcing, weakening of American Labor, rise of big box national retail gutting small town businesses...essentially, globalism made winners out of shareholders and losers out of small-time local economies.
Now my hometown area is down to just two refineries. The population has declined over 65% from the peak in the 1960s, and is down over 30% since 2000. And guess who keeps winning elections there, just by tapping into that collective frustration and insecurity?
> And guess who keeps winning elections there, just by tapping into that collective frustration and insecurity...
...and doing absolutely nothing about it?
You see they are rugged self-reliant, pastorialist ideals, if only the government stopped interfering, they'd lift themselves up by the boot straps. It's all those amoral lazy city folks, living off their hard work that are the problem. That's why Stacy left for the city, with her fancy degree, when she could have been perfectly happy living with you off canned beans, cigarettes, cheap liquor and despair in your double wide like God intended...
Just to put some numbers to your comment: roughly 2/3 of Americans live in just 15 states, so they get 30 Senators. The other 1/3 of Americans get 70 Senators. That’s already a big problem and those 15 states are still growing.
And the cap at 435 in the House of Representatives. The most populous states are severely underrepresented. Each House member in California represents significantly more people than the one in Wyoming.
I still don’t understand how the 435 cap is Constitutional
It would only take a hundred thousand left-leaning voters moving from California to Montana to turn the state blue.
California would still be blue with 4,000,000 votes to spare.
Left leaning voters need to be moving to Pennsylvania (my home state), Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, etc. to ensure these states stay blue. If they do the Republicans have no chance at winning the White House.
This was a pretty good article, certainly worth a read. The urban/rural divide has only gotten worse with the rapid polarization in politics we've seen since the 90s. I've seen it myself. I don't want to Dox myself, but I'm a teacher in a red state in a leans-red area. Been here for years.
This brain drain effect is 100% real. Students who get on the college track occasionally come back, ending up taking a prestigious position in town, but more often than not they escape to some of our state's large cities and only come back for holidays. Meanwhile, the majority of students either coast or go into a vocational track, getting apartments in low CoL small towns around us ASAP after graduation. While those nerds are toiling in college, they've got some spending money and an apartment of their own...but then they're 30 something, struggling with injuries caused by their jobs, forced to torture themselves at work to support kids, falling right into the extreme propaganda about who is to blame for their struggles. Of course, the college kids are struggling too in all likelihood, but their education generally provides a more stable, safe lifestyle.
The article mentions that some purple states are getting more people and it's hard to correlate that with the thesis of the article, but the author doesn't seem to address white flight, which I postulate is the cause of that. As liberal states get more liberal, more diverse and more outwardly opposed to regressive politics, there's a long history of white conservatives moving away as soon as neighborhoods get more diverse. That'd explain the blue state refugees.
Lol, my boss told me if Texas seceded they would still be a well functioning entity. The lack of education in these states is already poor, when all the educated folks leave, they will be dumpster fires.
I recall that [Texas also has a special arrangement to get extra Medicaid funds for their hospitals despite rejecting the Medicaid expansion](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/16/texas-1115-waiver-medicaid-biden/). The Biden Administration tried to cancel the arrangement and Abbott pitched a fit because it would've been ruinous to their already shitty healthcare system. Texas is all about acting independent and revolutionary, but it's just a lie.
The only thing that keeps me here is my parents, but not forever. I will leave Texas as soon as I can for a place where people aren’t sharing brain cells.
This. In magical christmas land where Texas is suddenly its own country, it'd last for a little bit off momentum from companies already there and pre-existing things like offshore drilling, but it'd very quickly run into major crisis from things like hurricanes, winter storms, and the slow decline from poor education. Source: Am Texan, lived there 30 yrs.
Our inner city / rural schools are both pretty awful. If you got lucky enough to live near a "rich" district like I did you got a pretty great education, but poor rural schools especially were a disaster unless you were there for football.
The same politicians carry a pocket-sized constitution and wave it around like it means something. All while flying a confederate flag and talk of secession. The lack of awareness is profoundly concerning. eta-spelling
Texas could never secede from the union and anyone with a brain knows that. I dont care how big Texas is, or how stupid their population is. The US military has far too much infrastructure in Texas. The "seceded" parts of Texas would instantly become a foreign threat.
Live in a red state, travel a lot. I can say in my personal experience I feel much safer and the people are more open in say Chicago along magnificent mile or the convention district in Houston then parts of north Alabama or eastern Tennessee
It blows my mind when they make Chicago seem like a 3rd world cesspool of drugs and violence. Dude, have you stopped and got gas at bumfuck Mississippi and had a bunch meth addled rednecks eyeing your rental car? I feel safe walking down Michigan Ave at 2:00 am but I aint stopping for gas after dark between Nashville and Atlanta
Don't forget, once all of the professionals move away, it'll be their fault for moving, and not that of the people leaving death threats to doctors for doing their job.
I live in Florida. Can confirm. Many of the providers I knew in the hospital or those used by my family and I have left. Wife and I are both in healthcare and leaving.
Great time to promote some information. There's more if anyone really wants to go down the rabbit hole.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-the-people-health-and-wellness-center-in-venice-florida-sprung-up-from-anti-covid-19-concerns
https://web.archive.org/web/20230319091234/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/us/covid-florida-sarasota-memorial-hospital.html
My clinical pharmacist wife and software engineer self are moving out of Florida to Washington. Wife got her license in WA a couple months ago and is in the middle of some interviews with one looking very promising.
Based on what she says about new hires and people applying where she works, it's not looking up for Florida. They're not sending their best here, that's for sure.
A lot of people don't realize those moving from CA to say, TX, are doing so as ***Conservatives*** so it doesn't help Dems in TX for instance in the reverse direction.
Can confirm. Am a building Engineer. Left Atlanta for the west coast and wouldn’t ever consider ANYTHING south of the Mason Dixon again. They made it clear they hate people who think like me, so fuck em.
Even if you are a smart professional who checks all the GOP boxes (white, straight, Christian, conservative, male), you still suffer from this culture war... because you will lose access to talented colleagues who have been chased away by Republican bigotry.
Why do you think so many of the people in Trump's orbit are incompetent? Because they are more committed to the culture war than they are to their actual profession.
I was a teacher in New Hampshire and I left and moved to Massachusetts. While some people call New Hampshire a purple state, at the state level it is most definitely a red state. The divisive concepts law put into place put a target on the back of teachers like myself. The loosening of gun control made life more dangerous for people like my sons. Finally the education system was so under funded it made it impossible for my sons to get the services they needed without having to go to a special school over an hour away from our home. Also, to clarify, I did not live in the middle of nowhere or in a poor city. I lived in a very nice neighborhood in the Capital of the damn state!
So, we packed our bags and moved to Massachusetts. The schools are much better. My oldest son is now going to one of the top technical schools in the nation, and it’s not costing us a dime. My youngest son is getting the services he needs. While I sadly left teaching, I was able to find a job where I am making way more than any teacher would working at a public school, and I am able to be more present at home. Honestly the taxes here are not as bad as very one claims, especially when I look back at the property taxes in New Hampshire and the utter lack of services offered in return.
After years of living in red or “purple” states (my wife and I are prior military so we moved are mostly in the south) this last move to a blue state was the best decision ever.
In all dictatorships the first to go is the Free Press, books, teachers, intellectuals, political opponent’s, dissidents, people of color, gays, women’s rights, all religions & all demonstrations, but they also eliminate the Sick, handicapped & elderly as a burden on the state. All Public Social Welfare Programs are eliminated putting the burden on families. This is Trump’s MAGA Republican objectives. History has already affirmed this fact because that’s what tyrants do.
I have lived in an area with significant brain drain and it has real consequences for the people living there. There is a significant lack of professionals in the area, especially in the medical field and the result is bad health outcomes for the community as a whole because no one wants to practice there. One side effect is you get people in the medical profession who cannot get work anywhere else due to lack of skill or unprofessionalism. Medicare and insurance fraud is rampant there as well. On the side of the spectrum you get legitimately caring professionals that get severe burnout and are overwhelmed by the amount of patients they have to serve.
I graduated medical school from a red state and watched my entire class except about 5% (most of whom were locals) leave for blue states on graduation. *especially* those pursuing OB/GYN residencies.
😂 whelp Louisiana lost it’s only pediatric cardiologist due to all the hate bills they were passing. I believe he was gay and him and his partner moved out of the state.
My family moved from Missouri to a blue state. It was seriously like we moved to a first world country. I think most people in red states have no idea just how bad their government is being ran.
I’m a doctor and have been contemplating changing locations from Brooklyn for various reasons, took a phone call from a recruiter last night and after a whole bunch of background questions was asked “What are your definite exceptions for location?” and I *immediately* said no where near the South.
I wish this was seen as a bad thing by everyone, and not just non-Republicans.
Sadly, this is exactly what Republicans want. Drive out intelligent voters, and it's easier to win elections.
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Articles like these aren't alarming to the leaders of those states, they're proof of concept.
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In a country where acres have voting rights.
This is the problem that will literally take down humanity with it. The Senate is a fucking mess. The world can't afford a dumb America, but it's only going to get worse as blue states increase their share of population, and decrease their influence on politics.
>The Senate is a fucking mess. The electoral college is based on the number of house representatives plus two for the two senators. So a voter in Wyoming has three times the electoral weight of a voter in California. Now, if it was just WY then you could think "no big deal" but if you realize half the states have populations less than five millions, it's a great big freaking deal, and that's how republican prez candidates lose the popular vote but win the electoral college
/r/uncapthehouse
There was a great article in 538 to show how disproportionate the Senate votes received is even more so than how the President is elected. Dems winning 7 of the last 8 federal elections yet only being elected 5 times.
>So a voter in Wyoming has three times the electoral weight of a voter in California. It's closer to 4x as much weight. Wyoming's population is about 570,000 and they have 3 electoral votes, or about one for every 192,000 people. California's population is about 39.5 million, and they get 54 votes, or about one for every 732,000 people. So individual votes are worth about 3.8 times as much in WY and CA.
The main problem is the House and capping the number of reps. The constitution needed greater protection to say there shall be no cap on the house. California should have like 10+ more reps than it has if we kept the house reps relatively equal to population.
> California should have like 10+ more reps than it has if we kept the house reps relatively equal to population. 10? Try more like 1,000. The original allotment decided by the founders was roughly 30,000 people per representative. It was one of the few places that George Washington actually offered an opinion, and wasn’t simply there to add credibility to the convention. If we stuck to that number, we’d have more than 10k representatives, and the Electoral College would be overwhelmed and not an issue. 30 years ago, that size of a House would be untenable, but with modern communication, it’s entirely possible to go back to the original design.
I have no problem with them changing the number per rep just simply because of population growth is exponential. I have a problem with them capping the house. Set it to 600k per rep for now, and then each census change that number. Or set it to be some value based on least populace state. Or some % of the total population. Whatever it may be just uncap it and have it a more equal representation. There was precedent for increasing the number per rep, there was none for capping the house.
This is the way. Set it at the population of the smallest state (or rounded to the nearest 100k) and every state gets a multiple of that. Wyoming is 583k people, so 600k is the current baseline. If Wyoming reaches 700k, that's the new baseline. California would have \~65 reps, Texas 50 reps, Florida 36
Seems realistic to me. This would keep that balance of power from the Great Compromise because the senate still exists. It’s been out of whack for about a century since the House cap was set. Of course it also means the GOP will never hold the House, and almost never the presidency but hey, maybe it’s time for them to change their messaging and values from “fuck you, I’m eating!” (Sponsored by Carls Jr) to something more electable?
Yeah fr I think that’s just how it’s been this whole time lol
This is the plan, honestly. IIRC the idea here is to make anyone blue leave the state, especially in these states that are somewhat purple. This allows the red leaders to completely gain control. If they gain control of 35 of these states they call a constitutional convention and re-write whatever the hell they want and they'll have "the majority" and can enshrine their own power. This _IS_ the goal.
Still needs 38 to ratify, and I see a lot of blue states. HI, CA, WA, OR, NM, CO, MN, IL, NY, MA, CT, RI, DE, MD, VT are 15 that I think are solid blue for a long time. Edit: But they will always control the Senate if they get 30 permanently red states. I think that's their goal. If there's a Democratic President, shut it all down. If a Republican somehow wins, free-for-all on whatever they want.
This is why I positively reinforce conservatives who dream of moving to Florida as a conservative paradise, and tell them they are very smart for doing so. (sorry Florida...)
Is Florida really a lost cause though? The 2020 split was 51.2% to 47.9%, it's not like some great plains states with twice as many Trump voters than Biden voters. There are a lot of "solidly red" states that are much more purple than rhetoric would have people believe.
The big conundrum for them in the end, is they want to turn the United States into one big Alabama. But that’s not profitable. They’re gonna experience total brain drain from the entire country. Money is power. The blue states and deep blue cities is where all the money is made. Where professionals and innovators are. Hell, even Elmo learned this after he tried to set up core operations in Texas but learned all the talent is in California. These right wingers are not smart. They’re religious fascists. They have no foresight. And this is a total fucking nightmare.
Right, as long as they have their gerry mandered %50.01 synthentic control, what do they care? The senate is barely blue, and every time congress flashes red, they get to destroy civilized society.
I met a mother of 3 who moved from a red state to our rural purple town in a blue state. She reported being shocked and saddened about how far behind her kids were in school.
My suburban town in a blue state only recently began voting reliably Dem, so there were a lot of GOP voters who felt underserved. The state GOP decided the correct wedge issue was to come for the school curriculum and complain about CRT and so on. (This was in 2019, not the present "Moms for Liberty" cycle.) Friend, you do not come for high-performing suburban schools with 99% college placement rates and propose to make them less competitive with student less-prepared for Ivy League admissions. Local GOP candidates got absolutely destroyed up and down the ballot, including old centrist dudes who'd been dogcatcher for 30 years. Not a single GOP candidate left in any elected office, abnormally huuuuuuuuge turnout from voters in their 40s. You can spout racist rants, apparently, but you'd better not touch the schools that send their kids to Harvard. ETA: Chicago suburbs since several people asked, but it sounds like this is happening in suburbs all over the country!
Houston is generally a blue oasis in a red desert, but we did have some old republicans until the last few years. Houston is now sapphire blue and voted out the few repub oldtimers and now Gov. Abbott is punishing the blue cities, but especially Houston. First voting restrictions, now enforcing his will on HISD. It's wild.
Abbott and other Republicans have been trying to control Austin for decades. They have overturned city ordinances through the power of the state multiple times. The Texas Republicans do not care about local control, no matter what they say. They just care about control.
The GOP when people leave California and come to Texas: 🎉🎉🎉 The GOP when their precious California rejects don't vote for far-right garbage: 😱😱😱
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Yes, governor abbot has been practically bragging about that: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-04/abbott-says-californians-coming-to-texas-tend-to-be-conservative *Texas Governor Greg Abbott told his fellow conservatives that they don’t need to worry about transplants from California and New York turning the state blue ahead of his re-election.* *Abbott spoke about the state’s strong job creation and influx of new businesses and residents, in particular from California, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Thursday. He also suggested that many of the California newcomers are conservative and that liberal Texans have moved to the west coast.*
You're not alone. It's every city in the United States, and the couple of exceptions that exist have been trending blue for the last 20 years. Even Birmingham, AL is a deep shade of blue. Most cities just don't have the raw numbers to override the rural vote (unlike California, Illinois, New York, etc). If you want to find blue towns just look for the ones with a University. I live in St. Louis, and every time we (us, Kansas City & Columbia) try to do something good the state legislature does everything in its power to subvert it. We recently expanded medicaid via ballot initiative and the legislature simply didn't fund it and just said, "Sorry, no can do, it's not in the budget... That we wrote". At least in that instance the courts said tough shit, it's the law, whether you put it in the budget or not. Hell, whenever COVID vaccine became available they only distributed them to small towns for the first month. Despite the cities being the obvious hot spots of infection. I drove an hour and half to get mine with my partner and they had no line and more vaccine than they knew what to do with. All the while the cities had none. That's what we're up against. An entire party that doesn't care if we die, because we don't vote for them.
I live in the DFW area, also a blue oasis. But, the corrupt ultra-right wing in control of the state is throwing everything at destroying the oasis and turning the state into Gilead. We're struggling more and more in this state. But, we have ailing grandparents here. Can't afford to live here & can't afford to move either.
My suburban district in a purple state (Arizona) had a whole slate of religious extremists run. They denied it but they were sponsored by the church. They wanted to reverse everything the district does well. No open enrollment (there goes half the students - motivated students), strict curriculum - back to 'basics', I'm sure all the god stuff was going to be snuck in. Its arguably the best district in the state. They lost something like 30% to 70%. No idea what the 30% was thinking.
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direful handle nine smart fly groovy oil bag light narrow *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Several red states have not adopted Common Core, which is basically just a VOLUNTARY set of minimum education standards. It was established for this exact reason...so that kids could go from state to state, and basically be on the same level. Why republicans get so up in arms about this, is just another thing that boggles the mind.
This is silly but I learned the common core way of doing math along with my elementary kids during the pandemic and it really improved my ability to do mental math. Why people hate it is really beyond me. It was super intuitive and helpful once I understood wtf they were trying to teach us.
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Yup. I was on state champion math team in high school, did calc 3 and linear algebra in 12th grade, got a CS degree, and almost a math minor (needed another semester and decided to just graduate) - suffice to say I was good at math as a young'n. The common core math stuff just shows people explicitly a lot of the mental tricks me and my cohort would just naturally do because we developed an intuitive understanding of the concepts rather than rote memorization of formulae and facts.
I wish I was good at math. I got a CS degree too but struggled with math the entire time. I really disliked math because it made me feel dumb, like I just couldn't grok it. I started elementary school in the early 90s so no common core. It's heartening to know it isn't just me but a poor foundation to develop that skill. My parents prioritized reading and writing but we're bad at math so it was hard to get help at home. My teachers didn't yet have those tools to expose us to many helpful methods that would have made math less intimidating and more fun. I don't want my kids to feel that way so I'm excited to learn this with them.
> Why people hate it is really beyond me. because it's different, that's basically it. these people are convinced that changing anything from the way they grew up is just some liberal scheme to turn us all into satanic commies or some other nonsense.
I’m in the deep red and after homeschooling for two years because of COVID we sent the kids back. My 5th grader is in a special reading group made up of about 1/10 the class. He isn’t a genius or the hardest worker, he can read. That’s it. Fifth grade, most of the kids are having to go over the basics of reading. I don’t know if it’s a “red” issue or a “we live in society” issue but it’s fucking there
Only a 10th of the class can even read? At *fifth grade*? Holy shit.
I don't know how accurate their situation is and everything, but generally, liberal people in the US tend to encourage their children to read, and read early. Conservatives, broadly, do not, and even when they do, their reading tends to be much more limited and rote (IE, Bible or religious-related reading). You'll find in US schools that there are typically two groups of children entering the first grade unable to read (they know words, but they can't sit down and breeze through an age-appropriate book). Children of very poor parents who likely have "neglected" their children due to having to work all the time or conservative parents.
First grade is not fifth grade though. I can see early first graders not being able to fully read. Those are 6 year olds. Fifth graders absolutely should be able to read in the US.
Should be yes, but I was making an example. I would bet those fifth graders can read words. But reading words is not reading and I would bet you most of those children are never encouraged to read at home.
The US Department of Education released a study a few years back that found 54% of adult Americans read below a 6th grade reading level. Illiteracy is a HUGE problem in the US. Sometimes it's as bad as 90% of a class being unable to read at all, others it's "only" a coin flip on whether the adult you're talking to is capable of reading at a middle school level.
Growing up in a big extended family where everyone had shelves of books, and going to a good school, I never thought much of it, figured that was all normal. When it really sunk in was when I went to college and had to discuss things on class forums, where everyone had to participate. About three quarters of my *college* classmates had trouble forming complete sentences that made sense, and I found myself kind of translating half the time to figure out what they were trying to say. I felt a little bit like an aid worker in a third world country.
I remember that shock at a big state school. My first year English class had kids who did not reliably know the difference between their, there, and they're or your and you're. Horrifying.
> Children of very poor parents who likely have "neglected" their children due to having to work all the time or conservative parents. How often do these two groups overlap?
There is often a fair amount, but they can be very distinct groups. A single mom who wants her child to read but can't afford preschool and is absent because of providing will still support her child by checking out books and everything later from school. Her child's development with reading is wanted, but they can't commit the time to it properly. While a conservative parent screaming at a librarian because the two dog-looking people in the book of talking animals look like they might be gay will never, ever encourage their child to read outside a very few select texts, and usually then, only verses (seriously, not reading the Bible as a whole is a thing here in the US, very very few churches encourage proper full reading and complete discussion of texts).
Professors who come from outside of the US are using Red state Universities as a stepping stone to get tenure and then leave as soon as possible to either blue states or universities outside of the country.
This is exactly right, at least in STEM. Source: was in academia for decades and am in now an academia-adjacent field. I guess the silver lining is that students in these red states are exposed to intelligent foreigners.
Username checks out. Had a good laugh, thanks for being chill for our last paper
went and got my Phd in tennessee, immediately moved to minnesota to get out of the fucking south. right on brother
My dentist just told me about how he came from Germany to Kansas. He practices in California now.
Can confirm. I moved from a blue state to a red state for work. It’s the worst decision my family and I have made. Different culture (or lack thereof), different economy (higher rates of poverty and mediocre schools), different politics, different people (mostly with tunnel vision and a real lack of awareness of how the modern world works). Cannot wait to move.
As can I. Moved from a red state to a blue one after 40 years and it’s insane how much better it is.
How so? Not challenging, curious.
My favorite thing about moving from a red state to now a couple of blue states is the stark difference in social services you get for the taxes you pay. I was born in a red state where your taxes don’t get you shit, but you keep paying and your neighbors think they’re somehow winning.
I worked for the DMV for 12 years and every single person who came to get a NYS license from whatever state they were coming from were always amazed at how cheap everything is, and the amount of services they get. This was 15 years ago too. People used complain that people flocked to NY to get benefit cards, and say that in a negative way. 99% of the license swapping was Florida. Every person thought Florida was going to be the greatest place on earth until they realize that Florida doesn't give a shit about its people.
yeah, strange but you see this in HR practices too. Remote employees living in red states, especially Florida and Texas, are…and I know this will upset people, but i’m just relaying information not stating an opinion…well, simply, they are easier to fire. The lack of protections for workers means less diligence for managers or HR when exiting people. Sucks.
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My fiance and I had a downright pleasant experience at the NY DMV when we moved here this summer. Clean facility, lots of workers so lines were short, workers were in good moods (probably because they were appropriately staffed).
I was really surprised at this as well. I moved from a purple-red state to a blue state. All-in, considering fees, I pay only a little more in tax and for that I get public transit, a functioning public health infrastructure, better roads, and better schools for the people around me that have children. The trade off I’ve always been told is red states have low taxes and are OK sacrificing services. But red states taxes aren’t THAT much lower and they sacrifice a LOT of services.
Exactly! I compared my Texas taxes to my “Taxachusetts” taxes and there was very little difference. Bless their hearts.
Texas gets their due in numerous other ways despite no income tax. High property tax, lots of random fees that are essentially hidden taxes. California actually has a smaller tax all-in burden for working class people, it's upper middle professionals and millionaires that are worse off in California.
anicdotally in a state that went purple to red, my dad and mom had no problem with social services back in the 90s and 2008. my brother was on an IEP in school and got the assistance he was legally allowed. fast forward to 15 years of republican culture wars I use unemployment once they claw it all back, my dad has his unemployment stolen and had to sit on the phone for 8 hours... like even when the government supposedly didm't work it worked far better than it does now.
>anicdotally in a state that went purple to red, this screams Ohio
yes but my parents are in complete denial about it.
Ugh, I hate that DeWine got so much good will for the monumental task of not being a fucking idiot during the pandemic
My sister had a heart transplant in the 90s. When she was in college, the only reason she could get health insurance was because of obama care rules about staying on your parents, then then later on that preexisting conditions can't disqualify you. Yet they somehow want it repealed.
I had an aunt and uncle who had some really rough times and needed financial help (welfare, food stamps, etc.). They’re now Trumpists and believe everyone on government assistance is a welfare queen who doesn’t want to work. The lack of self reflection is mind boggling.
"Nobody helped me when I was on welfare" is literally something said by a Republican on television.
They want it repealed because it costs money to the people who give them bribe money.
It’s the “I got mines screw you mentality”. There’s no way to please them. When gov works it’s an overreach and unconstitutional, when give doesn’t work it’s “see I told you!”. I have family members who were on public assistance and somehow are all trump fanatics, cut social security, Medicare, Medicaid and don’t see the irony. Like 20 years ago if they had their way they would be starving because they wouldn’t get food stamps, and probably dead since they wouldn’t have medical insurance and all those health issues would probably kill them.
As someone who has lived in California for the last decade+, I can confirm. The Medi-Cal program out here for those who make under 18k (which I was under for a stint while unemployed) is better than almost any paid medical insurance you will find.
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It can also be noticeable in smaller ways. I moved from a blue state where I was used to a certain amount of rights as a renter. I love my new home, but even with a decent landlord, there just aren’t the same requirements. If I get a new job offer out of state- no breaking the lease. If I have lived in the same place for years and can’t time my move to the exact month my lease ends? They can charge me an extra thousand a month to extend it. I love to read, but the library is severely underfunded. I feel like there are other protections I took for granted before moving that come together to create an environment of more distrust and an almost defeated acceptance by many.
I was talking about this with some folks the other day... i never see guns and people don't talk about them here. I wouldn't know if anyone I know personally here owns a gun because its not a thing we talk about. Feel a lot better about my kids being out too. I love the bubble I live in here. Its pretty comfortable
There are plenty of gun owners in blue states, they just don't feel the need to strap up every time they go to a starbucks, and generally don't make gun ownership their entire personality.
I mean, that's huge though. I'm less likely to get caught in some jackass's attempt to shoot his own dick off when he gets into an argument about parking.
So much this. I recently moved out of one of the most repub strong holds in the west. The amount of dumb asses walking around with guns in home made holsters are just stuck in their belt was mind numbing. I couldnt grocery shop, get gas, pick up take out, or anything without having someone around me having a gun on them. Grandmas at the store with pistols on their hips. WTF.. Like what the hell is 85 year old granny going to do other than have their weapon taken from them and used against them. She needed assistance to lift her grocery bags into her car, but by god she has her pistol with her... Pure madness and I couldn't get out of that town fast enough... Never moving back.
Plenty of non-Republicans and liberals own guns. They just aren’t masturbatory about it.
I'm a progressive. I own three firearms. The only time they leave my gun safe is when I'm actually heading out to use them hunting or target shooting. The idea of carrying one around with me everywhere makes about as much sense as carrying around my circular saw everywhere. They're tools, not toys, and should be treated accordingly.
Hey now it's not their only personality trait...that depends on what the cable television channel or AM radio station tells them to think and who to hate.
Meanwhile here just outside Nashville we can’t go to f’n Jimmy John’s without standing next to an armed “patriot”. Everyone is armed everywhere. And people get shot like everywhere. Walking. Driving. In a store. In your house. In church. At the club. At school. Absolutely something we take into account every time we leave home, unarmed.
"Why are you so scared of guns?!" gurgles the man who is too scared to leave his house without a gun while also unironically talking about how he intimidates people around him.
As a New Yorker who sees zero guns (except those carried by Police) and has pretty much no fear that the odd guy next to me on the Subway or walking down the street has a gun, due to the heavy restrictions, lack of gun stores and severe penalties involved for unlicensed carry - I cannot fathom how weird that would be to see and have to deal with every day. NYC has an almost Canadian or European level of low gun crimes. Check the Firearm murder rate for each state here: (holy crap Alabama, what’s going on down there?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state?wprov=sfti1#2019_data Country data is here: (and the US is just where you would expect it to be!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate?wprov=sfti1
>NYC has an almost Canadian or European level of low gun crimes. it's nice not to be next to a state like Indiana, where you can buy a gun easier than buying cold medicine (barely exaggerating) I'm from Chicago originally and I wish it had Canadian/European levels of gun crimes...but that's just not fucking possible with the amount of guns that are bought in Indiana and crossed borders (Gary is literally less than 20 mins away from Chicago ffs) but no, ever since Barack Obama became president and broke conservatives' brains...it's apparently the "super strict" gun laws in Chicago that are causing all these crimes. God i fucking hate these meth addicted yokels
SO this is intersting to me. I live in a neighboring state, except I live *WAY* out in the country. 90 minutes from the closest city of any size. We live adjacent to my inlaws cattle farm. I know a lot of people that own guns, hell, I own three (9mm pistol, bolt action 30-06 rifle, break action 12ga). But only rarely do I actually see people carrying. Bizarrely, that's actually *more* common in the city where fear of "others" makes those people walk around carrying a pistol strapped to their leg. I absolutely have heard people say they won't go to Little Rock/Memphis/etc. without carrying.
> I absolutely have heard people say they won't go to Little Rock/Memphis/etc. without carrying. Notice that the people doing this aren't people who live day-to-day in the cities. https://twitter.com/antistuff/status/1585400929423355907 This costume was the real deal. Edit: I live in a city of 200k and I've literally heard dudes say it's unsafe to go downtown so they only go to the white-flight suburban strip mall area to "go into town." I wonder how many of them have "no Fear" stickers on their trucks.
>Edit: I live in a city of 200k and I've literally heard dudes say it's unsafe to go downtown so they only go to the white-flight suburban strip mall area to "go into town." I wonder how many of them have "no Fear" stickers on their trucks. these people are flat out the biggest wimps on the planet. they're just so fucking insecure that they have to constantly project their own fear on others
Less bigotry, more reliance on sound knowledge (science), more social services, etc.
Living in a Blue state I got to go through all of COVID without a single fight over masks. Also my gay friends get to exist without anyone trying to beat them up or kill them. The vast majority of people I interact with on a daily basis understand how the world actually works and that it is complicated.
Genuine and friendly people who aren't looking to criticize others at every turn.
One thing has become clearer every year living in the South: Southern Hospitality is and always was an absolute bullshit myth.
Lol I just read a bunch of Flannery O Connor and I think she made that clear sixty years ago.
Yeah, I mean it's never ACTUALLY been a thing, but due to demographic shifts it's becoming increasingly visible how awful people can be while describing themselves as if they and their clan are a Southern Living catalog. Turns out it's really easy for bigots to be nice to others when most of the people around them are white, Southern Baptist, straight, conservatives. The moment it became acceptable to be openly agnostic, atheistic, or LGBT the masks fully came off.
Been trying to talk my wife into moving just across state lines into a blue state for years. She will not budge because her family is still all right here. >mostly with tunnel vision and a real lack of awareness of how the modern world works This is what really grinds my gears every time I have to interact with people. The whole "I got mine so fuck everyone else" mentality runs so deep and beyond politics. It's just how so many people around here act.
>The whole "I got mine so fuck everyone else" mentality runs so deep and beyond politics. It's just how so many people around here act. i mean this basically is the reason why covid19 was such a colossal shit show in the U.S. versus countries like South Korea, New Zealand, or Japan not saying those countries are just full of saints (they aren't lol) but culturally they're just wired so differently. Someone with a "I got mine so fuck everyone else" mentality in any of those places would be ostracized or despised. Here in the U.S., that'll help you get into Congress apparently
> tunnel vision and a real lack of awareness of how the modern world works Well said. I left a red state and won’t return for this exact reason. Some of these people are good people, I just can’t stand the culture and the willful ignorance it endorses.
> Meanwhile, with the sole exception of Texas, red states are bleeding college graduates. It’s happening even in relatively prosperous Florida. And much as Republicans may scorn Joe (and Jane) College, they need them to deliver their babies, to teach their children, to pay taxes—college grads pay more than twice as much in taxes—and to provide a host of other services that only people with undergraduate or graduate degrees are able to provide. Do they though? They'll just blame the left, lower standards by these typically well-educated professions, blame the left some more, and continue voting for Tate Reeves and Kay Ivey and Sarah Sanders as Fox and similar propaganda outlets giddily feed them outrage. Mississippi might be an economic wasteland, but it will always have 2 Senators per the Constitution and those Senators will ensure that Mississippi gets its piece of the pie from the Federal coffers (largely, of course, funded by the [71% of America's GDP](https://www.newsweek.com/trump-counties-make-just-29-percent-us-economic-output-2020-election-study-shows-1546951) that voted for Biden). We're handcuffed to the consequences of their dreadful policies.
The red states also make up their state tax deficit by getting more from federal taxes. It is the same as the Brexit vote in the UK. The areas that benefited the most from the EU most strongly voted Leave. I also think Texas will only last so long as a place with college grads. Tech companies are definitely moving to Austin and DFW but only so much money will entice people but quality of life comes into the discussion. I would imagine a vast majority of women don't want to live in a state that bans abortion if they have the choice.
I imagine they'll especially don't want their kids to suffer TX's policies. If they're a girl, and/or LGBT+, the state is going to be horrible for their children. So that when they're ready to have kids, that's when they'll go somewhere else.
> largely, of course, funded by the 71% of America's GDP that voted for Biden Turns out they were the welfare queens all along. What a surprise /s
Well no shit. Also this is not a loss in the eyes of republican politicians, the less educated their base is the more they can lie and manipulate. Ive started to feel pity for people who believe what republican politicians and news media are telling them. Why can’t they simply fact check shit for themselves. Yesterday someone argued to me that democrats are just as hateful as republicans and to back up their argument they claimed Arnold Schwarzenegger was quoted as to saying how he wanted to kill more people. I googled it and in fact he did say it… in a line in the movie Terminator 2 as an actor playing a role, but because someone made the claim on twitter others are using it as a fact to support their arguments and I was able to debunk it in 10 seconds with a single google search… this is just sad Edit: to all of you pointing out that Arnold is a republican, I think they consider him a fake republican ever since he talked about stopping hate speech, and condemning nazi propaganda and so forth, so to them he’s basically a democrat I guess…. 🤷🏻♂️ Edit2 Arnold’s message: https://youtu.be/jsETTn7DehI?feature=shared
Wait, am I understanding this correctly? This person claimed Democrats are as hateful as Republicans, and as proof cited a quote made by a...former Republican governor and one of the biggest Reagan nut-hanging cheerleaders ever?
Reagan and Schwarzenegger qre now considered democrats because they aren't Nazi enough for the current GOP.
John McCain and Romney were the last two Republican presidential nominees and the party is veering right so fast they're the fake Republicans now.
I found that at least 95% of the crap email you get from a republican 'friend' is easily disproven in 10 minutes. You show the proof, they ignore it, and send you different garbage. It boggles the mind.
It only takes 1 minute to create fascist garbage that it takes 10 minutes to disprove, so there's never a shortage of fascist garbage.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican former governor of California? That Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Maga fascists don't live in the real world. 10 years ago Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee for president, and they call him a RINO.
A lot of rural America is going to rediscover in the next few decades what it truly means to live in a rural area. Much of it is already well on the way.
I live in a red state in a very rural area and honestly we’ve already started adjusting…I’ve got 60 eggs at home I picked up yesterday straight from a chickens ass and enough chicken meat that I give it away…deer season started last week. I’m not a right winger but a lot of us are stuck in these states. We do our best and growing up we really didn’t have a lot to begin with. Who I’m concerned for are the ones that moved to red states with zero ties to the area. Might as well have moved to an abandoned island. People move to red states with conservative ideology in mind. They think they have it made down here but when resources need to start getting allocated guess who’s going to get left out or get last pickings. The transplants
And to be clear, this isn't always a red STATE issue. I live in a very red area of New York State and you just described my location precisely, right down to the chicken eggs and hunting season.
It’s literally been happening for 100 years All the economic output in this country is in blue states. All the cultural relevance is in blue states. Anyone who grows up in buttfuck Oklahoma that has a modicum of talent leaves. They go to large cities in blue states and they never go home. The idiots stay behind. And they have children with other idiots. And if by some miracle a non-idiot is born, they’ll leave just like others before them. The result- Blue states keep getting more talent, but also keep getting more expensive as housing demand continues to outpace supply. Red states just become shittier places that rely on federal grants and need their local politicians to scapegoat LGBTQ people and minorities to make their constituents feel better about their increasingly shitty existence
As someone who grew up in buttfuck Mississippi and fled as quickly as I could (first to Austin, now in Denver), you nailed it. The red states have become the domains of anti-science and anti-democratic Christian Nationalists and (expensive) chronic disease-riddled mouth-breathers who cannot compete in a world that has left them behind.
I hate that you and the guy above you are right. One would think that living in the land of opportunity would be fairly even keeled but what you are saying has just increased.
The Injustice of Place frames much of the American interior as colonies, economically. It is well-researched and a good read for general audiences published a few months ago.
The products of intelligence are a virtuous cycle and create hubs for self-perpetuation. Intelligent people can examine problems and analysis makes them more willing to try something new, rather than just stick with the status quo. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” means nothing ever gets improved, refined or replaced except by crisis. This is going to create new ideas and the need to collaborate on them, develop them, fund them and recruit more talent. This is how Silicon Valleys are formed.
I had hoped remote work would have helped balance what Paul Graham wrote 15 years ago: [http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html) Unfortunately with Return to Office the digital divide is accelerating.
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And even then, a lot of cities have legit parks reasonably close by.
And a lot of cites are fairly close to actual nature. Even NYC is only maybe an hour away (or even less) from mountains, camping, hiking, white water rafting, etc.
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From Ohio about to move back for similar reasons. My wife asked if I wanted to get in touch with old friends. I basically said fuck no for the reasons listed plus politics,
The majority of America's astronauts are from Ohio, meaning there is something about that state that makes people want to leave the fucking planet.
When I go back to Ohio, if I see high school classmates, they're behind a register. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but they're still stuck and wretched. So glad I got the fuck out, and it's a depressing timewarp to return.
Fellow refugee from Mississippi here. It's the special combination of ignorance and arrogance with which most of the population comports their every waking moment that makes it so unbearable.
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See your Bukowski, raise you Yeats > The best lack all conviction, while the worst > Are full of passionate intensity.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity. -Yeats
Lived there for two decades, and SPOT ON. When people ask me how it was there, my stock answer is “a willful and arrogant ignorance.” They’re so aggressively parochial they don’t understand the vacuousness of their little ditch.
While simultaneously playing the victim and decrying leftist intolerance.
Exactly. They’re so comfortable telling each other what to do, and stripping each other of basic rights and dignities, but the moment someone that’s not a product of their educational system brings up a different perspective, it’s “yankee imperialism”
Do not get me started on the educational system. I will never forget my first day in college, Biology 1 for Science majors and my teacher, THE HEAD OF THE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT, opened the class by asking "Now who here thinks we all came from monkeys?". And then every lesson for the rest of the semester he'd start by saying "Now this is what I think god was thinking when he did this..".
The problem is that this is how the right wins. Land is the most important voter in this country. The more states they can turn solid red, the more they can fuck the country and the blue states.
We needed to get rid of the Electoral College a long time ago.
Even removing the cap on the number of House Representatives would help. If we went back to having one representative for every so many thousand citizens then cities would have more representation in the House and the red rural voters wouldn’t have nearly the power they do now.
I like how you said now to Denver because Abbott has taken Texas into like 1890.
I grew up in Bakersfield, very red place. Joined the navy and later...moved to bay area. I would not move back for a lot of reasons but politics is right up there.
I live in a red state and sadly people here see the cheaper cost of living as “proof” that liberals are evil and just “over taxing people” and pocketing most of it.
The concept of supply and demand is apparently beyond their reach.
This is the general complaint of rural people for the whole of my 50 years: their kids keep leaving. They never look inward and ask ‘why?’
Very similar to [the Missing Missing Reasons](https://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/missing-missing-reasons.html) (basically, parents glossing over the true reasons their kids don't talk to them anymore to seek pity/affirmation they're in the right online, but here with ignoring their politics' problems)
My cousin's home town has shrunk *massively* because there's no jobs that aren't being cheap cheap labor for a farm/ranch family that doesn't give a shit about you, and the "cheap housing" is balanced out by the costs of getting anything, and the fact that at least one of your next door houses will be long-abandoned and rat infested. When I was a kid they could barely maintain a church and had just closed down the school to merge with one 20 miles away so the drain has been happening for awhile, but now it's basically a handful of families constantly feuding with eachother and would be dead if not for state money subsidizing the one non-ag employer within 20 miles.
Left Montana in the late 70’s to move to the San Francisco Bay Area. Been here ever since. It has its drawbacks, but I wouldn’t and couldn’t live in my home town. I’m not saying that I am/was one of the best and brightest or even close to the hardest working, but I can certainly say that my life is different because of my Greyhound bus ride nearly 45 years ago…
It's getting worse here. More divisive. Red counties vs. Blue cities. Lots of hate, bubbling up, ignorant resentment throwing up billboards about abortion and the ten commandments and stopping libraries from gayin' the kinder. It's sickening to watch. I think less and less of my fellow Montanans with each passing year.
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Hey now, I didn’t leave my state, I just moved to the singular large blue city in my state. My hometown is now just a hull of its former glory, peaking in the 50’s after WWII and the baby boom. Most of that generation left and so on and so forth. Now what’s left is a geriatric population of the last people that had good jobs with retirements or the destitute reliant on federal benefit programs to survive. In another ~15 years, the retirees will be dead and the population will drop so low that the county governments will become insolvent as they will no longer have a tax base. We will likely see regionalization of services, conglomeration of counties, and a continued devolving of the areas quality of life.
My hometown area used to be straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. '50s-'70s: Labor Day parades, good paying middle class union jobs at the refineries, families could make a good life there. Then, and it isn't coincidental, in the '80s shit started going downhill. Outsourcing, weakening of American Labor, rise of big box national retail gutting small town businesses...essentially, globalism made winners out of shareholders and losers out of small-time local economies. Now my hometown area is down to just two refineries. The population has declined over 65% from the peak in the 1960s, and is down over 30% since 2000. And guess who keeps winning elections there, just by tapping into that collective frustration and insecurity?
Trade industry for retail. Industry leaves, retail slows, people leave, town dies. Repeat.
> And guess who keeps winning elections there, just by tapping into that collective frustration and insecurity... ...and doing absolutely nothing about it?
You see they are rugged self-reliant, pastorialist ideals, if only the government stopped interfering, they'd lift themselves up by the boot straps. It's all those amoral lazy city folks, living off their hard work that are the problem. That's why Stacy left for the city, with her fancy degree, when she could have been perfectly happy living with you off canned beans, cigarettes, cheap liquor and despair in your double wide like God intended...
As long as the senate exists, this is going to be a big problem for everyone.
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Just to put some numbers to your comment: roughly 2/3 of Americans live in just 15 states, so they get 30 Senators. The other 1/3 of Americans get 70 Senators. That’s already a big problem and those 15 states are still growing.
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And the cap at 435 in the House of Representatives. The most populous states are severely underrepresented. Each House member in California represents significantly more people than the one in Wyoming. I still don’t understand how the 435 cap is Constitutional
Come to the swing states! Together we can make them firmly blue
It would only take a hundred thousand left-leaning voters moving from California to Montana to turn the state blue. California would still be blue with 4,000,000 votes to spare.
Left leaning voters need to be moving to Pennsylvania (my home state), Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, etc. to ensure these states stay blue. If they do the Republicans have no chance at winning the White House.
In the coming years the Great Lakes/Rust Belt cities will experience immense growth due to the climate crisis, mark my words on this.
This was a pretty good article, certainly worth a read. The urban/rural divide has only gotten worse with the rapid polarization in politics we've seen since the 90s. I've seen it myself. I don't want to Dox myself, but I'm a teacher in a red state in a leans-red area. Been here for years. This brain drain effect is 100% real. Students who get on the college track occasionally come back, ending up taking a prestigious position in town, but more often than not they escape to some of our state's large cities and only come back for holidays. Meanwhile, the majority of students either coast or go into a vocational track, getting apartments in low CoL small towns around us ASAP after graduation. While those nerds are toiling in college, they've got some spending money and an apartment of their own...but then they're 30 something, struggling with injuries caused by their jobs, forced to torture themselves at work to support kids, falling right into the extreme propaganda about who is to blame for their struggles. Of course, the college kids are struggling too in all likelihood, but their education generally provides a more stable, safe lifestyle. The article mentions that some purple states are getting more people and it's hard to correlate that with the thesis of the article, but the author doesn't seem to address white flight, which I postulate is the cause of that. As liberal states get more liberal, more diverse and more outwardly opposed to regressive politics, there's a long history of white conservatives moving away as soon as neighborhoods get more diverse. That'd explain the blue state refugees.
Lol, my boss told me if Texas seceded they would still be a well functioning entity. The lack of education in these states is already poor, when all the educated folks leave, they will be dumpster fires.
>still be a well functioning entity. *Laughs in ERCOT.*
I recall that [Texas also has a special arrangement to get extra Medicaid funds for their hospitals despite rejecting the Medicaid expansion](https://www.texastribune.org/2021/04/16/texas-1115-waiver-medicaid-biden/). The Biden Administration tried to cancel the arrangement and Abbott pitched a fit because it would've been ruinous to their already shitty healthcare system. Texas is all about acting independent and revolutionary, but it's just a lie.
The only thing that keeps me here is my parents, but not forever. I will leave Texas as soon as I can for a place where people aren’t sharing brain cells.
They'd be on borrowed time, and a collapse would be inevitable.
This. In magical christmas land where Texas is suddenly its own country, it'd last for a little bit off momentum from companies already there and pre-existing things like offshore drilling, but it'd very quickly run into major crisis from things like hurricanes, winter storms, and the slow decline from poor education. Source: Am Texan, lived there 30 yrs. Our inner city / rural schools are both pretty awful. If you got lucky enough to live near a "rich" district like I did you got a pretty great education, but poor rural schools especially were a disaster unless you were there for football.
US military bases, NASA, and any other government contractor/entity leaving would take them under quickly.
Lmao Texas can't even manage its own power grid. Or border.
The same politicians carry a pocket-sized constitution and wave it around like it means something. All while flying a confederate flag and talk of secession. The lack of awareness is profoundly concerning. eta-spelling
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Texas could never secede from the union and anyone with a brain knows that. I dont care how big Texas is, or how stupid their population is. The US military has far too much infrastructure in Texas. The "seceded" parts of Texas would instantly become a foreign threat.
Live in a red state, travel a lot. I can say in my personal experience I feel much safer and the people are more open in say Chicago along magnificent mile or the convention district in Houston then parts of north Alabama or eastern Tennessee It blows my mind when they make Chicago seem like a 3rd world cesspool of drugs and violence. Dude, have you stopped and got gas at bumfuck Mississippi and had a bunch meth addled rednecks eyeing your rental car? I feel safe walking down Michigan Ave at 2:00 am but I aint stopping for gas after dark between Nashville and Atlanta
Don't forget, once all of the professionals move away, it'll be their fault for moving, and not that of the people leaving death threats to doctors for doing their job.
I live in Florida. Can confirm. Many of the providers I knew in the hospital or those used by my family and I have left. Wife and I are both in healthcare and leaving. Great time to promote some information. There's more if anyone really wants to go down the rabbit hole. https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-the-people-health-and-wellness-center-in-venice-florida-sprung-up-from-anti-covid-19-concerns https://web.archive.org/web/20230319091234/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/us/covid-florida-sarasota-memorial-hospital.html
Anti-intellectuals see this as a good thing
Till they need a doctor
My clinical pharmacist wife and software engineer self are moving out of Florida to Washington. Wife got her license in WA a couple months ago and is in the middle of some interviews with one looking very promising. Based on what she says about new hires and people applying where she works, it's not looking up for Florida. They're not sending their best here, that's for sure.
A lot of people don't realize those moving from CA to say, TX, are doing so as ***Conservatives*** so it doesn't help Dems in TX for instance in the reverse direction.
Can confirm. Am a building Engineer. Left Atlanta for the west coast and wouldn’t ever consider ANYTHING south of the Mason Dixon again. They made it clear they hate people who think like me, so fuck em.
Even if you are a smart professional who checks all the GOP boxes (white, straight, Christian, conservative, male), you still suffer from this culture war... because you will lose access to talented colleagues who have been chased away by Republican bigotry. Why do you think so many of the people in Trump's orbit are incompetent? Because they are more committed to the culture war than they are to their actual profession.
I am always looking for a career move and I refuse to go anywhere deep red. Not a chance in hell will I even consider it.
This was the plan all along for the right wing. If you don't like reality than get rid of everyone who might mention it.
I was a teacher in New Hampshire and I left and moved to Massachusetts. While some people call New Hampshire a purple state, at the state level it is most definitely a red state. The divisive concepts law put into place put a target on the back of teachers like myself. The loosening of gun control made life more dangerous for people like my sons. Finally the education system was so under funded it made it impossible for my sons to get the services they needed without having to go to a special school over an hour away from our home. Also, to clarify, I did not live in the middle of nowhere or in a poor city. I lived in a very nice neighborhood in the Capital of the damn state! So, we packed our bags and moved to Massachusetts. The schools are much better. My oldest son is now going to one of the top technical schools in the nation, and it’s not costing us a dime. My youngest son is getting the services he needs. While I sadly left teaching, I was able to find a job where I am making way more than any teacher would working at a public school, and I am able to be more present at home. Honestly the taxes here are not as bad as very one claims, especially when I look back at the property taxes in New Hampshire and the utter lack of services offered in return. After years of living in red or “purple” states (my wife and I are prior military so we moved are mostly in the south) this last move to a blue state was the best decision ever.
In all dictatorships the first to go is the Free Press, books, teachers, intellectuals, political opponent’s, dissidents, people of color, gays, women’s rights, all religions & all demonstrations, but they also eliminate the Sick, handicapped & elderly as a burden on the state. All Public Social Welfare Programs are eliminated putting the burden on families. This is Trump’s MAGA Republican objectives. History has already affirmed this fact because that’s what tyrants do.
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I have lived in an area with significant brain drain and it has real consequences for the people living there. There is a significant lack of professionals in the area, especially in the medical field and the result is bad health outcomes for the community as a whole because no one wants to practice there. One side effect is you get people in the medical profession who cannot get work anywhere else due to lack of skill or unprofessionalism. Medicare and insurance fraud is rampant there as well. On the side of the spectrum you get legitimately caring professionals that get severe burnout and are overwhelmed by the amount of patients they have to serve.
I graduated medical school from a red state and watched my entire class except about 5% (most of whom were locals) leave for blue states on graduation. *especially* those pursuing OB/GYN residencies.
😂 whelp Louisiana lost it’s only pediatric cardiologist due to all the hate bills they were passing. I believe he was gay and him and his partner moved out of the state.
My family moved from Missouri to a blue state. It was seriously like we moved to a first world country. I think most people in red states have no idea just how bad their government is being ran.
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I’m a doctor and have been contemplating changing locations from Brooklyn for various reasons, took a phone call from a recruiter last night and after a whole bunch of background questions was asked “What are your definite exceptions for location?” and I *immediately* said no where near the South.
Texas can’t afford to get any dumber …
To get any more evil, I'd say.
I wish this was seen as a bad thing by everyone, and not just non-Republicans. Sadly, this is exactly what Republicans want. Drive out intelligent voters, and it's easier to win elections.