Democrats and Republicans Aren’t Just Divided. They Live in Different Worlds.

[pppolitics]

Democrats and Republicans Aren’t Just Divided. They Live in Different Worlds.

The two parties represent radically different slices of the American economy.

https://www.wsj.com/graphics/red-economy-blue-economy/

[T'Chenka]

Dat paywall tho

[Indy Texas]

I'm worried this could lead Republicans to the perverse incentives that Southern Democrats had after Reconstruction ended - to deliberately retard economic growth to cement their hold on power.

Send more people to college? Can't have that. They'll be exposed to that SJW nonsense.

Get more people employed in jobs involving critical thinking and human interaction? No! They'll just start voting for Democrats. They need to be mining coal or ringing up groceries at Dollar General. Nothing more.

Wealthy GOP donors will be fine with that. If they want exposure to growing economies, they can just invest in foreign companies. Meanwhile at home they'd be able to permanently maintain a position where they have the largest slice of a stagnant or shrinking pie, so they will always be at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy.

Social mobility would reach a standstill, public investment in education and infrastructure would halt. The bottom 75% of the population would be living in dire poverty. The nonwhite elements of that would be excluded from the political process and frequently abused by law enforcement - basically treated like South African blacks or Brazilian pardos. The white poors would be given a sense of purpose in life through televised agitprop and participating in Alt Right vigilante groups, or encouraged to become police officers or join the military; those not interested in or suited to these jobs would be encouraged to stay in their mobile homes in opioid-induced stupors.

The next 24% would be the white bourgeoisie who manage the stagnant industries and provide professional services - defending coal companies when they are sued by the EPA, being the superintendent of the White Christians-only for-profit charter school, writing bad takes for the Heritage Foundation and AEI.

And then there would be the 1% who write the checks to the GOP and are firmly ensconced in their positions of wealth. This group would live in NYC, DC and the Bay Area, and are insulated from the neglect and disinvestment the GOP has treated Flyover Country with. Ironically, they engage in exactly the sort of behaviors the GOP's propaganda demonizes as "liberal elitism." They eat organic food, don't go to church, and vacation in Europe. If their daughters or wives want or need an abortion, they will be able to easily get one.

[Progressive Pessimist]

What else is new?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

I'm disappointed. The article doesn't explain how different levels of wealth distribution make a corrupt, lying abuser into a honest, talented man of faith in red districts.

[atheist4thecause]

I'm worried this could lead Republicans to the perverse incentives that Southern Democrats had after Reconstruction ended - to deliberately retard economic growth to cement their hold on power.

Send more people to college? Can't have that. They'll be exposed to that SJW nonsense.

Get more people employed in jobs involving critical thinking and human interaction? No! They'll just start voting for Democrats. They need to be mining coal or ringing up groceries at Dollar General. Nothing more.

Wealthy GOP donors will be fine with that. If they want exposure to growing economies, they can just invest in foreign companies. Meanwhile at home they'd be able to permanently maintain a position where they have the largest slice of a stagnant or shrinking pie, so they will always be at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy.

Social mobility would reach a standstill, public investment in education and infrastructure would halt. The bottom 75% of the population would be living in dire poverty. The nonwhite elements of that would be excluded from the political process and frequently abused by law enforcement - basically treated like South African blacks or Brazilian pardos. The white poors would be given a sense of purpose in life through televised agitprop and participating in Alt Right vigilante groups, or encouraged to become police officers or join the military; those not interested in or suited to these jobs would be encouraged to stay in their mobile homes in opioid-induced stupors.

The next 24% would be the white bourgeoisie who manage the stagnant industries and provide professional services - defending coal companies when they are sued by the EPA, being the superintendent of the White Christians-only for-profit charter school, writing bad takes for the Heritage Foundation and AEI.

And then there would be the 1% who write the checks to the GOP and are firmly ensconced in their positions of wealth. This group would live in NYC, DC and the Bay Area, and are insulated from the neglect and disinvestment the GOP has treated Flyover Country with. Ironically, they engage in exactly the sort of behaviors the GOP's propaganda demonizes as "liberal elitism." They eat organic food, don't go to church, and vacation in Europe. If their daughters or wives want or need an abortion, they will be able to easily get one.

Oh boy. You really misunderstand the argument people make about universities and jobs, as well as misunderstanding how the economy works. We could send every person in the USA to a 4-year university to get an education. Would that get them all a job? No. Why not? Because sending people to universities doesn't create jobs. Businesses create jobs and then people fill those jobs, and if people want a job that takes a higher level of skillset, they go to universities to get that education.

What's going on right now is everybody is being encouraged to go to universities and there just aren't enough high skill jobs for all of them. So after people go to these universities, there's no job for them to get often times, even though they promised there would be one waiting. Meanwhile, people going to tech schools incurring much less debt are finding good paying jobs much more easily.

All groups of people should have the ability to go to universities, but our goal as a society shouldn't be to send the entire population to a university. That is expensive and unnecessary. We need to do a better job informing kids coming out of high school what ALL of their options and support them even when their choice isn't to go to a university.

As for the SJW in universities issue, that is an issue. It's not an issue because people run into SJWs, it's an issue because the SJWs are pushing political agendas more than they are trying to teach people to get them into work. Most of these gender studies majors don't lead to many job opportunities, and kids don't necessarily understand that coming out of high school.

Your Marxist ideals are getting in the way of you understanding those you disagree with.

[Sumner 1868]

Get more people employed in jobs involving critical thinking and human interaction?

Silicon Valley is neither of these things.

[RINO Tom]

Pretty sure someone posts an article like this once a week.  These studies and stories are interesting, and they certainly contain a grain of truth.  However, they make the classic political nerd mistake of acting like "red areas" are full of Republicans and "blue areas" are full of Democrats, and then there are a few purple areas that are 50/50.  The reality is that tens of millions of Republicans and Democrats live in areas that don't vote in a way with which they agree.  There are plenty of factory workers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan (areas that swung to Trump) that have remained loyal to the Democrats, especially among minority workers in those states ... and yet they've probably heard some people in real life or on TV talk like the red avatars here who have sworn those areas off as nonredeemable.  Similarly, it's not like tens of millions of suburban Republicans disappeared magically one day when their counties and precincts went from 55% GOP to 55% Democratic; anyone with a basic understanding of statistics knows that a shift like that involves relatively few people changing their minds, and possibly just a very minor change in who's actually voting (i.e., even fewer people changing their minds).

None of this is to say that the era of Trump hasn't brought very significant shifts in our electorate; it obviously has.  But this whole "two worlds" crap is, indeed, overstated.  I live in downtown Chicago ... I could go walk outside right now and find a Republican within ten minutes if I were obnoxious and classless enough to ask strangers about that kind of thing.  The point is, it's easy to forget that there are VERY few places in the United States where nearly everyone votes for one party strictly because of where they live (keep in mind, a county or town that votes 75% for one party still has a very significant 25% that didn't).

[pbrower2a]

I'm worried this could lead Republicans to the perverse incentives that Southern Democrats had after Reconstruction ended - to deliberately retard economic growth to cement their hold on power.

Send more people to college? Can't have that. They'll be exposed to that SJW nonsense.

Get more people employed in jobs involving critical thinking and human interaction? No! They'll just start voting for Democrats. They need to be mining coal or ringing up groceries at Dollar General. Nothing more.

Wealthy GOP donors will be fine with that. If they want exposure to growing economies, they can just invest in foreign companies. Meanwhile at home they'd be able to permanently maintain a position where they have the largest slice of a stagnant or shrinking pie, so they will always be at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy.

Social mobility would reach a standstill, public investment in education and infrastructure would halt. The bottom 75% of the population would be living in dire poverty. The nonwhite elements of that would be excluded from the political process and frequently abused by law enforcement - basically treated like South African blacks or Brazilian pardos. The white poors would be given a sense of purpose in life through televised agitprop and participating in Alt Right vigilante groups, or encouraged to become police officers or join the military; those not interested in or suited to these jobs would be encouraged to stay in their mobile homes in opioid-induced stupors.

The next 24% would be the white bourgeoisie who manage the stagnant industries and provide professional services - defending coal companies when they are sued by the EPA, being the superintendent of the White Christians-only for-profit charter school, writing bad takes for the Heritage Foundation and AEI.

And then there would be the 1% who write the checks to the GOP and are firmly ensconced in their positions of wealth. This group would live in NYC, DC and the Bay Area, and are insulated from the neglect and disinvestment the GOP has treated Flyover Country with. Ironically, they engage in exactly the sort of behaviors the GOP's propaganda demonizes as "liberal elitism." They eat organic food, don't go to church, and vacation in Europe. If their daughters or wives want or need an abortion, they will be able to easily get one.

Oh boy. You really misunderstand the argument people make about universities and jobs, as well as misunderstanding how the economy works. We could send every person in the USA to a 4-year university to get an education. Would that get them all a job? No. Why not? Because sending people to universities doesn't create jobs. Businesses create jobs and then people fill those jobs, and if people want a job that takes a higher level of skillset, they go to universities to get that education.

If the objective is to get more people starting small businesses, then the last thing that we need to do is to send more people to college.  Unless one is talking about professional practices, college graduates would rather be glorified clerks than establish the boutique-style stores that might attract the Big Spenders in America to buy unique stuff or diners that might be alternatives to chain restaurants. College degrees create a sense (often misguided) of security in bureaucratic organizations.   

What's going on right now is everybody is being encouraged to go to universities and there just aren't enough high skill jobs for all of them. So after people go to these universities, there's no job for them to get often times, even though they promised there would be one waiting. Meanwhile, people going to tech schools incurring much less debt are finding good paying jobs much more easily.

I will make a concession: the world is becoming more complicated at the least in consumer choices of entertainment and information. The hucksters in politics are becoming more sophisticated, and just to offset it would be wise to make K-14 education the norm instead of K-12 so that people can apply coherent logic, detect propaganda and read between its lines, recognize that there is no such thing as a free lunch, write coherent reports, and recognize hustles when they appear. The bachelor's degree is still rightly an elite phenomenon because multitudes are simply unsuited to the learning necessary for it.
 

All groups of people should have the ability to go to universities, but our goal as a society shouldn't be to send the entire population to a university. That is expensive and unnecessary. We need to do a better job informing kids coming out of high school what ALL of their options and support them even when their choice isn't to go to a university.

For this, community college is a good alternative to going to a residential university. Many people are coming to recognize this as a way of constraining the cost of education and perhaps getting a solid trade that gives one more means for paying for schooling if one still lusts for advanced learning. There is nothing wrong with a machinist or electrician deciding that he wants to study antiquities. 

As for the SJW in universities issue, that is an issue. It's not an issue because people run into SJWs, it's an issue because the SJWs are pushing political agendas more than they are trying to teach people to get them into work. Most of these gender studies majors don't lead to many job opportunities, and kids don't necessarily understand that coming out of high school.

The SJW types are in colleges and universities in part because they could never fit well into profits-first, profits-only enterprise that treats employees like livestock. If anyone wants to show me that humane values have any place in the Dark Satanic Mills of our time, then try to convince me. The corporate dream is of 21st-century productivity on peon wages, something possible only in a climate of fear that ultimately wrecks people. 

Your Marxist ideals are getting in the way of you understanding those you disagree with.

The problem is with people who see a Marxist critique of capitalism as an ideal worthy of defense instead of as a shame in need of extensive reform.