Red-blue state divide

This piece by Richard Florida explains a lot about the current blue- and red-state divide in America. In general, blue state economies in the Northeast and on the West Coast offer more technology, engineering, cutting-edge jobs at the forefront of innovation and finance at the expense of a more expensive standard of living and more costly housing, while the South and parts of the Midwest and Southwest, predominantly churn out more jobs in energy, production and agriculture with more affordable housing and standards of living. That said, economic inequality, surprisingly enough, has grown the most during the last three decades in predominantly blue states like Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and California.

As Florida points out, while metro areas like San Francisco and New York:

are booming … they are hampered by potholes and crumbling infrastructure, troubled public school systems, growing inequality and housing unaffordability, and entrenched poor populations, all of which mean higher public costs and higher tax burdens.

And yet for all that, they are pioneering the new economic order that will determine our future — one that turns on innovation and knowledge rather than the raw production of goods.

Despite their longstanding divisions, red state and blue state economies depend crucially on one another. Just as Alexander Hamilton’s merchant cities ate and exported the harvests of Thomas Jefferson’s yeomen farmers, and New England textile mills wove slave-harvested cotton, blue state knowledge economies run on red state energy. Red state energy economies in their turn depend on dense coastal cities and metro areas, not just as markets and sources of migrants, but for the technology and talent they supply.

Of course, while Massachusetts and Mississippi represent the extremes of America’s politico-economic divide, there are many red states like Utah, Arizona and Texas that are growing their tech and knowledge economies, and a number of historically blue states like Pennsylvania that have benefited from the fracking boom. But in our increasingly competitive global economy, long-term prosperity turns on knowledge, education and innovation. The idea that the red states can enjoy the benefits provided by the blue states without helping to pay for them (and while poaching their industries with the promise of low taxes and regulations) is as irresponsible and destructive of our national future as it is hypocritical.

But that is exactly the mantra of the growing ranks of red state politicos. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a likely 2016 G.O.P. presidential candidate, has taken to bragging that his state’s low-frills development strategy provides a model for the nation as a whole. But fracking and sprawling your way to growth aren’t a sustainable national economic strategy.

The Republican strategy is one that has, so far, worked to persuade conservative voters who are unable or unwilling to see the big picture, and the big picture is that while an economy that is focused on agriculture, production and labor-intensive industries may be able to foster a cheaper standard of living in the short term, it is not sustainable as a long-term model to lead American into 2016 and beyond. And this is Florida’s central point. The basic conservative model has subsisted in conservative American politics for centuries going back to Jefferson’s yeoman farmer. The conservative vision for this nation has, historically, been far too shortsighted and dare I say, naive to do America’s economy any favors, although it’s this willful naivety that has handed the conservative party many a victory through the years, and more times than not at the expense, ironically, of the very people who support it.

The allure of cheap growth has handed the red states a distinct political advantage. Their economic system may be outmoded and obsolete, but it is strong enough to blight the future. The Democrats may be able to draw on the country’s growing demographic diversity and the liberal leanings of younger voters to win the presidency from time to time, but the real power dynamic is red.

As long as the highly gerrymandered red states can keep on delivering the economic goods to their voters, concerted federal action on transportation, infrastructure, sustainability, education, a rational immigration policy and a strengthened social safety net will remain out of reach. These are investments that the future prosperity of the nation, in red states and blue states alike, requires.

Heightened partisan rancor is the least of our problems. The red state-blue state divide threatens to kill the real American dream.

Our red state of affairs

A Feb. 25, 2011 report from Gallup shows that the United States is becoming increasingly more conservative, not less. Here’s the map that shows wide swaths of the nation in dark green (more conservative) and two main pockets of liberal areas, mainly in the West and Northeast:

Map via Gallup

Richard Florida with The Atlantic has taken the time to present some graphs on what the map means as far as trends. While the conclusions are not surprising, they are disheartening for those of us who would actually like to see the country move forward not ever backward.

Be that as it may, here’s a brief roundup.

Conservative states were found to be:

  • More religious than liberal states
  • More blue collar than liberal states
  • Less educated than liberal states
  • Less diverse than liberal states
  • Considerably poorer than liberal states

Florida notes:

While rich voters trend Republican, (Columbia University’s Andrew) Gelman and his colleagues found, rich states trend Democratic.

That’s quite a statement: rich voters with influence in poor, less educated and less diverse states. This reminds me of a profound statement made by British politician [[Tony Benn]] while being interviewed for the movie, “Sicko:”

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern, and I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people. We don’t want people to be educated, healthy and confident because they would get out of control (chuckle). The top 1 percent of the world’s population owns 80 percent of the world’s wealth. It’s incredible that people put up with it, but they’re poor. They’re demoralized. They’re frightened; and therefore, they think perhaps the safest thing to do is take orders and hope for the best.

Here is Florida’s conclusion about the inflated, and rather ironic, trend of conservatism in America:

Conservatism, at least at the state level, appears to be growing stronger. Ironically, this trend is most pronounced in America’s least well-off, least educated, most blue collar, most economically hard-hit states. Conservatism, more and more, is the ideology of the economically left behind. The current economic crisis only appears to have deepened conservatism’s hold on America’s states. This trend stands in sharp contrast to the Great Depression, when America embraced FDR and the New Deal.

If you’ve read this far, perhaps you know what I’m going to say: In essence, the very people who need some of the reforms that would come with more progressive policies vote, almost in blind lockstep, against liberalism in favor of politicians who, at best, don’t care about their interests, and at worst, actively seek to introduce programs and policies that purposefully keep people uneducated, unhealthy, poor and, in the end, hopeless. Voters in many of these states are too ignorant to catch on to this little game, so the poor stay poor and the wealthy interests happily glide above the fray on cloud nine. Not only is conservatism the ideology of the economically left behind, it is the left behind ideology, and the above more than bears this out.

Following are three of the more telling graphs:

Credit: Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander/The Atlantic

Credit: Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander/The Atlantic

Credit: Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander/The Atlantic

To elucidate some of these points, here is the late comedian George Carlin: