Conservatism liberalism US states

@easterniowegin It's not "relative" that conservative counties are less productive.

@SomeMichGuy what does "productive" mean to you?

@easterniowegin I'm going off of the info presented by @ElwoodBlues.

To have, in 2018

• Red--
> 2400 counties
who voted for Trump
generate 29% of the US GDP

• Blue--
< 500 counties
won by Biden
generate 70% of US GDP

means that that the "blue" counties are paying most of the Social Security, Medicare, Medicade, Welfare, etc., for the "red" counties.

Yet the "red" counties include citizens who love to go on about self-sufficiency, etc.

But, to your point, the pandemic showed a lot of businesses that people *could* work at/from home, and lots of people have improved their quality of life, reduced their average commute, slowed down, spent more time meaningfully...and STILL kept paying for most of the social programs in all those other counties.

I think that's making one's income a blessing to others less fortunate.

@SomeMichGuy you need to put the data into perspective.
- what is the population distribution compared to the productivity?
- how many red states have increased number of retirees, who are inherently not productive?
- what impact does cost of living/cost of goods have when comparing the different states?
- the govt also seems to try and keep costs in ag related areas more in control than goods/services in the cities.

There are so many variables in play here. A simple comparison isn't simple at all.

@easterniowegin

lol

You need to rethink your plan of attack.

Consider this: those "red" counties are typically less populated. So that means "blue" counties are a source of MORE retirees, as a simple matter of population statistics. Some move, but many people like their friends, family, homes, stuff, and the familiarity of where things are, etc.

But you need to deal with the surprising reality that those "blue" counties don't just *match* the GDP output of the ~5 "red" counties on the other side; on average, they produce about 2-1/3 (i.e., 7/3) MORE than those other ~5 counties.

@easterniowegin Oh and regarding


For my point,

more GDP
= more wage/salary income
= more payroll taxes
= more $ for Social Security, medical programs
= more income tax
= more $ for other programs
= more self-employment income (with the same results)

@SomeMichGuy you're intentionally not comparing apples to apples.

I'm talking as a % of population. Lol
Everyone knows the blue states are more populated...thus all numbers for everything are higher.
Percentages are what allow for apples to apples.

CA for example has a population of 15% >65.
FL is 21% of the population. Huge difference in productivity right there.

WA, IL, VA, MD, CO, MN are all under 17% of the population being retirees.
But 60% of states have a % of their population 65+. Red states have a larger % of its population unproductive/retired. When ppl leave NY to retire in FL, they don't contribute to GDP there.
Do you seriously not understand the concept of % and how retirees impacts gdp??

@easterniowegin Do you seriously not understand how you are arguing that the "red" counties are even more of a drain because of the retiree effect, and should be happy that the "blue" counties exist?

@SomeMichGuy I'm not sure why the idea of cost of living is so difficult to understand in the bigger picture of comparing apples to apples.

https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/cost-of-living/&ved=2ahUKEwjXjLCLiZf6AhXnJjQIHWWtDisQFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3xGyCN5I3xA9Dej2BGi3xC

@easterniowegin It isn't. But retirees also cost more medically, too.

You can't try to pretend that things are complicated and then ignore whatever threads you don't like. lol