if living in russia taught me anything, people in distress reduce themselves (and got reduced) to the most basic questions, like who is to blame, and populists have them like a piece of cake.
Most vatniks, not unlike MAGAs, don't have answers to many questions, they want to be left alone to manage the hole they happened to be born into, and the promise of a candidate or ideology that does just that or even paints their quest as a herioic one, or a sacred sacrifice, would win again and again until there is someone to work with that and educate them.
They are used to live in shit and depend on themselves, don't know anything better and become pretty jealous if others get that. Others having it worse, especially their 'enemies', kinda makes their own living more bearable. Their struggle is a downpainment for a mission of punishing the unworthy ones.
When a person is downscaled to that childish level of consciousness it's impossible to reach them with rhetorics that don't directly benefit them.
As long as they continue to be like that and their thoughts are unchallenged, they'd always vote maga.
If you look at the impacts to their lives from the Clinton presidency, it is understandable that they would think that Democracts are not necessarily working in their interests.
Clinton really did fuck us over, though I guess the Bosnians like him.
Well lets hope we can correct course and make changes, unless Trump triggers a civil war or removes too much load bearing duck tape from the federal government and it more or less implodes
Another way to view this is that the poor are voting republican now. Trump won those making less than $100,000 handedly while Harris won those making above. Probably because he's offering them a solution to there problems, deport the immigrants and bring manufacturing back. His plan is dumb and won't work but at least he's putting something forward unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same.
The democrats are slowly becoming the party of the out of touch elite, and memes like this don't help. The democrats need to be putting forward solutions to those problems, and trump has shown it doesn't matter if they're viable or will actually help. If these "dumb poor people are rubes who will fall for anything" give them something to fall for. Say your going to tax the billionaires at 50% and use that money to pay for Healthcare and child care, don't cozy up to them so you can raise another billion dollars to lose another election .
Say your going to tax the billionaires at 50% and use that money to pay for Healthcare and child care, don't cozy up to them so you can raise another billion dollars to lose another election .
You go on Joe Rogan for one. Kamala ran the last presidential campaign that will ever rely so heavily on the legacy media apparatus. This whole cycle proved that they are only broadcasting to themselves and real people are elsewhere on podcasts, twitter and YT.
With all the fucking TV ads and mailers the campaign spent billions on. If the average voters is just covering there ears then why spend so much on advertising or why even campaign at all? Yeah some people are like that but they're deep in the maga cult, there's still a large amount of people open to both sides if the messaging is right that decided this election. Harris' messaging didn't work though.
I mean the marketing was effective. A lot of people including Donald trump thought he was going to lose. Just not effective at getting people who support Biden to get off their ass.
Democrats are forbidden by their patrons from using too much populist rhetoric. That's the number one reason why they fail to connect with what has become a very populist country, thanks to decades of wealth transfer to the top.
Bernie used populist language and the Democratic establishment pulled out all the stops to give us "anybody but Bernie". Now we are living the consequences.
What's neat is that you appear to have internalized the conservative view of the Democratic machine in this country. They are completely incompetent...but also such shadowy and powerful figures they control what everyone says and does and control who votes for who...except when it comes to republicans who these scary shadowy figures are unable to competently manipulate ever....
If you want to argue today that the Democrats aren't failures at fighting Republicans and specifically Trump, I would love to hear that argument.
There was nothing "shadowy" about the "anybody but Bernie" effort in 2020. They might have preferred it to be quieter, but I think just about every relevant detail of that scheme leaked, and it played out quite transparently. Are you arguing that it didn't happen?
It's not as much about competence as it is about perspective. The Democratic establishment is somewhat competently running strategies that are well suited for the 90s but completely out of touch with where voters are today.
People are scared and angry already. Not everyone has the financial stability you apparently do. Republicans focus that fear on the powerless. Democrats pretend it's not there. You can't respond to struggling families with "the economy is great!"
Let Bernie be Encharge. I am jealous that the US has Bernie. Seeing all this shit storm from afar, I now just believe the US doesn't deserve Bernie at all. He is too good for the US.
You lumped a huge percentage of people as putting their fingers in their ears.
Maga is going to vote maga. And there's a huge chunk that didn't vote or were surprised Biden dropped out. Those folks didn't put their fingers in their ears. Like Bernie said, they were ignored.
People who were surprised 5 months after Biden dropped out didn't have their fingers in their ears in your version of the world? I think you and I mean very different things by that phrase.
Check out leopards eating faces for the next few years..those people, whether it's moms surprised the education department is again going to punish their kids, Muslims surprised trump hates Muslims and wants them eradicated, EV company owners who think being allowed to support means being part of the narcissists inner circle, Latinos shocked that their friends or family members there illegally won't get special protections no matter how many times McCarthy rears his head.
"EV company owners" aside, most voters in this country just want something to change, and they'll vote for whoever promises the most of it. Harris' campaign didn't do anything nor promise anything that resonated, and practically everything she said ended up morphing into her highly-rehearsed stump speech. No talks about Medicare for All, no talks about the minimum wage, no talks about legalizing weed, and kowtowing to the right on border policy by accepting the 'crisis' framing. Harris also failed to address the situation in Gaza in a way that mattered, even though it was a major issue for undecided voters in key states like Michigan. Over 100,000 Democratic primary voters there cast an uncommitted vote over Biden's handling of Israel and Gaza, which is more than the margin by which she lost the state.
Harris had a potential base on the progressive left, but the DNC insisted on tweaking her campaign to try to win over right-moderates. That doesn't work anymore, precisely for the "sticking fingers in ears" attitude you mentioned from right-wing voters. It's asinine for the DNC to continue to try and appeal to them, when the median Republican voter thinks Democrats are agents of a satanic agenda. Regardless, the message the DNC seems to have gotten from Nov 5 was that they lost this election because they failed to move to the right hard enough. The ratchet effect continues.
As a side note, I know several trumpets who would've voted for Sanders in 2016 were he the Democratic nominee, and would've voted for Walz even this election were he the main guy on the 2024 presidential ticket. Such people are not very coherent ideologically, they just want someone in who has big ideas.
Unfortunately, it's just not enough to be "not the other guy", even if the other guy is a convicted felon, rapist, and just all-around a downright awful human being.
Many of those people will inexplicably be against a 50% tax on billionaires for two reasons: 1) they have no concept of how progressive tax brackets work, and think that means they'd be taking literally half that person's wealth, and 2) they believe that one day they could be in that situation, and when they are, they sure as shit won't want to pay half of their wealth! (spoiler alert: they won't)
And until we can change this type of thinking, we will never make those people pay their fair share.
This is what decades of American Exceptionalism, and Rugged Individualism, does to a nation; Empathy dies, and it becomes every man for themselves.
Probably because he's offering them a solution to there problems, deport the immigrants and bring manufacturing back. His plan is dumb and won't work but at least he's putting something forward unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same.
This is exactly what I was pointing out to my friends. Every one of us are making six figures, and could not understand why anybody would vote Trump.
And I asked them how many people in their lives are poor, living paycheck to paycheck. I have family members who are working two or three jobs to get by. All the work Biden did is not being seen or recognized by them.
Are they are under-educated yokels? Are they morons for not keeping up with politics? You can call them what ever you want. Theyre still a voter.
Face it: what they're hearing from Democrats vs what they're hearing from Trump are pretty clear cut and we can stay in this echo chamber all we want on Lemmy. Those folks aren't listening to us. They're just trying to survive and will vote accordingly.
CA, NY, IL and MA are all in the top 5 for states that have the most people leaving.
TX, FL, NC and AZ are attracting the most people.
Massachusetts has priced out average people. If you aren't the inheritor of some generational wealth you have a better chance of being upwardly mobile elsewhere.
That really has mostly to do with the high cost of living. And it's going to be high in an area inhabited by businesses on the cutting edge of technology. Those jobs have high wages because they need highly educated people, and highly educated people come from the best universities in the country, many of which are in Boston, and Cambridge. Not to mention the great schools in commuter range in Providence and Worcester.
Red states don't have higher education, and they don't have innovative industry, so they don't have the population density issues that blue states have.
Maybe if red states had these things, they'd have a high cost of living, too.
Most of the people fleeing MA for those states are working remotely for their companies still in MA. Mostly DINKS and young (primarily male) single professionals that don't really have public education or healthcare as any sort of immediate concern. That's gonna lead to problems when the average age of red state populations inverts itself. Better make sure that they can't not have babies.
You can't blame "rent gouging" without blaming the government for condoning it and setting up the conditions that encourage it.
The cost of living in blue states is absolutely due to city/state level Democrats. Democrats write the zoning laws. Democrats decide the tax laws. Democrats build the infrastructure and public transportation. Democrats also vote down rent control and affordable housing requirements.
Red states are controlled by rich Republicans. Blue states are controlled by rich Democrats. Sure, Republican rule makes Oklahoma the shit hole that it is. But don't try to give Democrats a pass for making Massachusetts as expensive as it is.
but yes, democratic leaders have left us, so it's easy to say both sides are corrupt, especially as long as insider trading and conflicts of interest are OK to them.
bring manufacturing back. … unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same…. The democrats need to be putting forward solutions to those problems
Perhaps like the CHIPS act or IRA? Instead of demogoguing, democrats followed through with actual investment in manufacturing, unionism, infrastructure. Supposedly 80% of that manufacturing investment went to red states
Is this one of these scenarios where people are too impatient with the time it takes to get a factory off the ground, so votes out the group making that investment over someone who’s “good for business” or at least taking credit ?
The chips act was more about national security then employment. Semiconductor manufacturing doesn't require much labor and isn't a mass employer. Even in Taiwan it only employs around 300,000 or 2% of people. Even if the chips act somehow brought all 300,000 of those jobs over here, which it wont, it would still be a drop in the bucket in the u.s.
The ira was better but was still limited in it's effect. Most Americans don't see the effect it had or don't think they're effected. You need universal programs that are easy to see the effects: Free school lunch, Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, subsidized child care, student loan forgiveness etc.
Also I don't believe Americans actually want to work in manufacturing. They really just want the stability, dignity and pay that union manufacturing jobs provided. If they got those from unionizing a Walmart or Starbucks then they'd probably be happier as those jobs are safer and less monotonous. This combined with the fact everything would get more expensive if it were manufactured here, no one could afford an iPhone built in america, makes me think the onshoring movement is a dead end politically and we should instead be focused on unionization.
So according to you it's worse to acknowledge we can't go back in time than to lie to people and promise that which we (in the 3rd party pov sense, meaning NYC republicans) actively subvert every day? One would have to be exceptionally stupid and stubbornly uninformed to believe this is reasonable.
About 1974. Massachusetts was the only state to not vote for Nixon during his re-election and the bumper stickers appeared after the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation only a year and a half into his second term.
I love the "Have you actually considered that the state doing the worst under consistent Republican policy is voting because they're unhappy with the DEMONRAT status quo???"
They really don't give a shit about consistency in their arguments. People have or lack responsibility for their moral and political choices according to whatever suits their "LIBERALS BAD" talking point of the day.
That would make sense if Oklahoma hadn’t voted that way every time regardless of who the previous president was. But I mean, conservatives are pretty good at inverting their arguments. So I’m sure when Bush left office, they voted for Romney because they were so happy with how the Bush admin went. But when Obama left, they voted for Trump because they were so unhappy with how the Obama administration went. Simple!
Maybe they voted against the incumbent so overwhelmingly because things are hard.
People vote based on their feelings.
When they were feeling pain, the message from the Dems was about how great the economy was, but the reality is that the stock market and GDP don't speak to the quality of life of these people. To them the Dems saying how great things were was dismissive of their real concerns.
Meanwhile, Trump latched onto their fears and concerns. Yeah, his policies are idiotic, and millions will suffer and be in worse shape. But when they said they couldn't pay the mortgage or buy groceries, he listened. The Democrats didn't because they've abandoned the working class that should be their backbone.
But the point, for this population and this meme, is that they have consistently voting in the same people and the results they have received are similarly consistent, and they keep voting that way.
Yes broadly there's been a "vote out the incumbent", but this illustrates why that's misguided, as it illustrates the different results of two states with consistent policies for each party.
Not even just consistently, the person accidentally made the point for them that they've actually gotten more red over that time. So they've somehow kept convincing more people to vote for them despite them never doing a thing to help them.
When an entire country shifts away from a party, it means the party is doing something to drive them away. Trump is the worst candidate in the history of the country, yet he's won 2 elections. Why is that?
It's because the Dems have abandoned the economic policies that formed the heart of their party and lost the working class vote they've relied upon since the Depression.
In that one case, they're a pretty consistent electorate. The general sentiment across America and around the globe since the post-pandemic inflation crisis began has been anti incumbent, which is why we see a lot of changed governments and populist uprisings now.
This type of meme isn't helpful when people already think the Dem Party isn't for working class people and elites only lol. Trump listened to people issues about material needs even if he lied. It still worked. Harris and Dems went on the whole time not addressing issues with the economy. Adopting a real working class agenda and free college would do wonders and putting resources to getting the crazy folk away from Education.
Working classes don’t need healthcare or education? Quality of life is irrelevant? A strong economy doesn’t matter? One of the highest minimum wages doesn’t affect working class? I
And yet people in Massachusetts generally elected not to change. Maybe not as big a majority as expected, but by a solid amount. Maybe all it takes is paying attention to healthcare, education, quality of life, free college, etc. maybe we have at least one model and all we have to do is follow it, instead of negativity and blaming mysterious pain points that you never actually identify
i think you're missing their point.
the working class does want these things, but the meme reinforces the idea that the dems only take care of the rich.
im not saying i agree with this interpretation. just that the meme reinforces an erroneous causal relation depending on the bias of the reader.
im dont know these places very well, but im used to seeing govenrments treating lower class neighborhoods with less attention. its a common perception.
No it doesn't. Massachusetts is full of working class people.
I think you might be confusing cause and effect here. Perhaps the people in MA are "rich" (I would say, doing well. There are tons of working class people in MA, they're just not necessarily living in squalor) because the dems took care of them. Almost as if we have tons of data backing this up... That Democrats consistently do these types of things, while Republicans constantly walk them back.
Crapton of working class people there. I mean a lot. It is possible to have top-tier education and health care yet have working class people in the same State.
Being a rural state does not by default equate to “working class”. If anything it probably means more people per capita on government assistance or in poverty.
Are Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh not "working class" cities? I think there are a whole lot of people who would like a word with you for writing them off.
Almost as if working class people don't have to be stupid.
It’s pretty difficult to find anywhere in the US currently that has good jobs, good entertainment and restaurants, access to healthcare, good schools, and isn’t expensive. Sure, you can get a house cheaper in rural Kansas or something but then you have to live in rural Kansas.
Very well said. I live in the other state from the meme and I'm broke af. I could be living in a better state and still be broke af but getting things from my taxes rather than them being used to put Bibles in schools.
You got a better explanation? People are leaving Massachusetts and the cost of living is high . The most likely reason is that poorer people who can't afford to live there any more are leaving. Otherwise why would you leave a state with such a high quality of life?
The people leaving largely aren't the poor, though. They're the middle and upper class looking for lower taxes. They're leaving because the high quality of life there benefits those with less money disproportionately compared to those with more money; public transport and good public schools matter less to the wealthy than to the poor.
Every company I know are careful to watch where their employees live and adjust wages appropriately. That’s probably the real reason most are hybrid: if you have to come into Boston twice a week, can you really live up in the mountains somewhere cheap?
Supply and demand. High quality state is going to be more desirable and so more expensive, where the dumpster states that noone WANTS to live in are so cheap anyone can afford to live there, even if they don't want to.
I would rather bring the whole country up to MA standards, increasing supply of QoL, instead of bringing it down to OK standards because "bUt iT CheEp ThEir".
Well, all it does is drive up the cost for the working class who live there who are then forced to move out.
If you were born there, that does indeed suck. If you bought your way in there, it's a win. If you were born there and can afford to keep living there, also a win
Also with the high cost of living most of the poor move out so that would make it seem lower then if you look at the inequality to the neighboring states where people may move to or the u.s. as a whole. Probably harder to find but it would be interesting to see inequality among people born in Massachusetts, including those who left. Would be interesting to see if there system is actually creating successful people, or if they're just kicking out unsuccessful people and attracting already successful people from other states.
It's why I left 25 years ago, as much as I liked living there, I couldn't afford it. The house i grew up in is currently on the market for $2.5mil... my mom sold it for $400k in the 90s. All my high school friends have moved away, though some farther than others...
The data certainly deserves a deeper look. It may also be because we just have that much more well paid jobs than what people generally think of as wealth inequality.
I realize that looks inconsistent so let me explain. Most people think of wealth inequality as the different between the Bezos of the world and them. However in this case, I see their measuring by quintile but we have a ton of software and medical- maybe we just have bigger quintiles three and four. Still wealth inequality mathematically but very different from what people expect that means
I have also thought that before I moved from Mass to Oregon. Just my experience of course, but my state taxes increases 2x and everything seemed to be more expensive.
How is Massachusetts being outrageously expensive not diametrically opposed to "quality of life"? The average person can't get ahead in Massachusetts which is why they are leaving to go elsewhere.
meanwhile here it's generally not expensive, but we can't seem to come up with a reasonable way for foreign doctors to gain canadian credentials and continue to have waits anywhere from hours to coming the next day instead
I crisscrossed Oklahoma on one of my cross-country trips, the state absolutely sucks and they even know it that's why you can legally drive like 80mph through the whole thing.
Kansas also sucks but khp uses the highway as a way to punish people with the wrong license plates. A majority of traffic stops in Kansas were of out of state drivers as recently as a few years ago.
It was. And in fact the Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the reservations still exist. One consequence is that Google Maps now shades the entire eastern half of the state in dark shading showing the borders between the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and so forth.
The tribal governments are taking an increasing role in providing public services to all of the citizens within their borders, as the civil state government descends deeper into libertarianism.
It was, but Oklahoma passed a law saying tribal lands couldn't use postal addresses and had to use PO boxes instead. Then they passed a law saying you needed a postal address to vote.
No doubt due to cost of living because Massachusetts is ridiculously expensive. The friends I have there are either leaving or totally resigned to not owning a house or ever retiring. Comparing a historically important coastal population center to a historically poor and strategically insignificant flyover state doesn't prove much.
The states with highest domestic emigration (e.g. people voting with their feet to leave) are overwhelmingly left leaning. (Except for Louisiana and Ohio)
"Why are blue states always so expensive?!". It's supply and demand. High demand to live someplace makes it expensive.
My million dollar house is worth as much as it is because of its located near high paying jobs, good school, and good neighbors. It's expensive to live where I live because lots of people want to live here.
Yeah, but it's supply and demand. I bet your million dollar home isn't next to an apartment building. Cities would be much cheaper if it weren't for NIMBYs who already own homes insisting that their homes must appreciate in value at all times.
Yeah, crappy places are more affordable. "Look how cheap the shitty places are, let's make the whole country shitty so it is cheaper" is a strange logic. Is rather bring everything up to MA standards so the supply is higher and demand isn't driving prices up.
As an Ohioan that tracks. We’d long been the poor person’s progressive state but yeah I’m ditching to go somewhere I’m safe, even though it sucks to leave somewhere affordable
Major petroleum marketplace. The commodity trading floor is in a big city somewhere else. But a lot of the oil actually changes hands in our around Cushing.
Gotcha. FWIW I have no bone to pick with Oklahoma at all. If anything the fact that people criticize it for being a backwater probably means that it's awesome.
I can only imagine lmao. I'm an okie currently, so I may have some idea, what with our state mineral being meth.
I've only ever heard stories and seen one documentary (The Wild and Wondeful Whites of West Virginia) from out of WV but it sounds...different out there, even compared to OK, haha.
Post civil war, the USA should have imposed rules that enforced integration.
They didn't have the will, and now we reap the consequences as a nation, to have the south still stuck in the moral degradation that comes with dehumanizing a portion of our population to the point of enslavement.
The hidden costs of health care are largely in the denial of antifragility. But it may not be just medicine—what we
call diseases of civilization result from the attempt by humans to make life comfortable for ourselves against our
own interest, since the comfortable is what fragilizes.
Less Is More
For instance, a small number of homeless people cost the states a disproportionate share of the bills, which
makes it obvious where to look for the savings. A small number of employees in a corporation cause the most
problems, corrupt the general attitude—and vice versa—so getting rid of these is a great solution. A small number
of customers generate a large share of the revenues. I get 95 percent of my smear postings from the same three
obsessive persons, all representing the same prototypes of failure (one of whom has written, I estimate, close to
one hundred thousand words in posts—he needs to write more and more and find more and more stuff to critique
in my work and personality to get the same effect). When it comes to health care, Ezekiel Emanuel showed that
half the population accounts for less than 3 percent of the costs, with the sickest 10 percent consuming
64 percent of the total pie.
First of all, "all counties were red/blue" is not what "unanimous" means.
I agree with you there.
Second of all, I don't think "ha ha your state is poor" is the grand slam argument you think it is.
Takes a lot of mental gymnastics to boil down all the listed differences as "state is poor". Unless you mean "poor" as in "in bad shape" and not "economically suffering". I'll assume you mean the former as that's the only way your argument makes sense.
I think it's more about how a state is voting against its own interests. There is NOTHING about the Republican platform that would improve any of the listed metrics. If anything, Republican politics would only further worsen an already bad state of affairs.
And of the off chance your initial argument was entirely economic, it's Democrats who want federal government involvement to help poor states.
That goes against democracy along with not allowing old people or people in prisons. It is opens the pandora's box to now allowing LGBT or people of color to vote by locking them in prison or fixing IQ tests to yield low scores.
There were about 258mil adult citizens in the USA in 2021( the last year I easily found statistics for), about 248mil of them are 'eligible' to vote. In the 2024 election, about 155mil ballots were cast.
Sure sure... 155mil isn't a small number, but it's nowhere near everyone. 60% of the adult population is a far far cry from universal participation.
In case you're wondering why you're getting down voted, it's because you didn't even offer up a valid argument and instead engaged in ad hominem, which is a logical fallacy.
I get that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but if the richest states are almost all blue and the poorest ones almost all red, that is a very strong correlation and trying to claim it is insignificant only makes you seem the fool.
You seem to be intelligent. Ask yourself why this post made you so upset.
You really didn't have to throw in the "seem to be intelligent" part but that very conscientious of you.
I'll go ahead and fix it for you though and be the asshole.
In case you're wondering why you're getting down voted, it's because you didn't even offer up a valid argument and instead engaged in ad hominem, which is a logical fallacy.
I get that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but if the richest states are almost all blue and the poorest ones almost all red, that is a very strong correlation and trying to claim it is insignificant only makes you seem the fool.
You seem to be intelligent. Ask yourself why this post made you so upset.
MA law doesn’t force insurance providers to cover gender-affirming hair electrolysis, so most don’t. Trans women with facial hair and cis women suffering from hirsutism are all expected to live with their beards and hairy shoulders.
Washington, Oregon, California and other states have laws on the books making it illegal for medical insurance providers to deny coverage of treatment for these conditions.
MA doesn’t get to do victory laps for its progressive bone fides until it gets with the program and takes care of its women.
Also, I'm going to disagree. Every win deserves its associated celebration of success. Saying it isn't successful - and this is what I'm referring to with your comment not coming across how you intend - helps nothing.
It doesn't mean its "over" to have a win. Its never going to be "over". There will always be new issues to tackle, rights to address, support that needs to be put in place, etc.
But glossing over what has been accomplished as just "not good enough because of one issue" isn't going to help or motivate. Its the celebration of the successes that provide the drive for more.
Your comment comes across as "Massachusetts may as well be Nebraska."
We generally don't hate people from red states, I'm in Oregon. We see them like a kid that won't stop touching a hot stove. It's more a disappointment than a "fuck em".
Apparently you've never had people tell you that you don't matter because you're from a red state. I'm trans, stuck in a red state, and get to have people tell me I deserve what the state is doing to me and my trans siblings because we were born here.
Obviously Texas wouldn't be so red if we would just vote for Democrats, right? Therefore, we must be part of the problem! As long as one person votes blue then that cancels out all the red votes so we really have no one to blame but ourselves!
Apparently you’ve never had people tell you that you don’t matter because you’re from a red state.
I’m trans, stuck in a red state, and get to have people tell me I deserve what the state is doing to me and my trans siblings because we were born here.
Girl, that is absolutely bullshit, I am so sorry to hear that. I have family in both Alberta and Saskatchewan (Canada's blindly right-wing provinces) and it is brutal if you're not white, male, and hetero. Even moreso if you're visually not one of those things, and you're in a rural area.
One of my kids is trans, and we're about to get a Con federal government, so we're pretty worried for her. Who knows what care will be removed when Canada's Trump Loving Party takes over (the Conservatives are looking like they'll get a majority).
(For anyone who doesn't know our parties, that's the Federal Liberal Party (Centre/Centre-Left Wing), Conservative Party of Canada (Right Wing), New Democratic Party (Centre-Left/Left Wing), Bloc Québécois (far tougher to describe. They swing from Right to Left Wing.)
Could you share more about your trans siblings? I had understood that being transgender was relatively uncommon, and I realize there may be genetic or other factors involved. It's new to me that multiple members of a family might identify this way, and I’d love to learn more if you’re open to sharing. Thanks!
That the states that consistently vote Republican are also consistently among the states with the worst quality of life, and that there's a correlation between the two.
That Republicans don't actually care about Americans.
That they keep voting for people who “love the working class” and who “have great economic policy” but every classically Republican state is a fucking shithole that constantly needs money from blue states to stay barely afloat.
It’s yet more evidence that the GOP don’t have any interest and/or ability to properly run a country. All their ideas fucking suck and everything they touch is worse for it, and their base needs to realize this. Also educated or not it’s so insanely obvious these days just how bad shit is and whose at fault but us North Americans(I’m Canadian, same problems here but more boring) can’t stop but chase the right when the center falters. At this point people should be mocked, this shit’s inexcusable in ways it wasn’t as much even only 10-15 years ago.
That red states vote against their own interests. They have massive needs and lag on many wellness metrics, yet consistently vote for politicians who are happy to keep them that way via the policy they enact
So wait, the poor and the hopeless, looking for some kind of help, voted unanimously for TRUMP, and those happy with their current conditions and wanting no change voted for Harris.
I think it's pretty clear that the current Republican party is fundamentally different than the one of 15 years ago. Whether they consider themselves conservative or not, they are the party that is promising change from the status quo.
The parties have clearly changed roles with respect to manual laborers. The blue wall doesn't exist anymore because of this. What it all means, I have no idea, but we need to update our mental model of the two parties. Their demographic have fundamentally changed.
They are just lieing to the uneducated gullible masses they created. I suppose you can phrase it as "promising change from the status quo", but it isn't exactly accurate.
I have to disagree, It is 100% accurate. The change will not make non-billionaire lives any better, but there is definitely change from the status quo. There are huge shifts with the cabinet appointments already away from qualified "Washington Insiders" to unqualified "Trump Loyalists". That is a huge change from the status quo. Even during the first Trump admin he appointed mostly qualified career politicians. This is different, as promised. It won't be better...
I don't, but a large chunk of america does. I think that speaks a lot to the democrats messaging.
The world's richest man is helping a billionaire get elected and that's not one of your main points to voters? No but Harris can't attack billionaires because that'll anger all the ones on her side.
Oklahoma has voted for Republican presidential candidates all but once since 1952 (in 1964), with the Democratic candidate having failed to pick up a single county in the state in all elections since 2004
Now that I have pulled Oklahoma’s electoral results going back to 1988, now you can pull Oklahoma’s education results going back over the same period of time and we can see if there is, in fact, a correlation between the quality of education (overall education rankings) and how the state votes in presidential elections.
I suspect that it was not purely the quality of education which influenced the “red shift”. I would bet that the lower-quality of education made the influence of social media more effective for those targeting the less educated to adopt a conservative political position.
Just share your findings here and we can work together.
Well done. I'll leave my response up, but I'll admit that the Massachusetts/Oklahoma example is a bad one to make the case that Trump was the populist in this election and Harris was a vote for the conservative "no change" position.
I see the ones under republican state leadership, clamoring for change, yet in reality voting for the same assholes that govern them into the ground? Not sure how you’re not seeing that, though I imagine it’s willful
They never said they voted for him. They pointed out that the living conditions in the red state are worse, and the chose to vote for Trump. Presumably under some kind of belief that he will ameliorate those conditions.
Before you tell me he won't, I know that he won't. They don't know that though. And they have gigantic right wing echo chambers telling them all about how he will.
I think we are interpreting this correlation in two different ways.
The demon buer sees it as:
bad living standards → vote republican
(because in this election the selling point of the republicans was the economy(/+immigration (because they also partly blame immigrants for the economic problems)), while for the democrats it was the the "protection of democracy" (which isn't really the biggest concern of someone struggling to pay their bills (or also not desired if that democracy got them to where they are now)))
others are seeing it as
vote republican → bad living standards
(because if republicans are no good, and if a state has been consistently voting republican in the last years of the state's local elections, then the state also won't be no good)
(the arrow means "causes")
(not directly directed at anyone, besides everyone who reads this post: ) Just because there's a correlation, we can't say in which direction the causation goes, if there is one.
if living in russia taught me anything, people in distress reduce themselves (and got reduced) to the most basic questions, like who is to blame, and populists have them like a piece of cake.
Most vatniks, not unlike MAGAs, don't have answers to many questions, they want to be left alone to manage the hole they happened to be born into, and the promise of a candidate or ideology that does just that or even paints their quest as a herioic one, or a sacred sacrifice, would win again and again until there is someone to work with that and educate them.
They are used to live in shit and depend on themselves, don't know anything better and become pretty jealous if others get that. Others having it worse, especially their 'enemies', kinda makes their own living more bearable. Their struggle is a downpainment for a mission of punishing the unworthy ones.
When a person is downscaled to that childish level of consciousness it's impossible to reach them with rhetorics that don't directly benefit them.
As long as they continue to be like that and their thoughts are unchallenged, they'd always vote maga.
Really well said
I haven't seen an analysis from your perspective before. Lines up very well with my experience from the Southern US.
And as they continue to vote against their own interests it becomes a self-perpetuating system.
If you look at the impacts to their lives from the Clinton presidency, it is understandable that they would think that Democracts are not necessarily working in their interests.
Clinton really did fuck us over, though I guess the Bosnians like him.
Well lets hope we can correct course and make changes, unless Trump triggers a civil war or removes too much load bearing duck tape from the federal government and it more or less implodes
Another way to view this is that the poor are voting republican now. Trump won those making less than $100,000 handedly while Harris won those making above. Probably because he's offering them a solution to there problems, deport the immigrants and bring manufacturing back. His plan is dumb and won't work but at least he's putting something forward unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same.
The democrats are slowly becoming the party of the out of touch elite, and memes like this don't help. The democrats need to be putting forward solutions to those problems, and trump has shown it doesn't matter if they're viable or will actually help. If these "dumb poor people are rubes who will fall for anything" give them something to fall for. Say your going to tax the billionaires at 50% and use that money to pay for Healthcare and child care, don't cozy up to them so you can raise another billion dollars to lose another election .
That was basically Harris' tax plan.
What Would Kamala Harris's Tax Plans Mean For You? | Kiplinger - https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/kamala-harriss-tax-plans-2024
It doesn't matter what your platform is if it's not communicated effectively to the median voter
How do you communicate effectively to someone with their fingers in their ears screaming nananananananana? Please advise, oh political oracle.
You go on Joe Rogan for one. Kamala ran the last presidential campaign that will ever rely so heavily on the legacy media apparatus. This whole cycle proved that they are only broadcasting to themselves and real people are elsewhere on podcasts, twitter and YT.
She did go on Call Her Daddy.
She was on traditional media? I guess I wasn’t there to see either candidate. I only saw both online
With all the fucking TV ads and mailers the campaign spent billions on. If the average voters is just covering there ears then why spend so much on advertising or why even campaign at all? Yeah some people are like that but they're deep in the maga cult, there's still a large amount of people open to both sides if the messaging is right that decided this election. Harris' messaging didn't work though.
I mean the marketing was effective. A lot of people including Donald trump thought he was going to lose. Just not effective at getting people who support Biden to get off their ass.
Trump seemed to get through.
Democrats are forbidden by their patrons from using too much populist rhetoric. That's the number one reason why they fail to connect with what has become a very populist country, thanks to decades of wealth transfer to the top.
Bernie used populist language and the Democratic establishment pulled out all the stops to give us "anybody but Bernie". Now we are living the consequences.
What's neat is that you appear to have internalized the conservative view of the Democratic machine in this country. They are completely incompetent...but also such shadowy and powerful figures they control what everyone says and does and control who votes for who...except when it comes to republicans who these scary shadowy figures are unable to competently manipulate ever....
If you want to argue today that the Democrats aren't failures at fighting Republicans and specifically Trump, I would love to hear that argument.
There was nothing "shadowy" about the "anybody but Bernie" effort in 2020. They might have preferred it to be quieter, but I think just about every relevant detail of that scheme leaked, and it played out quite transparently. Are you arguing that it didn't happen?
It's not as much about competence as it is about perspective. The Democratic establishment is somewhat competently running strategies that are well suited for the 90s but completely out of touch with where voters are today.
So basically you lie to them and tell them what they want to hear? Stoke fear of "the others" among them to keep them scared and angry?
Yeah, no, I'm good.
Is that what you think Bernie does?
People are scared and angry already. Not everyone has the financial stability you apparently do. Republicans focus that fear on the powerless. Democrats pretend it's not there. You can't respond to struggling families with "the economy is great!"
Let Bernie be Encharge. I am jealous that the US has Bernie. Seeing all this shit storm from afar, I now just believe the US doesn't deserve Bernie at all. He is too good for the US.
Ah yes, now that you made fun of the prior commenter, we have convinced the world and now Kamala is president?
Bernie is fucking right.
?
You lumped a huge percentage of people as putting their fingers in their ears.
Maga is going to vote maga. And there's a huge chunk that didn't vote or were surprised Biden dropped out. Those folks didn't put their fingers in their ears. Like Bernie said, they were ignored.
People who were surprised 5 months after Biden dropped out didn't have their fingers in their ears in your version of the world? I think you and I mean very different things by that phrase.
Who do you think the people putting their fingers in their ears are, in this case?
Check out leopards eating faces for the next few years..those people, whether it's moms surprised the education department is again going to punish their kids, Muslims surprised trump hates Muslims and wants them eradicated, EV company owners who think being allowed to support means being part of the narcissists inner circle, Latinos shocked that their friends or family members there illegally won't get special protections no matter how many times McCarthy rears his head.
"EV company owners" aside, most voters in this country just want something to change, and they'll vote for whoever promises the most of it. Harris' campaign didn't do anything nor promise anything that resonated, and practically everything she said ended up morphing into her highly-rehearsed stump speech. No talks about Medicare for All, no talks about the minimum wage, no talks about legalizing weed, and kowtowing to the right on border policy by accepting the 'crisis' framing. Harris also failed to address the situation in Gaza in a way that mattered, even though it was a major issue for undecided voters in key states like Michigan. Over 100,000 Democratic primary voters there cast an uncommitted vote over Biden's handling of Israel and Gaza, which is more than the margin by which she lost the state.
The right took advantage of this. An EV company owner paid a PAC to distribute ostensibly pro-Harris pamphlets in predominantly Arab neighborhoods in Michigan saying she was the most pro-Israel candidate on the ballot. The right helped put abortion rights directly on the state ballots as propositions, letting people believe the choice could be separated from who they voted for (see Florida, where the proposition lost at 57% support when the state voted roughly the same percentage for ol Don).
Harris had a potential base on the progressive left, but the DNC insisted on tweaking her campaign to try to win over right-moderates. That doesn't work anymore, precisely for the "sticking fingers in ears" attitude you mentioned from right-wing voters. It's asinine for the DNC to continue to try and appeal to them, when the median Republican voter thinks Democrats are agents of a satanic agenda. Regardless, the message the DNC seems to have gotten from Nov 5 was that they lost this election because they failed to move to the right hard enough. The ratchet effect continues.
As a side note, I know several trumpets who would've voted for Sanders in 2016 were he the Democratic nominee, and would've voted for Walz even this election were he the main guy on the 2024 presidential ticket. Such people are not very coherent ideologically, they just want someone in who has big ideas.
Unfortunately, it's just not enough to be "not the other guy", even if the other guy is a convicted felon, rapist, and just all-around a downright awful human being.
edit: grammar and wording in a couple spots
Many of those people will inexplicably be against a 50% tax on billionaires for two reasons: 1) they have no concept of how progressive tax brackets work, and think that means they'd be taking literally half that person's wealth, and 2) they believe that one day they could be in that situation, and when they are, they sure as shit won't want to pay half of their wealth! (spoiler alert: they won't)
And until we can change this type of thinking, we will never make those people pay their fair share.
This is what decades of American Exceptionalism, and Rugged Individualism, does to a nation; Empathy dies, and it becomes every man for themselves.
This is exactly what I was pointing out to my friends. Every one of us are making six figures, and could not understand why anybody would vote Trump.
And I asked them how many people in their lives are poor, living paycheck to paycheck. I have family members who are working two or three jobs to get by. All the work Biden did is not being seen or recognized by them.
Are they are under-educated yokels? Are they morons for not keeping up with politics? You can call them what ever you want. Theyre still a voter.
Face it: what they're hearing from Democrats vs what they're hearing from Trump are pretty clear cut and we can stay in this echo chamber all we want on Lemmy. Those folks aren't listening to us. They're just trying to survive and will vote accordingly.
Six figures? Lucky you.
That's like an average cali salary man. You gotta pump those numbers up
California has one of the highest CoL's in the country. 51% of Americans made $15k or less in 2021.
And yet. Manufacturing was down under trump in 2016 even before covid hit and under Biden manufacturing is the highest it's been in decades.
The Democrats must be doing something right, if their states have better everything.
Maybe if the Republicans would listen to us, we could all have the best schools and hospitals.
They don't have better retention rates.
CA, NY, IL and MA are all in the top 5 for states that have the most people leaving.
TX, FL, NC and AZ are attracting the most people.
Massachusetts has priced out average people. If you aren't the inheritor of some generational wealth you have a better chance of being upwardly mobile elsewhere.
That really has mostly to do with the high cost of living. And it's going to be high in an area inhabited by businesses on the cutting edge of technology. Those jobs have high wages because they need highly educated people, and highly educated people come from the best universities in the country, many of which are in Boston, and Cambridge. Not to mention the great schools in commuter range in Providence and Worcester.
Red states don't have higher education, and they don't have innovative industry, so they don't have the population density issues that blue states have.
Maybe if red states had these things, they'd have a high cost of living, too.
Most of the people fleeing MA for those states are working remotely for their companies still in MA. Mostly DINKS and young (primarily male) single professionals that don't really have public education or healthcare as any sort of immediate concern. That's gonna lead to problems when the average age of red state populations inverts itself. Better make sure that they can't not have babies.
This is due to rent gouging, not democrats.
You can't blame "rent gouging" without blaming the government for condoning it and setting up the conditions that encourage it.
The cost of living in blue states is absolutely due to city/state level Democrats. Democrats write the zoning laws. Democrats decide the tax laws. Democrats build the infrastructure and public transportation. Democrats also vote down rent control and affordable housing requirements.
Red states are controlled by rich Republicans. Blue states are controlled by rich Democrats. Sure, Republican rule makes Oklahoma the shit hole that it is. But don't try to give Democrats a pass for making Massachusetts as expensive as it is.
No, it's from rental agencies that do as they please out of greed. They don't condition anything, they just don't do anything about it.
Even after ignoring everything I said, you still admit I'm right. If the local government doesn't do anything about it, who is supposed to?
Sure bud.
he also proposed nuking a hurricane...
but yes, democratic leaders have left us, so it's easy to say both sides are corrupt, especially as long as insider trading and conflicts of interest are OK to them.
Perhaps like the CHIPS act or IRA? Instead of demogoguing, democrats followed through with actual investment in manufacturing, unionism, infrastructure. Supposedly 80% of that manufacturing investment went to red states
Is this one of these scenarios where people are too impatient with the time it takes to get a factory off the ground, so votes out the group making that investment over someone who’s “good for business” or at least taking credit ?
Yeah, but what about the vibes, man?
The chips act was more about national security then employment. Semiconductor manufacturing doesn't require much labor and isn't a mass employer. Even in Taiwan it only employs around 300,000 or 2% of people. Even if the chips act somehow brought all 300,000 of those jobs over here, which it wont, it would still be a drop in the bucket in the u.s.
The ira was better but was still limited in it's effect. Most Americans don't see the effect it had or don't think they're effected. You need universal programs that are easy to see the effects: Free school lunch, Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, subsidized child care, student loan forgiveness etc.
Also I don't believe Americans actually want to work in manufacturing. They really just want the stability, dignity and pay that union manufacturing jobs provided. If they got those from unionizing a Walmart or Starbucks then they'd probably be happier as those jobs are safer and less monotonous. This combined with the fact everything would get more expensive if it were manufactured here, no one could afford an iPhone built in america, makes me think the onshoring movement is a dead end politically and we should instead be focused on unionization.
So according to you it's worse to acknowledge we can't go back in time than to lie to people and promise that which we (in the 3rd party pov sense, meaning NYC republicans) actively subvert every day? One would have to be exceptionally stupid and stubbornly uninformed to believe this is reasonable.
No, the point is to come up with solutions, ANY solutions. Democrats aren't even in the game, so the other guy gets to eat the pieces.
The solution proposed was stop mining coal and learn to make modern devices, I think.
That's like saying you'll fix unemployment by just getting people jobs! Great.... How?
Time is a circle.
when is it from?
Probably from 1972 when Nixon swept the country, except Massachusetts and DC
About 1974. Massachusetts was the only state to not vote for Nixon during his re-election and the bumper stickers appeared after the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation only a year and a half into his second term.
I love the "Have you actually considered that the state doing the worst under consistent Republican policy is voting because they're unhappy with the DEMONRAT status quo???"
They really don't give a shit about consistency in their arguments. People have or lack responsibility for their moral and political choices according to whatever suits their "LIBERALS BAD" talking point of the day.
Republicans have had a vice grip on our state and local politics for 40 years...BUT ITS THE LIBRULS FAULT
That would make sense if Oklahoma hadn’t voted that way every time regardless of who the previous president was. But I mean, conservatives are pretty good at inverting their arguments. So I’m sure when Bush left office, they voted for Romney because they were so happy with how the Bush admin went. But when Obama left, they voted for Trump because they were so unhappy with how the Obama administration went. Simple!
They probably mean at the state level which has been consistently led by Republicans since Obama was elected.
Maybe they voted against the incumbent so overwhelmingly because things are hard.
People vote based on their feelings.
When they were feeling pain, the message from the Dems was about how great the economy was, but the reality is that the stock market and GDP don't speak to the quality of life of these people. To them the Dems saying how great things were was dismissive of their real concerns.
Meanwhile, Trump latched onto their fears and concerns. Yeah, his policies are idiotic, and millions will suffer and be in worse shape. But when they said they couldn't pay the mortgage or buy groceries, he listened. The Democrats didn't because they've abandoned the working class that should be their backbone.
I wouldn't be so confident about assigning such motivation.
They haven't been unanimous in the counties all those times.
So then the trend is getting reder with time then? I don't see your point.
It's not saying 100% of people always vote red. But the majority have for a VERY long time.
Yes. it got redder across the country this election.
But the point, for this population and this meme, is that they have consistently voting in the same people and the results they have received are similarly consistent, and they keep voting that way.
Yes broadly there's been a "vote out the incumbent", but this illustrates why that's misguided, as it illustrates the different results of two states with consistent policies for each party.
Not even just consistently, the person accidentally made the point for them that they've actually gotten more red over that time. So they've somehow kept convincing more people to vote for them despite them never doing a thing to help them.
Again, not really sure what point your trying to make?
When an entire country shifts away from a party, it means the party is doing something to drive them away. Trump is the worst candidate in the history of the country, yet he's won 2 elections. Why is that?
It's because the Dems have abandoned the economic policies that formed the heart of their party and lost the working class vote they've relied upon since the Depression.
Well that and the fact Trump has a cult of personality that will only disappear when he dies.
In that one case, they're a pretty consistent electorate. The general sentiment across America and around the globe since the post-pandemic inflation crisis began has been anti incumbent, which is why we see a lot of changed governments and populist uprisings now.
Sounds like making an avg citizen feel heard was the Trump card
The audacity!
This type of meme isn't helpful when people already think the Dem Party isn't for working class people and elites only lol. Trump listened to people issues about material needs even if he lied. It still worked. Harris and Dems went on the whole time not addressing issues with the economy. Adopting a real working class agenda and free college would do wonders and putting resources to getting the crazy folk away from Education.
Working classes don’t need healthcare or education? Quality of life is irrelevant? A strong economy doesn’t matter? One of the highest minimum wages doesn’t affect working class? I
Free college (depending on income)doesn’t matter?
It's probably more like no one has helped us improve our healthcare / education / quality of life, so we'll take a gamble on someone different.
Misses the actual pain points. These are good things objectively but these are not the things that people want change
And yet people in Massachusetts generally elected not to change. Maybe not as big a majority as expected, but by a solid amount. Maybe all it takes is paying attention to healthcare, education, quality of life, free college, etc. maybe we have at least one model and all we have to do is follow it, instead of negativity and blaming mysterious pain points that you never actually identify
Maybe we're learning that democracy fails when the people vote for the things they want over things that they objectively need.
i think you're missing their point. the working class does want these things, but the meme reinforces the idea that the dems only take care of the rich.
How? Does Massachusetts not have working class people in it? Is it a state comprised entirely of the wealthy?
im not saying i agree with this interpretation. just that the meme reinforces an erroneous causal relation depending on the bias of the reader. im dont know these places very well, but im used to seeing govenrments treating lower class neighborhoods with less attention. its a common perception.
"the people" seem to want to change 'THEYRE SEATING THE CATS, THEYRE EATING THE DAWWGS'....so, fk if "the people" know what they want.
No it doesn't. Massachusetts is full of working class people.
I think you might be confusing cause and effect here. Perhaps the people in MA are "rich" (I would say, doing well. There are tons of working class people in MA, they're just not necessarily living in squalor) because the dems took care of them. Almost as if we have tons of data backing this up... That Democrats consistently do these types of things, while Republicans constantly walk them back.
Ever been to MA?
Crapton of working class people there. I mean a lot. It is possible to have top-tier education and health care yet have working class people in the same State.
Being a rural state does not by default equate to “working class”. If anything it probably means more people per capita on government assistance or in poverty.
Are Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh not "working class" cities? I think there are a whole lot of people who would like a word with you for writing them off.
Almost as if working class people don't have to be stupid.
Oh no! #1 in cost of living and #1 in quality if life? And among the lowest poverty?
Do people really just need social support to thrive? No way! It's gotta be stuff! Cheap stuff! That's what life's all about!
It’s pretty difficult to find anywhere in the US currently that has good jobs, good entertainment and restaurants, access to healthcare, good schools, and isn’t expensive. Sure, you can get a house cheaper in rural Kansas or something but then you have to live in rural Kansas.
Very well said. I live in the other state from the meme and I'm broke af. I could be living in a better state and still be broke af but getting things from my taxes rather than them being used to put Bibles in schools.
Pretty easy to have high quality of life and low poverty if all the poor people leave because there priced out.
Bingo
What an utterly bizarre take.
You got a better explanation? People are leaving Massachusetts and the cost of living is high . The most likely reason is that poorer people who can't afford to live there any more are leaving. Otherwise why would you leave a state with such a high quality of life?
The people leaving largely aren't the poor, though. They're the middle and upper class looking for lower taxes. They're leaving because the high quality of life there benefits those with less money disproportionately compared to those with more money; public transport and good public schools matter less to the wealthy than to the poor.
Every company I know are careful to watch where their employees live and adjust wages appropriately. That’s probably the real reason most are hybrid: if you have to come into Boston twice a week, can you really live up in the mountains somewhere cheap?
I only know that my town has high population of immigrants and if blue collar jobs and we’re growing like crazy.
I mean all the land was developed a couple hundred years ago, so we’re getting taller
Supply and demand. High quality state is going to be more desirable and so more expensive, where the dumpster states that noone WANTS to live in are so cheap anyone can afford to live there, even if they don't want to. I would rather bring the whole country up to MA standards, increasing supply of QoL, instead of bringing it down to OK standards because "bUt iT CheEp ThEir".
Well, all it does is drive up the cost for the working class who live there who are then forced to move out.
If you were born there, that does indeed suck. If you bought your way in there, it's a win. If you were born there and can afford to keep living there, also a win
What's the wealth inequality metric for them?
Not the worst but top 10 in inequality
Also with the high cost of living most of the poor move out so that would make it seem lower then if you look at the inequality to the neighboring states where people may move to or the u.s. as a whole. Probably harder to find but it would be interesting to see inequality among people born in Massachusetts, including those who left. Would be interesting to see if there system is actually creating successful people, or if they're just kicking out unsuccessful people and attracting already successful people from other states.
It's why I left 25 years ago, as much as I liked living there, I couldn't afford it. The house i grew up in is currently on the market for $2.5mil... my mom sold it for $400k in the 90s. All my high school friends have moved away, though some farther than others...
The data certainly deserves a deeper look. It may also be because we just have that much more well paid jobs than what people generally think of as wealth inequality.
I realize that looks inconsistent so let me explain. Most people think of wealth inequality as the different between the Bezos of the world and them. However in this case, I see their measuring by quintile but we have a ton of software and medical- maybe we just have bigger quintiles three and four. Still wealth inequality mathematically but very different from what people expect that means
I have also thought that before I moved from Mass to Oregon. Just my experience of course, but my state taxes increases 2x and everything seemed to be more expensive.
I moved from CA to NC and the taxes were absolutely worse.
EDIT: They were, I even had a check that was half in one state and half in another, and guess what? The CA check was bigger.
Education, healthcare and quality of life aren't cheap. Want cheap? Go to Oklahoma.
How is Massachusetts being outrageously expensive not diametrically opposed to "quality of life"? The average person can't get ahead in Massachusetts which is why they are leaving to go elsewhere.
Because quality of life is that much higher to make up for the cost, at least mathematically
Yeah, I alternate between proud that we have a $15 minimum wage and horrified at what it probably should be
Second in American health care. ..
Obviously. What else would it be when comparing two American states.
a decent amount of americans seem to think they are the global best in every category so probably not obvious enough even.
I hate having to explain this to people when I talk about the insane cost of healthcare in the US.
"but US healthcare is the best so of course it's going to be the most expensive"
No, you moron. It's the exact same procedure by equally qualified doctors using the same equipment.
meanwhile here it's generally not expensive, but we can't seem to come up with a reasonable way for foreign doctors to gain canadian credentials and continue to have waits anywhere from hours to coming the next day instead
I crisscrossed Oklahoma on one of my cross-country trips, the state absolutely sucks and they even know it that's why you can legally drive like 80mph through the whole thing.
Kansas also sucks but khp uses the highway as a way to punish people with the wrong license plates. A majority of traffic stops in Kansas were of out of state drivers as recently as a few years ago.
Wasn't Oklahoma supposed to be given back to the native tribes? Like more than 50% of it?
It was. And in fact the Supreme Court ruled in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the reservations still exist. One consequence is that Google Maps now shades the entire eastern half of the state in dark shading showing the borders between the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and so forth.
The tribal governments are taking an increasing role in providing public services to all of the citizens within their borders, as the civil state government descends deeper into libertarianism.
Oklahoma was built on genocide. Is it any wonder those that govern it are garbage people.
Unlike Massachusetts which was totally uninhabited when people settled there.
America was built on several genocides. Oklahoma isn't special.
The Cherokee genocide was seriously fucked up and the Trail of Tears ended in Oklahoma.
It was, but Oklahoma passed a law saying tribal lands couldn't use postal addresses and had to use PO boxes instead. Then they passed a law saying you needed a postal address to vote.
Massachusetts is also 4th in the country for states with the most people leaving to live elsewhere.
No doubt due to cost of living because Massachusetts is ridiculously expensive. The friends I have there are either leaving or totally resigned to not owning a house or ever retiring. Comparing a historically important coastal population center to a historically poor and strategically insignificant flyover state doesn't prove much.
The states with highest domestic emigration (e.g. people voting with their feet to leave) are overwhelmingly left leaning. (Except for Louisiana and Ohio)
So progressive places make a place so desirable to live in that people are willing to compete with each other for the experience.
"Why are blue states always so expensive?!". It's supply and demand. High demand to live someplace makes it expensive.
My million dollar house is worth as much as it is because of its located near high paying jobs, good school, and good neighbors. It's expensive to live where I live because lots of people want to live here.
Yeah, but it's supply and demand. I bet your million dollar home isn't next to an apartment building. Cities would be much cheaper if it weren't for NIMBYs who already own homes insisting that their homes must appreciate in value at all times.
And yet Massachusetts is probably the first state with a statewide zoning overrride, allowing just that, near any transit (including buses).
It’s too early to tell whether it will work, but one of the first examples is about to open near me
There's higher demand to live in Florida and Texas. Look at the domestic immigration numbers. People are leaving CA, NY, IL and MA in droves.
Yeah, crappy places are more affordable. "Look how cheap the shitty places are, let's make the whole country shitty so it is cheaper" is a strange logic. Is rather bring everything up to MA standards so the supply is higher and demand isn't driving prices up.
How is people leaving almost exclusively "progressive" places an indicator of competition?
Look at the inverse of that chart. Most people in the country are moving to places like Florida, Texas and Idaho.
Because shitty makes for cheap.
How is this confusing?
As an Ohioan that tracks. We’d long been the poor person’s progressive state but yeah I’m ditching to go somewhere I’m safe, even though it sucks to leave somewhere affordable
Cushing, OK has a bone to pick with this.
Assuming that is a missile silo or something in which case I stand corrected on that front!
Major petroleum marketplace. The commodity trading floor is in a big city somewhere else. But a lot of the oil actually changes hands in our around Cushing.
Gotcha. FWIW I have no bone to pick with Oklahoma at all. If anything the fact that people criticize it for being a backwater probably means that it's awesome.
West Virginia also voted straight red, I believe
Holy crap, they did.
I spent a lot of my life there and boy oh boy.
I hear it’s nicer up north, but I couldn’t afford to go anywhere and check it out. It is WILD where I came from.
I can only imagine lmao. I'm an okie currently, so I may have some idea, what with our state mineral being meth.
I've only ever heard stories and seen one documentary (The Wild and Wondeful Whites of West Virginia) from out of WV but it sounds...different out there, even compared to OK, haha.
New Mexico also voted straight blue
You can’t come at these people with facts.
Some states need to lose their right to self govern
Post civil war, the USA should have imposed rules that enforced integration.
They didn't have the will, and now we reap the consequences as a nation, to have the south still stuck in the moral degradation that comes with dehumanizing a portion of our population to the point of enslavement.
I've recently been imagining separating the countries of the US, or as Americans like to call them; the states.
Unfortunately there are liberals in those red states. That would be death sentence for them.
First in education, clearly that means education makes you lib'ral, and gay! And trans!
This doesn't really tell the fully story, 1/3 of MA's pop. Still voted for Trump...
This shocked me the most. I thought we would be a darker shade of blue than ever, despite what other state voters do. I’m so disappointed
Damn, did know that. Carry on Massachusetts and the Oklahomans fail to learn and continue to eat shit.
Now, I have to hope our state Gov't can do everything possible to keep up the laws and quality to protect us.
CHADachusetts completely topping Cucklahoma
Jokelahoma
Butcher knife is always gonna lose to hand pistol.
I prefer toe pistol, myself. No one ever expects it.
Oklahoma has much bigger numbers in the rankings there. USA! USA!
Uh...Hawaii? West Virginia? Rhode Island?
These are also states, yes.
Now do healthcare and quality of life
Me when I cherry pick.
What is Oklahoma ranked higher than Massachusetts in? Show us your favorite cherries please
If democrats are so smart why did they lose the election
It's not an aptitude test.
Massachusetts is fucked. Only a good place to live if your very well off or a career welfare recipient.
Go back to your kapusta.
Am I supposed to know wtf that is?
I hate Republicans too, they're selling the whole country for parts, but this meme sucks.
First of all, "all counties were red/blue" is not what "unanimous" means.
Second of all, I don't think "ha ha your state is poor" is the grand slam argument you think it is.
I mean, take a second to look into why red states are poor.
And the only reason their state and local governments are able to remain solvent...
These states would collapse completely without the largesse of the federal government (funded by blue states) if they ever seceded.
I agree with you there.
Takes a lot of mental gymnastics to boil down all the listed differences as "state is poor". Unless you mean "poor" as in "in bad shape" and not "economically suffering". I'll assume you mean the former as that's the only way your argument makes sense.
I think it's more about how a state is voting against its own interests. There is NOTHING about the Republican platform that would improve any of the listed metrics. If anything, Republican politics would only further worsen an already bad state of affairs.
And of the off chance your initial argument was entirely economic, it's Democrats who want federal government involvement to help poor states.
They can make those metrics in other states worse.
LOL. You're right, if they make Massachusetts worse than Oklahoma then Oklahoma's ranking would improve! I never thought about that. BRILLIANT!
We are pretty poor here.
And the people of both states will continue to be ordered like this irregardless of which party is in power. Funny, huh?
That goes against democracy along with not allowing old people or people in prisons. It is opens the pandora's box to now allowing LGBT or people of color to vote by locking them in prison or fixing IQ tests to yield low scores.
You stop that by restricting who you can vote for, not who can vote. No felons could be a nice one.
That is a terrible idea that shows you should not pass said test if one were to exist.
Na, man. We need to get everyone to vote. Power to the people!
There were about 258mil adult citizens in the USA in 2021( the last year I easily found statistics for), about 248mil of them are 'eligible' to vote. In the 2024 election, about 155mil ballots were cast.
Sure sure... 155mil isn't a small number, but it's nowhere near everyone. 60% of the adult population is a far far cry from universal participation.
Power to the people, just wish we'd wield it.
That is a stupid idea...no voting for you!
Everyone should be obligated to vote. What we need is to educate the population not deny votes.
In case you're wondering why you're getting down voted, it's because you didn't even offer up a valid argument and instead engaged in ad hominem, which is a logical fallacy.
I get that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but if the richest states are almost all blue and the poorest ones almost all red, that is a very strong correlation and trying to claim it is insignificant only makes you seem the fool.
You seem to be intelligent. Ask yourself why this post made you so upset.
You really didn't have to throw in the "seem to be intelligent" part but that very conscientious of you.
I'll go ahead and fix it for you though and be the asshole.
In case you're wondering why you're getting down voted, it's because you didn't even offer up a valid argument and instead engaged in ad hominem, which is a logical fallacy.
I get that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but if the richest states are almost all blue and the poorest ones almost all red, that is a very strong correlation and trying to claim it is insignificant only makes you seem the fool.
You seem to be intelligent.Ask yourself why this post made you so upset.Who said bad and good? Those are words that you brought to this thread.
MA law doesn’t force insurance providers to cover gender-affirming hair electrolysis, so most don’t. Trans women with facial hair and cis women suffering from hirsutism are all expected to live with their beards and hairy shoulders.
Washington, Oregon, California and other states have laws on the books making it illegal for medical insurance providers to deny coverage of treatment for these conditions.
MA doesn’t get to do victory laps for its progressive bone fides until it gets with the program and takes care of its women.
"Its not exactly what I want so it sucks" is never a useful take for anything.
Agreed. It's a good thing that "no victory laps yet" is not the same as "it sucks".
"No victory laps yet" means "the work isn't done yet." You only get what you demand and are willing to fight for.
Not even remotely how your comment comes across.
Also, I'm going to disagree. Every win deserves its associated celebration of success. Saying it isn't successful - and this is what I'm referring to with your comment not coming across how you intend - helps nothing.
It doesn't mean its "over" to have a win. Its never going to be "over". There will always be new issues to tackle, rights to address, support that needs to be put in place, etc.
But glossing over what has been accomplished as just "not good enough because of one issue" isn't going to help or motivate. Its the celebration of the successes that provide the drive for more.
Your comment comes across as "Massachusetts may as well be Nebraska."
Yeah, fuck those Oklahomans! Those idiots deserve to suffer and struggle.
That's not the message to take from this.
Oh? What is?
I know. How does that make my comment wrong?
We generally don't hate people from red states, I'm in Oregon. We see them like a kid that won't stop touching a hot stove. It's more a disappointment than a "fuck em".
Like maybe they are just stupid?
Apparently you've never had people tell you that you don't matter because you're from a red state. I'm trans, stuck in a red state, and get to have people tell me I deserve what the state is doing to me and my trans siblings because we were born here.
Obviously Texas wouldn't be so red if we would just vote for Democrats, right? Therefore, we must be part of the problem! As long as one person votes blue then that cancels out all the red votes so we really have no one to blame but ourselves!
I voted blue. Fuck you.
Girl, that is absolutely bullshit, I am so sorry to hear that. I have family in both Alberta and Saskatchewan (Canada's blindly right-wing provinces) and it is brutal if you're not white, male, and hetero. Even moreso if you're visually not one of those things, and you're in a rural area.
One of my kids is trans, and we're about to get a Con federal government, so we're pretty worried for her. Who knows what care will be removed when Canada's Trump Loving Party takes over (the Conservatives are looking like they'll get a majority).
(For anyone who doesn't know our parties, that's the Federal Liberal Party (Centre/Centre-Left Wing), Conservative Party of Canada (Right Wing), New Democratic Party (Centre-Left/Left Wing), Bloc Québécois (far tougher to describe. They swing from Right to Left Wing.)
Could you share more about your trans siblings? I had understood that being transgender was relatively uncommon, and I realize there may be genetic or other factors involved. It's new to me that multiple members of a family might identify this way, and I’d love to learn more if you’re open to sharing. Thanks!
Individual responsibility, bootstraps, etc.
Maybe. How many times does a kid have to burn himself on a hot stove before we accept that he's just stupid and a lost cause?
Never. But we can still be disappointed. Not everyone in red states sucks, the majority of them seem to though.
Why you have to call them stupid?
Gestures broadly
That the states that consistently vote Republican are also consistently among the states with the worst quality of life, and that there's a correlation between the two.
That Republicans don't actually care about Americans.
That they keep voting for people who “love the working class” and who “have great economic policy” but every classically Republican state is a fucking shithole that constantly needs money from blue states to stay barely afloat.
It’s yet more evidence that the GOP don’t have any interest and/or ability to properly run a country. All their ideas fucking suck and everything they touch is worse for it, and their base needs to realize this. Also educated or not it’s so insanely obvious these days just how bad shit is and whose at fault but us North Americans(I’m Canadian, same problems here but more boring) can’t stop but chase the right when the center falters. At this point people should be mocked, this shit’s inexcusable in ways it wasn’t as much even only 10-15 years ago.
That's what I did.
Mocked, yes, but saying they deserve to suffer…I dunno honestly yea I kinda agree but I’m trying to take something more productive from the data.
Well, is it not true?
Do you think it's true?
That red states vote against their own interests. They have massive needs and lag on many wellness metrics, yet consistently vote for politicians who are happy to keep them that way via the policy they enact
Exactly. They're idiots and they deserve what they get.
Man you seem pretty happy about it, almost like you want your country to suffer.
You reap what you sow.
Some might say that makes you deserving of it, and others might disagree. But the apparent causal relationship exists outside of moral judgments.
Every Oklahoman I have ever met would agree with this statement unironically
Blue-voting Oklahoman here!
...yep
I feel called out.
I dont want my blue friends to suffer, but yeah i deserve to suffer for being born here.
I can't believe they would vote for a different candidate after suffering under the current candidate! FOOOLSS!!!!
So wait, the poor and the hopeless, looking for some kind of help, voted unanimously for TRUMP, and those happy with their current conditions and wanting no change voted for Harris.
maybe youre just completely unfamiliar with the word "conservative". those red states dont want change. they want to conserve their regressive stance.
I think it's pretty clear that the current Republican party is fundamentally different than the one of 15 years ago. Whether they consider themselves conservative or not, they are the party that is promising change from the status quo.
The parties have clearly changed roles with respect to manual laborers. The blue wall doesn't exist anymore because of this. What it all means, I have no idea, but we need to update our mental model of the two parties. Their demographic have fundamentally changed.
They are just lieing to the uneducated gullible masses they created. I suppose you can phrase it as "promising change from the status quo", but it isn't exactly accurate.
I have to disagree, It is 100% accurate. The change will not make non-billionaire lives any better, but there is definitely change from the status quo. There are huge shifts with the cabinet appointments already away from qualified "Washington Insiders" to unqualified "Trump Loyalists". That is a huge change from the status quo. Even during the first Trump admin he appointed mostly qualified career politicians. This is different, as promised. It won't be better...
You think a rich nepo baby wants to help working class Americans instead of himself and his rich friends? LOL
I don't, but a large chunk of america does. I think that speaks a lot to the democrats messaging.
The world's richest man is helping a billionaire get elected and that's not one of your main points to voters? No but Harris can't attack billionaires because that'll anger all the ones on her side.
Republican education speaks to Democrat messaging...ok.
History. What you obviously weren't taught.
You must be from Oklahoma.
The maps were identical in 2020 (following a republican administration):
Oklahoma 2020
Massachusetts 2020
And 2008 (following a republican administration):
Oklahoma 2008
Massachusetts 2008
Once you get back to pre-social media era internet, you begin to see Oklahoma have shades of blue.
2000 1996 1992 1988
Perhaps we could collaborate on this.
Now that I have pulled Oklahoma’s electoral results going back to 1988, now you can pull Oklahoma’s education results going back over the same period of time and we can see if there is, in fact, a correlation between the quality of education (overall education rankings) and how the state votes in presidential elections.
I suspect that it was not purely the quality of education which influenced the “red shift”. I would bet that the lower-quality of education made the influence of social media more effective for those targeting the less educated to adopt a conservative political position.
Just share your findings here and we can work together.
Well done. I'll leave my response up, but I'll admit that the Massachusetts/Oklahoma example is a bad one to make the case that Trump was the populist in this election and Harris was a vote for the conservative "no change" position.
Yes, I believe that was actually true. Look at him, slashing and burning his way through cabinet appointments.
She was definitely the more conservative choice. It's ok that I'm not smart.
I see the ones under republican state leadership, clamoring for change, yet in reality voting for the same assholes that govern them into the ground? Not sure how you’re not seeing that, though I imagine it’s willful
theres a reason education goes out the windows in red states.. otherwise they might understand theyre voting against their own best interests.
its a priority to keep them stupid to stay red
it is. racism and hate go a long ways.
Just because the person you are replying to has a different opinion about how people vote, doesn't mean they are a trump supporter.
I don't think this person is your enemy.
They never said they voted for him. They pointed out that the living conditions in the red state are worse, and the chose to vote for Trump. Presumably under some kind of belief that he will ameliorate those conditions.
Before you tell me he won't, I know that he won't. They don't know that though. And they have gigantic right wing echo chambers telling them all about how he will.
The states that consistently vote Republican are also consistently amongst the worst states for quality of life. There's a correlation there.
They also consistently take more money from the federal government than they provide.
Way to tell on yourself about your lack of education.
It's necessary.
If their comment wasn't smartass idiotic, maybe not.
He was at least handsome and with a purpose in life.
TBF, being wrong is kinda their whole thing.
I think we are interpreting this correlation in two different ways.
The demon buer sees it as:
bad living standards → vote republican
(because in this election the selling point of the republicans was the economy(/+immigration (because they also partly blame immigrants for the economic problems)), while for the democrats it was the the "protection of democracy" (which isn't really the biggest concern of someone struggling to pay their bills (or also not desired if that democracy got them to where they are now)))
others are seeing it as
vote republican → bad living standards
(because if republicans are no good, and if a state has been consistently voting republican in the last years of the state's local elections, then the state also won't be no good)
(the arrow means "causes")
(not directly directed at anyone, besides everyone who reads this post: ) Just because there's a correlation, we can't say in which direction the causation goes, if there is one.
The ignorant and gullible voted for trump. Just like past time, nothing in their lives will improve and the US will be less secure and worse off.