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A "National Divorce" would be devastating - for the Red States [1]

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Date: 2023-02-23  

This was pointed out by Joy Ann Reid.

The Brookings Institute recently generated a report that points out the Biden voting counties across the country produced 71% of the nation’s GDP.

Most notably, the stark economic rift that Brookings Metro documented after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory has grown even wider. In 2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36% of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate economy. A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time, Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 28 mostly low-output counties, and this piece will be updated as new data is reported.)

And this is true, it is mainly Red States in the middle of the country that are the most dependant on Federal aid.

States that rely the most on Federal Aid.

This was further addressed on Morning Joe by Steve Rattner.

"The Trump states, virtually every single state except for Utah, don't ask me why Utah, got back more from Washington than it paid," Rattner said. "So it would not really work very well to their advantage to leave. In fact, the top states for getting a better deal from Washington are Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia." Higher state-level poverty rates correlate with support for Republican candidates, Rattner said, while Democratic-leaning states tend to have higher income. "You can see with your eye that the red states tend to be above the national average in poverty," Rattner said, while presenting a chart showing that correlation. "The blue states tend to be below the national average in poverty. Another way to look at it is if -- this is by counties but you get to the same place, on the right, how much of the [gross domestic product] is produced in these places -- red counties, 29 percent, blue counties, 71 percent. They're suffering more economically, and that does lead to the question of, how does that result in more money going to these states?" Host Joe Scarborough was amazed by Rattner's finding that 71 percent of the GDP came from counties that voted for Biden in the 2020 election. "This just underlines the fact that it would be devastating for there to be a divide, for those areas that voted for Donald Trump to want a, quote, you know, separation, a divorce from the United States," Scarborough said. "I mean, yeah, what do you think -- well, what other chart -- do you have any other charts we can move along to here?" Poorer states pay less in federal taxes, Rattner said, and he presented additional charts that showed how much states got back in federal spending -- and those showed Trump states benefited disproportionally from the federal government and would suffer if they were cut off from that funding. "They'd have huge economic deficits," Rattner said. "They wouldn't have money for their projects, they wouldn't have new bridges, they wouldn't have federal installations in their districts. They wouldn't have food stamps, they wouldn't have Medicaid to help cushion their residents against extreme poverty. It would be a really tough and stupid economic decision. Again, the whole irony of this is you've got Republicans who oppose kind of almost every kind of federal spending, who are the biggest beneficiaries of the federal spending that they oppose."

And it’s worse than that obviously.

Not only are the Red States demonstrably poorer, they have higher crime.

I've had arguments on Twitter with those on the right who like to say that the cities with the highest crime are “run by Democrats.” Technically that’s true but then *most* cities are run by Democrats because that’s where Democrats live — in the cities. When you look at it, the cities with the most crime are mostly in Red States. Based on this information, the ten most dangerous cities in the United States are: Detroit, MI Memphis, TN Birmingham, AL Baltimore, MD St. Louis, MO Kansas City, MO Cleveland, OH Little Rock, AR Milwaukee, WI Stockton, CA The most dangerous city in the United States is Detroit, Michigan. Detroit has a violent crime rate of 2,007.8 incidents per 100,000 people with a total of 261 homicides in 2018. Detroit is the only midsize or large city in the United States with a violent crime rate of over 2,000. With a population of less than 700,000 people today, Detroit reported about 13,500 violent crimes in 2018 – a rate higher than cities with double the population. Detroit’s scarce economic opportunities have led to an annual unemployment rate of 9.0% and 37.9% of residents living below the poverty line. Even with a population of about 8.5 million people, New York City is not even in the 50 most dangerous cities in the United States. New York City has 295 homicides in 2018, which is less than Philadelphia’s 351 despite having a population five times the size of Philadelphia. Philadelphia takes the number 40 spot on the most dangerous cities list. Chicago had the highest number of homicides in 2018 with 563; almost double that of New York, which has triple the population as Chicago. The issue here is that Democrats who run cities in Blue states — like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago or New York — generally have a lower per capita rate of crime than Democrats who run cities in Red States. The difference is in the States — and the State Laws — rather than the Democrats vs Republican leadership in those cities. For those who would argue that the reason for high crime in these cities in Red States is the fact that their population is largely black, a common GOP claim, the statistic for crime indicate that their is no correlation between violent crime and race, but there is a correlation based on income and poverty. Violent victimization by income level Actually, when you break down both race and poverty you can see that the rate of violence for poor whites is actually slightly higher than that for blacks. Violence by Income and Race So again, the poverty rates are more in correlation to violent crime in general, and Red States have higher rates of poverty. They also have higher rates of Gun Deaths.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/23/2154578/-A-National-Divorce-would-be-devastating-for-the-Red-States

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