Submitted by terrykrohe t3_10go1zc in dataisbeautiful
Comments
RybosWorld t1_j55z31k wrote
Whenever there’s a chicken vs egg type question the answer is almost always both.
Poor states are red because red states are poor.
Libertas-Vel-Mors t1_j5609kj wrote
Definitely agree that is partly true.
But then it also begs the question...does every American have to believe generating wealth is the biggest priority for government? Meaning does everyone see drawing wealth to a state a meaningful measurement of success for a state government?
I would suggest the state governments generally reflect the desires of the people. In a largely rural state with mostly blue collar people and jobs...are the people going to place a high value on education beyond high school? Are people in urban areas that own little or no actual property going to care about high property taxes to the same degree someone who lives on 5 acres will?
Red voters judge blue states against their own priorities, and blue voters judge red states against their own values. And I guess my thought is who cares? If you state is doing okay, why do you care what they other 49 do? And if your state is not doing okay, fix it before worrying about the other 49.
With 330 million people in this country there's going to be a lot of variation in political beliefs and values and what people consider important. And the states should reflect that variation, and they do.
RybosWorld t1_j5675u3 wrote
> why do you care what they other 49 do?
Well we don’t live in a vaccuum. What happens in one state affects the others.
Most obvious example is federal funding. Red states disproportionately take more than they contribute. Blue states are the reverse.
This is one of the reasons it feels particularly frustrating that the electoral college is a thing. I.e. minority opinions can dominate and take take take.
Libertas-Vel-Mors t1_j56hjzf wrote
And that is exactly what Democrats vote for with social welfare.
If you want the poorer states to stop receiving federal money, there's an easy solution. You don't have to send money to Red States.
But you are disingenuous even using that statistic because you know as well as I do there is so much that goes into that that it isn't simple red versus blue. Do you want a lot of the states That supply agricultural and food products for the rest of the country to stop doing that in search of bringing in a big IT sector? Start getting rid of farming and move to health care or insurance?
Small scale farming is not profitable, but the country depends on it. If you're going to start a culture war by telling poorer states they're sucking federal resources, you might not like how that turns out. Ranching is another one that isn't particularly profitable unless you're a large-scale commercial operation.
But let's do that, let's transition all the rural agricultural heavy red states in the south to something like IT or insurance. Let's destroy the generally lower paying manual labor jobs in the rural communities that represent half the country. Let's move all those people to the cities to get better higher paying jobs. All those blue states can depend on their own agricultural production and watch prices skyrocket. It's what the red states produce that keep prices reasonable in blue states.
Libertas-Vel-Mors t1_j56kz6p wrote
Oh, and 4 of the 10 states with the highest percentage of the population receiving federal benefits are blue states.
A higher percentage of the population in Oregon, Illinois, New York, and Rhode Island receive welfare benefits than in the state of Texas.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/welfare-recipients-by-state
But states like Illinois and New York have a huge wealth gap. They have a lot of poor people receiving benefits but they also have a disproportionate number of really wealthy people paying a lot of taxes.
So it's not a blue state sending money to a red state, it's a small minority of the population of the blue state that is insanely wealthy sending money to red states. Which is precisely how Democrats designed the federal budget, tax the wealthy at a higher rate and redistribute that money to the less wealthy.
November_Grit t1_j53yifg wrote
Does that suggest that the Republicans are the party of the working class?
urgjotonlkec t1_j5511p7 wrote
It doesn't really tell you anything because states aren't monolithic. For instance black men are the most susceptible demographic to heart disease and the states with the most black people are almost all Republican. However that doesn't mean all the black men in those states are Republicans.
November_Grit t1_j552tyd wrote
Maybe, but as an outsider it looks like there is a strong correlation between being working class and the Republicans.
urgjotonlkec t1_j5536gr wrote
More like a weak correlation. More working class people are Republicans than Democrats, but not by some huge margin.
terrykrohe OP t1_j55tpyo wrote
... the Black population is more 'random' within the US than is the White population;
in other words, identifying a state as "rural' or "Rep" is less an indication of Black population than of White population (posted 03jun2021)
insufferablyaverage t1_j53zdu2 wrote
Nope, just that the working class of red states are more broke then then working class of blue states
Libertas-Vel-Mors t1_j55g35y wrote
But how does that overlay when adjusted for cost of living?
PapaGans t1_j54sqzm wrote
Why always the implied politics in these? Why not just rich vs poor, or rural vs urban?
urgjotonlkec t1_j550ps7 wrote
The politics is the whole point my guy.
Libertas-Vel-Mors t1_j55fixm wrote
But it doesn't tell the whole story.
jimngo t1_j57qlum wrote
If you only look at correlation to income or population density, that wouldn't tell the whole story either.
But these set of graphs show strong correlation, which is a strong and compelling reason to tell this part of the story.
terrykrohe OP t1_j55yef5 wrote
... "politics" I used to brush aside as "he said, she said" discussions; then I noticed in 2016 that in a table of "obesity" data that the most obese states were Rep. In 2020 the observation was repeated (14 of most obese states were Rep, posted 29Apr21).
... really?! it should be 'random' ... what about other metrics?
... other metrics: NOT random (summary post, 14Apr2022). suicide rate, incarceration, ed spending, life expectancy, infant mortality, accidental deaths, GDP state taxes, gun ownership, murder rate, violent crime, and others were NOT random.
I suspect that the reason for the Systemic Bias of the data is not a matter of "opinion".
**********
Max Boot has suggested, WaPost, 26Oct2022:
There are many reasons, from history to geography, why per capita GDP in the United Kingdom ($47,334) is so much higher than in Russia ($12,172) or China ($12,556), but I would argue it ultimately comes down to governance. Britain, as a liberal democracy, has long been run for the benefit of its people, while Russia and China have always been run primarily for the benefit of their rulers.
I think that he is correct: in this case, Rep governance ("rulers" = "of the few, by the few, for the few") is the reason for the data differentiation.
marigolds6 t1_j5782yl wrote
The problem comparing your quote with american states is the phrase "long been run". Boot is talking on time scales longer than the US has existed.
Most american states have flipflopped between Republican and Democratic multiple times in the last 160 years since the disappearance of the Whigs. (And the parties themselves have swapped positions several times during that space.)
Even a deep blue state like Illinois was under trifecta Republican control as recently as 1996. Deep red Missouri was under trifecta Democratic control from 1993 to 2000 (and has had Democratic governors for 20 of the last 30 years) and used to be a bellweather state.
PapaGans t1_j563gto wrote
Given all differences between the red and blue states, your assumption that all the trends in your chosen metrics are solely/mainly caused by rep vs dem governance is totally unfounded. Have you ruled out effects of agricultural vs trading oriented states? Or sparsely populated vs densely populated states? Demographics? I'm not saying it doesn't have any influence, but why would voting behaviour be the root cause instead of one or more of these other factors? In fact you didn't even look at the historical governance, but only at the 2020 elections... This has the same energy as using the notorious FBI crime statistics to prove a point about ethnicities.
Miguel7501 t1_j53wx1r wrote
What's the x axis in any of those? Labeling it would help a lot.
terrykrohe OP t1_j549vqt wrote
"50 states = 50 plot points
tables are ofter presented in "rank order": the plot is a visualization of the source's tabular information
terrykrohe OP t1_j53up5x wrote
sources:
2020 heart disease mortality
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/heart_disease_mortality/heart_disease.htm
2019 GDP
https://apps.bea.gov/regional/downloadzip.cfm
2018 life expectancy
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/life_expectancy/life_expectancy.htm
tool: Mathematica
***************
– the dashed lines are the means; the 'boxes' are \[PlusMinus] one standard deviation (SD) from the mean
– the parenthetical percent is the "relative standard deviation" (RSD)
marigolds6 t1_j578kwe wrote
Important to note that these are age-adjusted heart disease mortality rates. Similar to cancer, there can be interesting effects on age-adjusted heart disease mortality if a state tends to have extremes (high or low) in early mortality.
terrykrohe OP t1_j53uvnd wrote
other comments: heart disease mortality; with GDP and life expectancy
i) the overall pattern is of interest: a non-random, top/bottom Rep/Dem pattern is seen
ii) the Rep/Dem means are a SD apart: the t-test indicates systemic bias or different Sample populations
iii) And ... there are the questions:
Why are the Republican states always on the 'negative' side of the metrics? (excepting 'missing persons')
and
... how did 150 million voters separate the fifty states in such a distinct manner?
iv) The systemic bias: is it genetic in origin? or is it a consequence of environmental factors?
v) Which begs the question: what would be the environmental factors which result in the differentiated data?
[deleted] t1_j53yyob wrote
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terrykrohe OP t1_j549krq wrote
... the boxes are not "margin of error"
... "the 'boxes' are \[PlusMinus] one standard deviation (SD) from the mean"
Artistic-Breadfruit9 t1_j55xsy9 wrote
I'm not a fan of how these are plotted.
This could have three bar plots, with "Red States" and "Blue States" on the X-axis (y-axes the same). Error bars to indicate the variability across red or blue states. Actually, it would have been even better at the level of congressional districts, but I don't know if those data are readily available.
Also, Mann-Whitney U-Test instead of a t-test (unless you can demonstrate a normal distribution).
[deleted] t1_j58sznz wrote
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Libertas-Vel-Mors t1_j55fw5k wrote
This shows that the "poorer" states are linked to higher preventable death rates and lower life expectancy.
The correlation with politics is more interesting and complex. Are the "poorer" states poorer because they are red, or are they red because they are poorer?