One of the enduring mysteries of
America is why the citizens of Red states are generally poorer, less educated,
and sicker than the citizens of Blue states. To that question, I step up as
your hierophant with an answer to this deep mystery that you may not have
previously considered.
First, that generalization is
broadly true:
— Blue states account for about 71 percent of America’s GDP, whereas
Red states only produce 29 percent of our income and wealth.
— The median family income in Blue states is $74,243. In Red states
it’s $63,553. Individual states highlight the disparity: New Jersey’s median
income is $89,703, while Mississippi’s is $49,111.
— Counties that voted for Biden in 2020 are more diverse, being 35 percent nonwhite compared to 16
percent nonwhite populations in counties that voted for Trump.
— Counties that voted for Biden in 2020 are better educated, with 36 percent of their population having
some college education compared to Trump’s counties at 25 percent.
— Residents of Blue states live 2.2 years longer, on average, than residents of Red states.
And, second, it’s undeniably
true (and documented with each hotlink below) that Republican-controlled Red
states, almost across the board, have higher rates of:
— Spousal abuse
— Obesity
— Smoking
— Teen pregnancy
— Sexually transmitted diseases
— Abortion (at least before Dobbs; now it would be
“forced births”)
— Bankruptcies and poverty
— Homicide and suicide
— Infant mortality
— Maternal mortality
— Forcible rape
— Robbery and aggravated assault
— Dropouts from high school
— Divorce
— Contaminated air and water
— Opiate addiction and deaths
— Unskilled workers
— Parasitic infections
— Income and wealth inequality
— Covid deaths and unvaccinated people
— Federal subsidies to states (“Red State Welfare”)
— People on welfare
— Child poverty
— Homelessness
— Spousal murder
— Unemployment
— Deaths from auto accidents
— People living on disability
— Gun deaths
But are all these things happening
because Republicans simply hate their citizens and explicitly want high levels
of poverty, ignorance, death, and disease?
Turns out there’s a much simpler
answer.
The problem for Red states is
that Republicans worship cheap labor, which drives up profits for the fat-cats
who own American businesses — and having a steady and reliable supply of cheap
labor requires widespread poverty, ignorance, death, and
disease.
That poverty, of course, brings
along with it the long list of social ills above, but Republicans are more than
willing to tolerate massive, desperate levels of human suffering to make sure
there’s a steady supply of cheap labor. In fact, they intentionally run their
states that way to produce those results.
If you have any doubts about
this, if that sounds like hyperbole, simply look at the policies the GOP has
promoted for the past century:
— Republicans hate unions,
because unions raise wages and benefits for workers, shifting them from poverty
into the middle class. Once thus empowered, those uppity middle-class people
then start to demand “unreasonable” things like overtime pay (Project 2025
would functionally end it), healthcare, paid vacations, paid sick leave, and
paid family leave.
— Republicans hate Social
Security and have worked to gut, privatize, or outright end it ever
since FDR signed it into law in 1935. They do this because elderly workers in
poverty are a great source of compliant, cheap labor. Reagan’s
changes in Social Security benefits have led to millions of Boomers having to
take gigs as greeters, waiters, etc., for low wages; prior to Reagan’s changes
in the Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) and his raising the retirement age to
67, you could safely retire on Social Security in most parts of America. Now,
Republicans want to raise that age to 69 or 70.
— Republicans hate universal or
inexpensive healthcare (and real Medicare for the elderly) because
having massive medical debt provides a large pool of desperate workers willing
to work crappy jobs for pathetic wages to pay it off. It’s why the ten states that refuse to expand Medicaid for
low-income workers are all Republican-controlled. Medical debt is a
non-issue in every other developed country in the world, but here in
America 79 million people are struggling to pay off doctors’
or hospital bills (7 million of those debtors are elderly, many the victims of
the Medicare Advantage scam).
— Republicans hate the minimum
wage because it cuts into profits. That’s why the minimum wage in Blue
states can be more than twice that of Red states (Washington State
is $17/hr versus Texas’ $7.25/hr.). When most families are barely earning enough
to get by, employers have their pick of distraught, panicked workers willing to
work for subsistence wages.
— Republicans hate empowered
women because forced pregnancies create more potential workers and
unwanted children exacerbate poverty. Thus their 50+ years of opposition to the
Equal Rights Amendment and their embrace of abortion bans.
— Republicans promote hatred of
racial, religious, and gender minorities because when Americans are at
each other’s throats they’re not organizing to throw off the GOP/corporate
yoke. It’s hard to remember that the billionaires have stolen fully $50 trillion from the middle class over the past
43 years of the Reagan Revolution when you’re constantly distracted with
hysteria about Black Haitians, Brown Mexicans, and trans students who just want
to use the damn bathroom.
— Republicans hate education because
it’s the main tool for people to lift themselves out of poverty and thus demand
higher wages and better benefits. Before the Reagan Revolution, every American
who wanted to and could pass the entrance exams could go to college; many
universities (like the entire University of California system) were free, and
you could pay your tuition at most other colleges like I did in the 1960s
working weekends as a dishwasher at Bob’s Big Boy in East Lansing, Michigan and
pumping gas at the Esso station across the street. This is also why so many Red
states are gutting their public education systems with private school vouchers.
Less education, more poverty; more poverty, more cheap labor.
— Republicans hate atheism and
embrace a neofascist form of Protestant Christianity and a bizarre,
rightwing version of Catholicism that goes by a Latin name because both are hierarchical and
male-dominated, just like corporate culture. It’s why the Confederacy was explicitly Christian. “Don’t worry about how much you’re
paid, boy, or bother organizing into a union; just keep picking that cotton and
you’ll get your reward in heaven when you die.” After all, according to the
Bible your fate was preordained “before the foundation of the world,” as
was that of your boss, who must have been selected for particular grace by God
or he wouldn’t be so rich.
— Republicans hate food stamps,
housing supports, aid to women and dependent children, and every other form of
what they call “welfare” because these programs slightly reduce the
desperation of people who might otherwise be easily forced to work for a
pittance.
— Republicans hate unemployment
insurance because it reduces the privation people can experience when
they lose a job. It’s why all the Blue states offer at least 26 weeks of
benefits, but Red states often radically reduce that (Florida, North Carolina,
Kentucky 12 weeks; Alabama 14 weeks; Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri 16
weeks).
So, the next time somebody asks why
people living in Red states have it so rough, just tell them, “It’s all because
of the cheap-labor Republicans.”
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-Thom Hartmann
