# Half of US population lives in 9 states. **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 10, 2019, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868 "2019-07-10T22:31:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/61 "2019-07-12T14:38:17Z")
> [@bump](#): > > You’re missing the point- of the stuff that’s apportioned by population, it IS evenly distributed, or as evenly as we can do so with a limit of 435 House members and a requirement that every state have at least one House member. > > The Senate does NOT represent the people. Let me repeat that- the Senate does NOT represent the people. It represents the States as separate, sovereign entities. > > As such, the concept is that each State is equal to all others, hence the 2 Senators allocation. > That’s the Connecticut Compromise- what you’re griping about isn’t a new thing- it was there from the very beginnings of our nation. Small states were worried about being run over by the larger ones even then. > > I don’t have the motivation to go researching, but I’m pretty sure that’s why the House was given the power of the purse; the actual spending must be controlled by the House, and not the Senate or Executive branch. That puts more power in the proportionally elected house of Congress. > > And like I said before, we’re NOT a direct democracy either. What you’re griping about is about as absurd as some monarchist griping that our President doesn’t have enough power. Of course not, we’re not a monarchy. But nor are we a direct democracy either. Bully for them. Just because this was the reasoning doesn’t mean it was correct. It has lead to a situation which is, frankly, destabilizing - you cannot have 84% of the country stymied by 16% of the population because that 16% lives in 81% of the States. I’m thrilled this was the compromise that brought agreement in 1782. But it’s no longer workable, or even a workable theory of government. “We’re not a direct democracy” is the idiocy which brought us Trump, Bush, and other Presidents who are elected against the combined will of the _people_. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/62 "2019-07-12T17:13:49Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Bully for them. Just because this was the reasoning doesn’t mean it was correct. It has lead to a situation which is, frankly, destabilizing - you cannot have 84% of the country stymied by 16% of the population because that 16% lives in 81% of the States. That’s kind of the point though; Congress is NOT and never has been intended to be some sort of vehicle for implementing the “will of the people”. That’s the House’s job. The rest of the government is more intended to be the mechanisms whereby the States interact with each other, and the Federal government provides certain enumerated services to them, such as a postal service, defense, customs, courts, etc… The Founding Fathers were generally afraid of the people- they put in a lot of stuff intended to limit their influence. Some has been dismantled, but some is still there. The Senate is one such body- it’s more or less explicitly meant to be a brake on whatever popular excesses get through the House. They included several things to accomplish this- longer terms, state-level representation, and until the last 100 years or so, senators appointed by the state legislatures. In a lot of ways, the system is more concerned about the States and their interactions vis-a-vis the Federal government, not about being democratic or ensuring the will of the people. And… nothing’s really changed in terms of the country having large state/small state difference- in 1790, the top two states (Virginia and Pennsylvania) had as much population as the bottom 10 states. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/63 "2019-07-12T17:58:54Z")
> [@Sunny\_Daze](#): > > I’ve got nothing on Florida; possibly Spanish settlement? Nothing to do with Spanish settlement. Other than St. Augustine, none of the Spanish settlements are even inhabited anymore. Florida had 2.7 million residents in 1950, barely more than Iowa. The population is now over 20 million. There are - unsurprisingly - a number of factors for this. It’s mostly due to the Cold War, which made Florida important as: -a naval staging area -the closest state to many potential future communist countries -the home of the space program -the place where most Cuban refugees washed up after the revolution -a base of operations for Gulf oil production And so forth. The space program had a knock-on effect in that it made Florida an attractive place for aeronautical research and development generally, so Lockheed, Boeing, Hughes, Raytheon and other space contractors built plants and offices here for non-space stuff. Then there’s Walt Disney World, which turned Orlando from a backwater into a thriving tourist destination (especially after Universal, Seaworld, and other parks followed). All of this happened between 1954 and 1970 or so. Before that, most Florida jobs were in agriculture. Since then, most of our jobs have been in tech and tourism, though we still have a lot of labor-intensive agriculture like orange growing. It didn’t hurt that home air conditioning became affordable after 1950, which made Florida more livable (particularly to Northeastern retirees…) Having enough people also made it worthwhile for the federal government to start filling in swamps, creating space for golf courses and yet more theme parks. Tourism allows the state government to function without an income tax, which makes the state attractive to business and people (though it brings its own issues like terrible schools). Of all the densely populated states, Florida is somewhat unusual in that it doesn’t have a true center of gravity. Rather than having one megacity and a bunch of smaller cities, we have four major cities - Jacksonville, Tampa, Miami, Orlando - without having one dominant one (Miami is dominant if you count by metropolitan statistical areas, as the Miami metro area includes Ft. Lauderdale and the Palm Beaches). ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/64 "2019-07-12T18:24:19Z")
Really, the whole “Half the population of \_\_\_\_\_\_\_ lives in just \_\_ of the \_\_\_\_\_s!” issue is practically fractal or something. I was crunching some more numbers: My home state of Georgia has [_159_ counties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_Georgia), which range in population from Fulton County (over a million people) down to Taliaferro County (considerably fewer than 2,000 people). The top fourteen counties (less than 9% of the state’s counties) have over half the population. (Fortunately the Supreme Court made us ditch the [county unit system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_unit_system) a long time ago.) At the other geographical extreme, I remember the graphic in [this article](https://www.cntraveler.com/story/more-than-half-the-worlds-population-lives-inside-this-circle) being passed around the Internet a few years ago. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2019, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868/65 "2019-07-12T18:33:18Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The space program had a knock-on effect in that it made Florida an attractive place for aeronautical research and development generally, so Lockheed, Boeing, Hughes, Raytheon and other space contractors built plants and offices here for non-space stuff. How does that compare to Texas gaining from the space program, thanks to LBJ? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/half-of-us-population-lives-in-9-states/836868.md?page=3)