I support any tax plan that results in curlcoat moving as far away from me as geographically possible.
Except for a few who wanted more property (say, an acre) for dog activities which you cannot touch for under $1 mil here, the folks I know moved out because they were now on fixed incomes and couldn’t afford to stay, especially if they still had a mortgage.
People keep saying that but no one can prove it. My personal experience, both current and back when I lived below the poverty line, is that a great number of those living on welfare not only see little reason to get off it, but also feel entitled to be supported by someone else.
Legal immigrants. And it would be interesting to know if the contribution comes close to paying for what they take out.
One year does not a turnaround make.
Oh, I’m not talking about just now, or even just the last five years. The problem is increasing, but it’s been there for decades.
Perhaps if you had lived among them, you would understand.
Great! I do hope you will be able to keep that attitude as you age. I wouldn’t live anywhere else either, but it will probably turn out that we will have to.
I have no idea what you are talking about here.
Ass. Where I live has zero to do with your quality of life and you know it.
You have no case. For the first part, your argument that you cannot compare states is just dumb. If it held water, then you couldn’t compare towns either, because towns are collections of dramatically varying families. But you can’t compare families, because those are just collections of dramatically varying individuals.
Secondly, states are different. They make dramatically different decisions. They make decisions that will affect people that towns cannot make. Towns do not get federal block grants. Poor towns have very little recourse by which to meet the needs of the people living there. They can only tax themselves so much. Do you think they choose to have limited health care providers or insufficient police forces?
States set policies. States are the mechanism by which many towns find the means to help their residents. Did your local mayor choose whether or not to participate in the medicaid expansion? Of course not, that’s a state level decision.
Of course it is legitimate to compare states in terms of metrics like crime, health care, unemployment, and so forth. It’s dumb to contend otherwise.
Yes, we do. But those good qualities are entirely and strictly limited to manners, scenery, and cookery. That ain’t nearly enough to redeem our collective sins. There’s also religion, but that is one of our collective sins.
The fact that California real estate is expensive has little to do with government spending.
Personal anecdotes generally make poor evidence. Statistics indicate OTOH, a significant fall in the poverty level since Great Society programs were enacted.
Which is just an argument to legalize illegals to ensure they pay taxes. And net contributor by definition indicates they contribute more than they take out: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/29/us-usa-immigration-health-idUSBRE94S1GB20130529
One year does not a turnaround make.
Welfare programs have been cut back since the 1990s under Clintonian welfare reform.
I live in California and my family is not exactly wealthy.
And if Red States are so good, then why do the ones that are not ethnically lily white (ie places like Utah or the Plains states) generally display show of the lowest level of educational attainment, health, and other metrics of quality of life in the United States?
You are surprised at the assumption that conservatives are not honest?! No, liar, you are not surprised, and you are dishonest to say so, and you are dishonest to say – if you say – that conservatives deserve not that entirely justified assumption!
Come back when understand point.
I offer three hundred Quatloos to underwrite her journey to Triskelion.
That you want to compare school districts of equal size and population density because they have autonomy in policy decisions?
Yeah, he gets it, and that’s ridiculous.
Let’s look at the states with the fastest growing economies and how they voted in the last Presidential Election. source = USA Today.
10 West Virginia, red
9 Tennessee, red
8 Indiana, red
7 Utah, red
6 California, blue
5 Minnesota, blue
4 Washington, blue
3 Oregon, blue
2 Texas, red
1 North Dakota, red
That’s a 6/4 split in red’s favor, which is just about even. How about a different measure from Forbes? 10 Best States to make a Living In
10 Oklahoma, red
9 Kansas, red
8 Utah, red
7 Nebraska, red
6 Minnesota, blue
5 Wyoming, red
4 Texas, red
3 Colorado, blue
2 Virginia, blue
1 Washington, blue
Also a 6/4 split in favor of red. So what does this mean? It means msmith537 is full of shit, as usual. “By any objective measure”, at least economically, it’s pretty much a wash. There is no 'general correlation" like that idiot claimed in his OP.
Fixed the Forbes Link: Best and worst states to make a living in.
No it just means you can’t interpret or make meaningful conclusions from data. Probably because you’re not very intelligent.
msmith537, I bring data, you bring none.
You’ve been on this board as long as I have and I have never once seen you back up any of your assertions. I gave you facts by third parties and you can’t refute or counter them. If you are going to make a sweeping claim, like you did in your OP, you have to back it up with data. You can’t do that here, and you know it.
One thing I want you to know, though, is that I am a “blue dog” democrat. I don’t necessarily like “red state” policies, but what I especially dislike is sweeping bullshit like your OP.
So, a couple of things.
First, let me say that I appreciate you bringing some data to the table. I value that more than personal biases and opinions.
I think that IF the OP was only about job prospects or state economies, your data makes a compelling case.
The OP was broader than that, though. The OP mentions per capita income, which clearly disfavors red states: List of U.S. states and territories by income - Wikipedia.
The OP also was clearly about “other metrics usually used to indicate ‘a nice place to live in’.” So, while your data helps to consider part of the picture, it doesn’t resolve the question in the manner that you seem to think that it does.
In that sense, it does irk me that you and pretty much everyone else ignored the data that I pointed to in this post: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16738577&postcount=100. There, on a variety of indicators of things that make a place a nice place to live, red states fare poorly indeed. So, you claim that you bring data, and msmith537 brings none, but I did in fact bring some, and it was fucking crickets, including from you.
A few other notes: one weird thing about your two data sources is that even though they should track very closely (“fastest growing economies” and “best states to make a living in”), there are a lot of inconsistencies. For instance, the 8th best state on the fastest growing economies list (WV) is the 6th worst on the “place to make a living list”, and the number 1 (ND) on the former is 17th on the latter. (Additional false notes: OR (3rd versus 33rd), CA (6th versus 29th), TN (9th vs 24th).)
So, it seems like there’s a lot of noise in your two data sets, which makes some sense when one of the indicators is “fastest growing economy.” Things can be fast growing because they are really successful (e.g. TX, CA) or they can be fast growing because they used to suck really badly or are just really small (e.g. the number 1 state on your fast growing list, ND, has the smallest GDP).
So, I think you’re misrepresenting the state of the debate and the finality of your empirical contributions, but I do applaud you for at least making them.
That’s pretty much my problem with it. Too broad and including criticisms that just aren’t true. If he kept it narrower, I might have agreed.
Do you agree that red states disproportionately appear at the bottom of rankings of overall health, violence and dangerousness, bad driving, dental health and access to dental care, happiness, and standardized test scores?
I am not going to get into that type of argument, Hentor. My position is that msmith537 is an idiot, never does his research, and makes the rest of us democrats look bad.
He may or may not do his research. Why are you ignoring mine?
ETA: To expand on that, why should anyone bother doing any research when it rarely makes a dent in the volleying of uninformed opinion around here?
I’m not ignoring you. I’m just not going to go through every goddamn point re: red states and blue states. You now what you missed? Education. The red states suck on that. That’s irrelevant, though.
Red state / blue state was never my point. Msmith537 just annoys the fuck out of me because he makes sweeping claims and never backs anything up. I don’t really give a shit about a dick measuring contest between red states and blue states.