Makers vs. Takers, some numbers

[finnbow]

Here's some interesting data for you. 21 of the 25 counties in the country where government programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, income maintenance programs such as SNAP (food stamps) and what people commonly refer to as “welfare,” and unemployment insurance) account for the greatest percentage of total personal income are Republican. Imagine that.

http://civicanalytics.com/makers-tak...ic-development

It's amazing (and disgusting) how the GOP has succeeded in getting these people to vote against their own interests.

[mpholland]

Not sure about your neck of the woods, but over here I live in Extreme Liberallville USA. Oregon and Washington are pretty weird states. They have the nations most liberal democrats on the west side of the Cascade mountains, and the nations most conservative republicans on the east side. Interestingly enough, the west side is definitely where the two states have all the industry and jobs. The east sides, by comparison, have little or no industry in many places. A lot of farmers, ranchers, tourist stuff and so on. The unemployment is higher, but the lifestyle and thought process is completely different. I will say the east side seems to be a lot more christian and rely on each other for help more than the government. The work ethic and family values seem different. I realize this sounds like stereotyping, but as a rule, the east side could survive much better with little government compared to the west side. Probably because they have always been fairly self sufficient and the smaller communities seem to support each other more than large cities. I can understand why they are republican and against big government as usually the government comes around and wants to start telling them what to do, when they can do it and so on. When you are building a hay barn in the middle of 1200 acres the last thing you want is an agency telling you it can't be used to store hay because it doesn't have an outlet every 6 feet and a 20,000 dollar sprinkler system.

[CarlV]

Makes sense why they wish to gut public education wherever they can especially using the voucher snowjob.


Carl

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by mpholland

Not sure about your neck of the woods, but over here I live in Extreme Liberallville USA. Oregon and Washington are pretty weird states....

It's much the same here in Maryland. The DC and Baltimore suburbs and Baltimore City are Democrat and the rest of the state is Red. Same goes for Virginia (northern Virginia, Richmond and Tidewater VA are all Blue and the remainder very Red). As is true in Washington and Oregon, the developed urban areas are the economic engines of the state. The Red areas of these states are far more dependent on the Blue areas than the other way around, though of course they won't admit it. In many instances, the Red somehow think they're propping up the rest of the state.

I fully understand conservatism, but hold Tea Party know-nothingness in complete contempt.

[merrylander]

Out here in western Howard the only thing that protects us Democrats are the game laws. Which is rather surprising when you consider how highly ranked our schools are.

[whell]

Something is goofy here. I can't speak for all the counties listed. But Montmorency county is in northern MI, and I'm familiar with that area. One of the primary "industries" in the area is tourism - parks, lakes and rivers are in the area, with some hunting and snowmobiling business. There might be 10,000 people living in the entire county, and the population is dying off faster than its being replaced because there's a ton of retirees living there. Anyway, the economy is pretty seasonal / cyclical. A lot of folks make their money in the summer months and leave to go south for the winter.

However, competing economic data shows that the area's consumption of public assistance dollars are lower than state or national averages.

http://www.usacityfacts.com/mi/montmorency/economy/

While there's a fair amount of social security recipients up that way, the retirees do make a up a sizable portion of the population. The data from the source above is from US Census data. The data from Finn's linked source is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Their definition of transfer payment seems a bit funky:

"This component of personal income is payments to persons for which no current services are performed. It consists of payments to individuals and to nonprofit institutions by Federal, state, and local governments and by businesses." So if a business makes a gift to a non-profit in one of the counties, it moves the needle in the BEA stats? Sure, I get the fact that government makes payments to charitable and philanthropic institutions who in turn provide community services. But the BEA data doesn't seem to synch with census data in this case.

[barbara]

Gov funding typically has a required 'match' from the receiving agency. Often times, probably the majority of the time, that match comes from donations of private business or individuals.