For all the talk from the right of President Obama’s failure to create jobs and his misguided attempts to tax the rich this new report out on America’s poorest states sure doesn’t put the right in a good light.
All but two states are blue and only one state falls outside of the south.
The list includes Republican hotbeds like Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. All three states were red according to the 2008 election map and in Alabama Republican Presidential nominee John McCain carried a healthy 60 percent of the vote.
According to the report Alabama has the 9th highest poverty rate in America and 44% of all residents have absolutely no health insurance.
Next up is Mississippi, the poorest state in the United States of America. They have the nation’s highest concentration of poverty with 21 percent of the state’s residents living in poverty. The median income is just above $35,000 and Mississippi has the 7th highest unemployment rate in the nation at 10.4 percent.
It is truly depressing that Mississippi is still in such bad shape. Another red state where there is practically no economic stability and the number of people without jobs is deafening.
So, what say you Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, the so-called moral candidates? Where is the outrage that so many of your beloved countrymen and women are living in poverty and can’t afford to buy their next meal?
Republicans continue to rally against taxing the richest among us, yet the states where the meat of their votes comes from struggle mightily.
Now let’s juxtapose the nation’s poorest states against the nations richest.
Only two red states fall into the category of rich and the rest are Democratic blue. This country’s wealthiest state is New Hampshire with an unemployment rate of 5.2 percent and the nation’s lowest poverty rate, which is 7.1 percent. New Hampshire also has no sales tax or income tax.
So I say again to Bachmann and Perry, what say you to these numbers?
What does it say that Democratic states are generally wealthier than Republican red states? Does it say anything about the state’s character? What about the party’s position on social issues? Do Republicans generally care about the poor?
Simplistic, yet telling questions and stats regarding America’s poorest states.
What does it say that southerners continually lean toward a party that keeps them impoverished? How does it look that the nation’s poorest state has a Republican governor and he was elected twice to serve his state?
Well, while I would love to continue to beat up on Republicans this isn’t just a right or left issue. Democrats haven’t done that great of a job keeping people out of poverty either.
States in the south have suffered more than those in the north when it comes to this recession and Democrats have gun powder on their hands in this battle as well.
What’s most telling about this report is the vast wealth gap between the lowest and the highest where Mississippi has a 21 percent poverty rate and New Hampshire with only 7.1 percent.
What’s going on in this country where over 20 percent of the people in one state live in poverty and only 5 percent in another?
In essence this is a case where no one should favor a political party in this fight. Both have failed our nation, over and over again and it’s evident by this report.
For Democrats, simply taxing the wealthy won’t cure what ails America and for Republicans cutting every single spending item in sight won’t do the trick either.
To those that are suffering the most, the 99ers and the folks living in the throes of poverty: Know that your recovery is not with a political party. While it’s always helpful to receive a lending hand it’s not shrewd to believe in the color of an animal, be it an elephant or a donkey.
As native Mississippian, former Florida resident, I feel that I should ” put my 2 cents in”. I am currently double majoring in Finance and Economics at the University of Alabama. First I would like to say that your article is a very well written piece of work; However, I must tell you that it does lack details that could possibly open your mind on the poor “red states”. I can not speak for the other states, but just for my native state of Mississippi, and current residence in Alabama. Mississippi / Alabama has an overwhelming amount of citizens on welfare, food stamps, and unemployment; most of which have no desire to be a productive member of society (which puts a huge strain on the state budgets). I am not sure how it is in other states, but in this area the poor tend to be democrats and the middle class and up tend to be Republican. I myself (raised by a conservative, mostly Republican family) am proud to say that I am an open minded independent. In my personal opinion, the reason my states are “red” is because a majority of the people that take part in the elections, care about what is going on not only in our state, but also in nation(a majority of the voters work hard for their money and are paid enough to provide for their families and live without the assistance of the social programs offered in our state). Reading your article, gave me the impression that you feel that being a republican state only leads to economic collapse which is not so. A state runs like a business, If you have more money going out then coming in you are on a track to fail. The South does not have the industries that the North may have, leading to a lack of jobs for the people. Those who have jobs work hard for their money and would like to spend it the way they feel instead of a hike in taxes in order to provide more social programs for “bums and slackers”. Nothing is wrong with giving someone a helping hand, but no one should expect to take everything and give nothing. It is one thing if someone can not physical/mentally work, but it is another thing to have the ability to work and just do nothing because it is an easier way to live. Again, I enjoyed your article. Thank you
It is much the same here in England. We have had the free market since the 80’s and Thatcher. This free market has deliberately created a massive rich and poor divide due to us having no manufacturing industrys or manufacturing base, people are in short term, low waged, insecure jobs, and this is at the root of their poverty.
I do not prescribe to the populist American and English view by many, that these unemployed and homeless are bums and slackers, this is how Nazi Germany started, by mass descrimination.
I believe in the normal sense that America and Britain wants to go to work and earn a decent living, but because the right wing market based economy ideoligy needs mass unemployment to make it work, this is never going to happen.
“””Those who have jobs work hard for their money and would like to spend it the way they feel instead of a hike in taxes in order to provide more social programs for “bums and slackers”.””
Yes, Hitler used similar terms to describe the Jews, Gypsies, Disabled, and old during World War 2.
It is called descrimination, and America’s South was full of such language in the 60’s.
Not talking about the disabled or elderly at all !!! I am pretty sure he means the bums and slackers he referred to are the ones that are physically ABLE to get off the sofa and go to work but will not because they see they can get paid for NOT doing so. Being against discrimination does not mean being for a WELFARE state. Do you work Michael? and if so, aren’t there people you have met that, although totally able to work, they CHOOSE not to? Comparing someone with a work ethic to Nazi-ism is purely ridiculous.
What does the redness or blueness of the voters have to do with their economic circumstances? What matters is the redness or blueness of the POLICIES. And when you compare policies, state by state, you see that red policies are outstanding for economic growth. Texas is an examplar of this, and is currently accepting many citizens and businesses who are fleeing blue states like California. What matters isn’t the lip service politicians pay to Republican principles, but the degree of freedom from regulatory and tax interference.
You’ve got absolutely no evidence of a causal relationship between voters’ ideology and economic performance; and if such a relationship exists, you’ve got no evidence that its directionality is what you’re implying. Wealth doesn’t make folks conservative; liberals earn, on average, 6% more than conservatives. To the contrary, poverty may well make people conservative: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/25/poor-white-voters-reject-democrats
Mississippi is an exemplar of an entirely different set of circumstances: economic stagnation imposed by Reconstruction, and the subsequent failure to modernize. Mississippi’s economy is almost entirely agrarian, and relies heavily on antiquated techniques.
http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/us/mississippi-state-united-states-economy.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Mississippi#Economy
“Mississippi’s rank as one of the poorest states is related to its dependence on cotton agriculture before and after the Civil War, late development of its frontier bottomlands in the Mississippi Delta, repeated natural disasters of flooding in the late 19th and early 20th century requiring massive capital investment in levees, heavy capital investment to ditch and drain the bottomlands, and slow development of railroads to link bottomland towns and river cities.[69] In addition, when conservative white Democrats regained control, they passed the 1890 constitution that discouraged corporate industrial development in favor of rural agriculture, a legacy that would slow the state’s progress for years.[70]
“Before the Civil War, Mississippi was the fifth-wealthiest state in the nation, its wealth generated by cotton plantations along the rivers.[71] Slaves were then counted as property and the rise in the cotton markets since the 1840s had increased their value. A majority – 55 percent – of the population of Mississippi was enslaved in 1860.[72] Ninety percent of the Delta bottomlands were undeveloped and the state had low population overall.”
Don’t just draw correlations without concrete evidence of causation. That’s the height of sophistry.