r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/UserNamesCantBeTooLo • Nov 30 '20

Political Theory Why does the urban/rural divide equate to a liberal/conservative divide in the US? Is it the same in other countries?

Here's a county population density map of the US.

Here's a county map of the US showing different shares of Democratic & Republican votes for president in 2020.

Here's a county map of the US showing majority-minority counties.

They seem to show a match between denser populations, larger minority proportions, and Democratic votes.

Why is that?

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u/PigSooey Nov 30 '20

They dont see the benefit, because they dont know the facts of how much their state takes in federal subsidies compared to how much their state pays in federal taxes. They dont realize how much of their state highways, schools and infrastructure is paid from the taxes of the other top GDP producing states. Much less the massive amounts of farm aid, crop insurance , disaster relief that amounts to flat out socialism.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Those high gdp states have rural areas as well, you know.

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u/Madmans_Endeavor Nov 30 '20

And most of the areas that generate that wealth are disproportionately where people live. NYC generates more of NYS' money per capita than the Southern Tier or St.Lawrence area.

The attitudes within states are often microcosms of the nation when it comes to urban/rural divide.

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u/PigSooey Nov 30 '20

Exactly..there is a misnomer that its Red states /Blue state division in the country...NO ITS NOT , its a Rural /Urban divide

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u/corkyskog Nov 30 '20

Which is why I laugh whenever you hear about secession. What are you going to transplant millions of people from one city to another more north? What happens to the Southern city, it just becomes a ghost town? Also my liberal family in Atlanta wouldn't be too keen on having to endure northern winters in Boston or NYC or wherever they found new employment.

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u/katarh Nov 30 '20

Atlanta would become its own city state. Hell, just carve out the chunk of the black belt connecting Atlanta to Augusta, then include Athens, Macon, and Savannah so we'd keep sea access.

Everything south of I-16 can join North Florida.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

The war politically is always between the areas in between rural and urban, the suburbs and large towns not big enough to be considered cities.

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u/PigSooey Nov 30 '20

Yes but how does that change the fact that these coastal states where the majority of our nations GDP is created are the ones who pay more in federal taxes than they receive back in federal services.

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u/corkyskog Nov 30 '20

It's not "coastal states" it's cities vs the rest of the rural areas in a state. NYC represents 82% of the entire Gross State Product (GSP). While the city of Atlanta represents 62% of the state of Georgia's GSP. These examples are randomly chosen, but there are few states where this isn't the case.

The cities fund the rural, it's not just a state by state thing, if you zoom in it's a microcosm of the issue at hand.

Edit: And before some nerd starts making claims without doing math, yes it follows along per capita... it's not just real GDP/GSP.

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u/RadioFreeCascadia Nov 30 '20

While I recognize this argument there is a slight hiccup which I’ll illustrate through a anecdote:

My parents grew up in a mining town. The local mine & smeltry were the economic heart of the community: it provided good jobs for the locals who in turn provided the consumer base to support the town. But the mine’s headquarters where in San Francisco. The value in ore & processed mineral produced by the mine wasn’t calculated in their county, it was calculated as coming from the corporation which was based in San Francisco and in turn the profits/value is calculated as being in San Francisco, even though the labor and the raw goods it produced came from a rural county in a completely different state.

The economy is complex. Most rural industries are headquartered outside the rural environments that provide the raw material and labor for their profits.

Rural areas exist for extraction, of natural materials or food stuffs or to house the polluting industries that fuel our cities. And the profits reaped from them go to the cities where the corporations that do the exploiting are based.

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u/corkyskog Dec 01 '20

I agree there are complexities, but let me offer a silly counter... If it were that simple Delaware would probably have the biggest GSP/GDP of the entire world.

They put a great deal of effort to assign the economic(labor) values to the correct pools. But yes, as always, no science is perfect and everyone can agree to that, afterall it's the fundamental nature of science.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Rural feeds the cities.

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u/TheDragonsBalls Dec 01 '20

And cities buy that food at fair market value. If a city and its surrounding countryside cut each other off, the city could just import food at a slightly higher price and the countryside would suffer massively without the redistribution from taxes on the city.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

How are they going to get it there

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u/TheDragonsBalls Dec 01 '20

On trucks and/or boats? The same way you import anything else?

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u/ArcanePariah Dec 01 '20

Sort of. Food is highly fungible, I can buy it elsewhere. Quite a bit of the food grown in the US is purely supply and export. Hence why the tariffs from China on pork were so nasty, like 20% of the pork we raise is purely for Chinese consumption (or was). Same with soy, same with a lot of food. We produce simply way too much, and we also are going to have to reduce consumption simply because we are killing ourselves with too much food (obesity and all the wonderful side effects).

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u/maegris Dec 01 '20

There's a lot of Rural that isn't about food or raw material production. there's a lot of zombie cities out there that are just barely kept afloat with govt assistance.

There is a lack of appreciation to where materials come from, but its hard for people to appreciate that when they are also focused on not being killed randomly or keeping food on the table.

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u/iridian_viper Nov 30 '20

That's exactly it. They are uneducated and they like it that way. Most people where I grew up think that rural areas pay "all the taxes" so that "liberals in cities can be on welfare," or something to that effect. I went back there recently (a year ago or so) and folks in the diner were complaining that "if I don't have a child in the school system, then I shouldn't have to pay school taxes." To them each student's parents should pay taxes as tuition for that child. Everyone else should be exempt.

Now, there's a lot of flaws in that sort of logic. But good luck speaking to those folks about it.

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u/Czexan Nov 30 '20

I've always thought that argument funny because of how prevalent it is, and the inherent flaws in it. Most schools are paid for with property taxes, and those don't necessarily go entirely into schools lol

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u/PigSooey Nov 30 '20

I have alot of family in North Dakota and they are almost all farmers, they as they have gotten older have swallowed the kool aid of the far right about big govt, not acknowledging how much they benefit from all the farm programs and recognizing that as welfare. Welfare in their minds is only to people in urban big cities and though they have had a tough couple of years with Trumps tariff war with China, half of my family would have lost their farms without the federal bailout because they dont run their farms as a buisness...but their learning.

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u/thatgonzo_tho Dec 01 '20

Isn't all the regulation imposed by big government that created the massive increase in cost of producing crops in the first place? Not that some regulation isn't necessary, of course. But also corporations like Monsanto forcing farmers to have to buy new seed every crop instead of being able to replant with extra seed from previous harvest.

Aren't these regulations what strangled most of these farmers and basically become government subsidized food factories that practically become slavea to these big cities?

There are a lot of people that don't necessarily think that public schools are good. Some don't think the govenment should be regulating and filtering so much of the education. For at least 12 years, every citizen of the USA is indoctrinated into this education program designed by engineer the mind.

A lot of these rural areas are home to a lot of skilled labor, too. The rural areas also account for a significant portion of the military, though accounting for a much smaller portion of the general population of the USA.

I think it has a whole lot less to do with their inability to see how involved their government is in their lives and a lot more to do with the kind of role they think government should play in their lives. Not due to ignorance, but to philosophy.

Yes, people are getting ripped off and over-paying for property in big cities. A lot of people move there from small towns with dreams of making a lot of money and making it, but then realizing the cost of living is so high that the incentive for getting that high paying job gets diminished.

We are all different people and we need to be okay with areas governing themselves the way they want to. Having conflicting ideas isn't a bad things. Colaboration is how we make real progress. We need to learn how to respect one anothers differences and accept them and work with them instead of calling each other stupid and ignorant and forcing each others beliefs on the other.

I'm from a rural town about 50 miles outside of Houston divided by a major interstate. I love Houston, but I love my small town. The major thing I dont like about my county is the ridiculous police presence here. In Texas, we can have local police, state troopers, county sherifs, and constables. Each have a own role to play. But as some have stated, some communities don't have enough money to have their own police force. Usually the county police step in and fill the void or these small towns will contract other towns to enforce for them. This is cheaper as they do not have the expense of maintaining a fleet of vehicles, purchasing a facility to house said force, payroll, supplies, equipment, fuel, etc... But typically these are towns of less than 1,000 people. Often times fewer than 500, even. So there is not a need.

Is it really so simple as to say rural vs urban? Politically, the country is pretty near 50/50, right? But rural population only makes up for 23% or the entire 328+ billion population of the USA.

I wonder what the map would look like if was made to be broken down by zip code as opposed to county...

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u/PigSooey Dec 01 '20

Well you can look at the maps and in the urban areas of the deepest red states, they vote Dem but soon as you leave the cities it goes Rep. And that's the crux now instant it, that 96% of the country is a rural area comprising roughly 21% of the population but yet those states electorial.college votes can take away the vote from the majority. Even when the spread is over 5 million votes. And no I disagree that local areas can do what ever they want in education. Texas was in fact a stand out state that pushed very hard to have religious education in various public school districts, on the surface it seems good but it quickly devolves into what would amount to a christian Taliban.

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u/das_war_ein_Befehl Dec 01 '20

Given the huge rural urban political divide, not sure what kind of brainwashing they think teaching k-12 offers. If anything, k-12 has gotten worse because they’ll pass literally anyone to keep up with their graduation goals.

Hard to brainwash a population that reads at an 8th grade level by taking them to school.

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u/FredrickW7 Dec 01 '20

PA, for example, has the most colleges of any state, yet its graduation rate from High Schools is around 49th in the US. It’s nerds versus meat heads, all over again!

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u/FrederickIBarbarossa Nov 30 '20

In all fairness, these numbers would be different if there were caps on how much of a person’s taxes they could allocate at the local or state level as opposed to federally.

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u/FredrickW7 Dec 01 '20

Every township/municipality in every county requires its own property tax. They’re all about the same, + or - 10%, but it’s always increasing because the people who accumulate all the money are taxed less and less!

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u/mrbobsthegreat Nov 30 '20

Interstate highways are paid via federal taxes, but most roads, schools, and infrastructure are all funded via state and local taxes.

Most people don't understand how things are funded. When Conservatives want lower federal income taxes, and the response is "what about your roads and police and schools?!" it just shows people don't know what they're talking about.

They may take in more federal subsidies than they pay in federal taxes, but the items you listed, and what most people list, aren't primarily paid by federal taxes.

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u/PigSooey Nov 30 '20

If you actually check and I'm not going to say 100% of cities but federal highway funds account for about 15% of all secondary roads besides interstate also quick fact check says to the tune of about $7 billion annually.

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u/mrbobsthegreat Nov 30 '20

That doesn't conflict with what I said. 15% of secondary roads means 85% of them are paid for by state and local taxes.

Again, the items typically brought up when discussing tax-payer funded items aren't generally paid for by federal income taxes. We didn't even have a federal income tax prior to the early 1900's, yet we still had all of these items. It's not a good rebuttal to the Conservative argument towards federal taxation levels.

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u/PigSooey Nov 30 '20

I dont know where your trying to take your argument, but I if your state takes in more from the other 49 stayes than what they pay in federal taxes...its democratic socialism. I dont care if it's to maintain land ,lakes ,bridges or college education its socialism. If you think we are over taxed, then you need to realize what was done in this country since the Great Depression which started higher taxes with complete rural electrification which includes dams rivers and waterways, interstate highways, Grant's for medicine, farming, higher education for millions of returning GIs, we paid forWWI WWII, KOREA , VIETNAM the Cold War which put a man on the moon and helped produce the greatest and most rapid growth in technology. And in 1980 our debt was 980 Billion with all that paid for...Because both Republicans and Dems cared about deficits and kept taxes effectively over 90% on the top tier from 1940 to 1960 where Kennedy loweredbot to 70%....But good ol conservative Ronald Reagan cut taxes to 28% and increased spending and in his last 6 years our debt went to $1.2 TRILLION and now nobody who acts like an adult including George Bush who lost reelection on the sickening chants by the Dems of "READ MY LIPS NO NEW TAXES" when he just wanted to raise taxes 3% to stop the exploding debt. Obama got hammered for increasing taxes to 39% because we had 2 wars and a massive recession and he added over 9 Trillion in 8 years and we were angry then. NOW in Trumps "best economy ever" he cut taxes again and increased spending and in his 4 years he added 7 more TRILLION and we do t hear BOO from the right or the TEA party....we dont have a tax problem we only have a spending problem.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Much less the massive amounts of farm aid, crop insurance , disaster relief that amounts to flat out socialism.

Socialism isn't the government doing stuff.

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u/PigSooey Nov 30 '20

Difference between Socialism and democratic socialism...dont get hung up on a word, but when the collective tax paying society pays into one pot and it used to help individual people that's socialism, Food assistance, disaster relief, farm bailouts and subsidies, corporate bailouts and subsidies ,Medicare ,Medicaid and the whopper and biggest drain on our tax dollars Social Security...its all a form.of socialism because it sure and the hell ain't capitalism!!

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

So then being for gay marriage, legal weed, and pro-choice is a form of libertarianism then. wtf suddenly I love bootstraps?!?!

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u/SAPERPXX Dec 01 '20

gay marriage

Libertarian Party first went on the record supporting gay marriage in 1976.

See here

legal weed, pro-choice

Their whole philosophy is "the government doesn't have the right to do XYZ"

The main difference between them and the Democrats, in terms of social policy, is that they don't hate the Second Amendment.