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Comment by tmh79 | Hacker News Reader

Background: I am a [former] republican, grew up in flyover country, from a family full of trump supporters, now I live in California.

I believe that the red states are going to languish for the following reasons:

1) Brain drain as young ambitious people leave

2) Public services (education, roads, etc) decrease in quality, increase in expense

3) Older folks increasingly capture all of the economic gains allowed in small towns through consolidation of local political power

It was once possible to be young and ambitious and moderately wealthy in middle America by starting and expanding a small business like a franchise or a car dealership, but if you try to do that now, you'll get crushed in city hall pretty much every step of the way.

I am very open to discussion/debate on this topic if anyone has differing views or questions.

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Also from SV/CA. I think your points apply here:

> 1) Brain drain as young ambitious people leave

Tons of smart folks I know are leaving CA for TX or east coast.

> 2) Public services (education, roads, etc) decrease in quality, increase in expense

omg, this is CA. Have you driven a freeway lately?

> 3) Older folks increasingly capture all of the economic gains allowed in small towns through consolidation of local political power

CA to the letter.

I don't think you're wrong, just that what you're saying applies to us, too.

> Tons of smart folks I know are leaving CA for TX or east coast.

That is very true, but CA also has a large in migration of smart folks, leaving the number of smart folks here at a slowly increasing number. Small towns in red states for the most part don't see in migration from smart folks, the best people they have are the children of those residing there, and in my experience the ambitious ones chose to leave.

> omg, this is CA. Have you driven a freeway lately?

CA supports a relatively dense living situation compared to many areas in 'red states'. While CA might not have the best roads, they have the population and economy to support their maintenance. Many areas in red states have decided to stop paving their roads all together, and are crushing them back to gravel, because the cost of maintenance is unable to be supported by the population and density of people using them. We are definitely at "peak road" in red state America.

> CA to the letter.

Yeah, but I can also get a cushy corporate job in California. Most of the people I knew from [small town in a red state] that stayed either inherited a family business, got hooked on drugs, or settled into the life of mid/low paying government work.

> [small town in a red state] that stayed either inherited a family business, got hooked on drugs, or settled into the life of mid/low paying government work.

Again you describe CA. Outside the coastline (sometimes inside the coastline, especially past Marin to the OR border), this is very much the case in CA. The central valley is home to some of the most impoverished rural towns in America. Louis Theroux has a fantastic documentary that hits this point: https://documentarystorm.com/the-city-addicted-to-crystal-me...

I think it's more reasonable to apply your thinking to counties rather than states. I'm in a deep red state, but the county I'm in is slowly turning blue as tech companies move in and startups grow.

Also, red counties are where most of the food comes from. The farmers who have made it this far (through extreme competition in the food market) are quite innovative, clever, and ambitious. I wouldn't count them out. They don't want big business in their towns, but they also depend on basic services like filtered water, police, a fire department, and hospitals, and they'll make sure those continue to survive.

Agreed.

There seem to be a lot of microscale effects where people are moving from [small town where they grew up] to [moderately sized regional center], and most of my experience comes from seeing family members and friends still living in [small town where they grew up].

there are enough example states to refute it. hell Illinois is poster child for failed Democratic policies and their debt is now junk status. Quite a few other blue states are in the same boat with exploding debt.

blue states tend to be such only because of dense city populations in super cities; discounting California. Get outside those big metropolis with their outsides voting power and it shifts.

I am a decidedly red state and not one of the claims is valid so I seriously doubt its valid all places. thousands of successful small businesses are started each year. Where you will get crushed in big city blue states where regulation protects incumbent businsses even more than in rural areas (let alone taxes)

Yea, TBH, this is more of a view about "cities" vs "rural area" and less about "red state" vs "blue state". Id much rather live in the most densely populated county in Nebraska than the least densely populated county of NY/CA in terms of health/opportunity/economy/etc.

do you think your analysis applies to states like texas, virginia, arizona, north carolina, georgia, utah, etc? even the in-between states such as colorado and florida were doing fine before the blue takeover of 2005+.

i've been to all of these places in the last 10 years and they're all doing more than fine.

it seems to me only a handful of states over-whelmingly tied to particularly depressed sectors of the economy are the ones losing their people and tax revenue. and a lot of those were blue states just 5 years ago!

I would limit my "expertise" to rustbelt/midwestern areas, but from what I've seen in both data and experience, things tend to be more correlated with overall density metrics than specific location, and there are a lot of microscale effects. For instance, many ambitious people in the midwest are relocating from [small town they grew up in] to [regional center], like moving from avondale MI to Grand Rapids MI. The macro effects of outmigration from MI en mass show little info, but on a micro scale, people are leaving their smaller counties and moving to more dense ones. Over time, smaller regional centers like Grand Rapids grow, but the 200 miles of 'small town America' surrounding it grow older, more disconnected, less healthy, and less educated.

Interesting you picked those states, of those states, all but North Carolina have been becoming bluer. Using 2012 vs 2016 presidential margin of victory, with blueness being positive, Texas went −15.78% to -9.00%, Virginia went 3.87% to 5.32%, Arizona went −9.06% to -3.55%, North Carolina went −2.04% to -3.66%, Georgia went −7.82% to -5.13%, Utah went −48.04% to -18.08%.

I think you can interpret that as, prosperity leads to bluer policies, or bluer policies causes prosperity, or possible a little of both.

Maybe do a comparison next time there's a more traditional Republican candidate running to get a better idea of how much bluer a state is becoming.

Or compare midterms. Presidential elections can be wonky. Surely you don't think Wisconsin has made a dramatic red shift based on 2012 vs 2016, do you?

Considering for gubernatorial it went 53-45 blue in 2006, to 52-46 red in 2010, to 53-46 red in 2012 during the recall, and back to at 52-47 red in 2014; yes, I do think Wisconsin swung redder as a whole.

haha, except you left out all the states that don't adhere to your hypothesis, like the ones that won the presidential election in 2016. kind of a big oversight.

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