Utah’s Economic Exceptionalism
americanaffairsjournal.org
americanaffairsjournal.org
One article isn't a showstopper, but I really wish this didn't surprise people so much.
Taxes are taking away people's surplus (I've often heard 'they don't need the money' come up in arguments about taxes, for example) and invest it in government. That means that if the government fails to do something it is game over. The people have had the resources they would use to deal with it diverted. Low tax scenarios are much more fault tolerant. High taxes won't necessarily promote equality or great outcomes.
It’s a generally unsolved problem.
It does not have to be perfect, it only has to be better.
Other countries do have 24/7 TV channels and other media.
Yea and they spend most of that time complaining about Trump. And if they aren't, then people will go to Reddit, or some social media site to do it.
> What are you getting at?
Countries with small, homogeneous populations are going to tend to be less corrupt and better governed. It's more difficult to be a jackass in Iceland than it is in Brasil.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Singapore
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You can also be multi-cultural in the "look at my skin color sense" but not multi-cultural in your beliefs. And of course for the purposes of this discussion it's a matter of degrees. Locally there may be extremes, but when you compare different geographies that might highlight actual extremes. I'm willing to bet, for example, that the United States is far more diverse both in opinion and nationality than Singapore. Iceland? Less so.
The problem is solved by answering the question: ‘what mechanism will transform our current government to a better one?’
That is unsolved.
Because it's a lot easier to reduce taxes (simply change tax law) than to fix the government? Especially if the government is corrupt, and wouldn't take too kindly to people trying to "fix" it.
When institutions are systematically overfunded they tend to grow fat and entitled. Ironically they end up doing less with more. Trimming the budget enforces discipline and builds institutional knowledge around how to operate lean and execute efficiently.
The surprise subsides when they learn about the average age of the population (a young population hasn’t had time to accumulate wealth yet). The propensity for large socialist structures in the state (families) also helps.
It is surprising because given the rest of the "Red" states' records, Utah is an outlier:
> Eighteen of the 19 poorest states have legislatures where both chambers are Republican controlled. New Mexico (46th richest, fifth poorest) is Democratic. But there isn’t another blue or purple state until you get to purple Maine (31st richest, 20th poorest) with its “split” legislature of one party in each chamber. All the states in between (such as Tennessee and Florida) are Republican, both chambers. So is Michigan, where Republicans hold all high state offices (where Donald Trump won in 2016). Above New Mexico, you jump all the way to middle of the pack Vermont (27th richest, 24th poorest) to find a state with both legislative chambers held by Democrats.
> But all five richest states have both legislative chambers controlled by Democrats – Maryland, New Jersey, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Connecticut. Overall, Democrats dominate the 20 richest states.
* https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2018/10/21/mi...
> The people have had the resources they would use to deal with it diverted. Low tax scenarios are much more fault tolerant. High taxes won't necessarily promote equality or great outcomes.
When there are haves and have-nots, often expressed in (e.g.) a high Gini coefficient, things generally do not improve for the have-nots over time. As the 20th century has shown, especially in the post-Gilded Age post-WW2 era, taxing to fund social programs tends to improve a society in many ways.
California was a red state until 1992.
Drilling down further, it's more about density:
> There's a decisive break between Democratic and Republican support at a population density of 800 persons/per square mile.
* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-01/how-the-d...
* https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/2020-elect...
> If you follow the red state trend lines, you can clearly see that any dense, fast-growing cities that emerge in red states will be very likely to vote blue. The few that do already exist already vote blue.
> Red state voters generally prefer low-density housing, prefer to drive cars, and are sensitive to gas prices. Once population density gets to a certain level, behaviors switch: high-density housing is the norm, public transit becomes more common, and gas use (and price sensitivity) drops. Red state values are incompatible with density.
* https://davetroy.medium.com/is-population-density-the-key-to...
Down to the county level, urban centres tend to have more economic activity:
> A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time, Biden’s winning base in 477 counties encompasses fully 70% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,497 counties represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 110 mostly low-output counties, and this piece will be updated as new data is reported.)
* https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-v...
People say this all the time and it is false: California is a high tax state. No it isn't. It is a high Income tax state. It is an extremely low property tax state.
To put this in perspective, I live in Boston and my mom lives in California. She owns > $3 million dollars worth of property that she pays 1% tax on when she bought it (for around 500K total) so an effective property tax rate of .16%. In Texas she would be paying 3% property taxes which 1800% percent more. She also gets depreciation on the rental property that is marked up to when some it got transferred to her so she gets depreciation amortized over 18 years at ~2.5 million valuation. She also collects social security, a pension from a previous government job, and rental income. All unearned. Some of the rental income comes from Section 8 and other welfare programs (paid for by young workers). Let alone medicare which she will certainly get way more out than she ever put in.
I on the other hand, make ~190K a year. One year I got lucky with stocks/bitcoin. I've been paying in the 250K income tax bracket for 3/4 years. I've also paid >5% state income taxes every year on that money. I've paid double or triple my mom's taxes every year despite her making total earnings including investments way above me. ON top of that I have high payroll taxes, sales taxes, and no deductions. I live in a crappy apartment (near a bunch of frat houses) that costs 2K a month (a little less than my mom's mortgage on a house worth $1.7 million).
For young people that have no property and income we are in an awful position. All we hear is increase income taxes, but that is the only way we are moving up the socio-economic ladder. We have many types of inequality in the US, but the most extreme is age-related inequality. Older people have almost all the money in America. The largest generation now is the millennials and they hold <10% of US wealth. Millenials are now in their prime working years and income is the primary way they will acquire wealth as they hold almost none of the assets in this country.
Its no wonder that younger and middle class people are flocking to places like Texas where they can afford a house (because property taxes prevent money flooding into real estate), and can actually get ahead because of little to no state income taxes.
It was a unique pleasure working there... many small companies tout this, but it really did feel like an extended family. Such an aura of positivity and comraderie really helped morale in the face of a handful of make or break issues we faced during my time.
And despite the obvious roots of the company, not a whiff of anything religious or political was mentioned or hinted at, though people’s personal lives were regularly discussed and shared.
This is not surprising at all. I wish more Americans had this, I wish I did.
Having been raised in it you're not missing much. And the baggage it comes with far outweighs any benefit.
What in the world is this saying? That somehow Utahns are less likely to die once they have contracted the virus and that this has something to do with their economic prowess?
Utah currently has a raging pandemic with a test positivity rate of 22% and an ever growing 2000+ people a day being picked up by testing. ICU and hospitalization rates are skyrocketing: https://cv19.report/UT
Utah even sent out a text message to all residents warning them about the problem: https://coronavirus.utah.gov/utah-will-deploy-a-single-wirel...
This doesn’t look like much to brag about.
There are absolutely some positive things about the faith, but the darker aspects are not as easily visible.
[0]https://unews.utah.edu/common-antidepressents-are-less-effec...
Narrator: It doesn't and is heavily subsidized, simultaneously making non-compliance harder to reconcile.
It is impossible to discern if someone is making a satire of their religion, is an actual Mormon, or is an actual Mormon questioning the absurdities of their society.
Subsidised by whom?
SLC's strategy for homelessness is audacious and progressive. Leftists like me sat up and took note. Why can't we do the same in our own areas?!
Utah reminds me of the Nordic countries, specifically Finland. High homogeneity allows those societies to more easily find consensus, break out of dogmatic strategies that no longer work.
One data point about homogeneity (no cite, sorry) is a study of conservative support for raising taxes. Conservatives in more homogenous areas happily raise their own taxes, at about the same rate as majority liberal areas.
FWIW, Some of Utah's approach to social problems is my kind of conservativism. I grew up in the church. We did the food banks, adopting refugee families, missionary works (rites of passage). Not knowing any better, I thought this was the norm, and that I was a conservative. While I'm not a big fan of Mormonism (or religion in general), I love that society's commitment to mutual aide.
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Meta: I became interested in American Affairs when Ezra Klein interviewed Julius Krein.
https://www.vox.com/21528267/the-ezra-klein-show-trumpism-do...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Affairs
I love that the next generation of thinkers are reexamining big ideas with fresh eyes, that they're ignoring the framing and battle lines drawn up by Boomers and Gen X'ers (like me).
In my own activism and political participation, I've observed that Millennials (aka Gen Y?) are more interested in getting things done. Much to the consternation to most of us blue hairs. But I love it.