American policy is splitting state by state into two blocs
economist.com
economist.com
The cracks are forming in things as simple as traffic laws. Tons of egregious, selfish actions and little-to-no enforcement.
It sounds anecdotal, but there's plenty of data to back this up: https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-tra...
1) People in California don't want people in Texas influencing their politics, and vice-versa.
2) The "Balkanization" of the U.S. will weaken the international influence of the U.S. empire, allowing developing nations and others to evade the grip of Western capitalists and neoliberalism, allowing them to pursue their own development path according to their material reality.
The unipolar world that merged on the post-Soviet international stage is dead. Stick a fork in it.
Development path? What do you think enabled there to be a development path for these nations in the first place? The “material reality” of the every nation on earth save for like, France, the US, NZ, Argentina is not development… it’s de-industrialization. The unipolar world your celebrate the demise of was responsible for the greatest and fastest increase in the quality of life the world has ever seen… ever. You’re right though. It’s over. As is the influence of the US abroad, though not by accident, but by choice.
The first cities to be sanctuary cities violated Federal and usually state law by refusing to prosecute illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration is a federal crime, period.
We have a mechanism to overturn laws we don't like. That's not it.
Meanwhile, one area that Reeves and co is most definitely not leading on is making sure that the capitol city of his state, with a population of almost 200,000 people, has potable, running water. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/mississippi-water-clim...
Jackson’s inept local government failed to fix a known issue because they didn’t want to raise taxes to risk re-election.
Now Federal taxpayers will be on the hook to bail them out. So… I guess mission succeeded?
The lead that Tate Reeves is talking about is definitely in the opposite direction of what your implicit political stance's definition of taking the lead is.
It's not the classic left definitions like minimum wage increase, or potable water, or expected age, or access to a public defender.
I'm guessing it's things like having strict abortion control (or he would term it life preservation), or gun rights, or ability to reverse the Trump election results. Or, perhaps shockingly to the left view, "leading" in pushing laws so towns don't have the obligation to give potable water (and can avoid getting sued for doing so)!
While in the short term overturning RvW looks awful, and has terrible consequences for people in the present, in the long term the states will one-by-one elect politicians which protect that right. Some of it will happen in the next election, but even more will happen as the consequences of all these unwanted babies becomes clearer to both the woman bearing them, and the men forced to pay child support.
The most common argument to my argument above is that some conservative states are deeply rooted in religion and wouldn't allow that. My counter to that is, you are discounting how many "pro-life republicans" have hypocritically obtained abortion while also railing against it. They will go to the voting booth and be just as hypocritical, likely criticizing in public the very same 'liberal' they voted for in private.
My crystal ball says it's tired now, till next time.
The issue has been polarized into two groups:
1) a single cell is a human being 2) a nine month fetus isn't a human being until the last foot has emerged from the birth canal.
Many, perhaps most, think both of these positions are utterly ridiculous.
The article makes the Court's decisions here sound like a matter of personal preference. It doesn't mention their stated reasoning (even if only to argue against it), which, IIUC, is something like: the states have to follow the Bill of Rights, and the Bill of Rights explicitly lists the right to bear arms. In contrast, nothing in the Bill of Rights – or anywhere else in the Constitution for that matter – mentions abortion.
Perhaps compromise might be possible in future generations, cuz it's not a useful word today. Political polarization is pretty impressive worldwide at the moment.
The Democrats in office can barely agree on even basic moves to get public approval, good luck ever getting them to agree on directly harming millions of people just because they don't agree with how they vote.
I'd really like to see a rigorous calculation and explanation behind the decisions, because I think this could be a useful stat for comparing states' fiscal success relative to one another.
For example should the calculations include federal spend on federal employees? It's not really a reflection of the state's actions if the federal government happens to have a big agency headquarters there inflating the 'federal spend'.
It will be even more interesting if the red states then stop sending the blue ones things like food, water, and energy.
It may turn out that those things are more important than simulated pieces of green paper.
Thinking of it state by state is a mistake, though, isn't it? Are "blue" states net contributors to federal tax if "red" citizens move out?
https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17844
I would like to see how it breaks down by red vs. blue, and I suspect there might be a slight edge for team red, but California in particular fills an important niche of supplying most of the non-grain foods, and can produce food year round.
However California is probably going to lose its status as #1 as aridification continues.
We shouldn't be bragging about punishments of blue vs red at all, because should such a thing occur everyone is going to have a much worse quality of life, blue or red.
Text editors make software, and programmers just mash on keyboards?
There’s a lot more to farming than tending to the land. Crops don’t magically grow. Your simplistic view of it is both insulting to those who farm and dangerous.
Programmers for now do make the software, in that there's a dramatic difference in the ability of a good programmer vs. a mediocre programmer to actually complete a project, and they're compensated accordingly. That'll likely change in a decade or so, though. Then the software will be largely already written, and it'll be maintained by management structures with commodity programmers slotting into roles in the org chart. It's already happening for many roles.
It's a perspective shift from "here's a laborer making a product" to "here's a role for how the product is made, and any number of different laborers could slot into it", and it happens when there are enough people with the skills to make the product that any one of them can slot into it.
"Dollar value" and "calories" are two different things.
California produces a lot of high-dollar-value luxury crops, but doesn't actually produce many of the calories that stand between the population and starvation. It doesn't even produce enough calories to feed itself.
I have no idea what actual percentage of the state's land is farms, but...I'm certainly surrounded by them. Many miles of farmland; plenty, at least, to supply the people around here, if used efficiently.
The idea that "blue states are urban" and "red states are rural" is just plain wrong. There are cities in red states (though some red states don't have any large cities in them), and there's plenty of rural land in blue states.
Welcome to nuance.
The country doesn’t need this line of thinking and it benefits nobody but Putin.
see stuff like this https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/dining/fruit-vegetables-i...
Or if you want the latest raw data from the USDA Economic Research Service, you can grab it here: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/international-markets-u-s-tr...
It's true, many fresh produce foods are imported, but the majority (~80%) of food consumed in the US is domestically produced / grown.
Candy is not a large part of the American diet so it's not really that meaningful to call out its inclusion.
American agriculture is going to be more important than ever in light of the coming (present?) gas crisis. I'm not well informed enough to make a comment on Mexico but I would wager they're likely in a pretty good spot too.
But sure looking at something expensive like candy
About 37billion in sales https://www.foodbeverageinsider.com/market-trends-analysis/u...
Compared to 70ish billion of produce https://theproducenews.com/headlines/produce-department-sale...
That seems significant for all good and beverage sales. Nevermind alcohol, which I'm pretty sure was included in that first 80% number. Look at a supermarket, how much of that is real food. I think my local one has 3-4 aisles of snacks and candy
80% of american food and beverage is significant. And more significant than 20% of it, obviously.
Candy is a pretty small portion of the food people eat even if there's a lot of shelf space on the supermarkets. Most food that people eat are grains and meat, which is largely sourced internally.
The imported stuff is mostly fresh produce which is nice but also not really natural or essential to have year round.
This isn’t completely true. There are some high profile issues that are deadlocked on ideological grounds, but there’s legislation passed every session through compromise and bipartisanship.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/31/politics/red-states-blue-...
But also, most states are purplish and the ones that are purer red are very sparsely populated:
Let's not gloss over being the poorest state in the union also qualifies as leading the poverty rankings. Also having the lowest life expectancy is another. Oh, and dead last in public education. Way to lead Mr. Reeves! You're the best at being the worst!
I personally have always been intrinsically libertarian to my core, occasionally shifting perspective between left-libertarian and right-libertarian, but always wanting to disrupt existing institutions in favor of individual freedom. In 2020 I found myself voting for mainstream federal candidates for the first time in my life, arising from a sense of genuine conservatism. I had taken our institutions for granted, and now they seem to be under coordinated attack - by forces that aren't looking to reform and liberate, but rather to destroy and subjugate.
I haven't been able to tease out how much is simply due to me getting older, but unfortunately I see this trend continuing. In 1973 Roe v Wade was decidedly radical. Five decades and nearly two generations later, women's right to reproductive medical care is an integral part of our society. True conservatism respects that.
I'd also like to gently point out that you're doing a "no true scotsman" argument here.
The closest I've come to a decent conversation, when trying to understand current conservatism, was a DM conversation on Reddit. I didn't learn a whole lot, the dude was basically operating on reflexes and subconscious.
I'd really like to understand, but if repeated attempts end up with me getting explicitly insulted, I have to conclude uncharitable things.
The sharply insulting reactions you're getting are due to the hypocritical hysteria currently gripping the Republican Party. I don't think you will be successful at discussing philosophy at this time, especially online. The current energy is driven by hypocrisy and shallow thinking. The people that haven't been swept up by it are somewhere between being aghast where the party has gone, or sitting back and hoping for collapse.
My ultimate conclusion was that the pro war middle of the country is just driven by a different emphasis on issues and values, but still a core of ultimately wanting to be left alone (ie freedom). The Iraq War was not their issue, and the people on TV said to support it, so they did. Seeing this pattern also helped me critique my own bubble's politics for it.
Unfortunately, that "TV" has now turned into Facebook, where the message is not even curated by the US's power structure but rather whatever narratives play to people's biases. Narratives pushed by malevolent foreign power structures whether bona fide countries or just non-allegiant capital looking to loot. Still, I have to believe there is a core of conservatism that won't be swayed by the reactionary populism, and will eventually succeed at ousting the destructive elements from their party or at least leaving themselves. The alternative is collapse.