I recently moved out of New England (was born and raised there). Largest population of Sheeple in the the world.
I was getting quite a kick out of you. Particularly your drop and run technique. Several people have replied to your less than informed critiques and you haven't answered any of them.
If you really want to know what a "blue" country would look like, look to Massachusetts. There is a run-away legislature that refuses to enact what the people vote for, the economy is lagging (MA was the only state in the country to lose jobs in the 1st quarter of the year), the unions hold mafia-like control over most of the state (that Big Dig was great, wasn't it) and one of the biggest problems is the hemmorage of 21-35 year olds from the state. The people that are needed to build the economy are leaving in droves. This was actually a campaign issue in the last governor's race because it's affecting the economy.
Hard keeping up, sorry.
From the Boston Herald:
To an investor it must come as a surprise to hear all this talk of the ``red'' states, which voted Republican last week, as the ``real America'' or the ``heartland.''
And to hear the blue states described as a ``coastal fringe.''
One wonders if the pundits using these phrases have taken a look recently at the stock market.
Or the economy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average represents the leading companies of U.S. industry across all the major sectors.
At the risk of fueling further talk of secession: Of the Dow's 30 members, 23 are from blue states.
They include ALCOA, American Express, Boeing, McDondald's, General Motors, Intel, 3M, Microsoft and Disney. Some fringe.
Maybe in a modern economy it doesn't make much sense to look at where companies are based. These organizations operate and sell across America and around the world.
Instead we can look at state output or per-capita productivity.
Trouble is, the results are similar.
The blue states remain the engine of the American economy. All in all they produced $5.4 trillion in goods and services in 2001, the last year for which reliable data is available.
That's about $700 billion more than the red states, according to the government's Bureau of Economic Analysis.
It's true that populations are booming across the south and the west. People and companies have moved there in pursuit of cheaper land, lower costs, and fresh opportunities.
You might expect that, as a result, their economies are growing much faster, too. Instead, from 1994 through 2001, the two economies expanded in line with one another. Despite the population shift.
Per person, blue America outproduces red America by 21 percent. That's $6,700 per person per year.
Thinking of secession? Think of the tax cut.
Under current federal tax and spending, there is a massive net outflow of money from the blue to the red states. The blue states pay much more in federal income tax, and receive far less in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security - not to mention farm subsidies, highway funds and infrastructure grants.
``The tax money is coming from the blue states, but it's being allocated to the red states because they have lower than average incomes,'' agreed Scott Moody, senior economist at the Tax Foundation think-tank.
The bottom line: In 2002, according to a Tax Foundation study, the transfers amounted to $136 billion.
Economists say that hasn't changed much over recent decades.
For a family of four in blue America, from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, those transfers work out around $3,900 a year.
A tax cut that big would certainly ease the pain of having to show your passport to visit Florida.
Are the red states quite sure they want to roll back big government?
With only a few exceptions, such as Nevada and Colorado, they are all on federal support.
For that matter, are New Englanders being quite so smart in trying to prevent federal budget cuts? Even super-liberals might start to see the advantage of, say, state spending instead.
New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connectictut are among the biggest net contributors, per person, to the federal government. The costs of the Big Dig notwithstanding.
Maybe this doesn't matter. But it's something to bear in mind - especially if your brother-in-law from Tallahassee tries to give you grief over Thanksgiving dinner