In the wake of the 2012 presidential election, some political commentators have written political obituaries of the "red" or conservative-leaning states, envisioning a brave new world dominated by fashionably blue bastions in the Northeast or California. But political fortunes are notoriously fickle, while economic trends tend to be more enduring.
These trends point to a U.S. economic future dominated by four growth corridors that are generally less dense, more affordable, and markedly more conservative and pro-business: the Great Plains, the Intermountain West, the Third Coast (spanning the Gulf states from Texas to Florida), and the Southeastern industrial belt...I'm so old I remember when all those Californians who were escaping from high taxes to Southwestern states like Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado were going to become Republicans, but hey look what happened. When places get more developed they tend to get more liberal. (Kotkin's got a better bet in those areas where growth will come from gas and fracking jobs. The ensuing poisoned air and water ought to keep Louisiana from going Democratic for generations.)
I don't know how long they can keep telling themselves stories like this before they try to win votes by changing their policies instead of trying to grow new Republicans in shale oil.
UPDATE. vista, in comments: "If this is the case then our future is the growth of the undereducated, working low wage jobs with zero benefits, living in polluted areas with crumbling infrastructure." I believe that's the plan.
I'm so old I remember when all those Californians who were escaping from high taxes to Southwestern states like Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado were going to become Republicans, but hey look what happened
ReplyDeleteWhat happened was they stayed Democratic but pushed the Democratic Party rightward.
Joel Kotkin used to be a contributor to the LA Times, but he hasn't written anything for them for 3+ years, that should tell you something.
ReplyDelete"These trends point to a U.S. economic future dominated by four growth corridors that are generally less dense, more affordable, and markedly more conservative and pro-business"
ReplyDeleteIf this is the case then our future is the growth of the undereducated, working low wage jobs with zero benefits, living in polluted areas with crumbling infrastructure.
I don't know how long they can keep telling themselves stories like this before they try to win votes by changing their policies instead of trying to grow new Republicans in shale oil.
ReplyDeleteBullshit stories are the only form of the arts they like, and as long as they remain assholes, they're welcome to drown in 'em. (As has been observed before, if they were willing to change – and well, if they weren't assholes, too – they wouldn't be conservatives.)
the Third Coast (spanning the Gulf states from Texas to Florida)
ReplyDeleteKotkin can't just call that the Gulf Coast, of course, because that's a thing normal people say and therefore verboten in a Tea Party Uber Alles piece.
It's true! Here in Northern California, the heads of all the big F500 companies (Apple, Intel, Google, Facebook, Chevron, Oracle, etc.) are all terrified of the upcoming brain drain of our best and brightest engineering talent to Intermountain West (the throbbing, hypermodern metropoli of Colorado Springs and Cody) and Third Coast centers of cutting-edge research like Biloxi.
ReplyDeleteAs the sun sets in Cupertino, it rises in...Pascagoula?
Was he the guy who used to get the vapors about women's Halloween costumes and failure to marry any old guy who came along?
ReplyDeleteStates ranked by GDP per capita, 2010: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP
ReplyDeleteSpoiler alert: The 'fashionably blue' states remain the wealthiest, while the Third Mountain Intergulf or whatever, not so much. 13 of the top 15 states voted for Obama, while 13 of the bottom 17 went for Romney and/or McCain. Notable finishes: Texas about ten spots back of Illinois, North Carolina behind Pennsylvania, and gonzo-gangbuster growth states like Georgia, Arizona, and Florida all behind little old Ohio, whose economic obituary has been written about every year since 1965, but who for whatever reason refuses to turn into a third-world country.
This shouldn't be that hard. When your growth, such as it is, is based on cheap-ass, middle-of-nowhere real-estate bought by people who can't afford New York or LA anymore, minimum-wage, right-to-get-fired jobs whose workers essentially feed their paychecks into their gas tanks (because trains and buses are communist, obviously), and state governments that in many cases actively pursue a policy of identifying an underclass and publicly shaming them as useless and unworthy, it's not a symbol of real wealth or real prosperity. It's an illusion. But Kotkin and the rest are paid to shill for anti-labor policy, so they'll keep writing that NY, CA, and IL are doomed, doomed, doomed, and those states and others will continue topping GDP lists (and education, and health, and every other damn thing) while the most loyal-trooper red states always languish at the bottom. Snore.
I'm surprised he said "Great Plains" instead of "Patriotic Interior" or some fucking thing.
ReplyDeleteNope, his specialty is taking data about American cities and turning in into ideological stew.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could upvote this more than once.
ReplyDeleteI don't think throbbing is legal in Colorado Springs.
ReplyDeleteTwo more things. For one, some places like Arizona, Florida, the gulf coast, etc. at growing because people are retiring there. A lot of them because of the nice weather and such, but a lot because whatever pensions and savings they have aren't enough to keep living in Philly or New York, so they're going to the places with lower real estate costs. Christ, this isn't a new thing, and it's certainly not a sign of job creating genius.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I'm from DuPage County, Illinois, which is one of the richest counties in the country and which went from going 75-25 for Reagan in '84 to voting Obama 2 years in a row. It's similar in a lot of rich suburban areas, once impenetrably Republican, now split pretty much down the middle. Part of it is demographic shifts, yes, but part of it is that, as they've decided over the last 40 years to cast off any pretense of intelligence and aim straight for the pleasure centers of the most willfully ignorant gomers in the country, the wealthier, more educated people in the suburbs had less and less in common with the GOP. A lot of them started leaning Democratic not because they suddenly became lefties, because they didn't see themselves in a party that held up Sarah Palin and Todd Akin as heroes. So you've got a situation where as soon as anyone gets a high-paying job or a good education, they become less likely to vote Republican. And the reason suburban areas are less Republican than they were is because a lot of those sorts of people live there. So you've got a situation where the Republicans have a lock on the rural areas, which are declining in population, and an ever-shakier stalemate in the suburbs. They've completely lost the big cities. I don't see how any Republican could look at that and see a good future, so the answer of course is that they look elsewhere, and spin out crap like this.
"Business-friendly" may be a term of art, meaning "offering corporate welfare and legislative veto", rather than the alternative meaning of "good infrastructure and educated workforce".
ReplyDeleteMaking all you describe even worse, most of those "corridors" of which Kotkin rhapsodizes are not corridors, but tunnels with oncoming trains. The Repugs have been fighting tooth and nail (well, no, not tooth and nail, but more obstinately immobile) for federal and local spending cuts. Most of the states Kotkin thinks are the next economic Valhallas have lopsided negative tax balances--they get a helluva lot more than they send to Washington, and they're still in crappy shape on all the major indices--education, infrastructure, quality of life. They don't magically get better when that funding gets cut. They get worse. Most are also right-to-work states, which means there's no way for 90+ percent of the population to accrue wealth and minimize debt.
ReplyDeleteThese may be great places for predatory capitalism to take root, but that's pretty much the opposite of turning them into economic engines and good places to live.
before they try to win votes by changing their policies instead of...
ReplyDeleteOh, they've been changing their policies, at least when it comes to democracy and education. Realizing the unlikelihood of winning a majority of informed voters with their policies, they've evolved their policies on education, voting rights , access, and counting votes to create a society in which a future Republican majority will be too poorly educated to understand the consequences of their policy, those who may oppose them will find voting difficult to impossible, and gerrymandered congressional districts will decide presidential elections. Meanwhile, they're making a concerted effort to turn the military into a right wing Christian organization and arming the future brown shirts, err, gun enthusiasts, with ever more powerful weapons, just in case that peacefully deterring democracy thing doesn't work out.
Yeah, the Wiki site says that DC leads the country in GDP with $174K/per capita. Ha ha ha. Are you even more stupid than you sound?
ReplyDeleteIf you have the grasp of economics that a four-year-old does (every cookie you have is a cookie I don't) then the immiseration of others is a natural outcome: if you want to get your hands on a big pile of money, you first have to ensure that somewhere there is a big pile of money. Learning to bake the damn cookies is too much like real work, or something.
ReplyDeleteYou haven't visited Georgetown, have you?
ReplyDeleteI don't know how long they can keep telling themselves stories like this before they try to win votes by changing their policies instead of trying to grow new Republicans in shale oil.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is they have only one policy to begin with.
We even voted out a pretty damn moderate Republican Rep. in Biggert last fall.
ReplyDeleteNot sure what that's supposed to mean? People make a lot of money off of government, sure, but that's certainly a bipartisan sport. Doesn't say anything about the rest of the country and the relative performance between blue and red states.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me, the question that doesn't get enough attention is why the most fucked up states continually double down on failed leadership. I thought Howard Dean's 50 state strategy was the way to go. Ignoring the reddest states is an ongoing disaster. Engaging them and even bringing the spread down from 70-30 to 55-45 would make a huge difference in how the country is governed. Obama's Texas initiative strikes me as a great thing. Wonder why it's not universal? Suspect elitism has a lot to do with it. My personal experience in red states makes me suspect that if people were respectfully engaged and those who feel they have no power were given a sense of empowerment, that most would be competitive, and at least several more blue.
The "Gulf Coast" brand is being retired because of that regrettable incident with the otherwise noble, job-creating energy producer some years back. The new Third Coast welcomes you and invites you to light the oil slicks on fire to create a festive atmosphere!
ReplyDeleteI don't know how long they can keep telling themselves stories like this
ReplyDeletebefore they try to win votes by changing their policies instead of
trying to grow new Republicans in shale oil.
It's the conservative option. Do nothing and pray it gets better.
Bah! You're not in Northern California, you're at the top of the Central Valley. As for true Northern Californian, not like those fake (Judean People's Front Californians) , I agree with everything you wrote, middle-earther
ReplyDeleteHumboldtBlue
"the undereducated, working low wage jobs with zero benefits, living in polluted areas with crumbling infrastructure"
ReplyDeleteIf I may quote Monty Python, "They wouldn't have had much fun in Stalingrad!" Yet that's what they're aiming for.
Historically, these regions were little more than resource colonies or low-wage labor sites for richer, more technically advanced areas. By promoting policies that encourage enterprise and spark economic growth, they're catching up.
ReplyDeleteHuh. I seem to recall the policies that kept places like that as "resource colonies or low-wage labor sites" (which is geographer for "shitholes") being sold as ones that "encourage enterprise and spark economic growth."
Well, "Third Coast" is already a thing normal people say... but it means the Great Lakes states, or at least that's the only usage I've ever heard.
ReplyDelete"Resource colony or low-wage labor site for richer, more technically advanced areas" does sound better than "slave state".
ReplyDeleteThe billionaires will always have fun, even if their fun consists of sneering at Teh Poors. And the millionaires will be hoping to become billionaires. What a blast!
ReplyDeleteBut that would be disaster for the MOTUs. They don't want an engaged populace, they want an enraged populace. And the MOTUs own both parties.
ReplyDelete