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Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the government of the people serves the people. More precisely how taxes and math work.

The GAO and similar offices should do a better job of preparing reports on where every collected tax dollar is being spent; both in the physical sense as well as in the sourced income sense. A citizen should be able to approach this from either the government side (pick a city or unincorporated area) or enter their zipcode and approximate income and see where the money is flowing from and to. Of particular interest would be trying to categorize areas with positive or negative contributions to a person's or region's productivity. Investments in infrastructure, such as education or for transport (of various things), should also be given special categorization as they are some combination of a shared burden and long term payoff.

Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive. My personal believe is presently, for lack of data that I can digest, that the far right is probably focused around emotions.

# Possibly religious, in that some interpretation of ancient values systems drives them to desire a simple world in which those are imposed upon others?

# Possibly anarchist, in the sense of some romantic fantasy of self reliance (minimal government) and true grit; while forgetting or being ignorant of how society and government provide benefits (E.G. civil services such as fire, medical, and security aid).

# Possibly just believing the lies of people that say things they want to hear.

Or maybe the driving force is something different entirely that I haven't realized because it's just so obvious to someone that believes in it that it doesn't get said.

Offhand I don't think it's likely to be religiously based, and if it's charismatic attraction based I'm not sure what siren song is luring the voters.

I wonder if the interactive report on government spending and tax effectiveness might help find a common ground, or at least salient points to discuss for those who don't understand the benefits of buying in bulk and enriching the commons.

View on HN

I would love to see the data, but from the data I have seen, the data conflict with the popular (populist) narrative. A lot of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves. In reality, the money almost always flows in the other direction; taxpayers in cities are subsidizing the rural-dwellers. This has nothing to do with work ethic, it's just a hard fact that a lot of costs scale with square miles instead of with people (roads, emergency services), and that lower cost of living in the country leads to lower incomes which lead to lower tax revenue.

Part of this has to do with how we've been able to drive down agricultural costs by means of automation over the last century which has driven a move away from family farms to larger corporate farms. In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20 percent.[1]

Sure the coasts are creating more economic output by far, but people need to eat food. Agriculture is always going to be important, but lot less people are involved in it than ever before. This is part of what's led to the urban/rural divide where the rural folks feel left out - there just aren't as many of them as populations have migrated to cities. This is why people in rural areas feel increasingly left out. It's mostly due to economic forces that are out of their control.

[1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-americ...

I definitely don't think we should ignore or minimize the contributions of rural Americans. I do think we need to do a better job of making the costs associated with rural life more explicit. This is a big deal in California, where people have pushed further and further into the wilderness, putting themselves at huge risk for wildfires while also increasing the number of miles of power lines that need to be built and maintained; these very power lines are one of the main causes of wildfires.

New power lines are almost never the cause of wildfires. Old, poorly-maintained lines are. For example, the Camp fire that killed 86 people was caused by a hundred year old line that hadn't been serviced in decades. For miles of line around the origin site of the fire the C-hooks looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/r42KsHR.jpg

Total installed powerline length vs population is a problem.

Whether they're new / old or well / poorly serviced is just a difference of a few decades.

If there isn't money to service old lines now, then there won't be money to service formerly-new lines in 30 years.

It's not a question of insufficient funds. They spent five billion dollars on shareholder dividends while corporate documents show they were completely aware the equipment was breaking down and posed a wildfire risk, and they broke multiple state regulations to do so.

Some background to add to the above: https://twitter.com/tubetimeus/status/1306366930899460097 and https://www.buttecounty.net/Portals/30/CFReport/PGE-THE-CAMP...

The Camp fire report was riveting after-work reading. The financial engineering to avoid opex and instead magnify capex as a way to bilk the ratepayer is ingenious and evil. Further, their operating procedures and culture seem carefully engineered as a liability dodge. Read the report, it's amazing.

You have to be careful with the 80/20 US Census split numbers between urban/rural. Between myself and a couple neighbors, we're on 100 acres next to even more conservation land. One neighbor has an apple orchard. Another a Christmas tree farm. The town I'm in is considered urban because we're near a major city and adjacent to another small city.

But you are urban. You are near a major city, and adjacent another small one like you said. Urban versus rural is not a measure of closeness to nature, it's a measure of closeness to other humans.

It depends on your definitions. A lot of people would object to defining urban as encompassing having to drive anywhere except to connect to immediate neighbors. I can basically go to my two immediate neighbors. Otherwise I have to get in a car. Is that urban?

Sounds like a suburb. The real inefficient structures.

In what suburb do you have only two neighbors within walking distance?

Does America have a concept of walking distance?

It's a country road. There are no sidewalks. So no. It's not something you walk along. (And hardly unique to the US.) The ESRI categorization is ex-urban. The basic point is that the census bureau categorizes areas as urban unless they're really rural, as in small and pretty far from an urban center.

Rural is defined in USA here: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...

So that basically says that essentially no one in the state of MA is rural and that almost no one in the state of CA is rural. Which probably doesn't correspond to how average people think about rural vs. urban. So the fact that I can look off my back deck and see nothing but trees is a reasonable urban environment.

> and that almost no one in the state of CA is rural

Kinda crazy to see the entire I-5 length between San Francisco and Los Angeles classified as "metro". Perhaps the metric they're using doesn't work so well when counties (which is what they classify) are so large, and they primarily care that some city of over 50k people exists in it "somewhere". Some of those counties appear to be as large as or larger than some of the smaller states in the Northeast.

I'm sure there are reasons for the current classification. But there are certainly differences between I live on a hundred acres but I have decent shopping and culture relatively accessible and the nearest Walmart is 100 miles away.

As you suggest, a lot of what is classified as urban is not urban especially by the standards of someone who barely considers the South Bay as urban.

Huge parts of the California desert are also classified as urban as the counties are so large, some of those places are extremely remote. Even the western central valley, other than i5 cutting through it is remote and sparsely inhabited.

And, by the way, if you're going to go with binary definitions, it's perfectly reasonable to say that within 30 minutes of a Walmart and within a couple of hours of a significant city is a reasonable benchmark versus truly back of beyond rural. Just just don't expect that to correspond to an urban environment as many people understand that to mean.

Certainly I can normally go into town for an evening of theater but most people would consider my house to be in an urban setting.

I don't think your definition of rural matches with people who live in rural areas. Maybe that's why conversations around Urban vs Rural never make sense.

Statistically, most "towns" are considered urban, regardless of where they are located.

This has also happened to manufacturing and coal mining to a certain extent. But, unlike agriculture, the demand for certain resources like coal is significantly less than it used to be, but people in the affected areas haven't been able to find work in other fields.

Because they're not willing to move.

It takes money to move, and it's unlikely they have the financial resources to handle living in an area with a significantly higher cost of living, unless the job pays very well. Given the fact that public school graduation rates are relatively low where they live, it's unlikely they would be able to secure one of those high paying jobs if they don't have at least a high school diploma or GED.

But only a slim slice of rural living is on farms, or are you talking about immigrant Latinos who are left out of the political picture?

The supermajority of people working American farms and meat shops are Latino immigrants.

Farms have gotten bigger, but family farms still dominate.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-structure-...

I guess you can argue that a large closely held company isn't a family farm, but it isn't what "corporate" is meant to conjure up either.

The majority of production comes from a small minority of farms with > $1MM ARR. Most are still family owned, but I would argue they are “what corporate is meant to conjure up” in the sense of the scale and methods driving the farming operation (just not the legal structure and governance.)

That’s why the overall number of farms and farmers has gone down - the little guy can’t make it work economically.

But they are the little guys, they just swallowed a few neighbors.

People complaining about corporate farming are talking about outside money coming in and taking the land.

Those people in the middle of the country believe that if they all quit their jobs and demanded a government-given wage, that the country would starve to death.

If all of the people at facebook, google, and twitter quit their jobs, however, all that would really happen would be that the country would get a bit more peaceful.

You're talking about how much is taken in taxes. These people are talking about how much is given in life.

Sounds like someone's been watching a bit too much Fox Propaganda.

Farms are already subsidized by the government. Imports are already subject to tariffs precisely to protect farmers. Who do you think pays for those subsidies, and who pays for the tariffs? Yeah, the "coastal elites" that you've been trained to hate.

In farmers stopped benefiting from the largess of the coast, _they_ would starve to death, and everyone else would have cheaper food.

Just FYI if they starve to death there's no one to plant or harvest the food.

Also, if your argument is that the subsidies are unnecessary that would indicate that farming is profitable and they would in fact not starve to death. The point you're trying to make kinda collapsed on itself bud.

By “they” are you talking about the enormous masses of uneducated immigrant workers, frequently derided as illegals, who work in the dirt on the farms and meat production lines of the US? Those that constitute the supermajority of agricultural labor, and who see almost none of the fruits of their labor?

Or are we talking about those who Own things?

Are you arguing that indentured servitude is a good thing? It sounds like you're siding with the employers here.

> Imports are already subject to tariffs precisely to protect farmers.

I think you got these backwards. Subsidies are provided because other countries imposes tariffs on US farm products.

Because thats the divide? Silicon Valley vs family farms. Give me a break...

To take this view you've shared charitably, what would "Those people in the middle of the country" who keep up from starving want in order to be satisfied with ... life? America? whatever bothers them about the current arrangement?

To be clear: these aren't my views. I live on the Coast, and probably work at the same company some of you guys work at. I just also happen to have close friends who live outside of the bubble we all inhabit.

They think that they want to be left alone. They don't want what they perceive as coastal values forced upon their kids in school.

What values would those be?

Classics liberal here, recently moved out of west coast city to west coast rural area in large part due to critical race theory and fairly radical trans activism. Couldn’t stomache the current school curriculum around both topics.

Is this suggesting we could actually live without Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Many of us did that for many years of our lives. At the time, I never anticipated with the internet and eventually the web is that people who had never experienced life without it could so easily be caused to lose sight of what is possible, in favor of the mess we have today. The biggest impediment I see to positive change is that younger generations are being indoctrinated into a world where "tech" companies, intermediaries supported by advertising, are perceived as an essential part of using the internet. This is of course patently false. But these companies are ultimately surveilling and controlling the dialogue. After all, internet subscribers use these "tech" company intermediaries to communicate.

Before advertising took over the internet, the inter-network's user base was relatively small. Folks who used the internet recreationally during that time were likely to be technically minded people who enjoyed computers, the type of people many of which who are working with advertising supported "tech" companies today. Few of them are going to portray an advertising-free internet as a viable option. Their livelihoods today depend on advertising. Supporting Big Tech is their "work".

Anyway, it is good to see at least one commenter can contemplate a better course for the future.

It is possible to communicate and share over the internet without the use of Big Tech. However, as long as advertising-supprted "tech" companies sit between users, operating as intermediaries, that truth will keep getting buried deeper with every new generation.

Are you talking about immigrant Latinos, who constitute the supermajority of the farm and meat production labor you're talking about? Yes, I can totally see how they feel left out of the American political process; sometimes they are even called "illegals"!

And the families who own farms capture the lion's share of the fruits of labor!

You should make friends with some of those immigrant Latinos and ask them which is more important: a stable, reliable food supply, or faster file retrieval for twitter videos.

Easy choice. I'd pick food, lumber, minerals, manufacturing and energy every time over iFart apps, collateralized debt instruments, oxycontin and Disney movies.

And the idea that us smart people should just outsource all that physical labor stuff to 3rd-world mouth breathers may work for the moment, but just wait until there is a crisis or war.

If me and my coworkers stopped working, significant parts of the countries education system and essential services would stop working. I make 16 dollars an hour.

The need for many government programs (money spent on enforcing hollywood copyright) and the tax rules that create corporate wealth but cost other areas must be considered. The midwest could do away with many expensive budget items but are forced to pay a share.

The wealth of the nation could flip if heavy import duties were imposed forcing a manufacturing back inhouse.

Things are the way they are because the powerful like it.

> The wealth of the nation could flip if heavy import duties were imposed forcing a manufacturing back inhouse.

You mean the wealth of the nation would decrease?

Any quality would decrease, and some people value that, so in that argument the wealth of the nation would increase.

Most all the income and productivity gains from globalization and go to the wealthy, so if they lost billions of dollars, it is true that the nation would be less “”wealthy””…

> Most all the income and productivity gains from globalization and go to the wealthy

Income gains, perhaps. Productivity gains no. People buy foreign goods because they tend to be significantly cheaper. Capital in the US tends to be reinvested, so we would stagnate in innovation.

> Most all the income and productivity gains from globalization and go to the wealthy, so if they lost billions of dollars, it is true that the nation would be less “”wealthy””…

That's a popular trope, but not really supported by any evidence. Take, for example, sanctuary cities...which can be seen as a form of illicit globalization. The popular trope suggests that undereducated and low income native American citizens would lose by attracting large quantities of low cost labor. But the exact opposite is true: native blue collar employment and wealth increases, welfare dependence and poverty decreases.

Perhaps the purveyors of the popular narrative should read up on David Ricardo. It's been 200 years since he died, and people still haven't caught on that more trade is a universal good...something economists have nearly universally accepted for literal centuries now.

> The need for many government programs (money spent on enforcing hollywood copyright)

Okay, I'll bite: what government programs would you categorize as "money spent on enforcing Hollywood copyright"?

I think it's worth considering whether or not rural vs urban is the best way to partition the argument. Cities tend to be very office/payroll dense, and rural areas more home dense. Some of the people who work in the city, and generate some of that revenue, may live in a rural area and consume services there.

As far as cost scaling, I kind of disagree. That calculation doesn't work well in the US, where a large portion of the people who work in the city commute. I come from a rural area and live in the bay area now, and I can say without a doubt I spend much more time on the road here. Same with emergency services, they were waaaayyyy better in my (very small and poor) hometown in terms of response times (or responding at all), and I can't see how that would cost more than running the same services here.

>Same with emergency services, they were waaaayyyy better in my (very small and poor) hometown in terms of response times (or responding at all), and I can't see how that would cost more than running the same services here.

It matters on a per capita basis. What's the ratio of emergency service workers and their salaries to residents in your small and poort hometown compared to the bay area?

Also infrastructure (roads, running water, electricity) are much more expensive on a per capita basis than less dense areas

I'll agree with the latter point, but I think having less per-capita emergency services is a bug as opposed to a feature. I'd be willing to bet it's a matter of the land/buildings/employees necessary to run such services are far more expensive in areas where land/labor/everything is more expensive.

There are less absolute services available in rural areas and less services per capita and that lower level of services still costs more per capita to maintain, because for that one ambulance to serve ten people it had to travel 200 miles and took ten hours instead of having ten ambulances serve four people each in two hours.

If you look at only the most rural areas sure, but that isn't where most people outside of cities live.

The whole "who's subsidizing who" is a bullshit talking point for both sides.

The net inflows/outflows from any given state aren't that big on a per capita basis. They're small enough that anyone who either wants to not have to be told what to do by big city liberals or doesn't want to be held back by rural conservatives that would consider it a small price to pay for freedom.

I think the reason they think it's subsidizing the rich enclaves is because they believe the rich enclaves aren't really working - they're just generating revenue from information advantage. We're just building systems of control and making money from it. Compare that to them cleaning out a grain cart or chopping up a 300 pound pig. What is work? And why did I make nearly $300 today vs them who will make $300 for that pig that they had to raise for 6 months?

> Compare that to them cleaning out a grain cart or chopping up a 300 pound pig.

Here is employment data on meat industry workers:

https://www.epi.org/blog/meat-and-poultry-worker-demographic...

Here is ag farming:

http://www.ncfh.org/facts-about-agricultural-workers.html

The people you are holding up as exemplars are not the people who hold the views you're discussing.

> And why did I make nearly $300 today vs them who will make $300 for that pig that they had to raise for 6 months?

Effort has little to do with value. Utility also has little to do with value. See the diamond/water paradox for that second part.

There are certainly abuses in our society, rent seeking and outright fraud exist. But this childish rejection of capitalism that’s become trendy lately is tiresome. Capitalism is a technology that lifted billions out of poverty. Brilliant, earnest people (as well as some very evil people) tried alternatives in the last century and they failed horribly. No one has proposed plausible alternatives.

By all means we ought to couple capitalism in the private sector with a robust public sector, but to be against capitalism at this point is to be against human flourishing.

> become trendy lately

It’s not a new phenomenon, or unique to America or the west.

You can dozens of passages of the bible critical of the merchants and money makers, and many of them are arguments still echoed today.

> this childish rejection

Insults don't get anyone far.

Are you sure? Isn’t that the just world fallacy?

Rent extraction in the information landscape?

You seem correct on that at least.

Often forgotten about "subsidization" of one group to another - which area is more likely to have higher participation in the military and armed forces, and deaths in foreign conflict zones?

Judging by the racial makeup of the military, probably inner city neighborhoods have a disproportionate amount of military participation.

The military doesn’t track deaths in combat zones by race. They do track participation: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military

Per those numbers whites/blacks/Hispanics are more represented in the military than similar civilian occupations.

There is a higher percentage of Hispanic and black women in the military that might lower combat death numbers but there are a lot less high level black & Hispanic high level officers to make up for that.

It’s a long way of saying there isn’t good data on this but the US military is an extremely diverse group especially at the enlisted level.

The diversity of the military respective to the civilian population is not uniform (no pun intended). There are significant racial differences between services, and branches within services (e.g. infantry versus a combat support branch like quartermaster). It's very difficult to find accurate public data on this subject, but "the military is extremely diverse" is not as clear cut a statement as many seem to think it is.

Sure. The document I listed shows a pretty outsized portion of the marines & Air Force are white.

But the fact remains the military is more diverse than the civilian work force. Which given no other data implies we can rule out arguments that military service is a particularly interesting form of sacrifice for the USA in racial dimensions.

I drove through a few of the counties (eg. baker) mentioned in the article to visit a dog breeder, and the breeder had (nearly) her own highway exit. Complete with 2 overpasses. Must cost millions to build and maintain.

Her house was the only one visible for as far as you could see from that exit. All i could think about was how much better her life was for that exit and how all her total tax income forever could never ever come close to covering the costs society bore to build that exit.

I have always lived in very liberal, expensive, coastal cities and have always heard talking points about waste on welfare to cover poor inner-city americans (typically by rural/suburban conservatives), and all i could think was how backwards this was, and how many families could be fed by the cost of this one exit ramp.

Does this mean that society shouldn't build that ramp? I don't know because rural farmland obviously needs to access the rest of society (to ship food), and everyone sorta deserves to access the road system

How many families are you going to feed with that extra million you saved now that the numerous farms you couldn’t see from the highway overpass can no longer ship food?

“I have always lived in very liberal, expensive, coastal cities” — please, please venture out of your safe bubble more, for the sake of all of us. Go tour a real farm, not the local micro-organic commune one nearby. See how they work.

Obviously we still need to be able to ship food, i said that.

I don't live in those cities by choice (well, i chose jobs there... lots of tech in BOS/SF/etc).

There's a false dichotomy, because everyone in the US is subsidising a super-caste of 0.1%ers.

They're the ones who pay PR companies, think tanks, and other influencers to create the illusion of consensus narratives by generating these talking points and making sure they're repeated by various apparently independent sources.

It makes it almost impossible to argue the merits of public subsidy funding on its own terms because the truth about costs and benefits is aggressively obscured.

> and the breeder had (nearly) her own highway exit

This is the key assumption on which your statements are based on. How do you know the state built it for her, rather than, she built her house next to the highway exit? I find it hard to believe that the state would build a highway exit specifically for a few normal individuals.

Obviously it is the other way around! She is just likely one of the only people who uses it since there is few others around

I wish i could edit still.

My point was not to somehow cast this woman in a bad light, or claim that this exit shouldn't exist.

My point was...

(in my bubble) I hear the argument from conservatives that social welfare (for inner-city people getting checks) is bad because it takes away from everyone else, and wastes money.

I just wanted to point out that there is a lot more money subsidizing the livelihood a lot more people than just the poor city people getting some sort of social welfare check.

This appears to be a variation of the "who would build the roads" argument.

> A lot of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves. In reality, the money almost always flows in the other direction; taxpayers in cities are subsidizing the rural-dwellers. This has nothing to do with work ethic, it's just a hard fact that a lot of costs scale with square miles instead of with people (roads, emergency services), and that lower cost of living in the country leads to lower incomes which lead to lower tax revenue.

You've made up this narrative of what 'the other side' thinks.

I'll recast it for you.

* start narrative *

A lot of people in america seem to believe that their wages have stagnated while witnessing the wages of those living on the coast, who often disagree politically with them, rise stratospherically. To them it seems like the coastal elites do nothing, while they are quite literally breaking their backs to earn a paltry wage, that they then owe to the very coastal elites they feel are doing nothing.

It seems like they take the money, pay it in taxes, subsidize us and tell us we should grovel to them for it, while simultaneously opposing policies we feel would reduce the dependence. For example, they tell us we can't water our farms because of 'global warming', and instead should rely on their benevolence. But we don't want that benevolence.

* end narrative *

When you put it that way, you realize the 'hardworking real Americans' actually have a lot in common with far-left labor activists. And you'd be right. It would behoove everyone to have more compassion and charity towards their countrymen.

Anyway, there is a drastic shift in the Republican party that has gone completely unnoticed. Trump, everything from his personality to his tactics are more reminiscent of the pre-neo-liberal democrat party establishment than anything else. There is a real warming up of the republican base to social programs, government spending, and unions, so long as those institutions prioritize what they believe to be important issues. This is a far cry from the anti-spending, anti-union GOP of old.

How does this viewpoint square up with the partisan divide over $15 minimum wage?

This one's not really about partisanship but rather about cost of living and purchasing power. $15/hr would buy you a lot more in a red state, where things are cheaper, than a blue state where things are more expensive. Honestly, a federally-mandated minimum wage does a disservice to the poorer areas of the country. Why would a company (and thus a tax payer) move to a place that's farther out, has fewer services, etc if they have to pay the same for labor. It's no wonder that these places end up being resource-extraction driven -- the labor pool, which naturally would be cheaper, has been given a price floor.

$15/hr min wage makes sense in Cali and other high cost states. It should be up to the states, and really ought to be set at the local level.

I don't see much difference between the "new Trumpian GOP" and "old GOP" in terms of concrete policy. Both are staunchly anti-immigration, both reject social programs aimed at helping those in poverty (including healthcare, such as the Affordable Care Act), both want to increase privatization of government services (such as education and the post office), both oppose unions (arguably one of the best ways to ensure a consistent increase in wages). And most importantly, both the new and old GOP define themselves mostly by what they aren't: all those smart-talkin', book-larnin' liberals on the coast.

Hot top: it isn't the coastal liberals who are causing stagnating wages. It's the anti-union, labor-exploiting wealthy who are the stars of the GOP.

> Both are staunchly anti-immigration

Anti-immigration is a new GOP sentiment. Traditional small-government libertarianism/conservatism is pro-immigration. Look at Bush and Reagan. Anti-immigration is more in line with the labor movements, like the one run by Cesar Chavez.

> both reject social programs aimed at helping those in poverty (including healthcare, such as the Affordable Care Act

Not true at all. Many GOP members I know would be pro-gov't healthcare if we had our borders under control. The main difference I see between the dems and GOP in this regard is nationalism.

> both oppose unions

Not really. Trump's policies are incredibly popular among union members even if not popular with union leadership. Those two groups have different interests.

> It's the anti-union, labor-exploiting wealthy who are the stars of the GOP.

Who no one in the GOP likes anymore. Honestly, go read patriots.win or something, they'll tell you exactly what they think of the wealthy GOP.

> A lot of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves.

By far the most heavily subsidized, most expensive, poorest and least educated people in the United States are the poor living in urban zones. It's not even remotely a close comparison in terms of numbers.

You can see it in the crime statistics, you can see it in the drop-out rates, you can see it in the homelessness rates. And so on.

You can also see it in the cost of incarcerating violent criminals (not drug offenders, which are a shrinking, smaller share of the incarcerated population), which urban zones produce radically more of to go with the extreme poverty found in US cities. The urban zones - which are hyper dangerous in the US - produce the overwhelming share of all murder in the country. Who pays for the very expensive policing necessary to keep terrorist groups from burning Portland to the ground? That isn't going on in rural Oregon. Who pays for the very expensive policing to try to control the extreme murder rates in Baltimore or Chicago? That isn't going on in rural Maryland or Illinois; the per capita murder rates in Baltimore are 50x to 100x higher than in rural Maryland. These things are all subsidized by the urban high income brackets, and it's a huge cost.

And it's also true that the urban zones have far higher incomes, so they pay higher taxes and push more money into the welfare system accordingly. They subsidize both their local urban poor and the rural poor outside the cities.

The bottom 10% in Los Angeles represent a de facto third world standard of living and it's a very large population. Those shocking, unbelievable homeless camps in Los Angeles look like something out of a sci-fi dystopian movie. And that's just a very small fraction, a small visual representation, of the extreme poverty in cities like Los Angeles or Chicago.

Rural areas are pretty similar.

Just fewer people. Trailer parks instead of projects. Same crime, same misery.

The stuff that shocks the soul is a small fraction of the struggle and misery.

[citation required]

Even the worst parts of LA are miles ahead of the poor rural suburbs. There is just more visibility in LA due to the concentration of people.

In reality, the facts don't back up anything you said. :/

> violent criminals [...] which urban zones produce radically more of

That's just not true. A quick google pulls up this visualization from 2017: https://www.santarosa-lawyer.com/united-states-crime-map-201...

And you'll note that... there's basically no correlation with urbanity at all. Highly urban states like CT are very peaceful, but so is Idaho (but not Montana, which is pretty bad). Two of the worst states are NM and Alaska, which have near zero urban population!

There may be some rules to glean from the data, but the one you picked is not it.

Your analysis lumps all violence equally, and suffers greatly from the variance inherent in reporting of “light” violent the crime.

Homicides are much better to look at. There is very little difference between Alaska and New Orleans in their reporting of homicides. And when you judge rural vs urban by homicide rate, urban is much larger. Of the top 10 counties with the highest homicide rate, 4 are major metropolitan areas. This is particularly shocking because small sample sizes of small counties should make it so every single member of the top 10 is rural, but it’s not.

https://www.police1.com/ambush/articles/10-us-counties-with-...

> Of the top 10 counties with the highest homicide rate, 4 are major metropolitan areas.

Easiest way to tell someone is lying with statistics is when they try to make a point by counting outliers at the edge of the distribution.

I don't see how what you're saying follows at all. It seems just as likely that broad exurban counties are more economically inclusive while urban counties tend to cluster very-poor high crime areas more densely while leaving the safer adjoining suburbs (very much part of the "urban" population under discussion here) in different buckets.

Are "cities" killing more people per capita or not? Seems like that's a simple matter of adding up some numbers, so your attempt to spin here seems a little suspect. Again, my read is that there is almost no correlation at all.

I hear it’s healthy to ignore data that contradicts your prejudices because you’re “suspicious.” /s

If you want to investigate it more, then that actually would be healthy. But instead you look at some colors on a map delineated by state lines, and think that’s convincing evidence. It’s clear you’re only interested in validating your pre-existing beliefs when you jump with such energy into flimsy data that corroborates your prejudices while dismissing other analyses out of “suspicion” when they contradict you.

This particular movement, to its credit, seems to acknowledge this flow of money. It's about morality and control for them.

I think it’s about something that they aren’t talking about openly.

Oh, they talk a lot about the financial benefits — lower income taxes, looser land regulations — it’s just that the personal costs of a lower minimum wage, increased sales taxes, and less educational funding from the state aren’t going to fall on the people who are driving this.

These days its more a massive accumulation of debt and unfunded liabilities in suburbs and rural areas, but basically yeah

I'm confused at how you go directly from "subsidizing" to money flow. By taking a low-paying job that makes middle-class life possible for you, aren't they foregoing income (and thus isn't this costing them)? Heck, push it to the limit—if a farmer's wages were $0, who's benefiting at the expense of whom here? Who's subsidizing who? If you never see the cash, vs. having it deposited and then withdrawn from your account, does that suddenly change the direction of the subsidy? Does the intrinsic/moral direction of a subsidy necessarily need to match the technical/legal definition?

I'm no expert in this, but as a layman, the question of who's subsidizing who is really only meaningful if you look at it from a human/moral standpoint rather than a purely legal/technical one. Otherwise you're using it to solve math problems, not human problems. And the latter seems like a really tough nut to crack to me. I don't know how to do it personally, so I don't know who's right. But I don't get how people talk about it as if it's some patently obvious thing you can figure out by looking at tax dollars or cash flow in the economy. It seems to me you'd need to assign some intrinsic moral value to all jobs so you can compare them against what they "should" cost or what they're "worth", and that is pretty darn difficult by itself, let alone the subsequent political controversy that would surely follow if such a thing was done.

Here's the point, and I'll lay my cards on the table as being more progressive in the political spectrum. Progressives, by and large, don't actually care that our tax money goes to help a lot of other people. We actually like it, in fact. I do think that I should help subsidize the costs of providing things like postal service and broadband internet to people who live in the middle of nowhere. The paradox is that conservatives and libertarians are the ones who get all worked up about their tax money being spent to help others when, in reality, they are more likely to be net beneficiaries.

Oh, I see. Thanks for clarifying, I see what you mean.

Here is the website for one of the groups pushing for this: https://www.greateridaho.org/

Taxes are just one part of this. They list these other issues of concern:

> 1. American Values: Oregon will continue to violate more and more American values and American freedoms because normal rural Americans are outnumbered in Oregon. Not in Idaho. Addicts will be attracted to Oregon from all over the world by the 2020 drug decriminalization law.

> 2. Law and Order: Oregon refuses to protect citizens from criminals, rioters, wildfire arsonists, illegals, and the homeless, but then infringes your right to defend your family with firearms. Idaho enforces the law.

> 3. Low Tax: Idaho is the state with the 8th smallest tax burden, and Oregon ranks 33rd, according to https://taxfoundation.org/tax-freedom-day-2019 . Combining all taxes together, including sales tax, the average Idahoan pays $1722 less in taxes per year than the average Oregonian. That’s averaging together every adult or child, employed, retired or unemployed. And cost of living is 39% higher in Oregon than in Idaho. Oregon tax rates will continue to go up due to a lack of willingness to control spending.

> 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires.

> 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any other state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural industries to revive and employ us again.

> 6. Representation: The ruling party in the Oregon Legislature doesn’t have a single representative from a rural district or from eastern or southern Oregon, except one Ashland representative. But our reps would be in the ruling party in Idaho, where our concerns and needs would be heard.

> 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires.

If that's true then they'd be better off moving to Idaho, right? Given the vast area involved it's difficult to imagine that in a span of even a decade or more that the forests would be transformed so as to prevent wildfires. Staying where they are would only leave them in harms way for quite some years.

> Oregon will continue to violate more and more American values and American freedoms

Haha, what? If Oregon is doing stuff, it's definitionally an American value and American Freedom, right? Who gets to decide what an "American *" is?

> > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires.

They do realize that Idaho and Oregon have different climates and different precipitation amounts, right? The Western Rockies and Eastern Cascades are different biomes.

> > 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any other state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural industries to revive and employ us again.

Is there any data that backs this up? This feels like a pipe dream to me that's totally unfounded.

> Haha, what? If Oregon is doing stuff, it's definitionally an American value and American Freedom, right? Who gets to decide what an "American *" is?

Have you watched Fox News recently? They're very clear: "American" refers to their (conservative, older, rural) viewers; "anti-American" refers to everyone else. People believe this.

I know. I just... I keep hoping that by pointing out the obvious silliness of the phrase "American Values" that maybe, someone somewhere will read it and be like, "Huh, you know, maybe what I meant to say was, 'My values'...."

One interesting discussion point about American values it’s about whether it should be determined by the number of humans inside of American borders, or if it is just a birthright.

I support using satellite imagery to get a day by day census count to include tourists and everyone inside of America as part of the decision making and voting process to improve infrastructure at least.

Why should non-citizens have a voice in how our country is ran?

> violate more and more American values and American freedoms

By this the folks in eastern Oregon are criticizing Democratic Gov. Brown for her approach to the pandemic: you know, normal things like closing restaurants and churches, requiring masks indoors, etc.

Ok, so say that. Or connect them to "American Values" concretely somehow.

Because right now they are just saying their opponents are "un-American" which means whatever it needs to mean without actually saying anything of substance.

They put it that way on purpose, it's coded language, full of dog whistles. They don't say the quiet part out loud.

It's amazing how some folk deny what the intention is - I guess the terms provide plausible deniability. Sometimes it's "real Americans" or "middle-class Americans", or "people in the heartland" - we all know which demography you're referring to (and everyone else you're excluding).

Also "hard-working folks", "taxpayers", and "patriots"

> Ok, so say that. Or connect them to "American Values" concretely somehow.

The 1st amendment granting freedom to assemble? Free exercise of religion? The supreme court agreed when it struck down New York's and California's bans on religious gatherings, which also affected Oregon. So broadly speaking, these are correct by the highest authority on 'American'.

Perhaps this doesn't come to mind when you hear 'American values', but why would these counties care? You are almost certainly not their intended audience.

1. The first amendment gives "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." That's not the right of people to gather together wherever they want, whenever they want. Note the dependent clause. It's saying the people can join organizations like the CPUSA, People For the American Way, American Family Association, or even movements like BLM or antifa, and the government is not permitted to constrain that.

2. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" means the government can't say which religions are OK and which aren't, or that there's an official religion of the US. It says nothing about people being able to go to church on Sunday or temples on Saturday

> Who gets to decide what an "American *" is?

Their intended audience.

Keep in mind, this is written to appeal to someone who is already likely to agree that Oregon is handling these topics poorly.

I think I'm mostly just expressing frustration that this actually works. That anyone looks at that phrasing and says, "Yes, this makes sense."

Unfortunately logical fallacies are often used in much of political messaging, which far precedes the current climate.

https://propagandaprinciples.wordpress.com/logical-fallacies...

I certainly agree with you there. As the other person mentions though, it didn't appear any time recently and it's not going to go away any time soon. Most people don't think about things logically or critically. See also: ads work.

>American Values ... normal rural Americans are outnumbered in Oregon

What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?

> 3. Low Tax

The counties involved have median household incomes of 30-35K, making their tax burden $600-1100 total, a far cry from the average quoted, which is skewed right strongly by outliers (1%), which tend to be outside of the counties in this idea.

> 5. Thriving Economy ... low unemployment

Economy is a second order effect. How does having a low unemployment affect the number of jobs in the actual areas? Cause and effect are reversed in this claim.

> 6. Representation: ... But our reps would be in the ruling party in Idaho

I think the word is "governing", this is a little confused about the difference.

> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?

There's a very present "last bastion" framing in most of the right-wing media I track. It'll depend on exactly what the foundational beliefs of the community are that drive this framing -- John Birch society derivative folks arrive here via a different path than white supremacist survivalists and them a different path than evangelical fundamentalist Christians -- but it's common enough. It goes hand in hand with the notion that the US has fallen from the ideal set forth by the Founders and that only your in-group really gets it and has a hope of restoring it.

Alex Jones is a good, mainstream-ish example. Dude's a Bircher and has spent decades coaching his audience to believe that Globalists are in league with Satan and intend to destroy humanity, if only they could get the US out of the way. Satan/The Globalists are _this_ close to succeeding. Once they do, Real American Values will disappear from the world, ushering in the post-human era. Jones preaches survivalism (sorta, feeding your neighbors to your daughters will give your daughters prion disease) to his audience and I hope you see how the two strains of thought would fester into a framing like you've called out.

Thanks - as a non-American living there, this is pretty helpful to further my understanding.

I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the values being brought back from a point where they have disappeared.

> I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the values being brought back from a point where they have disappeared.

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Are you asking about examples of people that have been de-radicalized?

To be clearer - given Jones asserts that the reversal of satanists/globalists is good, are there examples of where such a reversal has had positive measurable effects on a society? I'm looking to understand perspectives opposite to my own here (as an atheist, non-American, liberal leaning person).

One common example is that religious cultures have a family culture that can propagates through time by having replacement levels of offspring.

So far, to date, every secular and atheistic culture tends towards inverting the demographic pyramid by having about half the required number of offspring to stabilize their culture/viewpoint through time.

This view assumes that there is any meaning to life, of course.

And the counter example on that is that disproportionate taking of POC adult males from the community has a destabilization effect on that community / family.

> given Jones asserts that the reversal of satanists/globalists is good, are there examples of where such a reversal has had positive measurable effects on a society

Uh, it's not that kind of belief system. The notion that we should order society by measurable things is not necessarily a universal belief, even if it's one I agree with personally. Last bastion apocalyptism like I've described doesn't really do "measurable".

“Evil Geniuses: the unmasking of America” was pretty good at tracking this. Basically politicians are using the framing of the glorified past within “American values” to manufacture dissent and create us/them other-izing between US citizens. The book explains it much more in depth. Get people to stop thinking of their fellow citizens as part of the same group as them in a fundamental way and chaos reigns. Maybe eventually it’s civil war. (It definitely drives that country from thinking of international factors.)

Probably another interesting definition of American values would be the ones held in foreign people. Sort of in the same way there’s who you are and then there’s the person in the minds of everyone who knows you. Except the US is a super power that’s done a lot of steering the world over the last century and that’s instilled some common practices across the world. Like citing CDC guidelines or using the US currency for reserve.

Many American values are fuzzy, hard to make out; how they are applied is only visible if you dig into history. Not the history in textbooks though ... at least until you've innoculated yourself with Howard Zinn's history. Pay particular attention to how those values - say, 'all men are created equal' - apply to minorities.

"What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?"

The US Bill of Rights.

You're being downvoted, but you're correct. Values espoused by the founding documents of the current United States government are also properly called American, even if the majority of americans disagree. There's two possible meanings here that is causing people confusion.

One might argue that technically (akshually?) the Bill of Rights goes against the founding documents of USA, amending them a few years later with values that were not in the original constitution to satisfy anti-federalists criticising the initial design (and its values).

So you're saying that slavery is an American value?

It is, after all, in the Constitution, although its popularity has waned of late.

> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?

America has been here for a long time. It's fair to say that values which are of long standing, still held by a significant fraction of the population, and them disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations, are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria.

Note that the value that people who come to America and join the national experiment become American is one of those values! That's unusual, and needs to be pointed out: values aren't more American because they're held by old American stock, causality flows in the other direction.

Not everything is a pure popularity contest. 51% of people supporting strict gun control (for the sake of argument) doesn't make that position more American, it just means more Americans happen to hold to it. That the Constitution makes altering its own text a matter of supermajority, both in passing and ratification, supports the idea that what it is to be American is not intended to simply shift in the winds on the strength of a bare majority.

That all said, the bottom line is that these five counties feel that their values are better represented by the state government of Idaho than by that of Oregon. Federalism is one of those old American values I was droning on about earlier; I don't see why they shouldn't get the chance to secede from a state which isn't serving their needs, and join one which they think would.

> values which are of long standing, still held by a significant fraction of the population, and them disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations, are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria

So, in an Oregon context, this would mean the values of the Chinook peoples?

Don't be silly, we're not talking about those values.

Not really, no.

For starters, we're talking about Eastern Oregon, so if you wanted to throw a gotcha, you should have gone for the Paiute.

America is a nation, and it took its time getting to Oregon. The Chinook were never particularly numerous, nor influential on the values of that nation. That's just a fact.

The Iroquois League was more influential, the Founding Fathers were very impressed with their system of governance, though how much of that made it into the Constitution is a matter of debate. Painting with a broad brush, centuries of contact with the native peoples of this continent has certainly left its mark. The Western ethos of self-reliance and freedom owes a lot to them.

The Native American people are both their own nations and a part of the American nation. Speaking as one American, I'm inclined to value their contributions, but it seems a bit presumptuous for me to say that Apache or Navajo values are American values.

To continue down the road you've set us upon, the American descendants of slavery went unheard for many years, but starting no later than Frederick Douglass became a key part of shaping the ethos and values of the nation. They insisted that "all men are created equal" meant all men, and put an end to white supremacy, which was certainly an American value and just as surely is no longer such.

> The Western ethos of self-reliance and freedom owes a lot to them.

So the notion of "self-reliance and freedom" that makes Western ideologies suggests you're referring not to Native Americans but "pioneers"--the people who settled the Western lands without government help. Except, I guess, for the help it provided by clearing the land of its prior inhabitants who somehow didn't know the land wasn't theirs anymore. And providing basic infrastructure like schooling (funded from sales from Township 16). And funding the construction of railroads so that homesteaders could acquire the goods they couldn't make themselves and sell their excess produce to US markets.

Well, then I'm confused.

You started off saying that it makes sense for these people to say that the government of Idaho upholds American values more than the government of Oregon, because values' 'Americanness' isn't determined by the majority, but rather by appeal to ancestry and tradition.

But apparently the Chinook (or, if you wish, the Paiute), who I would say have superior claim on that front, don't get to wield the mystical power of American Values because they were never numerous, nor influential.

But surely the population of Idaho and eastern Oregon is also not particularly numerous, nor influential.

And the population of Western Oregon also, surely, has some claim to be a "significant fraction of the population", "disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been American for many generations", so surely that means their values are more American values than ones which fail one or more of these criteria?

So I guess I just don't know what gives these people of Eastern Oregon more of a claim to determine whether Idaho or Oregon is 'more aligned' with American Values. Is it because their ancestors have been Americans since the early days of the old West, and they embody the pioneer spirit of the Oregon Territory? So their values are more American.

But it's maybe worth noting that in 1844, while Frederick Douglass was first publishing his slave story, Oregon passed a law that made it illegal for him, or any other freed slave, to set foot in the state. It remained part of the state's constitution through its admission to the US, and long after the 14th amendment made it unconstitutional.

In 1926, thirty years after Frederick Douglass died, a ballot measure to repeal it was finally passed. But 32% of voters voted against it.

Maybe if white supremacy is 'surely' no longer an American value, we shouldn't be looking to the traditional values of Oregonians as a guiding light. They have a bit of a history of being slow to catch on to changes in what are 'surely' American values.

> What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?

There are two conflicting meanings of the word 'American' that is causing your confusion. American can refer to an individual who is American. It can also refer to things associated with the government currently controlling the land known as the United States of America. The land of the USA has -- in its time -- been held by several government. Firstly there is the current one. Then there is the previous one, the confederated states of America. Some parts of the USA have at times been held by smaller governments, for example, the Southern confederacy (not to be confused with the USA under the articles of confederation).

Anyway, there are American values -- i.e., those held by individuals in America -- and then there are American values -- i.e., those in line with the constitution of the United States of America.

The Oregonians clearly are using the second meaning. They believe that the State of Oregon has failed to uphold values inherent to the Constitution of the United States of America. For example, if tomorrow, 98% of Oregonians decided Monarchy were the best form of government, in this usage, we can unequivocally say that that is not American, because monarchy is fundamentally at odds with the constitution. Thus, even if -- in my hypothetical -- monarchy were an American value in the individual sense, it would not be in the second usage.

As another unrelated example illustrating the difference in the usages, the majority of American Catholics believe contraceptives are okay. If you ask 'what is the opinion of the church on contraception', there are two correct answers. One can say 'Catholics believe contraception is okay' because most Catholics (in this country at least) agree. One can equally say 'Catholics believe contraception is not okay' because the institution of the Catholic church in this country has -- through official channels -- said it's not.

That's more informative than the article was, thank you.

Points 1 and 2 should be combined and addressed as "how civil services protect and better the community".

The issues of homelessness, drug addiction, and dis-enfranchisement of displaced people all relate to failed social safety nets and social planning. My understanding is that decades ago, in the early 80s IIRC, a terrible abuse and system for housing the mentally ill was disbanded. Unfortunately nothing took it's place.

There are also very troubling issues related to lack of housing, lack of jobs, and lack of a proper program to connect displaced individuals with that type of societal re-integration. A New "New Deal", in any form, could enrich the value of society by re-educating and providing jobs which enrich the commons of society thus improving the lives and economic fitness of all. Better those handouts from our taxes trickle up to the rich, as all else currently does, than go directly to their coffers in tax cuts.

Point 3, and probably 5 as well: The report I suggested would be the best way of understanding this issue for everyone. The issue is Taxes VS Benefits; not absolute tax taken. Until the balance of benefits to taxes is understood this is a straw man which needs more data for all sides to understand.

Point 5: Regulation in specific. Ideally regulation prevents more problems than it causes. Regulation should allow assumptions about fitness for use, safety, and fairness to all parties involved to exist. If there is some regulation which does not contribute to this common good, to the preservation of the commons, or if there is a lack of regulation which is resulting in abuse, then said regulations should be revisited by the representatives of the people.

6: "the ruling party" I take this as slang for the currently dominant political party, but it is strikingly 'Us' vs 'Them' and very divisively secessionist. Extremely misguided. Reform of our electoral systems and categorization of representation should be undertaken to finally liberate all citizens from the First Past The Post voting system to ANY kind of instant runoff. We need to have a spectrum of political parties to promote compromise and plans that work for many rather than for few.

> Points 1 and 2 should be combined and addressed as "how civil services protect and better the community"

No, point 2 is specifically calling out antifa and BLM, and catering to racist fears, but in coded language.

Can I just say, for me the use of the term "illegals" under the section of Law and Order comes across as a dehumanizing slur.

how unfortunate.

I'm struck by how "homeless" is included in a list containing "criminals", "arsonists", and "rioters". The homeless aren't people we need protection from, they're people we need to help.

Traditional conservative dogma requires the belief that poverty or misfortune follows from an inherent moral failing, never from circumstance. Therefore criminals cannot be reformed, homeless cannot be helped. The only solution is to remove them.

Of course traditional conservative dogma also has extremely strong private safety nets. Just look at Utah and the mormons. Or the Amish. I mean, I understand that many people do not understand this, but I have found that atheists and the unchurched cannot comprehend just how substantial most church support programs are. In my old parish, my wife and I practically lived at the place and when we had our first baby, we got free baby-sitting, meals, company, etc, even though we were far from our families. Many we know in our town (Portland, mostly irreligious) have to pay for this. How sad.

This is what I find so bizarre about the 'left' in this country (in quotes because I'm making wild generalizations). They say they are all about community and social ownership and responsibility, but they don't actually do it. Their ideal is lived out everyday in churches across the country. It used to be the case that the 'left' in this country (by that I mean the democratic party) was made up of the churched, so their ideals for social programs matched their lifestyles of intense social participation and private contributions to welfare programs. But today, the right is the one most likely to contribute to charity, and in my opinion, the one most likely to live in the leftist utopia.

I'll give an example. I hear all the time from those around me (I live in Portland) about family members homeless due to schizophrenia. As a very conservative religious man (and child of immigrants, so maybe it's that), I find this incredibly odd. My uncle has schizophrenia and was deported from this country after going after someone with a knife.

However, at no point was he ever homeless. My mother and father -- both incredibly unwavering law and order types -- kept my uncle in their house and assumed absolute responsibility for him until he was sent back to India. Once he was there, at no point was he allowed to live in destitution on the streets (we are not a rich family either). Eventually, he married a woman he knew (and who knew about his condition and has been able to manage it) and he has kids. Don't get me wrong.... the man is still crazy in a sense. At one point, he made up a religion unbeknownst to us, proclaimed himself God, and got many hundreds of followers on facebook. But at no point could we have ever imagined him homeless. In my view, what's missing in America is any sort of actual concern for our fellow man, our family most importantly. Everyone seems to want to outsource 'caring' for others to the government instead of actually doing the hard work.

Here's another example. Leftists want community health care. Okay, that's fine. But again, right-wing Christians are the ones actually doing it. Health sharing ministries see Christians pool together money so that no congregant has to face undue financial hardship. If you join this ministry you essentially get a 'tax' each month representing your 'share' of all members total emergency expenses. Again, supposedly thrifty conservatives simply giving their money away to actually help people instead of waiting. I don't get it.

What percentage of Christian ministries are actually providing these services? You don't say, just that some are. I would say that this is far from widespread phenomenon.

Are Christian ministries actually providing comprehensive healthcare, or only those procedures that they morally approve of?

If conservatives are the "real" humanitarians, why is there more poverty, more untreated diabetes, and worse healthcare in conservative states?

Why should the availability of healthcare be contingent on your religious beliefs?

Needlessly combative comment, but I'll bite I guess.

As to what percent, I can't give it to you. How do you quantify how much your friend likes you. A lot of this support is not organized, like the meal train I mentioned for my wife and I after our first kid.

WRT 'comprehensive' healthcare, many conservative people would find those procedures offensive and unnecessary.

> If conservatives are the "real" humanitarians, why is there more poverty,

Because it's relatively easy to be poor in a conservative area if you have community support. Lots of people to give you food and handouts. Like my aunt and uncle who retired way early and are technically impoverished, but live a good life, around family, friends, lots of food (from their church), etc.

> more untreated diabetes

because conservative people do not typically believe that life is the only end worth pursuing. This sounds strange given the 'pro-life' stuff, but you see it with COVID too. To a religious person, death is just the beginning, and what they perceive to be overly invasive measures to prolong life is not worth it. Whether it be diabetes dieting or covid lockdowns. Remember, the christian ethos is not utilitarian.

> and worse healthcare in conservative states?

All the good doctors realize they can make more money in blue states?

1. If you're going to argue that argue that religious-provided healthcare is superior to secular, you're going to have to do better than "well, who can say." You've given some anecdata, with nothing to back it up.

2. I'm aware that conservative people consider certain procedure unnecessary. My point is that religious-based moral outrage has no place in deciding the proper standard of care. Your approach means that when your morals contradict another person's health, you get to choose what kind of services they get. That's a great reason to divorce healthcare from religious influence.

3. Being poor sounds great! Makes me wonder why more people don't move to the south and live in the socialist utopia that you describe, where everyone has all their needs fulfilled with no effort.

4. If death is just the beginning, maybe we should abolish healthcare entirely, and just get to the good part sooner. Instead of wasting money on MRI machines, heart surgery, and diabetes medication, we should instead wisely invest in elaborate mausoleum, like the pharaohs of old. This also conveniently explains why religious conservatives, although ostensibly caring about their fellow man, consistently vote against any expansion of state-provided healthcare, which is selfishly rooted in the notion of keeping people out of heaven.

You say "Many we know in our town have to pay for this. How sad." but then you go own to observe that "If you join this ministry you essentially get a 'tax' each month".

So it's not that you didn't pay for it - you did, and continue to. But your support is contingent on following the rules of the community and maintaining your welcome, while the irreligious people in Portland had a more straightforward transaction.

> So it's not that you didn't pay for it - you did, and continue to. But your support is contingent on following the rules of the community and maintaining your welcome, while the irreligious people in Portland had a more straightforward transaction.

Not really. If we could'nt afford it, it wouldn't be demanded.

Who owns the hospitals in Portland? There is no conflict between churches and capitalism, either.

Illegals is, of course, a shorthand for illegal alien. The shorthand was created because of the regularity of having to describe such an individual. In what way could someone describe the reality of "a person who has violated international border agreements and is residing in a country in violation of the laws of that country" that you would not consider dehumanizing?

People can’t be illegal. They can be in the country without proper documentation. The _correct_ and _humane_ term is “undocumented”.

People can't be illegal, but they can do illegal things. I've never liked "illegal alien" or "illegals", but "undocumented noncitizen" seems much less accurate than "illegal immigrant".

I support a path to citizenship and making all forms of immigration more fair, humane and much more widely available. I don't understand the push from some on the left to say that all enforcement of immigration laws should go away.

This is like calling a drug dealer an unlicensed pharmacist.

Looks like it's the old dispute about 2A and I kind of understand them. Last time I heard, Oregon voted to outlaw mags with more than 10 bullets. Rural folks have disagreed and resolved the conflict in a civil manner: by declaring that they will have different laws from the big city Oregon.

Not sure what they've done in practice here from what you wrote. Are you implying that they made a public declaration that they would simply choose to ignore such a law?

As is their right. Self-determination is an American value.

EDIT: downvoted by those who believe voting and determining your area's form of governance is anti-American!

We fought a war about "determining your area's form of governance." As I recall, the south lost that one.

> 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires.

I just spent a month in central Oregon and there were proscribed burns going on all over the place. It was the most forest management I've seen in any state.

This is coded language to mean "we can pull resources from federal/state lands but not pay for them".

I thought it was coded language for "we can let logging corporations plunder the forest with no oversight."

Both works to be honest.

>violate more and more American values and American freedoms

If they were really a proponent of freedom then they would support the freedom of adults to smoke/injest/snort/inject anything they want. "Addicts will be attracted to Oregon..." precisely because of that freedom.

I own land in a rural area (house coming in maybe a year) and I have spoken to the neighbors. For the most part it's little things actually. Rules that the major cities deal with, like not being allowed to put up a specific kind of fence because the bureaucrats in the city look at .1 acre plots of land and don't like how certain fences look - where out here we're dealing with 5 to 100 acres (and in some cases a 40000 acres of land). Or that we should be required to pay "school fees" when we build a house because there's "no fucking school" out here! One guy had to dismantle a building he erected (he's a builder) because he maxed out on "how much roof" he can have.

There was one guy talking about Jesus but for the most part we're pretty sure he wasn't an anti-masker. Actually all of our neighbors have told us they wear a mask by the way. So yeah, it's really just getting away from the legal requirements that the populated places need but forget to loosen the rules far away.

Now every county is different so take my input as a grain of salt.

yea, thats not really the story in idaho/oregon area. A lot of the issue there is that lots of the land is owned by the federal government, and the people who live near by and are in ranching/mining/logging don't want to follow the rules the fed gov puts on operations in BLM land. There is a bit of "some guy 4k miles away in washington isn't allowed to tell me I can't ride my dirt bike here" attitude.

> One guy had to dismantle a building he erected (he's a builder) because he maxed out on "how much roof" he can have.

Please tell me what part of the country this is so I can avoid it.

If I were living in that state, I would build a fractal roof for my dog house that had close to an infinite surface area and then I would sue myself to teach people how dumb that rule is.

Floor Area Ratio regulations are pretty standard rules.

However, rules like these are "zoning/planning" and are usually set by the city or county, not the state.

The county shifting to Idaho is likely to have no effect on that regulation.

FAR's are why Palo Alto had to bring in regulations on basement sizes (the majority of the house was underground!), and why Zuckerberg is having problems with his renovation plans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio

https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/08/31/palo-alto-zuckerberg-...

https://padailypost.com/2019/08/26/is-city-going-to-far-with...

It's meant to affect light so should not apply to basements. Finished basement area is still taxed in most counties.

> Rules that the major cities deal with, like not being allowed to put up a specific kind of fence because the bureaucrats in the city look at .1 acre plots of land and don't like how certain fences look - where out here we're dealing with 5 to 100 acres (and in some cases a 40000 acres of land).

Wait, these rules aren't something that are enacted and enforced at an individual city / town level? These are state-wide zoning(?) rules being applied universally to all jurisdictions in the state? If so, that does seem obnoxious..

(I don't own land so I am very unfamiliar in how zoning regulation plays itself out, so apologies ahead of time.)

Out here, those rules are enforced at the county level if there's no city nearby. Counties can be massive and include lots of out of the way land.

>My personal believe is presently, for lack of data that I can digest, that the far right is probably focused around emotions

Both sides have appeals to emotion and appeals to logic in their platform. For instance, what basis is there for universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'? You can't make the argument that it would 'save the government money' to the right, because, in their opinion, the government should be spending any money on it, other than maybe paying for employees' insurance. Every dollar the government spends on it now is just an example of how the government can't do anything right.

I think it's common for people on opposite ends of the spectrum see the other side as 'not grounded in data'. After all, if they saw the reason in the opinions of the other side, they'd be in the middle instead of the end they're on.

All that being said, I think more clarity in government spending would go a long way in creating more/less trust in government's handling of certain operations. Maybe the right sees less inefficiency than they imagined, maybe the left sees more, but we'd at least have some real data to compare.

Except a lot on the left is driven by data.

Citation? Or is that just a data-free assertion? ;)

Banning plastic straws, asserting that men should compete against women in sports if they identify as women, and eliminating SAT scores doesn't seem like a science-driven approach, but more of a faith-based science-denialism.

Genuine question: what's wrong with banning plastic straws?

Edit: I know that paper straws are a pain to drink through, my question was more: why is banning plastic straws an example of "faith-based science denialism"?

Hypothetical answer: A ban on plastic straws can unintentionally make life more difficult for individuals with motor disabilities.

Paper straws break down relatively quickly and can lose suction effectiveness as a result. Reusable metal straws can cause chipped teeth or gum damage if bitten down on by someone with poor fine motor control. No straws at all can leave an individual unable to ingest liquids entirely. Reusable soft plastic straws would be ideal, but the tradeoff is that now we've placed yet an extra burden on an impaired person (or their caretakers) in our society because now they'll need to maintain a supply of clean, reusable straws that they need to transport with them. Disposable plastic straws are "soft" enough to not damage someone's teeth or gums too severely when bitten down on, but are more durable than paper straws to ensure reliable suction over time, and they do not require any upkeep or maintenance for proper hygiene due to their disposable nature.

I'm not sure if I can do this topic justice solely over text, but I'm going to try because I genuinely think it's important to address, and with the plea that I'm truly not trying to be a horse's ass here and disparage people who have different needs. If anything, I think people who have different needs are the ones being taken advantage of, both coming and going.

This quote really stood out to me:

> and they [disposable plastic straws] do not require any upkeep or maintenance for proper hygiene due to their disposable nature.

It's a rather bright example of the problem our global society has put itself into: there's still a need to deal with these items, but that need is no longer on the person using the item; it has been outsourced to the rubbish bin and, thus, to society and the environment at large.

We've done this to ourselves in myriad ways. Expanding public transport is "unfair" to people who have different needs because perhaps some people cannot quickly or easily board transit vehicles, or those trips do not go to the front door of where some people need to go. We cannot eliminate or shrink parking requirements or availability for the same reason.

Politically, we stop at "well, can't do that" without considering "OK, how could we do almost all of that with modifications for people who have other needs?"

We've fallen into the perfect must be the only outcome otherwise why bother. Some of that is genuinely not knowing, but large parts of opposition to the changes we know we need to make--both individually and on the companies and businesses supplying us in environmentally-poor ways--are disingenuously hiding behind those arguments simply to obstruct.

That's frustrating.

I'm unaware of any jurisdiction in which plastic straws are banned that does not explicitly make exceptions for those with disabilities.

Tangentially, has anyone developed a good use for old plastic straws? Like melting them down to 3D printer filament, or maybe just switch to corn/soy based plastic that is biodegradable within a reasonable time? Paper and metal are just not good substitutes. I think some of the "anti-big government" sentiment comes from banning very useful items without some sort of acceptable substitute.

Paper straws don't work well if you take too long to drink or if you are drinking something thick.

> Genuine question: what's wrong with banning plastic straws?

The push to ban plastic straws was nearly entirely based on misinformation or lack of information. Most of the debate was propelled to the highest levels by a 4th grader that literally made the data up[1], but that data was used to prescribe a "science and data driven ban".

Turns out, plastic straws really were never a big problem. Sure, single-use-plastic is a problem in general, but the ban of plastic straws has had nearly zero impact on the environment - or it could be argued it's had a negative impact since companies like Starbucks started using "multi-use" recyclable lids which in reality end up being single-use and are often thrown into the trash instead of recycling bin, and use more plastic material than dozens of straws combined.

The plastic bag ban is the same way too... turns out those reusable cotton tote bags consume way more energy to produce than thin plastic bags, causing dramatic increases in GHG releases, energy consumption, etc[2][3]. We now know plastic bags and straws are not a major contributor (or at all, really) to that massive plastic dump in the Pacific Ocean, which is mostly from fishing vessel waste tossed overboard. Good intentions with poor consequences unfortunately.

It's this sort of "theater" that puts people off...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-straws-b...

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/sustainable-shoppin...

[3] https://qz.com/1585027/when-it-comes-to-climate-change-cotto...

[4] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacifi...

There's a lot to unpack in your short utterance I just would like to comment on eliminating SAT scores.

> Noninstructional factors explain most of the variance among test scores when schools or districts are compared. A study of math results on the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the combination of four such variables (number of parents living at home, parents' educational background, type of community, and poverty rate) accounted for a whopping 89 percent of the differences in state scores

from https://alfiekohn.org/teaching/pdf/Standardized%20Testing%20... if you really want I can dig up the old study.

Those same factors explain a large portion of differences in educational achievement. Doesn't that mean the test is then doing what it is designed to do?

Your answer is as shortsighted and stems from the same fundamental misunderstanding as those given to "defund the police".

We need to change education itself so it is not a tool of systemic racism. Which currently, based on that study, it is. In a sense you are right: yes, it does its job if the job is to be the canary in the coal mine. But we did away with canaries in the coal mines and made the mines more secure.

> doesn't seem like a science-driven approach, but more of a faith-based science-denialism.

Only if you are deliberately framing these points that way. I'll try to explain how these points can actually be explained as science-driven

> Banning plastic straws

In the US alone, 500M straws were used per day (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/news-...). Given that many of these end up in the environment as consumers simply discard the container wherever they are walking, this is a serious reduction in litter.

> asserting that men should compete against women in sports if they identify as women

This one is a really hard debate, however... hormone distribution varies enormously between the two major biological genders so we're already (effectively) selecting athletes with the "best" ratios. Add to that people with intergender bodies (e.g. XY chromosome set but fully presenting as "female", XX chromosomes but have "male" body parts), and it becomes a real mess to define what is a male, what is a female and where a specific individual should be allowed to compete in - even if you're only going by purely biological metrics (hormone levels, appearance of gender-specific body parts). Add to that the "faith-based" stuff aka social gender norms and gender equality/anti-discrimination, and it gets very messy very soon.

tl;dr: for this point, there cannot ever be a "scientific consent" on what's correct and what's wrong. Personally I'd argue for a body-weight differentiation in sports (as it's done in boxing) instead of gender-based, since that way you have at least some common factor that is closely linked with physical strength.

> and eliminating SAT scores

Scoring of almost all kinds has provable issues - and especially in education:

- social background has massive effects on scores: rich parents can afford a lot of things closely linked to higher educational outcome such as private tutors, each child having their own room from a young age, send their children to well-funded public or private schools, or offering a stress-free environment for the child in general whereas poor parents are stuck with whatever the public school system offers, children often not having their own rooms which means they can't effectively learn if their baby sibling is crying in "their" room, and parents passing on their stress (poverty, overcrowding, homelessness, messy divorces, domestic violence) onto their children

- ethnic background: children of minorities have been proven to be discriminated against by teachers even at a young age, not to mention stuff like systemic under-funding of schools in geographic areas where school funding is based on the taxable income of the people living in this area, which is (again) closely linked to ethnic background as a result of segregation and gentrification

- government background: additionally to that, public schools may differ wildly in quality of teaching based on the funding priorities of county and state

- scoring leads to teachers "teaching for the test" aka "bulimia learning" instead of actual long-lasting knowledge transfer. This is something tests aren't primarily at fault for, but nevertheless play an important role

- scoring disproportionally affects students with mental health problems (e.g. test phobia), with dyslexia / dyscalculia and other learning impediments, and also those whose talents are outside of language and math

tl;dr: scoring is deeply flawed as a concept, where especially children from poor backgrounds (no matter if the family or the government is poor) suffer from massive discrimination.

Republican Reagan signed EMTALA which makes it so hospitals can’t refuse service in emergencies due to ability to pay. It stopped people from dying in the street. They did not fund this new mandate and so we currently pay for this through higher insurance premiums and county/municipal emergency service budgets. Universal healthcare would be a more efficient way to pay for an already existing benefit. When uninsured chronic conditions have reached the point you are literally in the ER / close to death, you suddenly get tons of subsidized healthcare. Subsidized in a grossly inefficient manner. Universal healthcare would lower costs through prevention.

I would have more respect for the right if they just admitted they are ok with people dying in the streets since they just ignore the economic effects of EMTALA.

Reagan is not 'the right'. He's a member of the Republican party who served 50 years ago. And again, universal health care only saves money if you start with the basis that the government will force private companies to take on customers that can't pay for service, something that is very much not a right wing ideology.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea or a good idea, I'm just saying there is no basis for universal healthcare that doesn't start with 'we need to help people'. Same with social security. Same with many other left wing policies. A lot of the problems around market inefficiency in healthcare are perfectly solvable without helping the poor.

> if you start with the basis that the government will force private companies to take on customers that can't pay for service,

EMTALA already does this and I don’t see a push on the right to repeal EMTALA. Universal healthcare is a more efficient model of what is already happening.

I also don't see a push from republicans to repeal social security. That doesn't mean it isn't a socialist policy.

Are you saying EMTALA (people not left to die on the street) is socialism? I don’t think that meets the definition of socialism.

No, I'm saying something being supported (or at least not repealed) by republicans doesn't make it ideologically right wing. Republicans, like democrats, have a wide variety of beliefs in their platforms, both right and left.

Here:

https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-the-2005-social-secur...

It wasn't sold as a push to repeal Social Security, because that polls extremely badly, but that's what it was.

Repealing social security has been a wink-wink, nudge-nudge part of the unspoken Republican platform since social security was created.

I live in a predominantly right-leaning area and know a lot of people who are against universal healthcare. I've talked with a lot of them about it, and every single person would be in favor of it if there was a magical guarantee the money would actually be spent properly and not corruptly misallocated. But the track record is so poor, and there is such little transparency, that they have no trust whatsoever. I can hardly fault them. And the left's argument of "give us more money, we promise to get it right this time" is hardly compelling. Obviously, accusing people on the right of being ok with others dying in the street doesn't help matters.

This is exactly right. Pretty much anytime the government takes anything over or has a new program...it's a shit show from the beginning. See "Cover Oregon" for a waste of a few hundred million dollars...see "Pandemic Unemployment Fraud" for what is probably a hundred billion...see "PPP program" for what is continuously being found as having tons of fraud...see "Oregon Unemployment still programmed in COBOL and can't adjust the waiting period" for non-financial incompetence. If any area in government could run efficiently and we saw evidence of that...it would be a lot easier to convince everyone that things like universal healthcare would be a good idea.

I am not certain the point you are making.

Are you saying you believe that there are no programs in existence, which are government-run, that are not "shit shows" ?

There are some programs out there that are OK, but I think the gist of the problem is you are missing out on free market forces like price discovery, private equity, and are manipulating risk so anything the government touches ends up becoming less efficient and built with different constraints.

Of course, there are times when efficiency is not the thing we’re optimizing for. The Space Program is an example of a pretty great government program; there was no profit or benefit to private space travel in the 1950s and 60s so the government had to subsidize it, but now that we are starting to see private business catch up, the best thing to do is get government out of the way. This is not all that different during the Age of Discovery where kings and queens subsidized trans-oceanic travel.

IMHO government should only exist to fix free market deficiencies (Monopolies, unfair competition, fledgling industries, lack of players). Not to take over a market and try to dictate it from the top down. Ultimately the goal should be that all people make enough of a wage to afford healthcare and let the market handle it. And still have a safety net for those who fall through the cracks, but the safety net should never be the goal.

It's ironic that many of the people I know who have a right leaning politics and a hatred of government waste are also working in sectors that get fat off government waste.

>But the track record is poor, and there is such little transparency

What exactly are you talking about? Don’t republicans have a 40+ year strategy of “starve the beast” to purposely make government services worse specifically to build this distrust?

Wait until those same people find out how private health insurance works. It's not fair to hate on public healthcare in a vacuum without comparing it to the horrendous private system we have now. Then it doesn't look very bad, corrupt, or opaque at all.

> But the track record is so poor, and there is such little transparency, that they have no trust whatsoever.

The track record of... Medicare? It's one of the most popular programs in government!

What you've done is just aborb spin. It's true that these people don't trust "The Government" to provide health care, because their thought leaders (and peers like you) keep telling them that. But then they go and enroll in Medicare anyway, and it pays for their care, and because nothing breaks and it's never in the news they don't even think about it.

At some point you'd think the truth would break through, but it just doesn't seem to be happening.

Literally every health care system sucks for someone, it's a complicated problem. But everywhere, both within and outside the US, the systems that work BEST are government-run.

There is no alternative to Medicare given the risk profile for the elderly. It has high approval because there is no other option.

It is also not universally accepted- this is only anecdotal, of course, but I had a doctor tell me he didnt accept it because the rates for some procedures worked out to be below the state's hourly minimum wage.

Perhaps a better example would be the VA- government run hospitals and coverage that is perenially in the news for some new corruption or incompetence scandal, and a very very hit or miss reputation.

So if we get rid of Medicare, do you think private insurance would step into the gap and the elderly would then have better health care?

Sorry, I thought I was clear that the risk profile of the elderly precluded private insurance as being an option.

The elderly would get better care if more hospitals and doctors accepted it; there are several ways to achieve this with, I suspect, mixed results.

The point is that Medicare is a solid floor of service that we know works. People with good corporate insurance do better. Everyone else either qualifies for Medicare or they do significantly worse.

Virtually all of the putative working class republicans "opposed to government health care" would be better served by Medicare. Period.

This is a way more difficult conversation to have with a reasonably informed person on the right than you are making it out to be...

The social security fund has been “borrowed from” to fund other programs.

The government is clearly in the pocket of big Parma.

The government uses taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street.

The government allocates subsidies based on lobbying groups.

The IRS specifically targeted right wing groups applying for non profit status.

The list goes on and on.

So people on the right are not keen to give that structure more money and power.

It doesn’t matter how successful you may think Medicare is. The power structure and track record of the entity which would manage universal healthcare is abysmal.

I think there is a way to do it which could make the whole program solid and resilient against abuse but the proposals all come from the left who don’t seem particularly interested in resiliency.

Also, I really really wish we had a good universal healthcare system. Being unemployed and terrified of being injured sucks

I’ve noticed this as a major driver too. San Francisco has a per capita city+county budget that is almost 2x the typical. Yes every election is “we just need another $300M for this” and “our bond proposal to fund X”. But next year not much changed and they are asking for more again.

> Both sides have appeals to emotion and appeals to logic in their platform. For instance, what basis is there for universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'? You can't make the argument that it would 'save the government money' to the right ...

You're right, you don't say it would save the government money. You make the argument that it would save everyone money. No one has any incentive to care about the price of healthcare, currently. Not the suppliers, not the providers, not the insurers. And the consumers simply have no choice.

>No one has any incentive to care about the price of healthcare, currently

That's a problem that can be fixed without making the government the sole customer: Make people pay for their own healthcare.

>Not the suppliers, not the providers, not the insurers

That's simply not true. They all have profit motive.

>And the consumers simply have no choice.

That's only true in emergency medicine, which is the minority of care most people receive.

> That’s only true in emergency medicine

What would you do about emergency medicine in your ideal world though?

I, personally, am pro universal healthcare to a degree.

> That's a problem that can be fixed without making the government the sole customer: Make people pay for their own healthcare.

People do pay for their own healthcare. That's our current system. Hello?

> That's simply not true. They all have profit motive.

Everyone has profit motive, but when your prices are arbitrary, that doesn't make you care about costs.

> That's only true in emergency medicine, which is the minority of care most people receive.

That's not even CLOSE to factual. Try getting your doctor to tell you how much any complex procedure or care will cost, before the fact, without insurance.

> For instance, what basis is there for universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'? You can't make the argument that it would 'save the government money' to the right ...

Something else: It fosters a more competitive work environment, by allowing capable workers to choose the best firms.

It also separates health cost, whose administration is expensive for businesses, from working capabilities of employees. It’s a major problem for small companies.

Finally, anything more than essential coverage could and should still be privatized, and paid for by individuals. Much like today’s life insurance today. e.g., long cancer recovery and care.

> Something else: It fosters a more competitive work environment, by allowing capable workers to choose the best firms.

Do you have data showing that the gains in competitiveness offset productivity losses from higher unemployment?

>Finally, anything more than essential coverage could and should still be privatized, and paid for by individuals. Much like today’s life insurance today. e.g., long cancer recovery and care.

What is the difference between essential and not essential? I don't think there's a good objective basis for what is and isn't, it just comes down to the costs healthy people are willing to bear, which comes down to feelings again.

Do you have data showing that universal healthcare leads to higher unemployment?

The difference between essential and non-essential? Why should I have to make that distinction in a forum?

Both private healthcare AND even medicare do this today, to different degrees.

Largely, routine check-ups and preventive care are covered. Emergency visits and triage care used to be covered (and still should be).

Everything else is quite subjective, and cost is a factor.

> Do you have data showing that universal healthcare leads to higher unemployment?

More competitiveness necessarily implies more frictional unemployment. You can't have one without the other.

> The difference between essential and non-essential? Why should I have to make that distinction in a forum?

I'm not saying you should, I'm saying an argument that points to universal healthcare as an objective practice requires it.

> to different degrees

Exactly. There isn't an agreed upon objective basis for what qualifies as 'essential'.

> More competitiveness necessarily implies more frictional unemployment. You can't have one without the other.

Nonsense. You’re thinking about competition for jobs. But I’m talking about competition to hire.

>I'm not saying you should, I'm saying an argument that points to universal healthcare as an objective practice requires it.

You’re asserting that it does. I’m arguing that an argument for it doesn’t require it. That’s one for practitioners and a wider audience to flush out.

> Exactly. There isn't an agreed upon objective basis for what qualifies as 'essential'.

And as before, I’m pointing out that aside from some clear cut cases, it’s not required to be “objective”.

There’s no objective reason why we enjoy various freedoms in the US, other than emotional reasons and desires.

> It fosters a more competitive work environment, by allowing capable workers to choose the best firms.

I dunno about that. Most people don't really care if their benefits are any good. And I've never seen a single job listing that went more in depth than "great benefits".

> Finally, anything more than essential coverage could and should still be privatized, and paid for by individuals. Much like today’s life insurance today. e.g., long cancer recovery and care.

Yeah, that's true in most if not all countries with universal healthcare. Of course, as someone else alluded to, it's a difficult distinction to make. I don't care about the mole on my face but a mole might legitimately effect someone else's mental health.

> I dunno about that. Most people don't really care if their benefits are any good. And I've never seen a single job listing that went more in depth than "great benefits".

I’m surprised you interpreted what I wrote this way.

What I mean is that some individuals cannot afford to leave their job and take a chance, because of the risk that they will not have any coverage whatsoever.

If you or your family member have a chronic but treatable condition such as diabetes, this a life and death decision.

It makes zero sense to give employers such leverage.

Likewise, employers are less likely to cover individuals that will raise insurance costs.

I'm in that situation myself, between an insulin-dependent diabetic and an epileptic toddler on my insurance. But overall the percentage of people, in my experience, who care about what the benefits will be like at a new job is tiny. Never been asked by someone we're interviewing, never been able to get any real info out of an interviewer or recruiter, etc. At the most they care about the coverage gap (how long until benefits start).

And also, how does that differ from "some individuals cannot afford to leave their job and take a chance, because of the risk that they will not have any money whatsoever"? Personally I think we could solve both of those problems (and plenty more) with "make employment terms public" (i.e. disclose compensation ranges, benefits & premiums, vacation, and so on).

Yes they can vote to leave the state but they should also not get any of the tax dollars from the more densely populated counties that stay behind. Thank you , sayonara!

> what basis is there for universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'?

Uninsured, underinsured, or people with high deductibles are much, much more likely to let a health issue linger for much longer than someone who gets free (to them) healthcare. If an issue lingers, getting worse and worse, it may eventually reach the point where it forces them out of the workforce; they stop paying taxes, they stop purchasing commercial goods which drive the economy, they stop buying new cars, etc. (on an individual basis, this is rare, but compounded by 40 million or so people it adds up to a lot of people not performing economic activity who would otherwise be making and spending money)

Free-for-me healthcare is better at providing preventative medicine than out-of-pocket healthcare. Preventative medicine is cheaper in absolute terms over the long term that remedial medicine, even if preventative medicine is much more common that remedial medicine. If remedial medicine removes a person from the work force, that costs the entire GDP a worker.

It is better for all of us -- in purely economic terms -- to have a worker wearing a government issued back brace, taking government issued anti-inflammatory drugs, and participating in government sponsored physical therapy than having a non-worker have back surgery on an insurance plan that spreads the cost among all of that insurer's other customers instead of producing widgets in the factory.

I might not speak for that many people on the left, but I personally support anti-poverty programs as a general rule not because I care about the plight of humanity or whatever, (fuck 'em) but because taxing people and spending those tax dollars on anti-poverty programs improve my overall quality of life more than just letting us keep the money. Every poor person, every homeless person, needs to have tax dollars devoted to them in terms of police and emergency services. Two years ago someone smashed my car's window, stole a $20 backpack with $40 worth of gym clothes, costing me a $500 deductible to replace the window and fix the e-brake. Pretty sure if that asshole had a better education, was given free tradeschool or college they wouldn't have smashed my window.

We, as a society, have decided that we'd rather have a pound of cure than an ounce of prevention. In a dozen ways. And that's fucking stupid.

> For instance, what basis is there for universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'?

Ask Bismarck. The first quasi-universal healthcare system wasn’t introduced because Bismarck was so nice; it was to increase productivity and discourage people from voting for the socialists.

Do you notice that you've defined your own viewpoint as rational and supported by data and the viewpoint of others as "probably focused around emotions"?

Do you have rational data that would present this viewpoint as otherwise? How about helping us liberals understand the conservative viewpoint better if you have insight on this.

Edit: please don't downvote based on disagreement - write something instead. This is a reasonable question asking to further understand the conservative viewpoint. Case in point, I'm upvoting buzzert's comments because they present a contrary, but interesting perspective.

One particular example might be Oregon’s decision to decriminalize all drugs[0] during a time when overdoses are at an all time high[1] and increasing over 40% in just the last year. You might say the political party who calls the war on drugs “cruel and inhumane” is acting on emotion rather than reason in spite of all the statistics.

[0]: https://drugpolicy.org/press-release/2021/02/drug-decriminal...

[1]: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ERD/Pages/Oregon-trends-with-U.S....

Is there evidence that criminalizing drugs decreases the incidence of addiction/overdose?

Another _could_ be letting people in Portland tear the city apart with impunity.

For most folks in Portland, pandemic aside, it’s been life as usual.

I have yet to encounter lefties in my SE hood terrorizing anyone.

Plenty of Trump caravans last year, waking us up, shooting guns.

All from outside the city.

Sure violence is up but it’s up all over. A side effect of a nation coddling old wealth, leaving the masses to rot.

Then the media is utterly and in conspiracy theory fashion lying about the situation on a daily basis. I’m not saying that’s not the case, just that it’s not the message the rest of us are getting, maybe and including these counties wanting out.

Yes they are obviously lying.

The war on drugs put people in prison for emotional belief those people were morally inferior.

It rightly so should be abolished.

To be replaced with trained medical help, detox programs, and a conversation about morality not tethered to superstition, or black and white judgments.

But the fundies, acting out of emotion, prefer boxes.

It’s all emotion since humans are motivated by such. It’s the outcome that should be judged.

> To be replaced with trained medical help, detox programs, and a conversation about morality not tethered to superstition, or black and white judgments

Why can’t these programs exist while also having drugs be illegal?

Also it doesn’t help your position by using childish words like “fundies”, FYI. Keep that on Reddit please.

> Why can’t these programs exist while also having drugs be illegal?

How would you make that work? Consider if drugs are illegal, then getting medical help / detox requires admission of guilt. This seems like a fifth amendment problem.

Why should you have to admit anything to get treatment? Is that some kind of medical requirement I’m unaware of?

I'm talking just human nature here. If something is forbidden , illegal, subjectively immoral, etc. then it's difficult to both admit and seek help with that thing. I don't have any data to hand to back my assertion that criminalization negatively affects treatment, however if such data exists, then it would be less surprising (to me) than the inverse (criminalization makes it easier to get treatment).

How should a doctor know how to treat you if you don't tell them what caused the problems? Doctors don't just hear you list a bunch of things you are "feeling" as symptoms and then output a pill to take. They need to look at your overall health, wellbeing, symptoms, medicine you are taking, diet, etc.

You can't just show up to a hospital with crack or heroin withdrawl and be like "I don't feel well, please help me". They are going to ask why you don't feel well.

Why must drugs be illegal?

Is it everyone else’s responsibility to protect you and your sensibilities?

It hasn’t prevented folks from consuming them, or becoming addicted.

If I’m childish for the use of a euphemism, what would you call living in an idealized reality that’s never existed?

Except that the evidence mostly points towards harsh drug laws having a net negative effect on people's lives. The logic of "drugs are bad" -> "we should outlaw drugs" without looking at the real world effects is the more emotion based argument.

Anyone who genuinely wants fewer people to die from drug use will support drug legalization.

If drugs have been criminalized for decades, and that has led to overdoses being at an all time high, isn’t that just a pretty strong point of evidence that criminalizing drugs isn’t an effective means to prevent overdoses?

We tried that strategy for many decades. It has failed as a strategy for decades. I don’t think that’s necessarily evidence that decriminalization will work, but it seems like...maybe we should at least try something else?

“Try something else”, as in the complete polar opposite of what we were trying before? I cannot rationalize such a decision.

What would you do instead?

In my city (San Francisco), the Tenderloin is nationally famous for having an "open-air drug market", which means a place you can go to _buy_ drugs with impunity. It also happens to be one of the most dystopian parts of the city, rampent with crime, overdoses, unsanitary conditions, and needles everywhere.

It seems like any rational person could see the connection between drugs and the dystopian aspects of the Tenderloin. What I would do instead is precisely what I would do if my children were addicted to drugs; tough love. I would make it impossible for them to acquire drugs and deal with the consequences of withdrawl.

Japan and Singapore are examples of countries that are extremely tough on drugs. I believe it is no coincidence that these places also turned out to be essentially the opposite of the Tenderloin with regards to public safety and heigene.

> I would make it impossible for them to acquire drugs and deal with the consequences of withdrawl.

Depending on the drug and the severity of their addiction, that could kill them. Would you take it that far?

Absolutely not, but we have tools at our disposal for that as well (Methadone comes to mind).

Good! You're most of the way to a rational and compassionate response to drug addiction. Let's see if we can get you further.

Methadone maintenance therapy leaves several problems, starting with the fact that other opioids still feel good and are still being profitably sold on the street. There's supply and demand, right there.

The illegality makes it expensive. Most opioid users start with pills, and continue to injection because heroin and analogues are expensive, and injection works better. Unfortunately it's also a much better way to kill yourself, as is taking what you think is one drug (such as heroin) and lacing it with a stronger one (such as fentanyl). It's possible to kill yourself with a bunch of pills of a known opioid of a guaranteed strength, but it's pretty tough to do by accident.

So let's remove the profit motive, by letting the state take over the sale of opioids. No advertising, of course, and this is done in settings where help can be made available to anyone who wants to quit being addicted to drugs. Make it expensive enough that it isn't the cheapest way to have a good time (opioids cost basis is very low), but not so high that constant petty crime is the only way to stay high. Limit purchase quantities; maybe give known addicts a license, so they can have a slightly higher limit to account for their tolerance. A little bit will leak onto the street, sure, that's tolerable compared to a hundred kilos at once arriving from overseas or the southern border.

This puts the dealers out of business, clears out the Tenderloin, reduces opioid overdoses, puts addicts where they can get help, and reduces the burden on our overcrowded prisons. Evidence from Switzerland and Portugal suggest that over time it will also reduce the number of opioid addicts.

All in all, pretty big win.

Having known somebody on methadone... it's not great. It's just as addictive as heroin, but instead of making you feel good, it makes you feel like shit. And then if you don't take the drug that makes you feel like shit, you go into withdrawal again.

If the goal is to punish somebody for the rest of their life for having fun on an illegal substance, then mission accomplished. If the goal is to remediate the user so that they can be a productive member of society, then it's an utter failure. Sometimes people don't get hooked on the methadone itself, but it's a very delicate balancing act and not at all guaranteed

> I would make it impossible for them to acquire drugs

But how? Drugs are already illegal. There is currently a vast government apparatus designed to make drugs impossible to acquire. The US has the largest prison population on the planet due in no small part to the war on drugs. It's not like we go easy on drugs.

And yet, in your city there is an "open-air drug market". Making drugs illegal doesn't make drugs harder to get, because drugs are profitable. To paraphrase Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park "drugs will find a way."

I think you're noticing a correlation and labeling it a causation. If people had a place to safely do drugs, would they be overdosing in the street? If SF had more public restrooms would people defecate in the streets? If the city had more affordable housing would people be living in the streets? If people had access to jobs so they could earn a living, would they be committing crimes? You blame the drugs for the problems, but I see them as a symptom of larger societal causes.

> But how? Drugs are already illegal.

Now do automatic weapons, straw purchases, felons getting guns, etc.

Both sides have their political bugaboos about problems that haven't been completely solved by existing approaches. Both sides want to try something different by cracking down on their own citizens; both sides want to try something different by lessening the burdens on good people who don't hurt others. Unfortunately, the two major political parties take opposite positions on which approach to take with which issue.

Maybe our political discourse wouldn't get quite to the level of talking about secession if we tried to understand one another's values a little better.

I'm sorry, but what does this have to do with guns? I don't think anyone in this thread brought up guns at all.

They are providing an example of another situation that has been difficult as the two parties can take polar opposite positions on (1) whether something is an issue, and (2) how to solve that issue, often without understanding each other's view point and how they came to that view point.

I see the outside reference fitting here.

I just thought it brought an unnecessary and questionable dichotomy to the discussion. For example, I support gun rights and own many guns. My libertarian and conservative friends support drug decriminalization. The other poster brought up an "either-or, both-sides" framing into what seemed to otherwise be a productive discussion. There was no mention of "parties" or "sides". I have no idea what "side" anyone else belongs to, and I don't see why it matters.

> I have no idea what "side" anyone else belongs to, and I don't see why it matters.

You're missing the point entirely. Drugs aren't an isolated example. There are a number of highly divisive issues in the US for which the majority of Americans appear to hold largely emotionally based views. (Note that the degree to which a view is emotional is entirely orthogonal to whether or not it can be arrived at rationally.)

> There was no mention of "parties" or "sides".

And yet in practice, the vast majority of opposition to drug decriminalization (let alone outright legalization) comes from more conservative people. Such divides exist in a statistical sense whether you like it or not.

Your points about the relative inefficiencies and overall failures of the current approach to drugs based on available data is well taken. However, when it comes to highly divisive issues such as this one, it seems that simply appealing to rationality in this manner is not a viable tactic on its own for the majority of people. The analogy to gun laws helps to illustrate this fact - imagine how the majority of liberals would react to a "rational" explanation of why a particular gun law was unlikely to improve things.

I'm sorry, I thought I was engaging in a conversation with specific people about a specific topic (drug decriminalization). I didn't realize I was engaging in a nebulous discussion ranging to what liberals feel about guns. I don't have anything to say about that topic at the moment. Apologies.

Again, you are missing the point. No one asked you about your particular views on that topic. Rather, a disparate topic was used to illustrate a broader point about the process itself. Surely the broader context is relevant when discussing a controversial issue that tends to elicit strong emotional responses from participants?

Burying your head in the sand won't change the fact that there are significant emotional components which are relevant here.

The original poster did: "Now do automatic weapons, straw purchases, felons getting guns, etc."

I wanted to talk about the merits and reasons for/against drug decriminalization, as well as alternative solutions.. You keep telling me that I'm missing the point, but maybe you're missing my point. I'm not interested in the discussion about the broader point of the process itself. Talking about parties and sides and gun control is not the discussion I engaged in. The fact that it's a controversial issue that elicits strong emotional responses from people is not germane to the discussion at hand.

The original poster said: "Maybe our political discourse wouldn't get quite to the level of talking about secession if we tried to understand one another's values a little better."

That's exactly what was happening! I wanted to take part in that. The last thing I would want to do in that discussion is bring in heated tangential topics that would serve to derail the conversation. That's not burying your head, that's staying on topic. There are significant emotional components about this and also as well about guns. Agreed. The original point stands.

> It seems like any rational person could see the connection between drugs and the dystopian aspects of the Tenderloin.

There seems to be a correlation vs causation issue there though. An equally plausible rational explanation is that the criminal act of selling drugs tends to make more sense in a place where that act is overlooked. If drug sales were decriminalized then those areas would tend to be less focused. Case in point is the proliferation of legal marijuana dispensaries. At least in the places that I've seen these (in Seattle), they don't seem to induce a higher criminal / unsanitary / dystopian atmosphere. Perhaps my perspective is unique.

>Japan and Singapore are examples of countries that are extremely tough on drugs. I believe it is no coincidence that these places also turned out to be essentially the opposite of the Tenderloin with regards to public safety and heigene.

Yes, and Singapore's approach still regards possession / use as a medical with an initial focus on rehabilitation, not just punishment. Singapore has some pretty big advantages over the US in its administration of the law (single jurisdiction / set of laws, single highly populous city). The laws vary widely in the US (consider Marijuana legalization an obvious example).

We tried a strategy. All evidence point to that strategy being a complete failure at accomplishing any of its goals.

Yes, let’s try a different strategy. Yes, that different strategy might be the opposite of the thing we were trying before. That’s because the thing we were trying before has failed in almost every metric for decades (including drug overdose deaths, as you’ve noted).

Honestly, I genuinely don’t know how one could rationalize preserving the existing strategy. Can you explain the desire to continue applying the same failed strategy? What’s the logical argument for continuing to do the same thing?

We tried prohibition of alcohol for a time, and then rolled that back when it was obvious that the experiment failed.

Decriminalization has its own issues, to be sure. I'd prefer legalization (the actual polar opposite). I want addicts to be able to buy a clean supply from a legitimate business. The US won't see a reduction in organized crime until we offer a path to legitimacy. Decriminalization is the easiest, but least effective middle ground.

Governments that have addressed drug use as a health issue, rather than a criminal issue, have shown good results.

If this is the direction Oregon is intending to go, it is certainly worth trying. But if it will just be an unstructured free-for-all I doubt it will result in any improvements.

I’m not closely familiar with the Oregon legislation, but usually decriminalizing drugs is paired with those kinds of approaches, so I would be very surprised if that wasn’t the case with Oregon’s legislation.

Decriminalization is usually just a necessary prerequisite to make the medical approach practically workable. I’d expect most legislatures would avoid touching the decriminalization issue if they could.

> But if it will just be an unstructured free-for-all I doubt it will result in any improvements.

For a functioning addict, drugs not being illegal is itself an improvement, even if overdose rates stay completely unchanged.

When you have an addiction problem, getting the legal system involved typically results in you getting two problems around your neck, instead of just one.

This is why we can't have a rational conversation; your very first point was to link two statistics in a misleading way. You immediately imply that enforcement of drug laws is connected to the number of overdoses. However anyone can see that both overdose and enforcement have increased over time.

The idea that treating drug problems with criminal punishment rather than medical care is effective for solving the drug overdose problem without data to back that viewpoint sounds more emotionally driven than the converse view. I'd anticipate that we would both agree that the former has provably not worked, it's time to give the latter a chance.

So the current system with drugs being illegal leads to an all time high of overdoses, but you suggest a switch to a different approach is timed badly? Yes, I do think going the opposite route of the one causing record levels of overdoses is a good start.

I have a hard time following your line of thought.

> decriminalize all drugs[0] during a time when overdoses are at an all time high[1] and increasing over 40% in just the last year.

You're assuming overdose rates are negatively correlated with criminalization of drugs. Have you considered the possibility that it's exactly the opposite, then when drugs are decriminalized, people can have access to better information and health care?

If you're a professional and you have alcoholism, you can get care and treatment, and it may even be paid for by your employer's health care plant. If you're addicted to cocaine, OxyContin, hydrocodone, or amphetamines, then maybe one day you OD because you never talk about it and you don't see a doctor about it, for fear of being convicted of a crime, losing your job, your health care, and ending up in prison or homeless.

I've never heard of a company accepting and paying for alcohol treatment? It's 100% fire rate in my opinion.

Most health plans will cover at least a portion of substance abuse treatment. Things like HIPAA are there to keep your employer out of your business. You might be surprised how many of your co-workers have been through some kind of substance abuse program.

> then maybe one day you OD because you never talk about it

And also because the substances you're consuming aren't subject to the vast array of safety mechanisms that exist for all other pharmaceuticals. You don't have anywhere near the same level of quality guarantees.

Compared to the synthesis and purification of complex organics, the distillation of ethanol is difficult to mess up. People still died of poisoning during prohibition though.

I don't think decriminalizing drug use was a strictly liberal policy. That had support from large parts of the right.

Where the right and left differed was in all the programs treating drug addiction that were brought in at the same time. Pamper the poor darlings vs Let them rot in the gutter.

OP’s structure of argument should be a well established anti-pattern.

I wish more people recognized that it is a tempting and lazy logical fallacy. It is fundamentally disrespectful to assume that people who don’t agree with you are too emotional. If you make this argument, you are killing your own argument, unless you support it with facts. OP demonstrates this uncharitability by asserting a lack of data, and then assuming emotions explain it. Go hang out with a more diverse crowd, OP. You are robbing yourself of life’s tapestry.

It's particularly troubling language because depending on who the subject is, the validity of the argument is often treated differently.

For example, If OP had made this argument about women I don't think we'd see so many upvotes on the comment and we'd see a lot more uproar. Despite the fact that women are routinely dismissed as being "emotional".

Here, OP presents that there is insufficient data to hop to conclusions. That said, OP still dismisses "conservatives" on the premise of acting purely on emotion. The irony seems lost on OP but also other HN viewers.

> OP’s structure of argument should be a well established anti-pattern.

Agreed that accusing your opponent of not using facts or reason makes it hard to have an honest discussion.

At the very least, if reason and facts are so important to you, what about the fact that this style of argument is empirically ineffective, and almost never persuades anybody to switch views? It's even dangerous to your cause, in the sense that it makes people defensive and more extreme in their views. If you care about outcomes, don't poison the conversation.

I'm also skeptical whenever I see an argument that depends on the assumption that if you just had access to all the facts, you'd agree with me. In my experience, the more facts I learn about anything related to human behavior, the more complex the picture gets, and the less certain I am that anybody has it right.

This is a major issue today. People do not understand why people with different views hold the views they hold. There is an assumption that the other people are not data driven, are just emotional and cling to the way things used to be. I think one reason is the completely different lifestyles held by people. We have some people in urban / suburban areas and some some people in rural. So many people who do not live in rural areas have never even been to such an area for any extended period of time. They don't get to know the people or mentality thst comes with it.

Exactly this,

One thing that has stuck with me recently was a quote where it basically said that ‘everyone is skeptical, but just about different things’

Thank you. No, the exact issue is that almost nobody notices that, regardless of political orientation.

What individuals believe seems _so_obviously_correct_ and what other people believe is _so_completely_ridiculous_ that we make up reasons for them being so... so... different than ourselves.

>Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the government of the people serves the people. More precisely how taxes and math work.

Given the metastasizing of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) sections of the economy, and their typical concentration in urban areas, I'd say that rural areas are basically in the same position as a colony to a colonial power.

Shipping cheap raw materials to the cities, who in turn own the shares, banks, and mortgages, has always been pretty common.

Of course, if you are in favor of colonialism....

A different lens to view this through has to do with economic and population shifts over the last century. Specifically the huge increase in agricultural productivity.

"In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20 percent." [1]

That's a large erosion of political and economic power in those rural areas as more people moved out of agriculture into other industries that tend to be located in population centers. Not sure how that changes unless we move away from large corporate farms back to smaller family farms (See various Wendall Berry essays and novels where he lays out what's happened to rural areas over the last century as family farms have dwindled), however, that seems very unlikely.

[1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-americ...

The current definition of what is urban vs rural is very shaky. I don't think when theses numbers are brought up there is an understanding of what counted as rural then and what counts as rural now.

In addition there's urban and there's urban.

Remove the imperial capitals (DC or London) or financial capitals (London or New York) and the next tier down ain't so much.

Note that this movement isn’t recent and I think I’d traced to the proposed state of Jefferson[1] (in the NorCal, south and east Oregon areas), which was going to get a vote in Congress but WWII got in the way and never happened. It comes up from time to time; you’ll see banners for it in rural areas.

So it should not be framed as a pushback to current politics. They feel they’ve had reasons for a while.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_...

You can trace it all the way back to the Mormons and their idea of the State of Deseret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret

The biggest driving factor is overexposure to news & social media which convinces otherwise well-off and content people that the "other side" is out to destroy their lives, so they must do something about it.

You can understand what's going on in eastern Oregon (and Idaho and Nevada) a bit better with some background. It's not especially about taxes. https://longreads.com/bundyville/season-one/

I think a lot of the momentum of the right is around the view that the left wants to take away their freedoms and make a big nanny state where big brother knows best. To a degree this is probably driven by the fact that due to “urban” areas having denser populations, and thus requireing more rules to keep people from stepping all over each other. The rural sees this and says get off my lawn, I don’t want your rules here. (Guns, taxes, envy concerns, business law, etc etc)

I see this as one place where the far right comes from, but by no means does this encompass everything.

Or maybe you are the one that doesn’t understand their situation. These are government professionals that live and work there, and are intimately involved with all of the legal proceedings between county and state.

You called them out as ignorant, and provided zero facts to back it up. Now let’s hear your credentials and experience with regional government in the rural Pacific Northwest.

And wouldn’t it be great if there were GAO reports on where every collected tax dollar is spent. Maybe if you had that, you would be able to address this with facts instead of your assumption that you must be right because you are smarter than them, and that means you don’t need facts to know you are right.

But given that you have presented zero facts, and zero experience, and may actually benefit from disinformation, I’m going to go with the opinions of the people that have all the facts, and all the experience, and actually have to pay the cost of their decision.

But instead of psychoanalyzing them, let’s hear your opinion on a simple yes/no question:

Should they be allowed to exit?

The last 30 years in Oregon, Both D's and R's have dis-empowered rural communities (Bill Sizemore comes to mind).

The cultural assumptions present in rural Oregon, Suburban Oregon, and Portland are vast. Go out to Christmas Valley. Go there. Then walk around the Pearl district in Portland.

You're trying to use pure reason. Go get some experience.

What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater good, is shown to be wrong?

Let alone the difficulty of tracing it: assume it’s possible to show where every tax dollar went.

Would you still favor this trnsparency if it’s shown to sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of their would be constituents? Just hypothetically?

Would you still favor this trnsparency [sp] if it’s shown to sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of their would be constituents?

Just Devil's Advocate, but wouldn't that be the best outcome? If it showed to which company every tax dollar went. Who the principals are in those companies. And the connections those principals have to politicians allocating the dollars?

Especially if it showed this for every dollar, I'm finding it hard to see a downside. Am I missing something?

> What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater good, is shown to be wrong?

Wouldn't we call that a success? You can't fix something that isn't measured. If nobody knows anything concrete then all people have to go on is vague feelings.

"Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive."

It's not a big mystery. A lot of politicians are making their careers by dividing people.

Some policies are just downright mean, and seem to serve little purpose other than division.

Conservative/rural people are often on the receiving end, because they just don't have a large enough constituency to fight it. Sure, they are winning some battles, but each one is uphill and the slope is steepening rapidly.

Sadly, the country will suffer greatly. The left is wrong on a lot of things (or at least too extreme), but they are in control and there will be little pushback going forward. Even moderate democrats are being trampled.

What are some things that are too extreme? And what are they extreme in relationship to?

> Of particular interest would be trying to categorize areas with positive or negative contributions to a person's or region's productivity

Having a map which highlight regions which has a negative balance sheet in terms of taxes vs government costs would mostly just be a map of segregation of class, which in turn would be a map showing segregation of different demographics. Illustrating which demographics are costing the government more than they pay in taxes is not something the left in my country are very happy to do, and I doubt it is that much different in the USA.

What a patronizing take. No wonder they want to leave, if they’re governed by people with your attitude.

You're being downvoted because your statement is a bit inflammatory and leaps to condemnation. However, it is otherwise a very accurate take in my opinion. OP has presented their view as inherently rational, correct, and moral, and presented conservative views as "emotional" or "lacking understanding". That type of moral assertion absolutely IS one of the main complaints I see from rural conservatives about urban liberals.

> Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the US very elusive.

Self induced tribalism.

It is always about power.

No reason to make it so complicated.

Not to understand the benefits of buying in bulk and enriching the commons - what can one say about such people! But at least you do.

Having good information accessibly presented is helpful but when local news outlets are owned by Sinclair Media[1] and Fox News is the most watched cable outlet for the conservatives that live there the facts really don't matter.

We can bend over backwards to explain how helpful the valley is to them but it's going to fall on ears which don't want to listen.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be provided for, they 100% should, just them actually leaving will do more to show them the inefficiencies of a conservative super state.

Short of that the most effective way to change the information disconnect is actually address the source of the issue: media.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Polit...

Why would you spend so much time writing so much about people who you admitted to knowing nothing about? Go visit rural America. Talk to people. Getting upvotes on Hacker News for presumptuous rants is no way to actually learn what’s happening.

I think Covid is driving a great deal of this division now. People in rural Oregon see red states like Idaho almost entirely back to normal, without the promised piles of dead bodies in the streets, and feel like they could have that for themselves if not for Governor Kate Brown and the state's ridiculous protocols and mandates, which even include masking for outdoor youth sports.

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