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Comment by tonystubblebine | Hacker News Reader

I’ve wondered about state level differences too. Most of the east coast has terrible roads. That’s especially true in NYC where I live. But I did a trip down to Delaware and was on freeways like I’d never seen in the US. Just really nice. Are some states just run much better?

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It varies county by county too. “Conscientious Republican” counties—like in Northern VA when I was growing up in the 1990s, or California from the 60s to the 80s—are the most well run. I live in a traditionally red county in Maryland (went Romney 2012, split evenly in 2016) and everything is super well run.

Democrats and Republicans each have things they do well and things they do bad. Roads are generally a Republican thing, and roads are visible.

Not just roads. Northern VA’s excellent educational system was built under republicans, with a few conservative democrat governors. Building and permits are much easier. Even just efficiency of government offices. Getting a copy of my kid’s birth certificate in my county took like 10 minutes. In bored strokes, at state and local level, republicans tend to focus on serving the majority, while democrats are focused on equity and redistribution for minorities.

I grew up in a super-red county in California. Things were horribly run. The area has been under Democratic leadership for the past twenty years and it is a world change in terms of how much nicer, better, and more efficient everything is. The roads are better, the schools are better, the neighborhoods and people are better.

It turns out than when you have people believe that government should exist, and that government can do a good job, you get people who do good work. And when your government consists of people who think it shouldn't exist...you get morass.

Contrast blue counties with red counties in most states and you'll notice a huge difference in how much nicer things are in the blue counties. There's a reason so many Republicans retire to LA and NY: after they've made their money railing "against the libs" they just want a nice place to live out their golden years.

Did your county see a change in significant improvement in socioeconomic status during that time period? Because that’s not a fair comparison. Note I said I was talking about places Northern VA in the 1990s, or Silicon Valley in the 1970s. I’ve never seen these places get better under Democrats.

Also, virtually no republicans “retire to LA and NY” lol. Maybe billionaires who can insulate themselves from the dysfunction of those cities. For middle class people, the major internal migration trend in the country is people leaving those places for Texas, the Carolinas, etc.

Yes, as soon as the Republicans were kicked out of office, the Democrats that replaced them made the area nice, and within a few years the socioeconomic status of the area improved.

Notably, this always happened after the Republicans were kicked out.

Generally, "competent" and "Republican" are diametrically opposed terms. Republicans like Mitt Romney are the exception to the rule.

In fact, every area that has been taken over by Republicans has seen a marked decrease in socioeconomic status following Republican takeover: see, for example, Ohio and Florida, which were once blue states that are now red.

The change of guard is most important from what I can tell. Both parties have their own corruption. Change often and each will stop the other's bad practices before they get too bad.

It isn't perfect, but it is the only thing that seems to have any long term success .

Alternate take: most places where people actually live are governed by Democrats, because Democrats dominate urban areas, and most people live in urban areas. Places with single-party dominance tend to be poorly governed (for instance: the Illinois Democratic party, the Kansas Republican party). When Republicans survive in Democratic areas (for instance: Massachusetts Republican governors) they tend to do well; presumably, Democrats managing in red states do well too, but we don't hear so much about them, because people tend not to live in red counties (they tend to be rural, not urban).

It's mostly party machines that are the problem, not the particular parties.

It's not just state level, the same thing happens at the municipal level. There's a trip I take a few times a year, and I always notice the transition from one town to another by the sudden deterioration of the road.

Winter and salt are both hard on roads with lots of freeze thaw cycles putting cracks in the road. So Delaware is an apples and oranges comparison. Delaware is going to have a lot less winter wear on their roads.

It's less "how well states are run" and more that some states just get way more money. Delaware gets approximately 50x as much money as California or New York does from the federal government on a per-mile basis.

Why does Delaware get more money per mile?

Biden ?

he is from there and has been a leader in Gov for decades.

Delaware is in large part a drive through state as people go from NYC/Philadelphia/New England to DC. So the roads there tend to be used more by out of staters. Look at the person I'm responding to. That makes it easier for other senators to want to contribute cash. Plus, Delaware doesn't have nearly as many roads, so the total number is still fairly reasonable.

There may be some fixed costs per state. I don't know.

There is a risk that if Delaware got too little money, they could forgo it, lower their drinking age to 18, and have state liquor store sell to everyone under 21 in the surrounding states.

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