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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

> If Trump follows through on his promises, the US will be in bad shape.

Might be a good learning experience for the Red states.

One huge issue in the US politics is that the Red states are largely insulated from the consequences of their decisions by the Federal budget transfers. Nearly all deep Red states are net receivers of the Federal funds, especially when Medicare/SS are taken into account.

All that culture war nonsense, CHIPS act, and so on do not make any tangible difference for a voter in Alabama. All these amount to peanuts compared with the overall Federal spending.

Trump is poised to seriously change this.

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> Might be a good learning experience for the Red states.

There's been plenty of opportunities to learn, facts don't matter apparently.

The most recent opportunity was 20 years ago when the housing market crashed. It did work, Democrats got 60 seats in the Senate.

Nothing since that time has really affected the Red states fiscally.

> Trump is poised to seriously change this.

Couldn't a Trump administration rework the distribution of funds so that states that voted for him got even more money, and states that didn't got none?

Bold of you to think the red states are capable of learning.

Oh, they will. Culture wars only go so far when your wallet is _truly_ affected.

Wasn't that the alleged reason for continued escalations in Germany in the 40s?

Not really.

Hitler got entrenched in power because his economic policies _worked_ in 1930-s. They were broadly Keynesian: state spending to stimulate infrastructure (for the military) and manufacturing (also mostly military). This led to economic growth that people really felt in their wallets: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Economic_development...

And so it resulted in a huge upswing in Nazi support, enabling Hitler to stay in power. People really _loved_ him.

This doesn't work all that well backwards. If peoples' lives keep getting materially worse, it's hard to keep blaming it on "the others".

Everyone learns when they're punched in the face. The question is what less will be taught? So far he's been able to tell them everything is someone else's fault, but when he's in the driver's seat, who will he blame? And will they believe him?

Red States are the biggest leaches off the federal government. Out of the top-10 states that take in more subsidies than they pay out in taxes, only 2 are blue states, 8 are red states! The Red States never learn because the social welfare programs from the Democrats coddle them ...

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