Blue state values

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A little counter point to the "red state values" bashing going on here:

An interesting table:
Generosity Index

I believe the first 25 states all went to Bush and that 19 of the lowest 25 went to Kerry.

It seems to me that the blue or more liberal (read socialist) states have no problem helping the downtrodden as long as it is with someone else's money, whereas the red or conservative states actually dig into their own pockets to provide charity for others.

Strikes me as a little hypocritical, but then I am biased to the right, so perhaps someone with a leftist view could put a different interpretation on this?

 

Not really, the blue believe the government should help the downtrodden. The red typically feel the government should help promote business and that successful businesses and people should help those less fortunate.

Pay more taxes to help or give to charities -- I prefer to donate to charities.

 

Well, one reason that more donations come from people living in red states would be that they have the most money. Income correlates highly with voting preference, with the wealthy tending to vote Republican and the poor tending to vote Democrat. One of the poorest segments of our society's population is urban African Americans. Many Kerry states have large African American populations, who ursurprisingly voted overwhelmingly for Kerry. Just think of all the "big cities" in the U.S. where these population centers are located - almost all of them have high minority populations and almost all of them voted Kerry.

Think about the major cities in the U.S. with the really big populations. You get cities like:

New York, NY KERRY
Los Angeles, CA KERRY
Chicago, IL KERRY
Philadelphia, PA KERRY
San Diego, CA KERRY
Detroit, MI KERRY
San Jose, CA KERRY
Baltimore, MD KERRY
San Francisco, CA KERRY
Washington, DC KERRY
Boston, MA KERRY

(I doubt these are in order - they are listed as they occurred to me. I would think that Boston has a higher population than Baltimore for example.)

I can't think of more than a handful of major cities in Bush country:

Atlanta, GA BUSH
Houston, TX BUSH
Dallas, TX BUSH
Miami, FL BUSH

If I'm being generous, and I really want to expand the term "major city" I suppose I could add:

Cincinnati, OH BUSH
Cleveland, OH BUSH

Population centers get the most aid from the government and they are the most poor. These people don't have the money to be donating to charity, and besides, who would they be donating to? Themselves?

 

Aldeth, I am sorry, but I have to disagree with your logic. Look at most of the states on the top of the list:

• Mississippi
  Arkansas
  South Dakota
  Oklahoma
  Alabama
  Louisiana

These are some of the poorest states in the nation. They have the lowest income per capita, and are not populated by corporate execs. They do not have huge many corporate complexes with thousands of high wage earning white-collar professionals.

I can tell you that living in one of these states myself, we don't have a problem with charity, as long as it is not taken at the point of a gun by the gov't.

Also, using your argument undermines one of the standing assumptions on this board, that the intelligent people in the cities voted for Kerry while the dumb hicks in the country voted for Bush. Is your stance now that the poorest Americans voted for Kerry, and that the majority of his support came from the downtrodden, under educated inner city? That the underprivileged majority in the cities so vastly outnumbered the successful urban vote so as to make it appear that those who live urban areas overwhelmingly supported Kerry?

If so this opens a whole new debate. Should the poor be allowed to vote in those who will take the personal property of some individuals and give it to the poor? Is this democracy or just mob mentality? This mentality inevitably leads to a point at which people vote for their immediate gratification without any thought to the future, and given the US deficit, we already have far too much of that!

[ December 01, 2004, 16:52: Message edited by: Darkwolf ]

 

I don't think I agree with either of the last two analyses.

1) Blue states pay far more into the federal tax system than do red states, meaning that red states are essentially beneficiaries of blue state welfare. If blue states pay more in federal taxes, we can say on aggregate that they are wealthier, and so aren't fully typified by a poor urban underclass, even if this underclass generally votes Democrat. As cities are essentially engines of wealth, you also have a large population of affluent professionals, and professionals tend to vote Democrat.

2) The methodology of the study is very odd, to the extent the index is essentially meaningless. The designers themselves admit the index is "educational" rather than "scientific (e.g., economics, sociology)." Lets look at the variables:

Note that the data here is drawn *exclusively* from tax returns, and so does not count those, such as the poor, who did not bother to file tax returns, and so only paid payroll taxes.

As I don't want to belabor this, I'll only look at the generation and comparison of the "Having Rank" vs the "Giving Rank." The "Having Rank" is simply the average income reported by all households/individuals who filed taxes. Mississippi (MS), ranked 1st in the Generosity Index, places 50th in the "Having Rank" with an average reported income of $33,754, while Massachusettes (MA), ranked 49th in the Generosity Index, places 3rd with an average reported income of $56,764.

"Giving Rank" measures a subset of that population: those who itemized charitable contributions (and so declared their charity as a tax break). The part of the population that filed income tax that did not itemize charity might or might not have given to charity, as everyone can take a standard deduction of several thousand dollars (and deductions include a number of things: mortgage payments, medical expenses, as well as charity); in 2002 this was $4700 for individuals and $7850 for married couples with a joint return. "Giving Rank" simply takes the amount of itemized deductions declared as charity (and yes, people can realize tax benefits through charitable giving) divided by the number of returns that made itemized deductions. In MS, 240,993 people itemized an average of $4,484 in charity, yielding a Giving Rank of 5, while in MA, 1,142,584 people itemized an average of $2,929 in charity, yielding a Giving Rank of 39.

A "Ranks Relation" was then produced, subtracting the Giving Rank from the Having Rank. For MS, this was 50 - 5, or 45, while for MA, this was 3 - 39, or -36. The "Generosity Index" simply ranks these in order, using "Percentage of Returns with Itemized Charitable Deductions" to break a tie (with higher percentage getting the higher rank.)

Hold on, you might say: first of all, what about these "Percentage of Returns with Itemized Charitable Deductions?" In MS, this was 20.7% of tax returns, while in MA, it was 37.1%, essentially saying "we will compare the average giving of the 20.7% wealthiest of one state against the 37.1% wealthiest of another." What, exactly, does this compare? Or is there a distortion in this measure somewhere: totaling up the Percentages for the top 15 states in the "Generosity Index" yields an average of 23.2%, while the bottom 15 states yield an average of 34.9%. In other words, there's a strong negative correlation between "Percentage of Returns with Itemized Charitable Deductions" and ranking on the "Generosity Index": the less people sampled, the better the score.

This could mean a number of things. I suspect that MA has a far higher percentage of middle and upper middle class professionals than does MS. These people give to charity, but not as much as upper class households would. In comparing the average generosity of 20.7% of MS tax returns vs 37.1% of MA tax returns, you are comparing very different populations; in fact as the "Having Rank" includes 100% of tax returns, this probably has something to do with a greater disparity in wealth between the rich and the poor in MS as opposed to MA.

So, this "Generosity Index" is essentially meaningless. It doesn't establish any kind of baseline to compare one state's generosity against another's.

I can't let this pass: this is kinda funny statement, given that the Index you site only looks at Charity giving declared on an gov't Income Tax form, for the purpose of getting tax breaks!

 

You got that right:

I also like this one:

Well gee, if the cost of living isn't an issue for "the upper reaches of income" and they donate more... ya' think maybe the cost of living does factor in a bit with people giving away spare change?

 

@Darkwolf

While I still think that this ranking is crap, I think you do bring up some very good points that need to be addressed.

First of all, I don't think that looking at average income is a fair means of measuring the wealth of people in two different state. More precisely, I think it is fair to do so within a state, and possibly between neighboring states, but faulty when looking at states in entirely different areas of the country.

Yes, the average income for Mississippi households is about $34K, while the average household income in Massachusettes is $57K. However, I question what that really means in practice. With the cost of living, especially in regards to housing (most people's single largest expense), being so much greater in MA than MS, I really wonder if the MA household has more disposable income than a MS household. Assuming that people who have more disposable income are more likely to make donations, it is entirely possible that the people of MS, while earning less, actually have more to spend than people in MA.

Secondly, yes, there are FAR MORE white collar professionals living in the big cities than in the states you list. However, I would argue that for every wealthy business man, there are many times as many poor people in that same city. So while the city may have some of the richest of the rich comprising 1%-5% of it's population, it overlooks the fact that 30% of the population is among the poorest of the poor.

But this is what I really want to talk about:

Well, they really aren't mutually exclusive arguements. Sure, cities have many educated working professionals, but they also have a very large urban poor population. I can argue that intelligent white-collar professionals voted for Kerry (which by the way isn't true - it was almost a perfect 50-50 split), and that the poor, uneducated urbanites voted for Kerry, and I'm talking about the same areas of the country - big cities.

I'm confused by these questions, as they seem to be facts - and self-evident ones at that. The poorest Americans living in urban centers DID vote for Kerry. The underpriveleged majority in cities DOES vastly outnumber the successful people in a city. That having been said, whether you are talking about the uneducated poor, or the educated wealthy, both groups living in urban areas overwhelmingly voted for Kerry. Check the vote tallies by county if you don't believe me.

And you think I like to look at the world through rose-colored glasses at times! Using this arguement, there wouldn't be democracy anywhere, as democracy invariably allows the poor masses to vote. Before democracy we had monarchies, where if you weren't an aristocrat your opinion didn't count. And you can be damn sure that then the haves did not worry about the state of the have-nots and laws were in place to keep all the money where it already was. Naturally, once you give the masses the right to vote, they are going to vote in their own self-interest. You can call this self-gratification or mob mentality if you wish, but really why would you expect anyone to vote against their own self-interest?

I don't mean for any of what I wrote to come off as mean-spirited or a personal attack, but I just wonder why you bring any of this up. The issues you question aren't really questions or discussions at all - you're questioning things that are facts. They are symptoms of a society that are self-evident to everyone, everywehre, every single day.

 

Did it occur to you that many people who voted for Kerry WERE THE POOR and lower income voters? Relgious donations, as has been pointed out, are probably also a factor that can't be ignored in your argument.

The government is also known as the "public sector"; or sometimes better known as the People.

 

Chandos

Has anyone notified the Gov't of this fact lately?

The US Federal Gov't forgot its role long ago. Would you march into the richest part of town, take out a gun, point it at the first rich person you find, and demand that they give up some of their belongings so that you can take them to the poor? No? Actually indirectly you do, every April 15th. If the Gov't is an extension of the people, then we are all guilty of this Machiavellian version of the Robin Hood story.

Unfortunately, the US Federal Government is no longer driven by the people, but the people are instead driven by it, as evidenced by the fact that the majority of Americans who voted did not want to vote for Kerry or Bush, but instead cast their vote in an attempt to block the other one. If this is a Gov't "of the people, by the people, and for the people" why did we not have a candidate that a majority of people wanted to vote for? This is not a fact in just the Presidential Election, but is reflected in many Senate and House elections as well.

In reality, far too much has been made of this "Blue/Red State Values" issues. The fact is that the Gov't is not representing the will of the people at any appreciable level, and until we are ready to throw them all out and start over (not talking revolution yet, I still believe that we can accomplish this via elections) we are going to continue to see our rights diminish and the Fed Gov't usurping authority.

All,

My point with this thread wasn't to make any scientific proof of "red states good, blue states bad", but to create a discussion as to where the Fed Gov't's responsibility for welfare should end and where private charity should begin. Rarely do broad based claims of "this group is x and the group is y" stand up to statistical analysis. But sometimes they still make for an interesting discussion at a logical level.

[ December 02, 2004, 16:47: Message edited by: Darkwolf ]

 

@Chandos: I really have no idea what you were trying to say about my quote other than support it (you are obviously blue -- that reminds me of Yellow Submarine: "Are you bluish? you don't look bluish...").

I wasn't stating either was wrong -- welfare or charity, either can help those in need. Welfare implies it is our obligation to help others, charity relies on people feeling a moral responsibility. Both are good, I don't know which is better or where that line should be drawn.

However, I do believe the government tends be the most expensive way to help (all the buracrats need a piece of the pie) and also the least flexible.

 

OK, if you say so. However, until these two sentences, everything else you wrote in the topic would indicate the exact opposite of what you wrote here.

 

T2 Bruno - I thought I was agreeing with you by making the point that the government is representative of the People (the ideal democratic-republican form of government). And I thought you were saying that government could be a force for good FOR the People.

I understood Darkwolf's point, which is one of the core arguments about the role that government is playing in helping the poor. I see the reverse: the rich continuing to steal from the poor, and keeping them such, by using government as a tool for the advancement of their own ambitions. For me the "rich" are not the kindly, benign force that some would have us believe. It's not just about taxes, but every level in which individuals interact with the econonmy and there is government involvement.

 

All bureaucrats need a piece of the pie? Is that why the pay and benefits are so much higher in the public sector than in the private sector? Let me tell you, all the bankers *I* know just can't wait to quit their hardship wages at Goldman Sachs and go work for the SEC or the IRS. And certainly, corporations are incapable of wasting resources...

Oh, and remember, when you're talking about the gov't, a big part of your budget is police, firemen, and military. Should they be privatized?

Look, a privatization is great, unbeatable even, in certain circumstances. But definitely not all circumstances. Without decent financial regulation, corporations would run this country into the ground (something which might be happening at the moment BTW). Someone has to be there to keep the game fair, and there are plenty of examples in US history where the untrammeled corporate might brought about disasterous consequences.

And many private entities are parasitic on public money. Look at the pharmaceutical industry, which absolutely relies on public money to educate it's researchers, and to produce the bulk of the basic science on which it relies. It can then cherry-pick the research to make ungodly profits. (Of course, as with Merck/Vioxx, there's some risk involved as well). Where's the free market there? It certainly isn't the clear public/private distinction most people try to make...

 

Wow, I actually find myself mostly agreeing with Darkwolf. All of the Western democracy are on the verge of a confident crisis, it may be further along in the US than elsewhere but it is lurking everywhere.

When that crisis fully erupts it will be a fieldday for wannabe dictators and extremists groups of all colours. We can look at Italy and Berlusconi to see what I deem as the Western democracy most at risk. Hopefully the people will be able to block any extremist wackos and authoritarians and recreate new and improved democracies. Wow, that makes me sound real utopian, to counter I actually think that we will fall prey yet again to the lure of fascism, nationalism or authoritarian communism even if the last one in contrast to the others do appear to be on the low at the moment.

 

I have seen no evidence of this in my little part of "Western Democracy".

 

Would you march into the middle class part of town, take out a gun, point it at a bunch of residents, and demand that they give you money so you can take the money and give it to the cops? No? Actually indirectly you do, every April 15th.

 

A

The difference is that the majority of the people paying for the police protection are willing to pay for it. The majority of the rich resent having to give up their hard earned so that the gov't can very inefficiently give their (the rich person’s) money to a lot of people who do very little to remove themselves from the need for such money. If the rich give their money to charity, they would prefer to select those charities themselves.

To boil it down:

How is it fair or right that the majority can vote to take away the property of a minority? One of the founding ideals of the US was property rights, which unfortunately are being eroded away.

 

I'm not arguing your point, just the manner in which you presented it, is all.

 

Harbourboy, do you like your politicians? Do you trust them to do solely what they think is best for all of New Zeeland? Do people in general see your politicians as trustworthy caretakers of your country or as slimey lying weasels out to line their own pockets? They need not even be like that, the perception among people that it is like that is more than enough.

I also said that some countries were further along than others on this path. The smaller countries usually fare better. Look at France and how they were forced to unite behind Chiraq because Le Pen had reached to the final round even if Chiraq was by no means popular in France. Look at the US who they have election after election the choice between two men who are blatantly in the pocket of the big corporations and that even if the Bush regime is more extreme and shady than usual there are not much of a real difference between the two parties for the vast majority of Americans. Look at the EU whose greatest problem is to overcome the both the deserved and undeserved distrust of the peoples of the EU countries.

It is not here yet but it will come.

Dooooooom I tell you!

Despite the smiley I am serious I just wanted to lighten the mood a little bit, hmm it may have been redundant to explain that, and this, and that hmm, I better stop now.

 

I bellieve it was Franklin that said: The only things you can be sure of are death and taxes.

Also, from the very birth of our country, the rich have always been taxed more heavily than the poor.

So it's really not fair to say:

When it is clear that even the founding fathers intended that the rich would bear the largest tax burden.

Now, if you're actually saying that there should be a flat tax where everyone pays the same percentage, then you would have to accept that your taxes would go up considerably. If we didn't apply a higher tax upon the rich, the burden would switch to the lower and middle classes, which would have to greatly increase their share to make up for what the rich pay.

Besides, there are areas where there are limits on how much you can be taxed. Take Social Security. The maximum contribution occurs somewhere around $90,000 in annual income. Beyond that, there is no further increase in your contribution. Therefore, someone making $100,000 per year pays the same amount into social security as some one who makes $1,000,000 per year who in turn pays the same amount as someone making $10,000,000 per year. As an aside, and somewhat couldn't we solve a lot of the Social Security problems by simply removing this cap, so that everyone pays the same percentage?