It's time to stop referring to "more productive people," perhaps. That's part of the problem. If you did what society told you to do, graduated from high school - sometimes even from college - and now are frozen out of the economy, working multiple low wage jobs to support your family, and having to choose whether to "become more productive" or help your child with learning, you might feel a bit left out when folks refer to you as unproductive and unworthy of assistance or respect. Sandel's book The Tyranny of Merit is worth reading as we contemplate the first chart.
thought provoking for sure. much of this difference is a proxy for education and urbanization. I am still fixed on the fact that whatever the reason 70 million of us chose Donald Trump
It's a pretty bitter pill, that the economy is so divided between more productive people who seem to lean Democrat, and Republicans – who vote against transfer payments for others but seem to be quite happily consuming transfers themselves. Perhaps the MAGA message makes a little more sense in this context. The ageing GOP voter being economically left-behind and dependent. The message of regaining personal independence and sovereignty from "those evil Democrats and their transfer payments...".
Ironic that the groups of people that most hate subsidies is in fact the party that seems to need them / happily consume them.
I've seen calls for electoral votes to be apportioned to states by things like economic productivity. Begs the question is American democracy, whilst powerful and seemingly stable, may also be a bit quaint? These elections start to look hugely wasteful, which was fine when they produced optimal results. However given that the choice was largely between two 70+ Caucasian men who were born when television was new, what does it mean if politics are bitterly divided, grossly expensive, and now produce suboptimal results?
To me, that chart says there are a lot of different ways we can optimise resource allocation, and the current methodology may be slowly failing.
It's simpler than that, I think. The reality is that the current surge in nationalism and populism is a result of convince impoverished, rural white people that their poverty is someone else's fault--whether through job stealing, environmental regulation, or welfare to minorities.
Yes, that's part of it. Fascinating that a singular cultural identity can hold both self-reliance and avoidance of responsibility as acceptable and cognitively integrated.
1) I see inequality... educational differences that beget income opportunity differences can beget disharmony when income becomes less of an opportunity as it has (real or perceived.)
2) The middle class - the health or... of any incomy - gets hollowed out by cronyism/capture. Taxes get avoided by the moneyed, avoided by those without much money and land on all the rest "in the middle."
That first chart does not bode well for hopes of lowering the political temperature. It reminds me of this excellent article that came out after the 2016 election—one of the pieces that helped me understand how someone's perspective on that election could be so radically differently to mine: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
A few thoughts: 1. it will be interesting to see if and how this will change as people migrate on the back of covid (because they can work remotely and are leaving more expensive areas to have a better quality of life). 2. "the winners": I have written about this and I think new technologies like blockchain (particular the concept of a token) have the power to contribute to a more level playing field. IMO it is not just "winner takers all" in society, but also in business and capital markets. I believe we are going to see massive change here in the next decade or so - in terms of the concept of "the firm", new business models, and financing, fueled by digitization of everything (including the work place and money), powered by blockchain based tokens and supported by other technologies.
The first chart begs many interesting questions... and false ideas. The way we allocate GDP to one county or another should lot be viewed as a straightforward "output" of their residents.
We are not in an agrarian economy anymore. The value that is assigned to some activities means that the value of biden counties is higher than maybe more rural counties that provide cities with food. Talking about (at least regional) ecosystems would be more productive to recognize interdependencies.
Finally, I would be interested to see the margin of those counties won by biden. His (fairly) large success in the electoral college means he got votes distributed well enough to win many states by some slim majorities. Maybe we see the same with counties, and it magnifies the difference in output that is in this graph.
Not exactly, net margin he has outside of california is slim, but there are places outside of california that he lost/won bigly.
But I'm more focused on the first part. We cannot at the same time:
- say we need to be careful in where we see and account value beyond stock price and salaries (remember nurses?) ;
- and take local GDP as a measure of objective output of the people in a county (not saying you said so, but those comparisons lend themselves to this interpretation, see Clinton after her defeat)
It's time to stop referring to "more productive people," perhaps. That's part of the problem. If you did what society told you to do, graduated from high school - sometimes even from college - and now are frozen out of the economy, working multiple low wage jobs to support your family, and having to choose whether to "become more productive" or help your child with learning, you might feel a bit left out when folks refer to you as unproductive and unworthy of assistance or respect. Sandel's book The Tyranny of Merit is worth reading as we contemplate the first chart.
thought provoking for sure. much of this difference is a proxy for education and urbanization. I am still fixed on the fact that whatever the reason 70 million of us chose Donald Trump
This was great. Keep doing these.
It's a pretty bitter pill, that the economy is so divided between more productive people who seem to lean Democrat, and Republicans – who vote against transfer payments for others but seem to be quite happily consuming transfers themselves. Perhaps the MAGA message makes a little more sense in this context. The ageing GOP voter being economically left-behind and dependent. The message of regaining personal independence and sovereignty from "those evil Democrats and their transfer payments...".
Ironic that the groups of people that most hate subsidies is in fact the party that seems to need them / happily consume them.
I've seen calls for electoral votes to be apportioned to states by things like economic productivity. Begs the question is American democracy, whilst powerful and seemingly stable, may also be a bit quaint? These elections start to look hugely wasteful, which was fine when they produced optimal results. However given that the choice was largely between two 70+ Caucasian men who were born when television was new, what does it mean if politics are bitterly divided, grossly expensive, and now produce suboptimal results?
To me, that chart says there are a lot of different ways we can optimise resource allocation, and the current methodology may be slowly failing.
It's simpler than that, I think. The reality is that the current surge in nationalism and populism is a result of convince impoverished, rural white people that their poverty is someone else's fault--whether through job stealing, environmental regulation, or welfare to minorities.
Yes, that's part of it. Fascinating that a singular cultural identity can hold both self-reliance and avoidance of responsibility as acceptable and cognitively integrated.
Thanks... my thoughts:
1) I see inequality... educational differences that beget income opportunity differences can beget disharmony when income becomes less of an opportunity as it has (real or perceived.)
2) The middle class - the health or... of any incomy - gets hollowed out by cronyism/capture. Taxes get avoided by the moneyed, avoided by those without much money and land on all the rest "in the middle."
That first chart does not bode well for hopes of lowering the political temperature. It reminds me of this excellent article that came out after the 2016 election—one of the pieces that helped me understand how someone's perspective on that election could be so radically differently to mine: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
A few thoughts: 1. it will be interesting to see if and how this will change as people migrate on the back of covid (because they can work remotely and are leaving more expensive areas to have a better quality of life). 2. "the winners": I have written about this and I think new technologies like blockchain (particular the concept of a token) have the power to contribute to a more level playing field. IMO it is not just "winner takers all" in society, but also in business and capital markets. I believe we are going to see massive change here in the next decade or so - in terms of the concept of "the firm", new business models, and financing, fueled by digitization of everything (including the work place and money), powered by blockchain based tokens and supported by other technologies.
Great initiative, keep doing these!
The first chart begs many interesting questions... and false ideas. The way we allocate GDP to one county or another should lot be viewed as a straightforward "output" of their residents.
We are not in an agrarian economy anymore. The value that is assigned to some activities means that the value of biden counties is higher than maybe more rural counties that provide cities with food. Talking about (at least regional) ecosystems would be more productive to recognize interdependencies.
Finally, I would be interested to see the margin of those counties won by biden. His (fairly) large success in the electoral college means he got votes distributed well enough to win many states by some slim majorities. Maybe we see the same with counties, and it magnifies the difference in output that is in this graph.
He won California by >4.5m votes so marginal wins elsewhere.
Not exactly, net margin he has outside of california is slim, but there are places outside of california that he lost/won bigly.
But I'm more focused on the first part. We cannot at the same time:
- say we need to be careful in where we see and account value beyond stock price and salaries (remember nurses?) ;
- and take local GDP as a measure of objective output of the people in a county (not saying you said so, but those comparisons lend themselves to this interpretation, see Clinton after her defeat)