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Counties responsible for the majority of US economic output voted blue, even in red-leaning states.
It's interesting how they consider an economically productive county. Baltimore, Philadelphia and Detroit might look economically productive because they have central business districts (surrounded by ghetto neighborhoods), but most of their employees commute from the suburbs. Actual city residents don't create much economic output.
New Orleans is probably the most economically productive city in Louisiana but the vast majority of wealth in the metro area is in the suburbs.
Usually a business would take out a loan to build up production until they turned a profit.
Now the model is about long term financial loss subsidized by investors (who do not provide loans, the former requires collateral).
I don't like the concept of taking out loans, but Silicon valley has totally recreated the wheel, look at WeWorks for an example.
These 'small businesses' are meant to scale, meaning if they don't become big, the fail.
Small business are typically part of a local supply chain that provide economic value to a region.
Tech start ups are sponges for investors and advertisers, but don't themselves build a productive infrastructure.
If you want a society that is productive and stable, you need small businesses. Tech start-ups are not traditional small businesses, they are just potential unicorns (billion dollar giants) that eventually pop.
Seems like a low IQ argument reuters uses to drive an agenda.
For starters a company's headquarters gets the disproportionate amount of GDP. The blue areas are more urban and have much of the population.
Also how is a Nebraska County not productive? Do those smug liberals want these supposedly unproductive farm counties to stop shipping food into blue areas?
Lol! I’ve became more conservative, I never needed money to be helpful to others, or make me not racist, started our business from scratch and realized that it would have been more difficult under carter then Reagan.
When you refer to not "needing" money to be helpful to others, how dire exactly were your straits? Were you homeless or on the brink of it? Going to food pantries? Dropping weight because you didn't have enough to eat? I was. And I had a 4 month old infant at the time. Being charitable was not a luxury I could afford, no matter my principles. My life was a fight to stay alive. And I swung conservative then, because despite these problems, qualifying for even temporary help, seemed to be a huge struggle...yet somehow I was looking around the DHS office seeing people wearing gold jewelry, talking on cell phones (before most of us had them, in the 90s) and with professionally done hair and nails, and I was like...how do these people get help from the government but I might actually starve to death here? But private charity, the occasional church, ministry food banks...that's where I got a little bit of help, enough to scratch by and live for a minute.
It was a matter of seeing who stood by me and who turned their back, and "welfare programs" as a huge scam--because my experience with them did not seem fair or right.
But my political leanings often have to do with realizing who is lying to me. I felt lied to by Clinton's Dem-headed government...but later, when I analyzed the fiscal promises of conservative leaders...they were lying, too! Ultimately I no longer expect a President to make much meaningful difference in any way that benefits my life, but once in a while some things do shift to the good (as in some respects under Obama) or to the bad (as in some respects under Trump)...
Of course now that I'm not spending my time in a desperate hustle just to eat, I also have time to analyze numbers, look for truths over rhetoric, and try to see past my own struggle, and pay more attention to the struggles of other people. And I'm not dug into the idea that I've succeeded because of gumption, I see the fact that I had some lucky breaks that a lot of people do not have along the way. It was NOT all "hard work" that got me where I am at.
By the by, there seems to be some here who think that bastions of liberalism are basically broke. I went looking for info on municipal entities that declared bankruptcy in the last 10 years, and almost all of them are rural. Most are in red parts of red states, those in blue states are in red rural areas for the most part, and very few are in blue parts of blue states...and even then, sure, Detroit is on that list but Michigan went to Trump in 16, so how blue is the state? Thing is, rural areas often don't have the tax base, because they don't have as much economic activity, to handle big expenditures without dealing in debt.
And sure, lets talk about how people making money in cities often don't live in the cities. Cities, which are where the left gets most of their votes, are high demand places to live. The poor want to live there because there is proximity to jobs and public transportation. The "nicer" housing in cities is so expensive that only the very rich can afford those penthouses and high rise condos and such. Not a lot of middle class going on in your typical city. The middle class notoriously inhabits the burbs, because they can afford property there, still get to jobs, they can afford the mobility to commute. It only makes sense that these forces would shape things. One need only consider supply and demand. But they still often live in the metro area that sprawls around a city. I have never lived in a "downtown" city core, but I've had addresses in the burbs that were still "Cincinnati" or "Des Moines" or "Olympia" or "Colorado Springs." Same county, too. So it is not just inner city poor driving a given city's votes one way or another.
Regarding what "counts" as wealth or value of a region... I mean, I see some talk where folks who probably wish we'd never left the gold standard, want wealth to stand for value of something tangible. I trade six chickens for a pallet of bricks to build my house, that kind of thinking. But in the modern era, I am reminded of a bit of philosophy my husband shared with me..."Where does money come from? Other people." Money does not symbolize a chicken or a brick, so much as the abstract concept of value that human beings assign to...ANYTHING. Among the very rich, it's an actual legit accounting practice to enter an expenditure of money for the intangible asset of "goodwill." Money changing hands, economic activity, that's the cogs turning and keeping the whole machine alive. But sure, the proof is in the pudding...some tech companies provide something that customers value (the one I work for has been thriving for a long time, and just keeps growing)...some lack substance to their operational model and go bust.
But really, I mean...there are many intangibles that have more value to me than concrete assets. I would rather have the internet, than a chicken or a cow. Or even, say, this one account I have with a brokerage service that permits me to trade stock, I know what to do with that...I would not really know what to do with a chicken. I don't think that means that my whole life is an unsustainable bubble that is doomed to pop in my face.
General Mills is located in blue Minneapolis. The ingredients are made in red counties, but the bulk of the activity gets registered where the headquarters are.
General Mills doesn't exist without red counties, yet it is being portrayed as a blue business showing an economic dominance of team blue.
Fact is corporate headquarters like big cities for things like air ports, amenities, tax breaks, schools, etc.
General Mills is located in blue Minneapolis. The ingredients are made in red counties, but the bulk of the activity gets registered where the headquarters are.
General Mills doesn't exist without red counties.
General Mills outsources their ingredients to suppliers and farms. They don't own the source of ingredients for the vast majority of their products.
These suppliers and farms count towards the GDP of their respective states. Not towards Minnesota. The only thing that goes towards GDP in Minnesota is the additional value that General Mills generates by creating products out of the ingredients.
The flaw is on your end.
As noted earlier, Agriculture accounts for a very small amount of the total GDP.
Counties responsible for the majority of US economic output voted blue, even in red-leaning states.
Rome was wealthier than the provinces. Hail Caesar. The wealth is the result of economic rents like nice weather in California. Anyone not in a stupor of ignorance, would know that California has a draw irrespective of capital and da guberment.
Of course not everyone befits from rents. Only the rentiers do.
I'm not really sure what the point of this conversation even is.
We're all kinda connected. Agriculture might not account for a huge portion of our GDP, but I doubt that anyone wants to do without it. The farmers get subsidies...where would the government get the money to do such things without the big tax bases in the population centers? Every time money changes hands it hits somebody's Income Statement, and ends up being part of the taxable revenue, more people, more economic activity, more times a given dollar can get taxed as it moves around. If the farmers are getting subsidized, maybe it's because it's worthwhile to America to keep them functioning. Gotta feed the population somehow, and it's not great to fully depend on imports for our food supply, is it?
To be honest though, I think that the growth of tech work and less tangible productivity, economic activity tied to the service sector and bureaucracies and other labor that is not production, manufacturing or whatever, I think it's only natural in a world where a lot of things are increasingly automated. Either we find more ways to put people to work even when automation replaces the function of a person or a team of people...or we decide to go in more of a "socialist" direction where a person's survival is not directly tied to whatever work they do (which may or may not be "made up" work with little real value.) I mean, how laudable is it to "create jobs" if those jobs are pretty meaningless and not generating much of value to society at all? But our culture largely says that if you don't "work hard" then you don't deserve to even live, so...gotta make up work to do, I guess, after the robots are doing most of what truly needs done?
General Mills outsources their ingredients to suppliers and farms. They don't own the source of ingredients for the vast majority of their products.
These suppliers and farms count towards the GDP of their respective states. Not towards Minnesota. The only thing that goes towards GDP in Minnesota is the additional value that General Mills generates by creating products out of the ingredients.
The flaw is on your end.
As noted earlier, Agriculture accounts for a very small amount of the total GDP.
Corporations headquarter in urban areas for the obvious benefits that it provides and also to better compete. The bulk of a businesses activities will be measured where they are headquartered. Many of their workers commute from purple and red counties. Those companies like General Mills only exist because of red counties providing them ingredients. There are tech companies with people creating for them all over the country, but the headquarters is in one spot recording the GDP in one spot.
GDP will be biased to where the headquarters are and it also ignores commuting, sometimes ignores supply chains, and the reasons for locating in urban areas.
It is silly to talk down as if red state, red county, or red voters aren't productive. If we must go this route, blue voters are significantly more likely to be on welfare.
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