by Tom Kando
Red states are conservative, Republican, and they are in the South or in the middle of the country. Blue states are progressive, Democratic, and they are in the North or on the coasts. Texas epitomizes the red states, California the blue ones.
There is a mythology that Texas
is immensely successful and that California is a screw-up. Texas governor Rick Perry tried
to exploit this when he came to California to steal jobs.
The reality is that Texas ranks
number one in the country in one respect above all: bragging. This has always
been so.
California is the most populous
state, and its economy is the largest. It has Silicon Valley. Here is a table
which compares the two states on a few indices:
Table One: Texas and
California Compared
Texas
|
California
|
||
Per capita income
|
$49,392
|
$57,287
|
|
Violent crime
|
450
|
440
|
per 100,000
|
murder
|
5
|
4.9
|
Per 100,000
|
rape
|
30
|
22
|
per 100,000
|
suicide
|
10th
|
15th
|
rank among 50 states
|
life expectancy
|
78
|
80
|
|
high school graduation rate
|
61% (rank: 43rd
among 50 states)
|
74.4%
|
|
new jobs, latest month
|
35,000
|
90,000
|
November 2014
|
I could add more subjective
factors. For example that California is incomparably more beautiful that Texas.
We have a phenomenal Pacific coast and Yosemite’s snow-capped peaks, Texas is a
dust bowl.
And what about economic
policy? This is where Republicans hold
Texas up as the model which we should all emulate. Really?
Actually, “socialist” California
has come roaring back from the great recession. Thanks to a wise governor, a
Democratic legislature and an intelligent electorate, California has raised
taxes (inconceivable in Texas), solved its state deficit, reduced its prison
population, increased funding for all levels of education, and is far ahead of
the national average in job creation. In November, it added over 90,000 jobs,
compared to Texas adding fewer than 35,000!
But bragging is in Texas’
nature. A few years ago, some Texas friends were visiting.
We ate some great Italian food together, with a lot of tomatoes grown in the
Central Valley - America’s breadbasket. No matter, the relatives tried to
convince us that Texas tomatoes are the best.
Or take what is allegedly
“America’s Football Team,” the Dallas Cowboys, compared with the San
Francisco 49ers: Over the decades,
Texans and others have sometimes
dismissed the 49ers derisively as the representatives of a “girlie
state” (to use former Governor
Schwarzenegger’s and Saturday Night Live’s neologism). But in fact, the San
Francisco 49ers lead their rivalry with the Dallas Cowboys at 17-16-1.
Both teams have won five Superbowls, the
49ers most of theirs during the unparalleled Montana-Young dynasty which lasted
from 1981 to 1998. So much for the “manly Texans” beating up on the
effeminate Californians.
Maybe Texas has a chip on its
shoulders because it was a sovereign country for a decade. There is a lot of
pride there, the Battle of the Alamo, James Bowie and all that. Fine.
But as to the Texas-California
rivalry, which symbolizes the Red State-Blue State rivalry, here is what I have
to say about that: Haha to Texas. Haha to red states. Haha to the Republican
model for prosperity and progress. I’ll go the California way, the blue way, the
progressive way.
16 comments:
Great column, Tom. Unless you've cherry-picked the facts (which you don't do), it's not chauvinism.
You were gracious in omitting a number of strange behaviors that underscore, I believe, a "Texas mindset." For all of California's groups and philosophies (sometimes called "The Land of Fruits and Nuts) nothing out here can compare to whacked-out Texas thinking.
In an undergraduate social psychology class at Berkeley, many moons ago, we had come up with a class "project", develop a team and develop same. I started a group, with 3 friends, called Friends of Southern Secession, based upon our premise that Lincoln got it wrong because the Civil War was about freeing the slaves, not states rights or preservation of the Union.The conundrum was Texas and how to handle it. Some favored ceding it back to Mexico, but the majority like Mexico and the Mexicans too much to inflict Texas and it's Gringos upon them. We finally decided not to recognize them diplomatically, have no embassy or consular offices there and to require all Texans entering the United States to have Visas (and I don't mean the credit cards!) Of course the same would apply to Mississippi, Alabama and S.C.
Of course, this is all in jest, but if you want a real experience you should have been with me on my OAT Peruvian trip, which was dominated by 10 people from a retirement community in Plano, Texas. Oy, talk about Alpha Mouths"
Lastly, that Cretin, Perry, advocated several years ago that Texas secede. Now, we're back to what we were advocating at Berkeley so many years ago!
I thank Barry and Bobby for their supportive comments.
They seem to share my pro-California bias.
Like Seyfried, I have often said (also in jest) that it’s a pity the South didn’t prevail in the Civil War: They could have gone their own way, and the remainder of the Union would have turned into a civilized country not unlike Canada. Of course, slavery would have persisted, at least for a while. Also, with several nation states sharing the North American continent, our history might have resembled that of Europe, where France and Germany (and other powerful states) waged war against each incessantly
Very good and very funny.
Thanks and Merry Christmas
Tom,
thank you
California has a demographic advantage over Texas. Texas is 12% African American and California is only 6%, resulting in higher social and economic costs for Texas. California has the low social cost advantage of a 13% Asian (predominantly high achieving and lawful) population whereas Texas is only 4% Asian.
I have to agree with you Tom…we would have been better off letting the South secede. The North had Republican state governments, 90% of the industry, and less than 3% African American population. The South had Democrat politicians and each state had 30-60% African American populations. It wouldn’t have ended up like France vs Germany…it would have ended up as a second Mexico on our border.
How convenient, to blame blacks for everything, and how brave, to say this anonymously! (Attention: I am being sarcastic). And we are to believe that racism is dead?
Why not blame things on the fact that Texas is hotter than California, or that more Scottish immigrants settled in Texas than in California, bringing with them a tradition of violence, or that Texas has more dogs per capita than California, or whatever?
If you had said that slavery had something to do with Southern backwardness, you would have a point: The Southern economy derived massive wealth out of slavery (cotton). But that’s just it: The South wedded itself to a system that benefitted the privileged class for generations but retarded the region’s development in the long run.
As to Democrats and Republicans: Don’t you know ANYTHING? Ever heard that Democrats and Republicans have made a 100% switch over the past three quarters of a century? That the GOP is now EXACTLY what the democrats used to be, namely the reactionary, racist, largely Southern party of privilege and injustice? Today’s GOP has only one thing in common with Abraham Lincoln’s party: its name.
Statistics don’t lie Tom. Fewer African Americans correlate to higher quality of life. Look at October 2014 USA Today’s top 10 states in quality of life with their black populations in parenthesis: 10 Wisc(6%), 9 Wash(4%), 8 Maine(1%), 7 Mass(7%), 6 Col(4%), 5 N.D.(1%), 4 Iowa(3%), 3 Ver(1%), 2 Minn(5%), 1 N.H.(1%). Then look at October 2014 Yahoo Finance’s bottom 10 states in quality of life with their black populations in parenthesis: 10 GA (30%), 9 N.M.(3%), 8 LA(32%), 7 S.C.(28%), 6 OK(8%), 5 Tenn(17%), 4 W.V.(4%), 3 Ark(16%), 2 Ala(26%), 1 Miss(37%).
Correlations are not necessarily causal.
They can be spurious. For example, the crime rate (A) usually rises in the summer, as does ice cream consumption (B). But neither of these variables is a cause of the other.
Nor is the direction of causality always clear. The relationship between variables can be functional: A↔B.
Or a correlation may be due to a third variable - increased temperature (C) may cause both crime (A) and ice cream consumption (B) to go up: C ➔ A & C ➔ B
Or a correlation must be traced. For example, say women’s math scores are lower than those of men. This may be the result of the following causal chain: Gender ➔ tracking➔ score differences.
As to the topic of this post: If those low quality-of-life states were to stop discriminating against their large black populations, their quality of life would improve...
The fundamental question is: are blacks the cause of poverty, crime, etc, or are they the victims of maltreatment/discrimination? Is black dysfunction a cause or an effect? Sociology has proven beyond any doubt that the answer is the latter.
Very good elucidation as to causality versus correlation.
However as to whether “ Is black dysfunction a cause or an effect? “, even if we were to agree it’s our fault and not theirs, as Hillary says “what difference does it make”? Despite spending enormous sums since the beginning of the war on poverty, that dysfunction continues. The predominant culture trying to fix this problem is like trying to push on a piece of string. Unless and until the African American culture addresses its dysfunction, any increased effort on our part is futile.
So, while we wait for them to address their dysfunction, the statistics bear out that the quality of life is improved by avoiding areas where they exist in large numbers.
No one ever put the problem better than Gunnar Myrdal in “An American Dilemma:” The Swedish Nobel laureate “saw a vicious cycle in which whites oppressed negroes, and then pointed to negroes' poor performance as reason for the oppression. The way out of this cycle, he argued, was to either cure whites of the prejudice he believed existed, or to improve the circumstances of negroes, which would then disprove whites' preconceived notions. Myrdal called this process the “principle of cumulation." (Wikipedia).
Thanks for the Wikipedia reference to Gunnar Myrdal. However, I am surprised, as a leftist sociologist, that you are referencing a eugenics proponent. The same article contains the following snippets concerning fooling Negroes into adopting birth control:
“In our further discussion of the means in Negro population policy we ought start out from the desire of the politically dominant white population to get rid of the Negroes. This is a goal difficult to reach by approved means, and the desire has never been translated into action directly, and probably never will be... The Negroes cannot be killed off…The only possible way of decreasing Negro population is by means of controlling 'fertility.' But as we shall find, even birth control -- for Negroes as well as for whites -- will, in practice, have to be considered primarily as a means to other ends than that of decreasing the Negro population. After a lengthy discussion of the reasons for promoting birth control among people of African descent (and to a lesser extent among poor people generally), Myrdal then endorses, on page 178 of the book, 'extreme' measures in this direction:
Finally, Myrdal acknowledges the opposition to such a program that is virtually certain to arise from the black community, and he infers that a certain amount of deception will be needed -- primarily the use of 'negro doctors and nurses' to conceal the real goals of white society. Note especially the change in language by which a serious attempt to 'get rid of the Negroes' suddenly is transformed into a campaign of birth planning meant to 'benefit' them (page 180):
The activity of the birth control movement's workers, the Southern whites, and the Negro leaders -- all with the same aim of spreading birth control among Negroes -- promises a great development of the movement in the future.....
A ... serious difficulty is that of educating Southern Negroes to the advantages of birth control. Negroes, on the whole, have all the prejudices against it that other poor, ignorant, superstitious people have. More serious is the fact that even when they do accept it, they are not very efficient in obeying instructions and sometimes they come to feel that it is a fake. An intensive educational campaign is needed, giving special recognition to the prejudices and ignorance of the people whom the campaign is to benefit. The use of Negro doctors and nurses is essential.”
To what extent Myrdal was a proponent of eugenics is not clear. It’s true that he and his wife reflected some of the spirit of the time, when eugenics was not a bad word - in Europe or in America.
However, everything I have ever read and learned about Myrdal is that (1) he analyzed (correctly) America’s racial dilemma, and that (2) his work was a major contributor to the Civil Rights movement, including such things as the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation decree.
The quote you are referencing must be read in context: What Myrdal is saying is that GIVEN that most white Americans - like you - would prefer it if there were no black people in America, here is what white Americans might do to achieve their objective. It is not clear at all that Myrdal would advocate these policies.
True, giving white Americans such a recipe is ugly. But, again, to my knowledge Myrdal has always been identified as a progressive supporter of civil rights and racial equality.
Hi Tom, I was away from my computer for a few days over Christmas and haven't been responding. I like the ideas that you promoted POSITIVE RESULTS in California. It would be good to explain how these things were done, rather than give credit to a political party.
Increasingly, I think the labels "Conservative" for "Republican" and "Progressive" for Democrat are misnomers. These parties are controlled by financial contributors and their policies are aimed at redistributing government funds to those contributors. Neither party is inherently bent on solving statewide problems. Rather, people react to crises and eventually get jobs done in spite of the parties. In my view, it is better to simply say what a state, like California, did to solve a problem and forget the political rhetoric that is increasingly divisive and irrelevant to the average citizen.
I thank Gordon for his always thoughtful comments.
I agree that bipartisan cooperation would be better than the stand-off that has been in effect for the past several years.
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