Infinite Monkeys

I wouldn't know whether to live in the one with the good bars or the one with the jobs.

Do what I do - live in the one with the jobs, and let your job take you routinely to the one with the good bars. Side benefit: Drinking on an expense account.

I DO believe in the right of secession, and I can't say I would mind living in a North America that had Moby's national breakdown. However, what I really want is for the federal government to get the hell out of the way of ALL the states. I'm happy to be an American, but I'm an Arizonan first, and I wish "America" would have a little more respect for the state that I call my home, not to mention all the others.

Why has it fallen to me to point out Moby's apparent lack of understanding in the area of federalism?

Dude, take of the headphones and the bono/fly/star glasses long enough to consider "moving to" the party that actually wants the states to be different from one another. (No, not every faction of it, I admit, but do the Dems have a Liberty Caucus?)

As a start, perhaps Moby could help the states make some clear delineations by getting rid of one of those pesky Supreme Court rulings that prevent the states from deciding matters for themselves. Let's see, which one could we begin with?

Oops. Note the time stamps. Obviously, I couldn't see Robb's second comment when I began mine, paused to put the kids to bed, then came back and hit "post."

Now I just can't believe it's fallen to me to post some comments about online gambling and male enhancement medication.

From some of the comments by Hewitt's guest host today, it sounds like a little redistricting is on the menu for California. So you may only have 2 choices for relocation, by the next election anyway.

Actually, such a secession would have interesting impacts on some of the red states. Many of the red states take in more tax dollars than they give. Many (most?) of the blue states give more than they take. Therefore, how would the red states handle the sudden loss of funding? The blue states would be in great shape: now free of the religious lunatic freeloaders, they can then run up a budget surplus and chortle happily as the red states go bankrupt.

Plus, all the financial centers of the country are in blue states. If (when?) the next terrorist attack hits any large "blue" city, you'll hear a lot less about all of us being Americans, and a lot more about how no real progress has been made on the war on terror. New Yorkers and Washingtonians (90% voted against Bush) are already tired of folks in the midlands using them as justification for mismanaged and misdirected conflicts. There will be no grace period for grief, and that city, whether it be DC, NYC, LA, Chicago, Detroit, wherever, will lash out at the administration, and most likely those that put them there.

cs,

I don't know where you get your figures, but that is some remarkable oversimplification. What would the Red States do without the Blue States' money? Perhaps stop depending so much on inefficient Federal beurocracies to provide essential services.

And "religious lunatic freeloaders"? Get real. Only an idiot of Bill Maher's caliber looks at people who happen to go to church on Sunday and otherwise mind their own business as "religious lunatics."

Baboon,

On this issue of "where the businesses are", company headquarters will leave the Blue States in droves when the Red States offer massive tax incentives to do so. And cs's budget surplus will disappear rather quickly when the blue states all vote for universal health care and minimum wage increases.

As you know if you've read my posts, I'm against the war. I think it would be healthy if the Federal government didn't have instant access to all of the states' individual militaries. However, as you pointed out, the folks in DC and NYC were hostile to Bush regardless. I'm not sure how much more "lashing out" they could do.

Regardless, this is all dreamland stuff - the right to secession died in the 1860's and simply cannot be revived. I wonder if Moby looks back (as I do) on the Civil War as an unnecessary, barbaric crushing of a basic American freedom by a government bent on massive centralized power. Somehow, I doubt he has the same sympathy for the Antebellum South that he has for "north-east-istan" and "pacific-stan".

Even calling them "blue states" is an oversimplification. I don't know much about the Northeast, but take a look at the by-county results for CA, OR, or WA. You'll see a few isolated clumps of blue around the large cities, and huge swathes of red throughout the rest of the state.

So if secession were to occur, it couldn't happen at the state level. At least, not without the city folk dragging the rest kicking and screaming. The cities could slough off and call themselves Urbanistan, leaving the rest of the country to make up Ruraland, but, y'know, good luck eating. Better start planting those window box vegetable gardens now.

Of course, down here in California, the cities have thoughtfully rooted themselves on top of fault lines. So, sooner or later, the situation will take care of itself.

Religous lunatics was just a joke, a small bony troll, but, since I'm a big fan of sleeping very late on sunday, getting up for a boring church service does seem to be a small bit of lunacy. But thats just me. Your mileage may vary.

Companies would not leave the Blue States, simply because of tax-incentives. At most they would establish factories in the red states, but even this is unlikely, as most of their existing factories are outside of the US, and no red state tax break could lower costs to a Mexican or Chinese level.

In terms of their white color workers, you would have a revolt / brain drain if they were forced to give up SF, LA, or NYC for Salt Lake City or Dallas. In many respects, you would probably have a brain drain from the red states, as many of your creatives will head off to a country which very closely matches their values: secularism, pro-choice, strong environmental concerns, widespread tolerance of almost everyone (Except the religious right), etc.

In terms of bringing the red counties along with any blue state secession, there really wouldn't be much of a problem. Both historical secession movements in American history were led by a minority viewpoint: 1776 and 1861.

In terms of minimum wage increases, I don't think most in the blue states would even notice as even entry level jobs are, at least in the cities, usually priced well above the minimum.

Universal health care wouldn't be that big of a deal. Canada seems to be doing better than the US economically. Univeral health care would probably actually contribute to the red state brain drain.

Secession? No friggin'way! We've almost pushed the louts into the oceans! By 2012 we'll have the whole place to ourselves with a few fruits and nuts sprinkled around to keep us in shape. -Wb

cs:

PUT DOWN THE PAUL KRUGMAN! Red states ONLY take in more tax revenue than they send out because so many military bases are in Red states, and so much of them is eaten up by federal land. When you get into a very sparsely-populated red state, it's not hard to tip the balance.

And where have you been? Canada's economy is horrible; much more unemployment than we have.

Wait - you were joking, right?

Its all a very tongue-in-cheek thought exercise. I do sincerely believe the BlueStates would be a better country to live in but that reflects my personal political biases.

If I'm wrong about Canada, then I accept the correction. I've been seeing predictions on a currency rise of the Canadian dollar so I assumed Canada was seeing a resurgence of sorts.

However, I don't think military bases explain it. I grew up in arkansas which was very much on the dole. I don't know the current state of farm subsidies, but I would think farm subsidies would be a large portion of the outlay as they are often quite substantial in size. Plus, Arkansas used to be in the bottom ten in terms of income, which would naturally lower the tax revenue. And then when you factor in the Delta region, a large area with near third-world conditions, you can see where the money goes.

Sure, Arkansas has WalMart, Tyson, JB Hunt, Dillards, and some other large companies, but since corporations have become very good at avoiding taxes, I would suspect this wouldn't affect the situation in Arkansas much.

I would suspect much of the south would repeat Arkansas's pattern. If my idea of farm subsidies is correct, then this would explain the outlays in the midwest as well.

I'd be interested to see information about state-by-state funding vs. tax revenues. I think we would probably all be surprised by what goes where.

For example, I would guess California is a mixed bag - they get a HUGE Federal subsidy in the form of water from the Colorado River. The economies of Central and Southern California receive a remarkable boost from low-cost agriculture that would literally disappear should that water be cut off, or even if they simply had to pay a "market" cost for that water's delivery.

At any rate, in our little "fantasy world", each of these economies would have to stand or fall more or less on their own, without such massive federal beurocracies shuffling the revenue and services all about to shield everyone from true market forces.

What the hell, let's give it a try! We can always go back to the old way if we want to.

For those actually interested in principled secession, this site has some interesting information:

http://www.secession.net/

The California central valley water generally comes from the water project (the San Luis Canal/California Aqueduct). Many of the large corporate farmers (using artificially created and desginated 160 acre farms) get subsidized water from this federally authorized and paid for project.