Quote:
Originally Posted by Aquillion
But that cuts both ways. New York and California are huge democratic strongholds with massive populations and comparatively low voter turnout in many of the most democratic areas, precisely because they always go Democratic and so many people never bother to vote.
As a New Yorker myself, I strongly disagree with the assertion that there has to be some artificially-maintained balance between 'rural' and 'urban' interests. That's what got us into the situation we have now, where major, highly-productive industrialized urban areas pay huge amounts in taxes, while a disproportionate percentage of that money ends up going to undeveloped, backwater rural areas in the form of pork-barrel spending. The problem is more the senate than the electoral college -- urban and rural areas both pay taxes based primarily on their population (which, after all, is what produces their income), but every state has the same number of senators and the same power to pull in pork, so even a state that (comparatively) barely pays into the system at all, like Alabama or Alaska, gets a big chunk of the massive federal taxes payed disproportionately by the larger more prosperous states. Alabama, Alaska et all are, in effect, sucking New York dry.
But it isn't New York that's suffering the worst from this; New York can afford it. The states that are suffering the worst from this are actually the rural states, which live off the teats of the industrial urban centers, and never end up having to industrialize themselves. The equal political power guaranteed by the senate means they never have to worry about trying to compete; they can just use their senators to pull an amount of Federal money that is grossly disproportionate, per capita. The result is states with terrible education, terrible healthcare, horribly low income per person, and massive amounts of crippling poverty.
The governments in those states are actively harmful -- instead of having an incentive to vote for people who take measures to increase the state's long-term productivity, voters are encouraged to vote in senators like Ted Stevens who are good at bringing in pork, good at looting the taxes of those more industrialized urban states for cash. Why should voters support a long and painful road of economic development when they can just vote for a senator whose guaranteed political power can bring them amounts of cash that are (for their population) massively disproportionate to anything they could produce themselves?
This is actually in their own best interest. Building up Alabama's infrastructure, urbanizing it and fixing its industry could take generations, and is going to be a painful process. Why would anyone vote for that when they can just vote for the senator who grabs as much of New York's tax dollars as possible and redirects it into dirt farming subsidies, ensuring that nobody has to industrialize at all? Alabama's low population and even lower industrial effectiveness compared to New York or California means that the proportion of federal dollars its senators can pull in is going to vastly outweigh anything their population can produce themselves via industrialization, completely screwing up their priorities.
As long as rural states can depend on their guarantee of political power, they won't have an incentive to follow political strategies aimed at urbanizing and growing their own industrial power base. In the long run, this is harmful to both them and the country as a whole. If their political power more accurately represented their population, they would be forced to develop themselves instead of just looting the taxes of urban democratic states for cash.
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I can kind of understand your feelings if it is true (I'm from Northen VA, which is a world away from most of the rest of the state and the relationship in the General Assembly is uneasy at best).
Yet that being said the Rural/Urban thing by states is somewhat misleading. Cause most states are breadbasket middle america with the exception of a few urban centers. Also a unique anomaly to the high industry/ high taxes thing is Texas. It has one of the lowest tax rates and one the highest economic outputs. Many say it's due to buisness incentives and productivity.
Plus the southeast as in NC (Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham) and GA (Atlanta) are gradually becoming more and more important economically just like the NE and California. Even Birmingham in Alabama is growing too, so I think you are a little off the mark there.
Now the DEEP SOUTH, Great Plains and Appalachia are a different story.
Also, I think it's the closest towards perfect equal representation in terms of voicing your needs in the federal structure. Otherwise, it would be rather unfair don't you think?