Why are some social problems worse in conservative areas?

[raccoon]

There've been threads about this from time, sometimes showing stats, and I don't dispute the stats.

Thing is, I wonder why. :shrug:

[jberryhill]

1. Read much Dickens?

[MadHound]

2. Why are some problems worse in liberal areas?

Urban areas, which tend to be more liberal, suffer from more poverty, higher drop out rates, etc.

Perhaps it isn't a function of politics, but rather location:think:

[FarLeftFist]

6. Uh, I'm guessing you've never seen rural poverty

FAR worse then urban poverty in many ways. Plus very high illiteracy rates. At least urban poverty is eased with various programs/shelters, charity, soup kitchens, wealthier people giving you spare change, etc. Neither are good, but I would rather be homeless in NYC than in the Ozarks or Appalachia etc.

[w8liftinglady]

8. We have a 68% graduation rate for high school. 68% in rural texas.

we also have a 68% uninsured in their 20's . Need I say more?

[MadHound]

11. Umm, I live in a rural area,

I've seen both rural and urban poverty.

The illiteracy rates for urban and rural areas are about the same.

And the age old fact is that it is still easier to be desperately poor in the country than it is in the city. You can grow and hunt your own food. While some cities do have decent social safety nets, there are many urban areas that have very, very little.

[w8liftinglady]

13. The major difference is transportation, IMO.

There is NO public transportation rurally. I see a LOT of walkers and bike riders.
It is tough for rural poor to get help.

[Dappleganger]

27. It's also difficult in many US cities who cut back public transportation

or make it so that it's impossible to get to a job interview from the poor side of town, as the city insists on stupid methods of routing (three hours getting across the city due to re-routing and delays). Our city knows that the poor depend upon public transport as their only means to get around and IMO purposefully put more obstacles up to keep people in their place.

[Dappleganger]

26. You have got to be kidding.

Poverty is poverty, makes no difference where you are. There are cities who have turned their entire backs on the homeless, even charities are playing the shuffle game daily to pretend they are actually accomplishing anything.

[FarLeftFist]

28. Actually, I'm not kidding

Like I said above, both are BAD. But as a NY'er I HAVE seen homeless people with brand new looking leather jackets, sneakers, etc. Again, BOTH ARE BAD, but it helps in NYC when you have charities on every other street and 20 Salvation Army's selling low priced goods. I was simply stating my opinion: I would rather live in urban poverty/homelessness than rural poverty/homelessness.

[Deep13]

9. It's is a function of politics, location and population density.

I have to wonder about the extent that your statement is actually true. Are rates of poverty higher than in say farm country, or does it just seem that way because everyone is bunched together. A few years ago, AAA determined the safest and most dangerous places in the USA to drive. Turns out the safest was MA. Despite have a lot of accidents, the population density meant few per capita. Montana was the most dangerous.

Anyway, politics affect public policy which affects how effectively social problems are solved. R. policies tend to deny that social problems are real or else they cast blame instead of fixing it.

[LiberalLoner]

12. Doesn't surprise me that Montana is the most dangerous state to drive in!

Sometimes the crews just don't get to that patch of black ice on the highway and there's nothing like hitting an antelope or a bighorn sheep or an elk or a deer to ruin your day. And in mountainous areas those animals jump right out at you and you have no chance to stop.

And then there's highway 93 and all the bars along the way. Those bars don't make for much safe driving at times either.

[sakabatou]

3. Usually, it's due to the lack of funding

awful rules, red tape or all of the above.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. Conservative policies are counterproductive.

They are against birth control and sex ed, so the teenagers get pregnant and can't go to college. They refuse to deal with reality and educate the teenagers because then, "Tell 'em about sex and they'll wanna do it!" like you have to put sex in a teenager's head. ha ha ha.

[w8liftinglady]

7. My partner volunteered to educate the 5th grade boys. Denied.

Abstinence - only is all Texas is allowed to teach.
we lead the nation in Teen Pregnancies.

[Deep13]

5. Denial isn't much of a public policy. nt

[LiberalLoner]

10. I read once that in the blue states, there is an emphasis for children

to wait to marry until they've finished college and established their careers. So you see alot of couples not marrying until they are 30 or older.

The article I read said that in red states, a person was considered full-grown at 18 (if not earlier) and ready to take on adult responsibilities like a job and marriage/family. Plus, in a lot of red states (like Montana, where I come from) people don't have the money to send all their kids to college. And the jobs that are around locally mostly don't need a college degree either, unless you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a professor. And there are never very many of those jobs around in a small town in a poor state.

The thing is, if you get married at 18, you are more likely to end up divorced. A person just isn't as mature at 18 as they are at 30. It used to be that social pressures, religious pressures etc. would keep people married and together even if they ended up hating one another. These days, divorce is more acceptable so people who aren't happy, tend to divorce.

The other thing is, when life is hard and bleak, you get some relief from a bottle of whiskey or a hit of meth or whatever. And then sometimes people get addicted, and then there are BIG social problems and costs associated with that. If you ever watch that show "Intervention" you see that the addicts create this huge vortex of absolulte misery and chaos all around them. It's really heartbreaking to watch.

Life is hard in the red states. It's hard to come by a job that pays you enough to live on. And the jobs that are there, you usually have to work extremely hard and put up with a whole bunch of BS.

Now, a lot of right-wingers are pretty upset when they think about taxes going up, because they work hard for each of those dollars and they don't generally have a big financial cushion. They imagine those tax dollars are all going to "those people" - welfare queens, young black bucks buying t-bone steaks with food stamps, etc.

If they ever came to the agape meals my old church sponsored, they would see the real faces of food stamps and welfare. Working families who just didn't earn enough to be able to afford a house and a car and food. So they qualified for some food stamps. People working at Wal-mart generally qualify for food stamps, I have read. Then there were people on assistance for life. People born with severe mental retardation, people in wheelchairs cripped from muscular dystrophy, people who were clearly mentally ill, I'm talking in some other world kind of mentally ill. There was no way any of those people could have held down a job.

I wish more people saw what I saw at those agape meals. The people so grateful for a meal, so happy if they got two biscuits instead of just one. I mean joy like they just won the million dollar lottery. There is hunger in America, I saw some for myself at those Agape meals in Ohio.

Maybe if more people saw the real face of welfare/food stamps they wouldn't be so mad about their tax dollars going to help those people.

[raccoon]

14. Great post! nt

[Snoutport]

15. Because so many people put all their effort into God and church and furthering

"The" message. No dental visit for Johnny...the church needs new pews.

[OHdem10]

16. Conservative Economic Fundamentalism--Free Market on the

Rampage. This system is designed to make rich richer
and poor poorer. Most of the red states have been
under conservative rule for years.

[hifiguy]

17. Lack of respect for education, for one

The poorer the area, urban or rural, the less concern with or respect for for high-falutin' book-learning.

Combine that with high levels of the more troglodytic and retrograde forms of religulous fundamentalism, which are ALWAYS hostile to knowledge/science, and that pretty much answers the question regarding the reddest states.

When you get down to it, there are a lot of people with a profound unwillingness to deal with reality. Many people would rather believe in the folk-tales of pre-literate Bronze Age tribes than the facts before their very noses.

[MadHound]

19. It isn't lack of respect for education,

But rather a lack of funding and resources for education, both in rural and poverty stricken urban areas. This is do to the way we fund education, which is based on the property value of a given school district. Property in both rural and urban areas is valued at a pretty low level, thus the tax revenues derived from that property is pretty low as well. Thus, both urban and rural areas wind of with schools that pay teacher poorly, which means they leave ASAP, and the resources, ranging from up to date textbooks to lab equipment to funding for extra-curriculars simply isn't there.

[hifiguy]

21. I will grant you that,

but there is a long 'murkan tradition of anti-intellectualism and hating educated "elites" or viewing the educated as "effete snobs" and, in urban areas, seeing the studious and educated as people who have "sold out their culture."

Modern era politicians from George Wallace to Caribou Barbie and Batshit Bachmann have built their entire careers on belittling the educated and playing to the resentment the "real American" masses feel for "those people." It's as American as apple pie and is one of the things that, as it spreads, is slowly rotting the country away.

Many people have a sharply-honed disdain for education, viewing "common sense" (which is anything but common) as all that is needed to survive in the world. They are grievously in error and refuse to even think that they are wrong.

[EC]

18. No revenue

they harp on taxes and cut as soon as they get into office. That leaves the cities, counties and states cash strapped. They also put into place "balanced budget" laws and no new taxes. So when costs go up, there is no way to make up the differences. When was the last time you can recall that a service went down in price? When the government has to pay for services, why do repubs think the cost will stay the same for years into the future? Since they don't stay the same - repubs paint themselves into a corner.

[jwirr]

20. Any program is only as good as those who administer them. Starting

with state leaders who do not believe in them right down to the receptionist in the office people need to apply at.

I have lived in several states and watched others. In Nebraska and Iowa most leaders hated social programs and did as much as they could to destroy them. In Minnesota, until recently, it was just the opposite. For the client that means facing people who let you know clearly how they feel about you and your needs. It also means that you are afraid to make a step that might get you kicked off the program.

States that are very conservative interpret the rules as narrowly as possible and try to keep people off the programs by making it hard for them. It is all a matter of attitude. And as my little granddaughter says the conservative states have a "tude problem".

[Odin2005]

22. A mixture of poverty, ignorance, and Born Again Christianity.

[hifiguy]

23. You win, Odin!

for you said in nine words what I was flailing around to say more delicately. Bingo.

[Odin2005]

24. Thanks!

[Taverner]

25. Because that is what Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats want

They want lots of suffering, partly because they're sociopaths and enjoy watching the misery of others, and partly because they can push more product to the middle class who's scared of such things happening to them.

Let me tell you a story: back in the days of slavery, a popular passtime for slave-owners was to watch the beatings of the slaves. Yep. they would sit on their 2nd floor porch, mint julep in hand and watch the Head Slave beat the tar out of any disobedient slave. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[lumberjack_jeff]

29. It's inevitable.

Conservatism breeds poverty which requires public assistance, which creates contempt towards those who use it, which leads to budget cuts, which exacerbates poverty. The historic correction mechanism for this cycle involves pitchforks.

On the upside, it promotes the sale of guns and bibles.