US Regional Polarization

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The article is an oversimplification of cultural and economic differences, and that's before discussing "2050" projections.

The urban-rural political divide matters insofar as there are rural Americans. These rural Americans are dissappearing. 80 percent of Americans already live in metropolitan areas, with around 40 percent living in the megaregions your second map described. That is not to say that each metropolitan area does not contain hinterlands, but their political interest tends to be somewhat aligned with the nearest city they are economically dependent on. There is still a suburb-city political divide in many metros, but I imagine that will fade. After all, metro areas tend to prosper or decline as a unit.

I personally find fascinating what could happen between the megaregions outlined. Northern California has very different politics from the Piedmont-Atlantic region, for instance.

Disappearing as rural America may be, I've long been aware of this cultural and political divide. Funny thing is, while the rural right are the definite minority, they're the ones claiming to the the truest Americans - as out of step as they are.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

This can even vary within a state NoArk being more liberal than SoArk,they say we are not even real Arkansans in the southern part of the state.

I think the reason that people living in more urban areas tend to be democrat, and the reason that people living in rural areas tend to be republican, is that democracy functions better in urban areas, whereas republicanism functions better in rural areas. Since rural areas tend to have more small businesses and closer relations between employer and employee, the system is more meritocratic, thus republicanism can function well there. In urban areas there are usually more big businesses and weaker relations between employer and employer, resulting in a system that is much less meritocratic, thus democracy is needed in order to protect the rights of workers. The problem here seems to be that over-regulation is a threat to rural societies, whereas under-regulation is a threat to urban societies. For this reason, I don't believe that a "one size fits all" fiscal policy can be made to effectively work in favor of the entire nation. Until people realize this, the rural 'little man' and the urban 'little man' will continue to be pitted against each other.

Most small business owners, like my dad, pull a large amount of weight in keeping their business afloat. He's not the guy who just bosses other people around, and has them do all his work for him. He works his a** off so that he and the people who work under him can continue to have jobs. Some of the guys who work under him are big slackers, yet still make good wages. He tends to view democratic fiscal policies as an attempt to take money from people who work hard for it like himself, and give it to lazy people who don't really deserve to make more money. He tends to take offense to slackers when they complain that their already good wages aren't high enough, yet they aren't willing to work a little harder.

A lot of people who work for big business have to work their a**es off just to make decent living wages. Their employers are guys who make huge profits without pulling much of their company's weight. They view republican fiscal policies as an attempt to make the profits of their greedy, undeserving employers even higher, while reducing the profits of people who work hard, pulling most of their company's weight, like themselves.

People tend to empathize with other people to the extent that they fail to realize that the circumstances of other people are different from their own circumstances. A lot of small business employers fail to see that the employees of big businesses aren't like their employees, and a lot of big business employees fail to see that the employers of small businesses aren't like their employers. Small businesses and big businesses are different from each other. Why should they be treated the same?

I have been looking to locate a business in a rural area. They are not declining, population has been stable over the long term, where the growth came in cities, and also the major population declines.

New Orleans has been losing population since the fifties, Detroit, Clevland, Rochester, Pittsburg, the whole Brownfields Belt across the Great Lakes.

The population doubled in the last fifty years and almost all in the cities, which gave them an influx of new money.

Rural, your income has to come from land, a business with a wide market, be retired, or just rich.

Rural is based around Owners, cities around Employees.

So the have nots move to cities where they rent a life, and of course want more services.

A hundred acre pasture does not have the tax benefits of a four plex on the edge of a city. No write offs, but the income is taxed the same. Also no Section Eight that says cows will pay their rent.

As the tobacco and textile towns have seen, loss of a major employer, is loss of the economy, the best leaving, and the worst staying. Detroit is classic, what is left will rob or kill you, and tax income does not pay for picking up the bodies.

The rise of the Prison Economy did not come from the rural areas, it is part of the decay of city life. Rural has a lower cost of living, where working for McDonalds will not pay the rent in a major city.

We are in the Forth Age of Cities, the first three failed. When this started, say the rise of London, there was an influx of landless drunks, and as Dickens writes, a large criminal underclass, kept in check by constant public hanging, cheap gin, and short lives. For most the process lead to the gallows or the gutter.

It kept wages down which lead to a few becoming rich. The best of them were marched off to war. Conquest, Colonies, new and exotic diseases to die from, were all that kept it going.

Child labor was approved of because their other choice was prostitution for gin in the alley. Now it is Crack, and the alley is in New Orleans or Detroit.

Master Chiminy Sweeps were allowed to take any unattended child off the street and put them to work for some food. This slavery was approved because all of the other uses of stray children were much worse.

Rome had to give out free bread, and free circuses where they could watch thieves being fed to lions. London had cheap gin and public hangings, gallows with up to a dozen nooses, and a new show every hour.

Up to a hundred and fifty years ago public hangings were the leading social event. Everyone came and brought their children.

It was fun, but an ever growing underclass, people living close together, brought plagues, which were good, but also non fatal diseases that spread through the population, leaving them weakened.

Public Health, then Antibiotics, have lead to a population boom, two world wars, and speeded up the historic decline of cities.

The 1918 Flu is an example of living close together, fifty million healthy young people, dead in twelve hours.

Cities have never lasted, they are strong because they are many, they are weak because they are many.

Rural people, much closer to the production of the land, survived.

Rome had good water, sewer, bread, but in 410 only a few hundred survivors, living in tombs outside the city, and they were all mad.

The largest City Complex in America is Prisons. Health Care is going to those who had something to do with their condition. The Wage Slaves who kept cities funded are unemployed, as machines and off shore do the job cheaper. Cities are economic engines running out of fuel.

They have not worked in a while, which is why the National Debt keeps rising. The needs of the many will always exceed the abilities of the few.

I will stick with traditional economics, dirt does not default.

Say what you will about the decline of cities, and the virtues of country life. I'll go by what my Dad had told me. He had been born and raised a country boy, but after high school and a short stint at college had left for the city and suburban life, and never regretted it. He had recalled rural life as small minded, with too much religiosity. When he was in a school play in high school, he was playing a foreigner, babbling incoherently - one of his friends afterward said his Pentecostal mother sitting in the audience had insisted my Dad had been speaking in tongues(!). As far as country virtues being superior to urban virtues, half the girls in my Dad's class had had to drop out after getting pregnant, and illegal abortions were rampant - and this was back during the Second World War. Too be sure, not everyone was ignorant, or had absurd religious notions, but enough were that the alternative was preferable to my Dad.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Give me the reddest and most rural areas of this map and you won't hear from me again.
[img][800:713]http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/politics/Election2012tippedmore.jpg[/img]

^^^Makes sense,it's interesting that there was no wheel in the Americas.

^^^seems logical,I bet the poor peasants would have loved a wheel barrow.
I use mine all the time,getting wood to the house,etc....