The Death Belt:Krugman explains how red states hatred of regulation is killing their own citizens

[babylonsister]

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/death-belt-paul-krugman-explains-red-states-hatred-regulation-killing-citizens/#.WpC0VhCw06A.facebook

‘The Death Belt’: Paul Krugman explains how red states’ hatred of regulation is killing their own citizens
Brad Reed
23 Feb 2018 at 08:50 ET


Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is connecting the dots on how conservative politicians’ hatred of regulation isn’t just failing their constituents on guns, but on a whole host of public safety issues.

In his Friday column, Krugman notes that red states’ disdain for regulating guns also extended to areas such as car safety.

“There’s a lot of variation in car safety among states within the U.S., just as there’s a lot of variation in gun violence,” Krugman writes. “America has a ‘car death belt’ in the Deep South and the Great Plains; it corresponds quite closely to the firearms death belt defined by age-adjusted gun death rates. It also corresponds pretty closely to the Trump vote — and also to the states that have refused to expand Medicaid, gratuitously denying health care to millions of their citizens.”

Krugman said that this aversion to regulation isn’t just about kowtowing to corporate donors — rather, it’s about a disdain for the notion that any societal problem requires any kind of government action.

“What I’d argue is that our lethal inaction on guns, but also on cars, reflects the same spirit that’s causing us to neglect infrastructure and privatize prisons, the spirit that wants to dismantle public education and turn Medicare into a voucher system rather than a guarantee of essential care,” he writes. “For whatever reason, there’s a faction in our country that sees public action for the public good, no matter how justified, as part of a conspiracy to destroy our freedom.”

The endgame of this, argues Krugman, is “a society in which individuals can’t count on the community to provide them with even the most basic guarantees of security — security from crazed gunmen, security from drunken drivers, security from exorbitant medical bills.”

[beachbum bob]

1. people there don't care.

[thucythucy]

2. Not until it affects them personally.

And even then, sometimes they refuse to connect the dots.

[roamer65]

3. Less right wing eaters is a good thing for the planet.

Let them die. Fuck ‘em.

[modrepub]

4. Leftover Post Reconstruction Era Attitudes Persist

Nearly all of the southern states eliminated a lot of government spending after Reconstruction ended. Hell even Texas cut funds to its own Texas Ranger police force. Most of it had to do with racism; didn't want to have any resources going to the freedman. The side effect was it also impacted poor rural whites, who still would be better off than the just freed slaves once the KKK kicked in.

That "I'm not paying for them" attitude carried over until the Great Depression. To help spur many rural areas across the country during the Depression, the federal government started providing 90% of the funds instead of the normal 50%. That, in my opinion, opened the flood gates to many Red areas these days getting more federal money than they pay into the system. The added benefit is these rural red areas tend to have long serving congress people. Since many committee positions are based on seniority you gut people like Bud Shuster diverting lots of federal money to his district to build I-99, which connects no cities over 100k people, upgrade the Johnstown airport, which has never had any large scale commercial flights (but does house the PA Air National Guard), and at one point was going to house a moving sidewalk.

At this point, I'd support some type of change in federal funding to keep more monies in the areas that actually generate them. Fat chance this will happen.

[Beartracks]

5. And they want to export that danger to the rest of the country. n/t