Wednesday, July 15, 2015

so what's the message?

Just saw this image, retweeted by a liberal-leaning friend on Twitter:


As you see, the above map supposedly shows where American wealth is concentrated. I find it interesting that the wealthy, often vilified by liberals, seem to be holding their wealth in an area that extends from Democrat-voting Washington, DC to Democrat-swamped New York City to the bottom third of way-liberal New England. The circle spans mostly blue states. So what does that tell you?

If you visit the link shown in the image, you reach a page that lists the states in the circle. I've copied the list and added parentheticals to show just how many of these regions skew blue. (NB: to be clear, quite a few New England states have had Republican governors. This doesn't make them red states by any means.) You'd have to be colossally stupid to miss the blue/wealth correlation.

Most of Vermont (blue)
Denser (southern) New Hampshire (blue)
Almost all of New York (blue)
All of Massachusetts (blue)
Rhode Island (blue)
Connecticut (blue)
Pennsylvania (blue)
New Jersey (blue)
Delaware (blue)
Maryland (blue)
Northern West Virginia (red)
Eastern and Northern Virginia (blue)
Small part of eastern Ohio (either/both, but leaning blue)
Small part of North Carolina (red)
The District of Columbia (blue)
(source)

Overwhelmingly blue states/regions. So the next time you hear liberals railing at "the one percent," remember that they're talking about their own ilk. That, at least, is the message I take from this image.

Conrad Hackett works for Pew Research, an ostensibly nonpartisan think tank.


_

2 comments:

John (I'm not a robot) said...

Totally agree with your assessment. I've long noted that many progressive policy initiatives seem to have a disproportionate impact on the working poor. Energy policies are but one example. Hypocrites.

Kevin Kim said...

What's fascinating is that the rich are located in blue states, but nowadays it's generally the red states, like Texas, Alaska, and even the Dakotas, that are thriving economically, thanks to less regulation and a more business-friendly environment. So if the rich are in the blue states, but the economically prosperous states are the red ones... the rich blues really are leeching off other people's money.