https://247wallst.com/special-report/2021/05/10/americas-ric…
Oklahoma South Carolina Louisiana Tennessee
Indiana Kentucky Alabama West Virginia
Arkansas Mississippi
aka “America’s Internal 3rd World Nation”
What’s keeping them poor?
And will strapping a young woman to the table and forcing her to birth her rapist’s baby make them richer?
Economists want to know.
intercst
The same people that only want to pay $7.25 would also like to get rid of minimum wage…to make that worse the messaging is inflation is the problem…and those paying $7.25 are the answer.
I think the Millennials have other plans.
will strapping a young woman to the table and forcing her to birth her rapist’s baby make them richer?
If the daddy is from another state, he has to pay support, etc for 18-22 years. So the state gets richer.
However, if the daddy is already a relative, then it is a net loss (no more income but more expenses). They MIGHT try to get her on yet another federal program to milk the feds for money, but only if allowed by the state.
Most of the states you mention are well known for their reluctance to fund public education adequately.
Poor education translates to weak job skills and minimum wage jobs.
Better job training could do much for this problem. (But will they still be on the bottom of the list? Probably. How do you out do the competition?)
This article was in the Indianapolis Star yesterday.
https://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/columnists/james-brig…
I’m sorry the article is only available to subscribers, but here are some key points.
As of 2020, 28.9% of Hoosiers had a bachelor's degree or higher (11th-worst in the U.S.) That's up from 22.7% in 2010, yet growing at a far slower rate than the nation as a while.
By Indiana's own standard, the state is going to fall far short of [redacted to remove politician's name] 2025 benchmark, even when giving credit for almost every kind of certificate under the sun.
/snip
Indiana’s inflation-adjusted spending per K-12 student was 17% lower in 2020 than it was in 2010. During that time, state and local governments spent $5 billion on tax incentives for businesses — while adding a meager $17 million to the budgets of colleges and universities.
It is an excellent article. I wish you all could read it.
Well, we get a twofer today:
During that time, state and local governments spent $5 billion on tax incentives for businesses — while adding a meager $17 million to the budgets of colleges and universities.
Same thing in Michigan: raised taxes on retirees and the working poor, cut educational spending, cut road maintenance spending, cut money distributed to cities and counties to pay for the services their residents want, to pay for multiple tax cuts for “JCs”.
And will strapping a young woman to the table and forcing her to birth her rapist’s baby make them richer?
Fetuses can’t pick their parents. If it is really about the fetus, there would be no exceptions for rape or incest. I give some states points for intellectual honesty in not making those exceptions.
What abortion bans are about, especially those with the exceptions, is punishing people for fooling around for fun. Part of the USian “traditional value” of a puritanical, punishment oriented, culture.
The result of more unwanted children will be more need for prenatal medical care, that no-one wants to pay for, more need for education, that no-one wants to pay for, and, probably, more need for juvenile courts and jails, that no-one wants to pay for, so a continued slide farther into poverty.
Steve
Better job training could do much for this problem.
Would it? Not to play too much of devils advocate here, but are there jobs available for better trained workers?
I suspect that poorer states have things half right when they offer incentives to attract good jobs to their states. But the half they miss is spending on education to get their own citizens ready for those jobs.
Instead, those business incentives attract people from out of state for those jobs. Which isn’t entirely a bad thing. But it doesn’t do much to help with their poorer citizens. The influx of better trained people from out of state may add a few low skill, low wage jobs to serve the new residents. But that’s about it. It doesn’t help to break the cycle of poor education leading to poor jobs.
On the other hand, better education without better jobs as well is a recipe for migration out of the state. Those better educated workers may not have jobs to go to unless they move away.
So the real solution is a bit of both - better education plus better jobs. But it’s a bit of a catch-22 problem. Better education might take a decade or more to produce better workers. That’s too long for the typical short term political thinking by both politicians and voters. So we end up seeing the incentives for business, which can have comparatively quick results, while the education spending continually gets deferred.
It would take an exceptionally forward looking and charismatic politician to accomplish both better education and better jobs while keeping the nay sayers at bay for long enough to accomplish both goals.
—Peter
We certainly hear there are shortages in many fields. Some not difficult to train for.
Truck driver
Welder
Machinist
Construction
Carpenter
Electrician
Plumber/Pipefitter/steamfitter
Bricklayer
Not to mention nursing and an array of medical fields that serve our aging population.
We can do better. Having too many qualified applicants is a high class problem. We should do more of that.