Hmmm..amazing then, isn’t it, that they somehow have managed to become the wealthiest, most successful area of the country…’

“More and more it looks like the long term blue regions in the northeast and now California are becoming the millstones around the necks of the rest of us.”

Sorry to be blunt, but this is just delusional. The Northeast and California are net contributors to the great federal wealth redistribution machine. The red states are, overwhelmingly, the takers. Do basic facts of economics not manage to intrude into your world view at all?

What is it with conservatives and the “facts of reality”? What will it take for you folks to break out of your self-created bubble and rejoin the real world?

http://www.villainouscompany.com/vcblog/archives/2012/11/election_day_th.html#comments

Sarah Hoyt–It’s all about love:

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/11/06/all-you-need-is-love/

Robert Avrech–Days of Heaven:

http://www.seraphicpress.com/days-of-heaven/

Neptunus Lex, from last year–Fear and Envy:

http://www.neptunuslex.com/2011/11/06/fear-and-envy/

Who to call if you suspect vote fraud:

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/11/05/vote-fraud-who-you-gonna-call/

After 2-3 years of Ronald Reagan that optimism was back.

(But there may be other lists.)

Many of these things are fairly easy to fix, but only if we as a country have the WILL to do so.

Reducing the influence of lawyers is, I think, the most problematic.

Thanks for the analysis.

I’m still waiting for “Recovery Summer 2010″….I bought my concert shirt and everything. ;-)

Shannon, I think this is Obama’s view of such things. He is convinced that the economy will recover, no matter what he does to it, and he fears that Romney will “get the credit” when it inevitably recovers. Roosevelt had similar ignorance but he had the excuse that it hadn’t happened before. At the time, there was no chance that he could learn from Harding because the depression of 1920 was unknown. All they knew was the “roaring 20s,” which was a bad example for everyone. They were determined to prosecute Sam Insull, who had had a significant positive impact on the prosperity. All he needed was a guy like Romney to run his business.

At larger levels in the social fabric, these ideas remain valid, even as they are modified to fit a different context.

Illegitimacy is a disaster. Lack of education is a disaster. Criminal behavior is a disaster, which includes, most emphatically, twisting the law to reward one side’s friends and punish the other side’s allies.

And, above all, energy must be released, both in the mechanical sense, as in the various forms of energy which are now being blocked by obstructionist politics, and in the personal, creative sense.

In the final analysis, the society which unleashes the creative energy of it’s people, and allows them to reap the rewards they are due, owns the future.

Worse, the political culture seems to be one of entitlement. I engage a lot of people from the Northeast online and often ask them why they think anyone would invest in the region or open a basic wealth generator like a factory. Not only do they not understand what they need tell potential investors to lure them to the region, they seem lack the basic idea that they should even have to do so. I don’t think most voters in the Northeast have a basic fundamental concept that an economy doesn’t “just happen.” I don’t think they even understand that things like taxes, regulation, unions, government consistency, energy cost and infrastructure quality have anything to do with whether they have jobs and a healthy community.

Outside of the “rustbelt” I think the infrastructure is in pretty good shape. One of the reasons that Texas has become the biggest manufacturing state is that we can easily move stuff around the state and to ports. Roads and rail are cheaper to build and maintain e.g. no frost heave and a year round work schedule so we can make a lot of road and rail with little tax money and keep it maintained for less as well. Ditto for things like pipelines. Once they get that Panama canal extension done, we won’t even have to ship stuff across to California to get to asia.

More and more it looks like the long term blue regions in the northeast and now California are becoming the millstones around the necks of the rest of us. I mean, if the entire country had the same basic political and economic culture and approach as Texas and other Western states, we wouldn’t really have many problems at all.

I think the formula was:

Graduate high school
Don’t get Married before age 20
Stay Married
Don’t have any children outside marriage

IIRC, that would give you only a 15% chance of your children ever falling below the poverty line for more than six months.

This post identifies several key elements of future prosperity in much the same way.

Real education for students, not a gravy train for educators and theorists.

Energy, energy, energy.

Reverse the takeover of social power by the legal profession, which now controls all levels and branches of government, and much of the economy.

The state is not an enabler of productive work except in a very limited sense, and if it is a very limited state. The current cancerous growth of state intrusion into every facet of personal and social life is a disaster.

It will take an extended period of difficult work and dedication to dismantle the leviathon state, and return it to the caretaker it was meant to be.

It is the citizen who is primary and paramount. The servant state must be returned to the quarters above the garage where it belongs.

Poor education is a large part of the problem. Citizens who know something about science, business and history are difficult for ideologues and control freaks to push around. Too many people are, through ignorance, afraid of low-probability hypothetical risks such as global warming yet ignorant of the tremendous real costs of restricting business and technological development, for example in electrical power generation and distribution.