@MontereyJack,
MontereyJack wrote:
You do know about density dependent diseases, don't you? Covid is one. Blue states have more people with higher population densities, so there are more exposures to more carriers, ,i.e. cities, get harder hit.
Surely there are nuances. Contact/exposure levels are determined by behavior, not just the number of bodies per square mile, right?
Quote:That's simple epidemiology. Blue states and their people do better economically and educationally and living-quality wise because they have more productive people in them.
You are assuming a lot here. NYC has Broadway theater, for example, which is really high quality entertainment for people who can afford it; but if those people paying for it aren't making money, they can't afford it either and that doesn't mean everyone involved isn't being as productive, except in the narrowest sense of the word.
Quote:That's why blue states subsidize red states rather than vice versa.
Economics are complex. If rich people move to an area and bid up the prices on property and other things there, more money is circulating and thus GDP is higher, but there is also inflation where 1000 square feet of living space might cost many times more in one city than another, so there's not more being produced by one 1000sf apartment than another, but one is still generating more revenue than the other, and because of that, the landlord has more income to spend, which means more revenues for local businesses, who can then afford to pay employees more, so they can pay higher rent, etc.
So inflation in one area can be used to subsidize other areas that are less inflated, i.e. because a dollar is worth more there; but in a way keeping prices deflated in those other areas subsidizes the more inflated areas by giving them cheaper investment opportunities when they invest in lower-wage economies, just as when corporations invest in offshore production facilities because labor is cheaper there. That is also a sort of subsidy for businesses to invest cheaper.
Quote:That's why blue states are Democratic. That's why blue states were discriminated against by Trump's appallingly bad partisan ineffective attempts to deal with the disease.
What can be done? People have to isolate and social-distance as best they can. There's no magic forcefield you can put up that prevents people from interacting and spreading the virus. We are all responsible for our own actions and when people act irresponsibly, it spreads the virus.