Comment by SilentM68

In my view, preference rarely equals outcome.

>> >>This is such a weird phrasing. "We prefer to tax our residents".

No, blue states generally prefer:

- better educational outcomes (8 of the top 10 states are blue)

---> After working in K-12 and Post Secondary Ed, I can tell you that I've not seen better education outcomes. In my view that does not exist. Degrees offered rarely equate to jobs, unless you know somebody that can give you a leg up. Jobs have been steadily declining for decades. In post-secondary, giving out degrees, to fulfill a quota is the norm, from what I have seen. Basically, getting a college degrees allows you to get a job in an education setting, which again puts you back into the same system that gave you the unmarketable degree in the first place. Its a never ending, self-defeating cycle of financial obsolescence. This will probably become more serious as AI begins to take hold of traditional human roles.

- healthcare access (10 of 10)

---> I see no instance where healthcare access has actually cured a single person. All I have noticed is the management of conditions and the requirement that you must have insurance to comply with a law that benefited the legacy of a party, president and the pockets of certain medical companies and officers. Most people that have lived for more than 50 years will have some idea of what I mean. The system is designed to ignore cures in favor of medical treatments i.e., manage the condition, fill you full of pills, put the needle in take out the money. Young people will naturally not have an idea. They are just full of idealism.

- lower crime (7 of 10)

---> You should check out the slums e.g., skid row, in my blue state, which I will not mention. They are crime-ridden. Even people who have jobs and see the homeless want them gone from their neighborhoods for fear that they will assault them. State officials prefer to remove or transplant them rather than solve the issue. If the issue is solved, there won't be any issues to debate in the general elections.

- better rehab outcomes and resulting lower incarceration (10 of 10)

---> Why not design a cure for this, rather than sending them to rehab? Design hangover injection to fix the them issue. Nobody wants to do it for the same reasons as mentioned above. It's just not profitable to cure someone.

- wellbeing/QOL/happiness (7 of 10)

---> Blue state have the highest poverty rates, cause there are no jobs. In the real world money = happiness because you don't have to worry where the next meal comes from, where the rent money is coming from, and of course paying for the medical bills for conditions that need to be managed and not cured.

- average income (9 of 10)

---> Again, raising the average minimum wage, when the cost of living is high due to unemployment and other reasons, equates to no change at all.

>>> Look, I'm sure tax is theft or something, or people need to get back to debating what the right type of barbed wire is to put on a fence to keep out the roving migrant caravans that show up in the news three months before every election and who all turn around in the days following. But yeah, interesting that that's what you take out of it.

---> You seem to be quoting stuff that gets played over and over on television. I don't watch television, but actually live on a blue state where voters tend to rise from their graves along with their dead pets and vote in general elections.

Hopefully, all that "ghost-voting" will be lessened by recent voter database court decisions, at least in the US.

But, “My tongue runs too freely and knows not when to hold its peace.” :(