What’s the cause this time?
Vonderrit Myers Jr., another 18-year-old representative of the Black Undertow, violently confronted and fired three shots at an off duty St. Louis police officer before the cop returned fire and shot him dead. The thug was wearing a gray hoodie and an ankle monitoring bracelet at the time of his death.
Obviously, the injustice on display here against poor innocent black teenagers, all of them “good boys” and aspiring rap artists who “didnt do nuffin,” and who just want to go to the store to get a sandwich from McDonald’s without being molested by racist cops warrants starting a spontaneous riot. No Justice! No Peace!
Note: That’s quite a sandwich that can pop off three rounds!
Do not stop, question, detain or otherwise molest the black people. They are above any laws meant for the rest of us. Cross that line at your peril. That is the message. It is disgusting how many whites I see climbing behind this, as if it were a lofty idea sent down from heaven. What weak souls these people are. Pathetic! I sympathize with the white cops expected to work any area of this country with blacks in it. What a mess.
Cops lie all the time. And, they don’t work for normal regular white folks. Not anymore.
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I noticed the Afro-Centric “Egyptian pharaoh” shirt this guy’s wearing. Blacks should be very wary of asserting that ancient Egyptians of the pyramid days were “negro”. The Book of Exodus would then identify blacks as the first slave-holders on record.
D’OH !
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Dang, the fun is never going end in St. Louis! BTW, was that “sandwich” registered or was it black market?
Now I’m thinking Ferguson October this weekend is going to be more interesting than I thought.
WaPo: The South Blows Chunks [slight paraphrasing]
Looking for a healthier lifestyle? You might want to move to Hawaii. More educated people? You should probably try Montana, Vermont, or Minnesota. Better job prospects? North Dakota. And if you want the best quality of living, pound for pound, the best place to live is New Hampshire.
But if you’re trying to avoid places where all of the above are (well) below average, you’ll want to stay clear of the South.
…..
Meanwhile, there are a number of states — all of them in the South — you might want to avoid. Mississippi, which scored lower than any other state, barely broke 50. Arkansas and Alabama, which tied for second to last, each scored 51.3. West Virginia, which was fourth to last, scored 52.2. And Tennessee, which was fifth to last, scored 52.9.
The South, which performed the worst of any region in the country, is home to eight of the poorest performing states. Only Virginia was in the top 25. And just barely — it placed 22nd.
…..
And if OECD’s rating system is to be taken seriously, everyone might be better off living somewhere other than the South.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/07/why-the-south-is-the-worst-place-to-live-in-the-u-s-in-10-charts/
This is from an OECD study using nine different measures of well-being: health, safety, housing, access to broadband, civic engagement, education, jobs, environment, and income. I would take it seriously because this type of deep statistical analysis is the OECD’s forté.
However, as anyone conversant with HBD would gladly point out to the WaPo writer, the main reason why New Hampshire finished first and Mississippi last in this study is because the former is 1.1% black while the latter is 37% black. But this would disrupt the Southern-whites-are-stupid-and-evil-and-too-incompetent-to-build-successful-societies narrative the writer is implicitly weaving here.
He also mentions that the Southwest performed poorly in this study as well. It must be the fault of all those right-wing rednecky racists in Texas and Arizona. I mean really, what else could it possibly be keeping the Southwest down?
Back in the real world, these state rankings are often apples-to-oranges comparisons because of the large percentage of NAMs in the South and Southwest compared with the rest of the country. So what would happen if we compared mostly white regions of the country with one another?
The writer mentions that “New England fares extremely well by just about every measure”, which is true. Here are the overall rankings and scores of the New England states:
1. New Hampshire, 77.6
3. Vermont, 74.8
7. Maine, 71.9
8. Massachusetts, 71.7
15. Connecticut, 68
19. Rhode Island, 67
Pretty impressive, right? The New England states have an average ranking of 8.83 and an average score of 71.83. Of course New England has the built-in advantages of being in the wealthy Bos-NY-Wash corridor, having some of the finest universities in the country (Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc.), and–most of all–being overwhelmingly white. Yet it’s not the region of the country with the highest standard of living according to the OECD. That honour goes to the six-state region of the Upper Midwest that I call German Lutheran America, after its dominant ethnicity and religion.
2. Minnesota, 76.2
4. Iowa, 72.9
5. North Dakota, 72.4
10. Wisconsin, 71.2
12. South Dakota, 70.5
13. Nebraska, 69.5
These six Upper Midwest states have an average ranking of 7.67 and an average score of 72.12, just edging out New England in both categories. That’s very impressive considering this region is far away from the coasts and is the coldest and–arguably–the least scenic part of the contiguous US, all very unappealing to the elites. Now let’s look at the mostly white Upper South, the five-state Appalachian-Ozarks region (Scots-Irish America):
42. Kentucky, 54.8
45. Oklahoma, 53.8
47. Tennessee, 52.9
48. West Virginia, 52.2
50. Arkansas, 51.3
The five Upper South states have an average ranking of 46.4 and an average score of 53. Wow, they suck. Seriously, I can understand the low rankings of the Deep South and Southwestern states due to their massive percentages of blacks and Mexicans respectively, but the rock-bottom rankings of all the Upper South states is a real head-scratcher. West Virginia is one of the whitest states in the union and yet it ranks a pathetic 48th.
Of course HBD would predict inter-white differences, but the difference between living standards in New England and the Upper Midwest on one hand, and the Upper South on the other, is nothing short of shocking. New England was settled by Anglo-Saxon Congregationalists, mostly from the East of England, but they’ve since been swamped by massive immigration from Ireland, Italy, Quebec, Poland and Portugal, so that Catholics now outnumber Protestants there. New England has a lot of historical and geographical advantages going for it, and its white population is too heterogeneous to fairly compare it to the other two regions.
The more homogeneous white populations of the Upper Midwest and Upper South better lend themselves to comparison. Are the Germans and Scandinavians of the Upper Midwest really that superior to the Scots-Irish of the Upper South? Are the stereotypes of the intelligent, industrious and organized Germanics versus the dimwitted, lazy and feckless Celts really true? The Upper Midwest has the highest labour-force participation rate in the country while the Upper South has the lowest: Germans love work, Celts love sloth. The Celtic-ness of the Appalachia-Ozark folk is probably somewhat exaggerated, but there seems to be a lot of truth to the Germanics > Celts notion.
Or could it be religious differences between the two regions that are mostly responsible for the vast chasm in living standards? The Upper Midwest is largely dominated by Lutheranism, which is a pretty middle-of-the-road Protestant denomination. There are right-wing and left-wing Lutheran factions, but they all tend to be fairly moderate and non-extreme in a religious sense. There is no real conflict between Lutheranism and science.
In the Upper South the dominant religious group are the much more extreme Baptists, along with their fellow travellers the Pentacostals, Seventh-Day Adventists, and various cults like the snake-handlers, etc. Unlike the Lutherans, these groups are mostly Biblical literalists who have a big problem with the scientific origins of the universe. They are also largely Dispensationalists (i.e. Jew-worshippers), something much rarer among Lutherans (Michele Bachmann’s sect notwithstanding). There is a strong strain of anti-intellectualism in Southern religious factions generally, again, totally unlike the more rational Lutherans.
So I think that ethnic and religious differences between white people in these two regions must account for the lion’s share of differences in living standards between the two. And these differences aren’t small because the Upper South has a lot of natural advantages over the Upper Midwest, namely beautiful scenery and a mild climate. West Virginia is infinitely more beautiful than Iowa and with a much more pleasant climate to boot, making it seemingly a more attractive place to live. Yet the former ranks 48th in living standards while the latter ranks 4th. Why?
I say mostly because of a better ethnic stock and more rational religious tradition. What say you?
What’s the obvious difference between West Virginia and Iowa?
What’s the obvious difference between West Virginia and Iowa?
Celts vs Germanics? Baptists vs Lutherans? You tell me.
Iowa is one of the flattest, most fertile places in America. West Virginia is one of the most mountainous.
Oklahoma is just as flat and fertile as Iowa, yet it ranks 45th in this study, 41 places behind Iowa. Colorado is even more mountainous than West Virginia, yet it ranks 6th, 42 places ahead of WV.
A few months ago, I became interested in this question and started researching the history of Appalachia.
Appalachia was settled long before the states west of the Mississippi. In West Virginia’s case, it used to be wealthier than Virginia in the early 19C century when the region had a farm-and-forest economy. “Appalachia” had an economy on par with the rest of the South in the antebellum era. It was not considered a distinct or backward region of the United States until after the “Civil War.” East Tennessee, for example, had a large population because of the rich farmland in the Great Valley. That area was the breadbasket of the Old South.
The “Civil War” destroyed the plantation-based economy of the Southern lowlands which in turn destroyed the corn-and-cattle economy of the Southern highlands which was deeply intertwined with it. The area was plunged into poverty by the war and its economy was soon taken over at fire sale prices over by Northern railroad, mining and timber corporations in the late 19th century. The worst hit area was the vast region known as “Central Appalachia” which is now synonymous with the coal mining areas of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and parts of northern East Tennessee and SW Virginia.
“Central Appalachia” went from being an area given over almost entirely to subsistence agriculture in the early 19th century – due to the topography of the Cumberland/Allegheny Plateau, which blocked the spread of the plantations – to one that was dominated by proletarian coal mining by the beginning of the 20th century. The profits from industrialization and coal mining in Central Appalachia flowed in one direction: northeast to non-resident stockholders in Pittsburgh and Wall Street. That whole area south from Pittsburgh to Birmingham was essentially one big industrial colony until the Cold War.
After the “Civil War,” Appalachian agriculture was thrown into competition with subsidized agriculture in the Midwest, in places like Iowa, and lost out. Today, even coal mining in Appalachia is losing out to Western coal. Also, the Southern economy in the 20th century was radically changed by military spending in WW1, WW2, and the Cold War, and most of the military bases or military related development in the region was centered either along the coasts or in the lowlands, the two most important exceptions begin Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Huntsville in northern Alabama.
West Virginia’s stunted economy was determined by geography – the coal industry was owned by outsiders, and its profits fueled economic development elsewhere; unlike Iowa, the state is not naturally suited to agriculture; its early settlement and the rugged topography of the Cumberland Plateau made transportation costs exorbitant and put it at a permanent disadvantage compared to other areas, a problem which only began to be remedied by the spread of Northern railroads in the early 20th century and the interstates in the late 20th century.
By comparison, Iowa is a flat state that borders the Mississippi River. Its agricultural products could easily be transported downstream via the Mississippi over railroad to Chicago and the Great Lakes at low cost. Colorado is another case and has a different history than West Virginia. For starters, it was settled much later, and its mines were loaded with gold and silver, not coal. Much of the state is agricultural too.
Don’t forget about the Yankee corporations using the people of Appalachia and rapping their land of resources, then throwing them in the gutter when there’s no more use for them.
There’s also nothing wrong with being laid back, and doing what you *need* to do to get by, while kicking off your boots when your work is done. Yankees view money as an ends, while Southrons view it as a means. To us, comfort is the ends, so we do what we *have* to do, but nothing much more than that. We don’t do what’s unnecessary.
Over all, this ranking system is basically subjective. Who’s to say working yourself to death for no clear reason is better than being content with living by your means? Obviously, the Hispanic and Black findings are substantial, but as long as us Southrons aren’t dying in the streets and living in 3rd world poverty, then who cares if Appalachia “ranked low”?
HW, have you watched the documentaries about coal mining in West Virginia on LinkTV? One’s called “The Last Mountain” and the other is “Coal Rush”. You ought to see if you can watch them. They’re a little hippie dippie, but it touches on the exact thing you’ve been speaking about.
When I read this WaPo article my first thought was that this was a straight-up smear against the South while ignoring the role of blacks in dragging down the region’s living standards. But looking closer at the actual data, the whiter Inland South states actually ranked lower than most of the blacker Coastal South states. So my initial theory was wrong, or at least partially wrong.
The white people of Mississippi have nothing to be ashamed of just because their state finished last in this study. They’re carrying a massive 37% black population on their backs. But the white people of West Virginia–which barely finished above Mississippi despite being only 3.4% black–really should hang their heads in shame. And it seems to me that the former Confederate states were treated far worse for far longer, and were more exploited by Northern interests, than the border states that chose to stay in the Union like WV or KY.
So maybe there are substantial ethnic and religious differences between whites in the Inland and Coastal South that would at least partially explain Appalachia’s perpetual underachievement. The South was originally settled by three different British groups: the Cavaliers around Chesapeake Bay, the Bajans in the Deep South, and the Scots-Irish in Appalachia. The first two were mainly Anglo-Saxon while the third was largely Celtic. So this Germanic-Celtic divide could partially explain the difference in white living standards between the Inland and Coastal South, just like it does in the rest of the US and, indeed, within Europe as well.
Baptists dominate virtually the entire South, but it seems that there are more extremist sects in Appalachia compared with the rest of the South. Snake-handlers, Holy Rollers (people rolling around on the ground in a state of religious ecstasy), speaking in tongues, these are the bizarre religious practices more associated with Appalachia than anywhere else. Biblical literalism seems more entrenched there than in the rest of the South, or anywhere else in the Western world for that matter. This type of primitive, anti-intellectual religiousity would surely have a negative effect on living standards over time, would it not?
There’s also nothing wrong with being laid back, and doing what you *need* to do to get by, while kicking off your boots when your work is done.
This attitude, while seemingly reasonable, gets dangerously close to the ‘mañana’ worldview that has done such wonders for the Mexican economy. And while it is understandable that the pace of life would generally be slower in the South than the North due to climatic reasons, just like the difference between Mediterranean and Northern Europe, the fact is that white living standards are higher in the steaming lowlands of the South than they are in the cooler uplands of the Appalachian-Ozarks belt–exactly the opposite of what a strict climatic or geographical determinism would suggest.
Which brings us back to ethnicity and religion. Just as the Germanic Lutherans of the Upper Midwest greatly outperform the Celtic Holy Rollers of the Inland South, so too–though to a lesser extent–do the Anglo-Saxon Baptists of the Coastal South. This may be simplifying a complex issue somewhat, but I’m convinced that the bulk of the socio-economic failure of Appalachia in general, and West Virginia in particular, can be blamed on an inferior ethnic stock and an irrational religious tradition.
Re: jeppo
1.) First, snake handling is such an obscure practice even in Appalachia that it isn’t worth mentioning.
2.) Second, Appalachia as a whole isn’t really that poor anymore – most of Appalachia has leveled out to national norms – it is the former coal mining areas of Central Appalachia, places like eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, that remain economically depressed.
3.) Third, there have been lots of studies of poverty in Central Appalachia, and none of them have concluded that inferior ethnic stock is to blame. Millions of Whites immigrated from that area to Northern and Sunbelt cities in the 20th century. Their descendants are indistinguishable from other Whites in those cities.
4.) Fourth, the underdevelopment of Appalachia had been studied at length. There’s quite an amount of literature on Appalachia’s economic history. I’ve shared the short version above.
Yeoman farmers settled the area and life was good in Appalachia through the antebellum era when its economy was based on subsistence farming and cattle herding. As overpopulation took its toll, more and more Whites were pushed up the hollows onto inferior soil.
5.) The victory of the Union in the “Civil War” did three things:
– It destroyed the plantation economy of the lowlands which devastated non-slaveholding Whites in the highlands because the economies of the two regions were so interpendent. The Upper South was the breadbasket of the Lower South.
– It threw Appalachia into competition with subsidized agriculture in Midwest and Union war veterans collecting federal pensions.
– It turned the region into a massive industrial colony of Northern railroad, timber, and mining corporations who bought up the region’s resources and built an extractive economy that sucked all the profits from there to Northern shareholders.
6.) Because of the above, places like West Virginia and eastern Kentucky shifted from the dying old system of subsistence farming directly into proletarian coal mining, steel, and later chemicals, which is why that area is such an anomaly in the South. It is best seen as a colony of the Rust Belt.
So, it had a stunted agriculture due to its topography, which eventually lost out to the Midwest; extractive industries (coal, oil, timber, railroad interests) which were owned by outsiders; and finally, a mountainous terrain that produced exorbitant transportation costs that stunted the development of a service based economy.
One of the most interesting things that I learned while studying Appalachia is that stereotypes of “mountaineers” as backward have lots of parallels in Europe and arise from similar causes.
Third, there have been lots of studies of poverty in Central Appalachia, and none of them have concluded that inferior ethnic stock is to blame. Millions of Whites immigrated from that area to Northern and Sunbelt cities in the 20th century. Their descendants are indistinguishable from other Whites in those cities.
Yes, but this large-scale emigration probably had a dysgenic effect on the population left behind. It was mainly the most intelligent, ambitious and talented “hillbillies” who left Appalachia, like West Virginia’s Chuck Yeager (of German descent), leaving behind the least intelligent, ambitious and talented. A parallel can be found in Canada’s Atlantic provinces, where the descendants of Maritimers who left the region over the past century and a half are basically indistinguishable from other (white) Canadians, but the people left behind on the East Coast aren’t exactly the cream of the European gene pool, to say the least.
Also, many other regions in the US have seen similar large-scale emigration, particularly the Great Plains. Yet the population left behind in these areas isn’t nearly as dysfunctional as it is in Appalachia. Possibly because they had a superior ethno-religious stock to begin with?
Here is a list of the ten whitest states in the US (non-Hispanic whites as of 2012) with their ranking in the OECD living standards study:
1. Maine: 94.1%, #7
2. Vermont: 94%, #3
3. West Virginia: 92.8%, #48
4. New Hampshire: 91.8%, #1
5. North Dakota: 88.1%, #5
6. Iowa: 88%, #4
7. Montana: 87.2%, #17
8. Kentucky: 85.8%, #42
9. Wyoming: 84.6%, #11
10. South Dakota: 83.8%, #12
Two of these states aren’t like the others. West Virginia and Kentucky are seriously underperforming compared to all the rest of the whitest states. There’s no doubt that you’re correct in your assessment of the economic history of Appalachia, but consider a state like Maine. Mostly rural with an economy heavily dependent on primary industries like forestry, fishing, farming and mining (and the wild fluctuations in prices these commodities command on international markets), Maine has a classic colonial-style economy mainly controlled from outside the state, just like WV and KY. Yet Maine finishes a respectable 7th in standard of living while the other two languish in the 40s. Why?
Or consider labour force participation rates, which I consider a crucial measurement of the willingness of a given population to actually wake up early, go to work, and pay taxes. To contribute to society, rather than sponge off it, in other words. In Canada, Alberta, with its largely Anglo-German population, leads the pack at 73.1% in the labour force, while Newfoundland, with its Anglo-Irish population, brings up the rear at 61.2%. The Germanic-Celtic divide in willingness to work is just as apparent when we compare German Lutheran America with Scots-Irish America:
North Dakota: 72.3%
Nebraska: 71.7%
Minnesota: 71.2%
South Dakota: 71.2%
Iowa: 69.5%
Wisconsin: 68.3%
Tennessee: 62.1%
Oklahoma: 61.9%
Arkansas: 61.3%
Kentucky: 61%
West Virginia: 54%
West Virginia’s participation rate is appalling, several points behind every other state (and province). I guess 46% of West Virginian adults are content with an economy based on meth, moonshine and gubmint bennies rather than actually putting on a suit and tie or a pair of workboots and actively seeking legitimate employment. They make the Newfies look hard-working in comparison. Now that’s embarrassing.
One of the most interesting things that I learned while studying Appalachia is that stereotypes of “mountaineers” as backward have lots of parallels in Europe and arise from similar causes.
I think that stereotype was accurate in the past but definitely not now. The two most mountainous countries in Europe (Switzerland and Austria) are also two of the richest. The Rocky Mountain states in the US are doing pretty well (with the exception of largely Hispanic New Mexico), and the most mountainous state of them all, Colorado, is doing very well indeed. In the 21st Century mountains have a certain cachet, like seacoasts and palm trees. People will pay a premium to live near them. But not in Appalachia apparently.
So I think that the socio-economic failures of the Appalachian-Ozarks belt compared to the rest of the country can largely be blamed on a Celtic rather than Anglo-Germanic population base, made worse by dysgenic levels of emigration, combined with a medieval, almost Islamic-like religious fanaticism virtually unknown in the rest of North America and Europe (snake-handlers still exist throughout Appalachia and Biblical literalism is widespread). My advice to them would be to pick up a book (not the Bible) and start reading, and, most of all, get off your asses and get a damn job.
But even in West Virginia crime is low.
But even in West Virginia crime is low.
Meh, not that low. West Virginia ranks as the 22nd safest state according to the OECD. When it comes to crime and safety, once again the German Lutherans put the Scots-Irish to shame.
“The safest states in the country
Score assigned from 0 to 10, based on homicide rates and self-reported crime”
3. Iowa, 8.7
4. Minnesota, 8.2
15. Wisconsin, 6.4
16. South Dakota, 6.4
18. North Dakota, 6
19. Nebraska, 5.7
22. West Virginia, 4.5
24. Kentucky, 4.2
34. Arkansas, 2.1
35. Oklahoma, 1.8
39. Tennessee, 1.2
Stop being a Gippo Jeppo. Obviously West Virginia is low crime considering the impoverishment.
Obviously West Virginia is low crime considering the impoverishment.
Obviously the South Bronx is low crime considering the impoverishment.
Obviously East LA is low crime considering the impoverishment.
Obviously Soweto is low crime considering the impoverishment.
Obviously Guatemala City is low crime considering the impoverishment.
Obviously the City of God in Rio is low crime considering the impoverishment.
We can keep playing this game all day, John. You keep setting up your pro-WV strawmen and I’ll keep knocking them down.
Gallup has a new state-by-state analysis of “Overall Well-Being”. Not surprisingly, the most German and most Lutheran state of them all finished first while the most Scots-Irish state finished dead last. I’ll let you take a wild guess at the latter.
First, the scores of the six German Lutheran states, with the national average being 66.2:
North Dakota: 70.4
South Dakota: 70
Minnesota: 69.7
Nebraska: 69.7
Iowa: 68.2
Wisconsin: 67.7
Now the five Scots-Irish states:
Oklahoma: 64.7
Arkansas: 64.3
Tennessee: 64.3
Kentucky: 63
West Virginia: 61.4
http://www.gallup.com/poll/125066/State-States.aspx?ref=interactive
You name the metric (standard of living, overall well-being, per capita income, unemployment rate, crime rate, levels of personal happiness, average IQ, SAT scores, labour force participation rate, educational attainment, etc.) and the former group of states beat the latter every time. By a lot. But don’t let that stop you from insisting otherwise. You’re helping prove my point.
Virginia losing the Civil War may have been a tragedy, but as a consolation prize they also lost West Virginia 🙂
Here’s a list of your “Germano-Lutheran” states by GDP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP
#15. Minnesota
#21. Wisconsin
#30. Iowa
#36. Nebraska
#46. South Dakota
#49. North Dakota
Let’s set aside the fact for a moment that none of these states, even in the colonial era, are as “Scots-Irish” as you believe they are. Here’s a list of your “Scots-Irish” states by GDP:
#20. Tennessee
#28. Kentucky
#29. Oklahoma
#34. Arkansas
#39. West Virginia
Just out of curiosity, let’s include the rest of the South:
#2. Texas
#4. Florida
#7. North Carolina
#10. Georgia
#11. Virginia
#22. Missouri
#24. Louisiana
#25. Alabama
#27. South Carolina
#35. Mississippi
C’mon Hunter, you know perfectly well that a list of states ranked by GDP is utterly meaningless. Now GDP per capita, that’s another story all together…
3. North Dakota
12. Minnesota
18. Nebraska
20. South Dakota
23. Iowa
29. Wisconsin
35. Tennessee
37. Oklahoma
43. Kentucky
48. Arkansas
49. West Virginia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP_per_capita
GDP measures the size of each state’s economy. Texas alone has an economy larger than “Germano-Lutheran America.” Here’s a list of US states with the smallest economies:
#40. Delaware
#41. New Hampshire
#42. Idaho
#43. Maine
#44. Alaska
#45. Rhode Island
#46. South Dakota
#47. Montana
#48. Wyoming
#49. North Dakota
#50. Vermont
Wyoming and North Dakota have two of the smallest economies in America. Is this because the people who live in Wyoming and North Dakota are inferior? No, it is due to their small populations, which is due in turn to their miserable, unattractive climates. Wyoming and North Dakota are hellishly cold and windy. So is Alaska. All three states though are bestowed with enormous mineral wealth.
Florida’s economy is now larger than the ten states listed above combined. In the nineteenth century, Florida was the smallest Southern state, but it now has the second largest economy in the South. How come? Florida now has the air conditioner, cheap air travel, interstates, refrigeration, a balmy subtropical climate, low taxes, and more sunny beaches than any other state.
Texas alone has an economy larger than “Germano-Lutheran America.”
India has an economy larger than Australia.
Mexico has an economy larger than the Netherlands.
Nigeria has an economy larger than Switzerland.
Pakistan has an economy larger than New Zealand.
Haiti has an economy larger than Iceland.
When it comes to measuring a nation’s or a state’s standard of living, who cares who has the larger economy? We’re concerned with quality rather than quantity here, so all that matters is GDP per capita, not total GDP.
There’s no doubt that Florida is generally seen as a more attractive place to live than, say, North Dakota. Florida has grown by about 17 million people since WW2 while North Dakota has stagnated. Mainly because Florida has two of the three natural attributes that modern Americans (and immigrants) primarily flock towards while North Dakota has none of them. They are, in no particular order:
1. Ocean
2. Palm Trees
3. Mountains
Since WW2 and the widespread use of air conditioning, millions of Americans have fled the interior of the country for the coasts. Millions more have moved from the colder northern two-thirds of the country to the warmer southern tier. And millions more have left the flatter eastern two-thirds of the country for the ruggedly mountainous West.
The choicest areas of the country are where all three of these features come together, Hawaii and coastal California. This is reflected in the highest real estate prices–by far–in the United States. Florida’s extremely rapid growth is due to the entire state’s proximity to the ocean and the fact that they’ve got palm trees (as a proxy for a warm climate) coming out the wazoo down there. The fastest growing region of the country over the past 30 or 40 years, the Inland Empire-Las Vegas-Phoenix triangle, also has two of the three most desirable attributes: mountains and palm trees, but no ocean. Fast-growing Texas has palm trees and oceanfront in the south and mountains in the west.
Conversely, the least desirable part of the country is the area furthest away from mountains, palm trees and the ocean, namely the Upper Midwest (aka German Lutheran America). But rather than being a negative this is actually a major positive for this region. Cold weather and lame scenery tend to keep the riff-raff away. Long, brutal winters are like kryptonite to non-whites, immigrants and white loafers, so they mainly gravitate to states like California and Florida rather than Nebraska and Iowa.
To a lesser extent, the same goes for Scots-Irish America. They have no palm trees or oceanfront and the Appalachians and Ozarks are like molehills compared to ‘real’ mountain ranges like the Rockies or Sierra Nevadas. The Scots-Irish belt may be severely underperforming today, but as the black and brown undertow continues to grow rapidly in the states to the south and east, greatly undermining their standard of living, Scots-Irish America will start to look very inviting to individuals and businesses wanting to flee from the Third Worldization of the southern tier and coastal states.
In the not-too-distant future I think we will be hearing about a sort of ‘hillbilly renaissance’ in the Appalachian-Ozarks region. However, I think it will be less of a case of this region rising than the surrounding states sinking beneath the waves of mass immigration. It will be a relative rather than absolute rise, which, alas, is about all we can hope for anywhere in the Western world. Whatever, it should be interesting to watch a future MSM try to explain away the rise of Redneckistan compared to the more wog-infested parts of the country.
But I seriously doubt that Scots-Irish America will ever match German Lutheran America in any important measurement of living standards. They are waaaaay too far behind today to ever catch up, and this is primarily due to the latter’s superior ethnic stock and more rational religious tradition. Historical and economic arguments to the contrary just aren’t going to cut it because the entire country has basically been an exploited political and economic colony of the all-powerful Bos-NY-Wash corridor since at least 1865. And that even includes areas of the Northeast like northern New England, western New York and western Pennsylvania.
Moreover, the gap in living standards between the Upper Midwest and the rest of the country will only grow wider due to this region’s horrible climate, boring landscapes and undesirable location. These factors will help it maintain its German Lutheran demographic core while whites lose their majority status in huge swathes of the rest of the country. So while mountains, palm trees and oceans are undeniably beautiful, they are also harbingers of demographic doom. The pancake-flat, treeless prairies of North Dakota shivering under a blanket of snow at -20 degrees maybe nobody’s idea of paradise compared to a palm-fringed beach, but if you want high wages, low unemployment, low crime rates, good neighbours and a white-majority society that will hopefully exist until the Earth crashes into the Sun, then ND is the place to be.
Here’s a report on absentee land ownership in West Virginia in .pdf form prepared by the WV Center on Budget and Policy.
http://www.wvpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/land-study-paper-final3.pdf
Thanks, Bob.
That looks very interesting.