It Should Surprise Nobody…
By Mitch Berg
… that the most fiscally sound and best managed states in the union are controlled by Republicans, while all of the worst marriage states are controlled by Democrats.
[…while] Mercatus makes no mention of the states’ political leanings, every state in the top 10 except for Florida is solidly red, meaning those states voted for the Republican in each of the past four presidential elections (see table). And Florida has had a Republican governor since 1999, and the state House and Senate are both controlled by Republicans.
At the other end of the spectrum, except for Kentucky, the 10 worst states are all solidly blue. And all but two of the governors since 1947 have been Democrats.
I said it should surprise nobody. But you know it will.
June 2nd, 2016 at 6:41 am
There is probably another exception; Kansas.
The state is facing some pretty severe economic issues due to tax reform enacted by the GOP majority and Gov. According to some friends that live there, even the GOP legislators that initially backed the tax reform, are having second thoughts. Some feel that the cuts were too aggressive, especially the ones received by farmers.
My friends surmise, however, that some of the issues are down line fall out from previous economic stupidity.
June 2nd, 2016 at 7:58 am
Silly Merg, fact Kentucky is one of the worst proves your entire theory is bunk.
June 2nd, 2016 at 8:56 am
Isolated incidents.
June 2nd, 2016 at 11:00 am
“There is probably another exception; Kansas.”
The powers that be have far too much invested in proving their supply-side dogma to admit defeat and come up with a new plan.
May tax collections were almost $75 million below the projected amount (a projection that was lowered in April); the state budget for FY 2016 is about $50 million in the red.
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2016/jun/01/kansas-revenues-fall-745-million-short-may/
June 2nd, 2016 at 12:03 pm
Kansas made mistakes.
Doesn’t disprove, or even impact, the thesis
June 2nd, 2016 at 12:42 pm
It’s sad because certain conservative movements are very helpful to growth. Things like removing occupational licensing and streamlining business and capital formation can be a huge benefit to any economy, no matter the state. Unfortunately, rather than put resources towards things that will assist Americans, the right continues to bludgeon an economic strategy peddled by economic clowns.
June 2nd, 2016 at 2:05 pm
Regarding Kansas, if their budget problems catapult them into the bottom ten, then the correlation is that a mere eight out of the worst ten states are run by Democrats….still looks pretty bad for President Blagojevich’s party, really.
And if you look at what happened in Kansas, it’s income tax problems. OK, is that Kansas’ fault–overly optimistic estimates of growth, etc.?–or is that the fault of a weak national economy–President Blago’s fault?
Plus, if you compare Kansas’ problems to those of, say, Illinois or California, there is no comparison. Kansas could reverse things with a well done budget/tax bill in a week. Illinois and California are facing decades long pension issues that are orders of magnitude larger.
June 2nd, 2016 at 4:10 pm
I believe Kansas to be the exception. As an aside, Wisconsin appears to be doing well. https://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/regional-economy/indexes/coincident/
June 2nd, 2016 at 5:04 pm
Emery, when is the last time you heard a Democrat talk about economic growth as a positive thing?
The GOP coalition is far weaker then the Democrat coalition. I am actually surprised to see that it took this long to fracture. The Dems are still solid — there unions actually endorse policies, like open immigration and guest worker programs, that have been shown to reduce workers’ wages.
June 2nd, 2016 at 7:56 pm
If the Democrats want to be the party of government again (and not simply the party of protest, victim-hood, and a rainbow coalition), they need to change.