How many decades has the Democrat Party railed against “rich people,” or accused the Republican Party of being the “party of the rich,” while calling themselves “the party of the working class”? Remember Barack Obama’s ridiculous admonishment that upper-income Americans need to pay their “fair share“? Remember also how Democrats never tell us when that “fair share” is enough?
Just one problem. According to a statistical regression analysis of Census data by Daily Wire, the more liberal a state, the more likely it is to be home to income inequality. Oopsie, Democrats.
Here’s more, via Daily Wire:
New York, Connecticut, and California had the biggest gulf between rich and poor, according to a Census Bureau yardstick called the Gini Index that measures how far an area is from “perfect equality (where everyone receives an equal share).” Utah, Indiana, and South Dakota had the least inequality. The Census Bureau’s detailed annual population study, the American Community Survey, was released on September 15, and covered 2021.
Democrat talk is cheap. While the party emphasizes “income gaps” between upper-class, and lower- and middle-class people — now promoted by the left as “equity” (wealth redistribution) — Daily Wire’s analysis reveals data and facts that fly in the face of the left’s narrative.
Conservative political consultant David Gordon told Daily Wire:
This shows that all of the things that [Democrats] complain about actually come from Democrat policies. When they complain about poor outcomes for blacks, for example, that is primarily in the areas where they have governed for generations, to catastrophic effect.
Democrat President Lyndon Johnson’s disastrous 1964 “War on Poverty” (Welfare) program remains the best example of Gordon’s point. Sixty years later, much of black, urban America has become an abject failure, resulting in skyrocketing violent crime and rampant gang activity.
The Daily Wire analysis focused on the 10 most liberal and 10 most conservative states by selecting those where one party controls both the legislature and governor’s mansion, then ordering them by the share of state legislature seats controlled by that party:
Hawaii was the most liberal state, with 93% Democrats in its legislature, but it was excluded because it is not part of the mainland and is subject to unique economic forces. That left Rhode Island, with an 87%-Democrat legislature, as the most Democratic state, followed by California, New York, and Delaware. The most conservative state was South Dakota, with a 90%-Republican legislature, followed by Wyoming, North Dakota, and Idaho.
The analysis also compared income gaps between races, including Hispanics; in terms of median income, Rhode Island, New York, and Connecticut had the largest gap between whites and Hispanics. Six of the 10 blue states analyzed had larger income gaps between foreign-born residents and whites than in every red state.
And, then these glaring differences:
In California, the average foreign-born resident made only a third of what native-born Californians earned. By contrast, in Idaho, the average black resident made 85% as much as the average white person, the closest thing to racial equity of any state. In Indiana, Hispanics made close to 90% as much as whites.
Who knew? Oh, wait — California continues to import as many illegal aliens as possible and welcomes homeless people in droves. You don’t suppose that has anything to do with the no-longer Golden State’s income gap, do you? Rhetorical question.
As I suggested earlier, the Democrat narrative has long been that red states are more impoverished – which the Census’ main poverty measure clearly shows is highly misleading because, as Daily Wire noted, the Census does not adjust for an area’s cost-of-living, and instead sets a uniform dollar amount as the poverty line for every family of a given size, making it useless. Needless to say, the cost of living in New York City and San Francisco, for example, is substantially higher than in rural Alabama or Georgia.
Moreover, the analysis determined, while median incomes are higher in the 10 measured blue states, rent and home prices are also substantially higher than in red states. Families of every race in red states are more likely than those in blue states to own their own homes vs. renting.
Finally, despite liberals touting the wonders of public education and teachers unions vs. private education, you guessed it: the more liberal a state, the higher percentage of children attend private schools.
The extensive analysis further validates what we’ve known about Democrats for decades, particularly liberal elites: what’s good for thee is not good for me. Imagine that.