These red/blue state comparisons virtually always confuse correlation and causation, and this gentleman is seduced by the same error. There is very little evidence that democrat policies caused a decrease in infant mortality or any of those things.
I mean if you prevent infants from being born and dont call abortion mortality, then I guess you can claim anything. Aborting babies also means less kids will die in house fires too.
Valid point. But how many of those stats can be attributed to the lifestyle, education, etc., of people who tend to vote Democratic? And BTW, maybe all the stats he quotes are correct and maybe they’re not. But just because someone says them in Twitter video ….
I know you are being slight facetious here, but I think the stats he cites are rates, so they would likely unaffected by changes in gross numbers. Unless we can think of reason that people who are more likely to have abortion are also more likely to suffer house fires.
Oh yeah, I was just taking his stats at face value, but even those can be suspect. As for your question about why these correlations exist, I agree with you. I would identify urban vs rural living as the likely driver of the trends. Something about cities almost magically produces gains in productivity, which translate to increased wealth. Wealthy people take much better care of themselves and their increasingly few offspring. And of course, urban dwellers are much more likely to vote democratic, while rural people vote overwhelmingly for republicans. So in the end, you get democratic leadership in the places where people are wealthy and healthy.
The whole issue almost certainly has a very circular causal nature, but I think of education as more trailing wealth. Rich people tend to appreciate and invest in education more. Do more educated people earn more? Yes they do, so this represents the circularity. However, I think you can’t just go into a very rural area, force some of the impoverished people there into a nice school and expect this experience to transform these subjects. There are cultural norms that are important for appreciating education and using the education to produce wealth.
Interesting perspective as I tend to think of education creating wealth. That was certainly the case for both my wife and I and many of our friends.
Education most definitely does not create wealth. I have as many friends with degrees as I have who do not have degrees and all the ones without degrees are Entrepeneur's and are a lot better off than most of my college educated friends. They are farmers, plumbers, landscapers and all are quite wealthy. An education helps open doors and I think for the non-motivated a degree will help them have a modest living, but it requires motivation to become wealthy. Education or not
It's funny as the populations that drag red states down are largely dense and highly liberal areas surrounded by a sea of conservative regular people. Look at Jackson, Mississippi or Memphin, TN for examples of this.
It’s a complicated issue, and I certainly don’t want to suggest people shouldn’t go to college. I am a professor, so going to college was obviously very important for me as well. But I want to take a step backto investigate how I did well in college. In my household, it was always assumed I’d go to college. My parents cared about my grades. I never even considered the option of not going to college. This was the culture that I was fortunate to inherit. Many other households and peer cultures don’t share those values. As a result, the people that grow up in those areas just don’t pursue education as frequently.
True. Abortion is beneficial to society in many ways. Unwanted babies are a bad thing for society. Unwanted babies have a much higher likelihood of being raised in unsafe or abusive households. And single women who don't have to raise unwanted babies have a much higher likelihood of improving their lives educationally and financially and ultimately being in a much better position to raise a healthy family.
