|
lol this person needs an editor -- hilarious b/c AEI is supposed to be a "premier" right-wing think tank.
A bit of a nit pick "urbane" != urban. Urbane means polished and sophisticated, it has nothing to do with urban environment which I presume the writer meant as most people would agree that Reagan was an urbane president.
As far as the "gentry" controlling the reigns of government -- that's pretty absurd on it's face. Obama like him or not, is self made, as was Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon -- and a long line of other presidents. George W. and H.W. where the quientissential gentried CT class of folks. (Prescott Bush was a U.S. senator and abotu as well connected as you could be)
1.) Large Blue states are net federal donors, while red states receive an influx of federal dollars -- especially in defense oriented jobs. So, comparing taxes is a losing comparison.
2.) California's problems mostly stem from having split governance and arcane rules that have promoted high services that no one wants to cut, and low taxes which no one wants to raise a Republican Governor had the ability to fix this and failed misrably.
Lastly, this is a very poor article from AEI, if your point is to try to compare Red states and blue states there is a much better article in the Economist (around July 15th edition or so) that compares both the governance and the economic trends.
But whatever this is gfy home of no facts necessary.
|