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by dumbfoundded 2129 days ago
Your framing of the list is more than a bit disingenuous. 4/5 of the top economies are blue. 6/10 are blue, 1/10 is a swing state, and 3/10 are red (1). When you dive a bit deeper, you can also see that all 3 red states border much bigger and richer blue states (Utah -> Colorado, Idaho -> Washington/Oregon, Arizona -> California). Perhaps a better way is to break it down by district (2). If you look at the house of representatives and sum up the GDP by party, democrats account for ~$10T and republicans account for ~$6T.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states

(2) https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/charts-democrats-represent-m...

1 comments

What if we looked at things like tax rate and cost of living?

People make more money in California, but they also spend more on housing, taxes, food, gas, etc.

If you look at quality of life indicators instead of economic strength, California certainly falls more than a bit but the red/blue divide grows even larger (1). From purely a quality of life standpoint, 8 of the best 10 are blue and 8 out of the worst 10 are red.

(1) https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings

Trying to build rankings of something like 'quality of life' seems pretty dense