And then we should be helping them on the state and federal level. I have replied a couple of times here that I have no problem with my tax dollars going to help them.
Unfortunately, they overwhelmingly vote for politicians that believe just the opposite on the state and federal level.
> And then we should be helping them on the state and federal level.
That’ll just lead to people on the opposite side of the spectrum (politically and in terms of being more urban) asking why their tax dollars are going towards a bunch of rednecks living in the middle of nowhere and destroying the earth with their heavily car-dependent lifestyles. _They should move to the city if they want a fire department! Otherwise, pay for it yourself or quit yer bitchin!_
> Unfortunately, they overwhelmingly vote for politicians that believe just the opposite on the state and federal level.
Perhaps the reason is because the people they “should” be voting for, according to you, are tied to a lot of social policies that these rural folks find deeply disagreeable. In a similar vein, if the 2024 Republican president campaigned on true free healthcare and massive taxes for the rich, you wouldn’t chide Democrat voters for not voting for that candidate on account of his social policies, now would you?
If the Republican politician campaigned on universal healthcare a larger social safety net etc I would be all for it.
But all that being said, I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat that said they wanted free health care and also bring back segregation and laws against miscegenation. The first affects me and everyone in my family and the second would affect my son and my soon to be daughter in law.
Democrats are not saying they want universal healthcare only for blue areas.
It’s taking my best to even go that far seeing they continue to deify people who demean people that look like me and say I - someone who has been coding either as a hobby or professional for literally 40 years - only got ahead because of “DEI”.
They can’t afford $5000 a year for software. I work in consulting, that is less than half of what my company bills me out for a week as a staff consultant.
You shouldn’t be stereotyping rural people like this. Rural communities differ wildly in population and political leanings. On average they are older, whiter, and Republican voting, but this is shifting. Many small communities that were dying out are being revitalized as artist colonies and tourist zones, and many active farming communities are gradually becoming more Hispanic. Framing urban vs rural as red vs blue plays into the hands of the divide-and-conquer strategy that elites use to prevent the population from successfully pursuing radical change.
If you look at a precinct-level map of election results you’ll see speckles of blue everywhere, as well as areas that were narrowly split. Those speckles represent real communities with people living in them. You can’t just write them off.
There’s also small towns or clusters of homes in the middle of nowhere where most of the residents disagree from the communities surrounding them. They don’t necessarily have enough votes to make a dent, but they also exist.
Assuming people’s politics or worth based on where they live leads to unpleasant outcomes.
Whose writing them off? I have repeatedly said that I have no issues with taxpayer funded assistance on the federal and tax level. But you can’t help people who are more interested in “owning the libs” and “fighting wokism”.
I was more responding to the notion that rural = Republican and therefore bad/hopeless. I think it’s a mischaracterization that needs to die before we can make real progress towards reform in this country.
Rural people face different challenges than urban people, although there’s some overlap. Finding agreement on the overlap—while attempting to solve the unique urban and rural problems in parallel—would be more effective than the tug of war that we have now. US politics has developed a winner-take-all attitude that’s clearly not working.
If you voluntarily choose to live at such low densities that the cost of fire protection per person is too high to pay, I struggle to understand why that is a public or government problem. Either accept that you’re preferred density is difficult and uneconomical to service and you’ll have to pay a lot in tax or private fees or whatever, or go without.
On the other hand, if you involuntarily live at low densities because of gatekeepers in the city who have prevented housing from being built for the last dozen decades or so, then we should fix that so that anyone who wants to live in a city with excellent and cheap fire protection can do so.
Importantly, neither of these have anything to do with capitalism or private equity.
Who needs farmers anyway? Alternatively, they could all move to the big city and farm there.
My issue is not that rural America is poor. My issue is that there vote for politicians whose explicit goal is not to help them. But that’s okay as long as the politicians “fight the woke”.
I agree with your broader political point re: voting preference. I also don't understand why this is a thing.
Re: farmers - are farms themselves a big farm risk? I can imagine farm workers living in nearby towns requiring fire service, but not the farms themselves or farm owners. I can see the case for public funding of fire service for such towns, but density still matters - if 1000 farm workers each live on their own acre (~42,000 sqft), it's going to cost more to provide fire service than they live on a 1,000 sqft lot, or in a 1,000 sqft apartment in a 4 storey building. Most of North American land use will require them to live much less densely than they might have otherwise, driving up the cost of infra & fire service.
Farms usually have large quantities of dry and flammable goods, whether it’s fertilizer, fuel, hay, straw litter, or dried harvested crops. Fields of dry corn or wheat could be flammable as well. Rural forests can also have wildfires which quickly get out of control and require massive intervention, so it’s better to put them out early.
These places use volunteers because fire is rare, but they still need some kind of fire service just in case. They often get their expensive equipment from grants, it’s the labor that’s provided by the community.
Unfortunately, they overwhelmingly vote for politicians that believe just the opposite on the state and federal level.