What The Bottom Half Can Teach Us

This data came from here.

What trends can we learn from the bottom…

To start bottom up, rank them how they vote politically.

• Nevada  .. a swing state.
• New Mexico — Democratic, but with a huge percentage of native American population.
• Mississippi — Republican
• Louisiana, Arizona, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma, — All Republican.
• California — Democratic with a huge Central American population.  In people it probably represents more than all the above so far.
• South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Idaho,  all extreme Republican.
• Kentucky, always Republican but now may be swinging.
• Oregon — Democratic
• Alaska, Michigan — now Republican
• Florida — historically always Republican though leaning to swing lately with new voter registration.
• North Carolina — Republican, rapidly pulling away from everything Democratic
• Montana — Republican values but lately a swing state.
• Hawaii — Democratic

(I should note that in case one didn’t previously look at the charts, they should know the worst at settings ones children up for success, is ranked on top starting with Nevada, and the educational levels get better as one goes down the list until he reaches America’s midpoint, which is just after Hawaii if one come up from the bottom.)

But see any trends?

Obviously Republican states do not do well here.  Could this be a coincidence?  If so it would be odd.  That states known for their blueness are all above average when it comes time for kicking their kids out the door, and states known for their redness, are really sending their children out ill prepared…

Now in my observation, it is too hard to pinpoint this on a political party.  Those things morph to get votes.  There has to be something bigger associated with the Republican Party, but not officially a part of it.

The culprit is the belief and practicing of austerity.  Austerity when based on evidence, does not work.  True believers counter that the opposite of austerity is Socialism.  I don’t think Socialism can be so narrowly defined as setting ones children up for success.  And that is what this is about.  Taking care of ones children is not socialism.  It is a duty.  Funding the educational process is a duty required I think by every state.  Every state deserves to have their children do well.

The practitioners of austerity have dominated the argument far too long.  Our children have suffered for it.  If one wants to practice austerity, it needs to happen in areas other than education. As a society we must decide this once and for all.

The idea that one will cut taxes just to cut taxes and make all things fall in line,  cannot apply to education.  Educational funding must be maintained at a consistently adequate level, and if revenue comes up short, then let the wealthy pay more…  This idea of cutting those very essential services and means for future growth so our elite can have more pocket change, needs to stop.

Austerity may have its place, somewhere.  But it certainly does not belong in education as this chart well shows.   All those states which champion austerity, are those very states bringing DOWN America’s academic excellence…

Austerity is nothing more than society’s choosing to button down, and stuff its money into a mattress instead of investing somewhere else and earning additional income or interest off of it… Only in this case, society has chosen the 1% to be its mattress…  Now imagine a mattress actually demanding that we feed it money.  Preposterous?   Well that is exactly what has happened to American society since Bush took over after Clinton. We have willingly obeyed its orders…

This chart of states ranked by their ability to send their children out into the world and be successful, better than any other indicator I think, shows the folly of following any austerity type of program, but especially when it comes to setting up our children for success….

1) It doesn’t help anything. 2) It hurts and makes us worse off.