As Republicans descend on St. Paul for their convention, one of the major themes being pushed by Democrats is that the GOP is out of touch and unaware of the economic travails of ordinary Americans. McCain’s I-can’t-count-all-my-houses snafu certainly doesn’t help them debunk those criticisms.
So with those arguments as a backdrop, it’s interesting to see that the state that will host the convention has some issues about wealth disparity. As the map below shows, Minnesota has some of the wealthiest areas in the nation around the Twin Cities and also has some of the poorest on its western front.
My home state of Virginia also has some great disparity with the suburban 11th District around Washington in the wealthiest tier and the hardscrabble 9th District in the poorest tier.
The map comes courtesy of the American Human Development Project, which has sort of a liberal, “Two Americas” feel to it. Whether you buy into this economic populism or not, however, the maps are superb and definitely worth a look.
Income by Congressional District
Citizen Grim
3 September 2008 at 3:34 PM
What’s amusing is that the people who complain the most about income disparity are the wealthy and privileged. This is really no surprise. They are wealthy and privileged because they value – surprise! – wealth and privilege.
Either by their own guilt or economic chauvinism – they perpetuate the class warfare nonsense, and promise to stick it to the nebulous “rich” in order to benefit the “poor.” But not everyone measures “rich” and “poor” in dollars and cents, and it baffles them that the lower classes might have different priorities than money and convenience.
Andy
3 September 2008 at 5:45 PM
When I saw the text saying that Minnesota “has some issues about wealth disparity”, I figured you’d be mentioning some of the poorer neighborhoods in Minneapolis. I was rather surprised to find that you were talking about the congressional district I grew up in. The bulk of Western Minnesota is farm country, and so incomes may be lower (there are periodic highs and lows, as well) but the cost of living is lower too. Minnesota also has a significantly larger social safety net, from health care to unemployment insurance, that allows people to better weather economic storms.
This is a case where the map doesn’t provide a very good indicator of the situation on the ground, and in this case is exacerbated by the odd, arbitrary shapes of congressional districts.
JD
18 September 2008 at 5:38 PM
I don’t know what Citizen Grim is smoking, but I was never more aware of wealth disparity than when I was a poor fry cook serving a wide range of customers: rich tourists, inner city nurses, and the destitute among them.
The notion of vacations, health insurance, a “family doctor” (ha!), dental work, and the like were foreign to me. But I overheard my rich and middle class customers talk about them all the time.
When you can’t take a day off because you can’t afford to give up a day’s wages, you really learn to value money. When you have to walk a mile through the snow to the public library because you can’t afford Internet access, you really start to value convenience.