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Mr. Beat explains why rural voters tend to lean more to the right politically and why urban voters tend to lean more to the left politically.
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What’s the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank
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The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America by Robert Wuthnow
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www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...
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www.pewresearch.org/social-tr...
www.hrsa.gov/rural-health/abo...
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www.brookings.edu/blog/the-av...
www.politico.com/news/magazin...
/ 1336342894630858755
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban%E...
source.wustl.edu/2020/02/the-...
www.nydailynews.com/opinion/p...
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
www.econlib.org/why-are-there...
www.theatlantic.com/business/...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33881...
www.nber.org/papers/w5774
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Notes:
From my Patreon supporter Naterade:
I enjoyed your analysis on the urban and rural divide. Automation and globalization has certainly widened the divide between urban and rural areas. Also, the fact that both parties in my opinion seem to have adopted this purity test where candidates and members of a party can’t hold varying stances on certain issues otherwise they are demonized e.g. Joe Manchin bucking Biden’s agenda or Trump and republicans who attack republicans who voted to certify the 2020 election.
From Patreon supporter Devin Canada:
The rural culture of self-dependence might also be a contributing factor.
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Please everyone stop supporting 🇮🇱
As a minority from a rural area, I think a lot of the argument about out of touch elites is silly, but I'll get harassment if I do a separate comment. Bigotry is everywhere, but leaders of smaller places can harass what few open minorities there are more easily. This is a big issue for me, as I have no time for bigots anywhere.
Something like 80% of the jobs created since 2010 (and I can't remember what source I got this from) are in the metro areas.
...So another way to put this? The rural areas have *been in a depression* for ten years.
And the Dems haven't done anything about it, even though they claim to be the party of the people.
As a metro person, on the further left, and LGBTQ+, I have no love for the Democrats. I have learned to fear Republicans, though.
I noticed that Hawaii is blue not red I wonder why do you know?
The difference between rural and urban is individualist vs collectivist.
Rural communities, and conservatives in urban areas, tend to be individualist. Their view is that they have earned what they have without (much) help from governments or city slickers. They will express views such as:
* How dare they pass laws to take my stuff and give it to those who didn't earn it?
* Why should I pay more for fuel just because those city people polluted their air?
* An electric car is not practical when you have to travel 100 miles to visit Walmart. Besides, warmer weather is good for the crops.
Urban communities, and liberals in rural areas, tend to be collectivist. Their view is that they succeed or fail as a community and anything that threatens the majority should be solved by the people as a whole. They will express such views as:
* How dare those country bumpkins not pay their fair share when there is so much suffering in the world.
* There is something wrong with them for not caring about the inner city, they must be racist.
* Climate scientists all agree that human caused climate change is real. Are they too stupid to see we must act now to save billions of lives?
That Whole Foods - Cracker Barrel analogy is both hilarious and actually quite informative
as a non-American, i didn't get it
@@chl_ca I guess because Whole Foods is mostly found in cities while Cracker Barrel is found in rural areas.
@@chl_ca Whole Foods is an upscale grocery store and Cracker Barrel has southern charm. Or something like that.
Not really dude is in Missouri I happen to know both counties that house st louis and Kansas city have both cracker Barrels and whole foods.
@@RickettsJr no not accurate. It assumed because of its esthetic alone but most cracker barrel located in high population areas.
it saddens me just how much neglect for the working class there is right now, which affects both rural and urban living people
It’s all about the 1% vs the 99%. We shouldn’t let the culture wars distract us. The working class needs to unite now.
@@jackh3242 yup, that’s the true divide and the media is trying to convince us our neighbor is our enemy, smh
Looking at the graph at 7:24 in the video, you can clearly see where the USA went off the gold standard. I don't think it's the 1% who are the problem (they existed before 1970); it's that the government keeps printing money and not giving it to us, which means they're diluting the value of the dollars in our pockets. Based on the correlation between the timing of that split between productivity and wages and the US coming off the gold standard, I think a likely explanation is that the gap between productivity and wages *is* the production that's being bought up by those printed dollars that devalued ours, rather than just by our productivity being siphoned off by our employers and given to shareholders.
And yes, you could claim that that money's being given out to the wealthy; some of it is (whether directly or indirectly), while much of the rest is being spent on government programs. The point is that that money-printing is effectively a tax on our buying power, and has been since the 1970s.
@@jackh3242 I would argue it's the upper 35% vs the lower 65% while the top 1% just sit back and watch. The 99% is NOT the working class and if you think that's the case, you are falling for propaganda.
@@RamRami238 the 1 percent is a phrase often use to describe the richest people of a country.
I live in California and people always overlook the rural areas because the Bay Area and LA dominate the states economy and culture. In fact California had more republican votes than Texas in 2020 mainly from our more rural counties. I feel like the whole blue or red state divide is a very bad way to look at the country as even the reddest of states can have a very liberal city and the bluest state can have a conservative area.
Most counties in CA vote Republican but they don't have large populations.
@@rino7789 Just checked. CA has 58 counties, 23 voted for Trump and 35 voted for Biden in 2020. Doesn't seem "most" counties vote Republican.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 isn’t it interesting how republicans like to make things up? 🤔
And Houston, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio are majority democrat. In a red state…
@@rino7789 because 60 people live in those counties
It's crazy how in America any town with less than 50,000 people is considered a small rural town. In Australia at my mum's hometown of 10,000 it's considered the largest town in the area, for us Australian a "small town" is literally like 300-1000 people
There's a population difference and some counties in some states barely have 1,000 or less than 1,000 people
And then you look at chinese or indian cities and theres cities with 5mil plus people youve never even heard of
That's the same here in the US. I consider anything less than 5k my 10k a small town. The largest town I lived in was 40k and I that's a medium size town.
Finnally somebody who thinks like that, my city has 7,800 people and everybody keeps calling it a town even thought it’s obviously a large city and soon to be if not already an empire. It even has five small villages annexed to it.
@@SkylordAh 5 million ain’t that much. Mexico city is 4 times that
In Germany, where I am from, "The Urban/Rural Political Divide" is heavily characterized by the issue of transport. While urban voters tend to see individual transport as lavish and hold public transport up as communal, most rural voters depend on individual transport and rarely benefit from investments in public transport.
Good video!
I'd say there's more similarity between Germany and the USA than meets the eye, then!
It's very similar in the United States. The more rural it is the bigger the vehicles get too.
isn't this divide also a east and west thing because east Germany is poor
@@Dutchwheelchair, east Germany is more rural - so indirectly.
Same in sweden aoultho the vehicles don’t get bigger. Sorry, bad english
Because they're in the minority, and often feel put-upon, I find that urban right-wingers and rural left-wingers often have some of the most flamboyantly exaggerated political opinions because they like to prove how much they don't "fit in here."
I’ve experienced this first hand. I live in Los Angeles and the republicans here are far more extreme than most I’ve seen in the country
In the 1996 election, Clinton won many rural counties. For example, Clinton won Illinois by over 17% and he won urban Cook County but he also won most of the rural counties in the state. In fact Dole won several counties in the Chicago metro area like DuPage County. But in 2000, many rural counties flipped Republican, causing Bush to flip 11 states and narrowly win the election.
Yeah I'm in rural Florida (Polk County) and I'm just a typical conservative but my best friend who lives in the same area is increasingly growing more liberal in like crazy sjw ways just because he doesn't want to "conform to society" and frankly its beginning to get a bit annoying
Nah. I've never met a republican in a city who tried to "prove" they don't fit in.
A wild JJ sighting! I think you are spot on here. It seems that the feeling of being besieged and surrounded sort of crystallizes people's opinion in a form that is opposite from their opponents as possible. What is funny about this is that (in my experience), there is no siege. The minority has a sort of felt hostility where there is little concern about them on the part of their opponents. I live in rural TX, and the only political theater that goes on here is the product of the small minority of liberals. Conservatives here are not really interested in proving their bona fides unless they have been provoked to do so. When I used to live in an urban area, it definitely felt the same for the conservatives.
I feel like as time goes on, Mr. Beat is getting more and more based by realizing the similarities between the two parties (like on economics and foreign policy) but also not necessarily advocating for centrism as the answer. Very nice
Real centrism. Don’t buy into that stupid “Manchin”, Liz Cheney-Clinton type of centrism. That’s just corruption veiled to look like “working together”. Working together to screw US.
@@dylanjohnson4624 that’s understandable lol, but I also see communists and anarchists use the term as well a lot. Plus Lil B invented/popularized the term after all, and I don’t think he’s a communist or anything but he’s def not a fascist
@@c4ptfr0zen80 yeah
@@WinginWolf I agree that all of those people you listed suck, I would call all of those people right wing tho personally (even tho Clinton and Manchin are democrats). Basically my comment is saying that “the answer” is not somewhere between the democrats and republicans, it is outside of that limited framework that the US govt wants citizens to stay within. Centrism in the US scope of politics is just as bad as US liberalism and US conservatism. Something much more radical is needed, and luckily more and more Americans are coming to that conclusion (that conclusion being socialism, and I don’t mean Bernie and AOC although they’d definitely be an improvement at least)
centrism is the answer
I grew up and still live in rural Missouri, and while I would describe myself as historically conservative, these last few years have thrown me for a loop. I don't even know what "conservative" means anymore. I tend to say I'm roughly libertarian now. But a lot of my gut-level, personal ideals (the value of work as an end in itself, personal responsibility, discipline, stickin' with your woman) remain "traditional." I just can't for the life of me figure out why that means I have to hate Mexicans.
because people with your views tend to hate Mexicans more than people with more left views
I don’t think most people who are against more looser immigration policies personally hate the people coming across the border, but it’s because large companies (who probably find think tanks) want the cheaper labor, and it’s not that most American workers are lazy, but it’s that they don’t want to work for extremely cheap wages.
Bernie Sanders actually spoke on this until he sold out on the topic.
@@crusader2112 There may be room for good-faith discussion on that point, but protecting low-wage workers generally is not the rhetoric I hear. I tend to hear: "rapists, murderers, drug dealers, terrorists, or at best welfare burdens." I tend to hear things like "they hate America and its laws" and "they want to destroy this country."
I would love to have a productive discussion about the economics of international labor supply and demand, and how best to find an immigration policy that works for the most people, but most "conservatives" I've talked about immigration with weren't interested.
@@Leavus1 Well, unfortunately most “conservativess” here the rhetoric and follow it, however, so does the left as well. Personally, I don’t hate average folk coming here. I do think that while they aren’t coming here and willing destroying America, Demographics do matter, and over time whether we like it or not. The culture changes over decades, for better or for worse.
I dropped the political party's and just identify as an American.
As someone who lives in the south it feels unbearable at times when so many things get politicized. I appreciate you bringing attention to this, have a wonderful day!
What gets politicized, uniquely in the south?
@@annonymous6827 idk in the deep south politics ain too too heavy
@@h0tb0i74 They are- it's just covert instead of overt politics.
To be fair, almost everything is political, but I know what you mean. Thanks for the kind words!
@@h0tb0i74 can confirm. I live in central Alabama and in the cities politics aren't really that prominent. Local/city elections swing to whoever is better at campaigning and is more about who voters think will better their city more. Alabama is primarily republican on state/federal elections because such a huge amount of our state is rural. Some counties add up to around 5,000ish people, sometimes less.
I've always been fascinated by the Rural-Urban divide.
Me too. :) It's really only been a divide, at least politically, for around 100 years!
@@iammrbeat Are you sure? I wonder how much of a urban-rural divide of 100+ years ago was concealed by back then that political parties had both a liberal and conservative wing.
The urban-rural divide goes all the way back to the epic of gilgamesh afterall.
@@iammrbeat Tbf American politics changed a lot post-Depression
Education plays a huge role in that. Rural areas just don't have the funding urban areas do. In America, your quality of education depends on property values. The more educated tend to lean left, whereas the undereducated skew further and further to the right.
@@MrBigTrey I'm skeptical of this (admittedly common) explanation for a few reasons:
First, because the correlation between education funding and education outcomes is not absolute (e.g. homeschoolers spend much less per child and yet have superior educational outcomes on average, with the 50th percentile of homeschoolers being roughly equivalent to the 70th or 75th percentile of public school students). I suspect that even among public schools, where the correlation is much more strong, it's confounded by local demographics and values: If your school is well-funded, it's probably because it's in a wealthier neighborhood where children are more likely to be raised in a culture that values academic and economic achievement, rather than a culture where they're raised to focus mainly on their high-school athletic achievement.
Second, because people in rural areas effectively have two different kinds of education going on at the same time: An abstract academic "when-am-I-ever-going-to-use-this" education in school, and then a practical hands-on education that takes place on the farm or in the woods after school. For instance, rather than cramming for an A+ like an upper (or upper-middle) class suburban high schooler, they may work hard enough in school for a solid B+ average and then spend the rest of their time taking care of 4-H animals, and make hundreds or even thousands of dollars each year for their effort _sometimes even before starting high school._ Alternatively, they may get a job working for an acquaintance in the logging industry before finishing high school.
Because of this second point, people raised in this kind of culture tend to value common sense over (or at least equal to) academic "book knowledge," and perceive theoretical explanations that are divorced from the practicalities of the "real world" as overthinking. (One local man I know got his Ph. D. in engineering, worked for many years as a professor, and then retired to run his own lumber mill for a number of years. When volunteering to teach the local high school physics class, he would sometimes follow up a complex calculation by saying, "...But the most important thing to remember is still 'Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.'" He may have been academically accomplished, but as a native of rural America, he still had this inculcated cultural value that your learning is only as valuable as your real-world competence with matters of practical value.)
This perception of a dichotomy between theory and practice explains several right-wing views held by rural people: On paper, communism looks good; in practice, it's always led to totalitarianism. On paper, decreasing domestic production of fossil fuels, farm goods, and lumber looks environmentally friendly; in practice, it just means importing those products from countries with even less environmental regulation while putting domestic rural people out of work. On paper, food or housing shortages look like they could be fixed by the government giving away those necessities for free (or more accurately, by having them come out of taxes); in practice, those shortages can only be solved by producing more of those things, not by redistributing the ones that already exist, and the government doesn't actually create the things it gives away (e.g. TANF doesn't generate food; only farms do that). And the list goes on.
You hit the nail on the head. Im 32, I lived rurally my whole life, and I never felt the government was out to get me, so much as it doesn't care about rural issues. I don't really hold value in political parties, I just try to vote for who I think will do best for everyone, rural and urban.
What do you think of Jan 6th and the 2017 Raid on Yemen?
@@christiandauz3742 What do you think of the failed extraction from Afghanistan and the cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline?
@@jakelee7083
US never learnt anything from Vietnam and needs to get away from oil ASAP
Space colonization is key to keeping current population alive and thriving as well as provide renewable energy!
If I was Biden I would have used Jan 6th to justify executing the entire Republikkkan Party and the Far-Right voters!!!
@@jakelee7083 The war in Afghanistan wasted trillions of dollars so I'm glad the US pulled out of it, no matter how messy it was (the occupation was messier). As for the Keystone pipeline, there's something called climate change and if we realistically want to limit it, we shouldn't encourage more oil consumption.
@@jakelee7083 A vote for a MAGA candidate is a vote for facism.
I lived and grew up in a rural town and it's "interesting" to see these things trickle down in local elections and town taxes. As kids from my town have the choice of going to two high schools, one being a large public school and the other being a much smaller semi-private academy that is rated way higher academically. Originally the second school was $700 dollars more expensive, so the older folks in the town, tried to pass the vote saying that everyone should go to school one, because "it was the better school." Then when the big school built some new buildings it become more expensive and suddenly there was a flip in their opinions and now the smaller school was "the definitive better option for all kids" and tried to pass a vote saying all kids should go to that school. In the past twenty years the town has become more popular for new residents because of the school system and property values were already up x4 before the crazy real restate boom. People are happy to have their home values go up but still vote against anything that raises taxes besides the police and fire department. A vote to fix up our super old and shitty baseball field would have taxes up three cents per $1000 paid in taxes last year and it barely passed. I think traditional values should favor something like kids playing baseball. People also complain that the town is too busy now, because the population has grown from 3,000 to 5,000 people, but what they should do is sell their house for x5 what they bought it for and go move somewhere else like they are describing.
As a rural left leaning voter, I can tell you we definitely feel abandoned by the democrats. I met a top aid of our (Montana) democratic senator's (Jon Tester) campaign in 2018 at a teacher's conference who told me that his campaign joked about my community because they never felt the need to come here because we were too red 😡😡😡. I guarantee you that if they campaigned here, they'd do better than expected, but because they openly scorn us to our faces, many people here vote the other way.
As an suburban working class person in a very blue metro area they have definitely abandoned us too. They don't even campaign here they just expect us to vote for them. They don't care about us one bit. But they know they can manipulate us with identity politics.
I can definitely understand then why they vote as they do. However, at this point in time, the Republican Party aren’t for anyone but themselves. Once in control urban areas and rural areas will suffer greatly. You see. The Republican Party has the same elite rich people in their party and if given control, a.k.a. total power, they will crush working people. And at are core, we Americans, urban and rural, are working people. We just want to take care of our families and struggle less. That’s what we all have in common and I believe together we can at least push for that change. But staying divided on other issues that don’t matter will keep us from doing that and that’s what both parties are counting on.
Interesting take Craig. So when you say abandoned do you mean in terms of policy or that they don’t come to your area?
@@sinorawright2799 has someone also would be considered rural, I know that the GOP is also controlled by the elite. The issue is we have no other choice. Vote for the elites who treat me like a human (GOP) or vote for the elites that attacks and degrades me (dems).
@@justingiese1746 ok, I get it. But If you look at facts and not feelings, then the trend would be that they talk a good game but don’t back it up. Take the so called tax cuts the Republicans said was for the middle and lower class. If you believe their words then they are correct however if you look at reality such as, people are still struggling, paychecks are still not enough to pay bills and don’t mention the inability to save, then they are liars. The tax cuts took place over 4 years ago, why haven’t the working class seen any benefits yet? Corporations’ had their taxes cut to 21% from 35%. Tell me why do they need a tax break when they are making lots of money. And don’t say trickle down effect because they’ve been saying that since Reagan was in office. If that worked then we working class folks should have seen benefits by now. Also, with the exception of President Obama, they were in control of the government for over 50 years and yes I am saying that President Clinton was a Republican disguised as a Democrat. If they are the best for working people then why haven’t the working people progressed? We have stagnant wages among other things that they refuse to address. So tell me, How do they help the working class?
Neither are doing what they could but the Republican Party is the party of corporations and wealthy people, and if anyone thinks that they will make the economy better for the working class then he/she is historically wrong.
The way you brought the world stage to tie it all together was perfect. We often live in a bubble in the US and forget that it's a world problem and not a Republican vs. Democrat issue at its root
it probably started as a American Republican vs Democrat issue and spread, due to the influence America has on the rest of the world
I was born and raised in Spain, lived my first 13 years under Franco's regime. My parents grew up during the Spanish Civil War. I immigrated to the US (legally, under the "quota system,") in 1970, became a US citizen as soon as I was eligible and have lived in the US since then. Even after all these years, I still find it startling just how ignorant (as in not knowledgeable) the average American is about the rest of the world, about history (heck they don't even know their own history, let alone world history), about the political landscape in the rest of the world.
And that is indeed a big problem, not just because it shows that the US is not the only place where these issues are at play but because things are not always the same everywhere either and that the US does not have a monopoly on how things can or should be done. Ours are not the only solutions and/or approaches that can work well for a society. This issue of rural vs urban with rural typically leaning right while urban leans left is very interesting for me personally as I grew up in as rural an area as you could imagine and that pattern/dynamic doesn't necessarily apply where I come from.
I grew up in a house that was at least a mile from the closest house. These were very thinly populated, very small villages. My family had no car, no phone, no TV until I was 7 years old and even then, there were exactly TWO channels that operated only for a few hours a day. Yet, I come from a long line of quite rebellious, much more leftist leaning folks (going back for many hundreds of years) than even what is viewed as the left here. And I believe that is true for other areas of Europe. As many Europeans will tell you, they don't see the US as having much, if any, leftist representation in this current US government. To quote a European commenter I saw recently on another video (having to do with SCOTUS overturning Roe V Wade). "The US doesn't have a left, they have a right, a hard right and the center with a few Democrats being left of center."
I think where I come from the "divide" was more along class lines, with the lower working classes typically leaning left, some radically left and the upper classes (there wasn't much of a middle class back then in Spain, but those few in the middle class would typically go along with the upper classes politically as their aim was to make into the upper class ... some day) leaning right and in many cases radically right, that's why we had the "Falange," among other extreme right wing factions. And even when most of these lower working class folks were not particularly well educated (as in very little or no formal education, significant numbers were illiterate, at least prior to the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War), they were nevertheless what I call "politically savvy," meaning they KNEW and understood which end of the political spectrum would be more beneficial for their situation and which end of the political spectrum would advocate and work for THEIR interests ... and it sure would not have been the right. I think that is part of the problem in the US right now, those who have been left behind, the working class, the poor, no longer understand this and they have been manipulated by politicians, most effectively by the Reps (at least in my opinion) to vote against their own interests and to support policies that do nothing to help them at best, and in many cases do a whole lot to make their situation even worse.
@@RS-hs5lq France has a national ban on abortion after 16 weeks, that's much more conservative than what America has. we have no ban on abortion nationally and most states only a ban at viability which is like 22-24 weeks depending on the state you live in .
@@Fater4511 That all may be true, but that is just one country, smaller in size than TX, with about 67 million people and that is just one of the many issues. I would have to check into it as I am not intimately familiar with their law, but I would be interested in knowing all the details (as, usually the devil is in the details). For instance, while their national ban may be at 16 weeks, there may be exceptions in that law that allow for abortion in later stages under certain situations, etc. I am guessing if there is a specific situation where the life of the mother is at risk and this happens after that 16 weeks, that law probably makes exceptions for that. So in order to make a fair comparison, you need to look at all those details. Even when I was born (in the late 50s) in Spain (when it comes to abortion one of the most conservative and restrictive countries back then), if the mother's life was at risk and the situation dictated a choice had to be made about which life you will try to save, the MOTHER (not the child) always took precedence. Because they understood all the complexities and knew that at the end of the day, saving the mother is (usually) most beneficial for everyone involved, If that mother already has other children (back then it was not unusual for a woman to have 6 or more children), who will care for the children already born that now are motherless? The father? He probably has to work from sunrise to sunset 7 days a week to feed his family. The other 'women folk' in her family? They probably already have a bunch of children of their own. And, of course, the upper classes could and would have access to abortion, whether it was legal or not, as is always the case.
But a more salient point for me here is, that while they may ban abortion after 16 weeks (which, of course is as arbitrary as any other you might pick), NO woman living in France has to worry about being denied access to abortion if she has decided to have one. EVERY woman in France has access to legal, safe, medically performed abortions and doesn't have to go travelling to another state (country) or fear prosecution in her own because she seeks or obtains an abortion. Of course I can't speak for anyone else but I would be perfectly OK with that more conservative abortion ban France has over the reality that a significant percentage of women in this country will have no access to medically safe abortions. Because you do understand that those abortions will happen, right? One way or another they will happen. There was an excellent article in The Guardian a couple of days ago, first published in American Scholar, by Tamara Dean I believe the author is, that went into the history of abortion in America. Fantastic article, I highly recommended it to anyone who wants to learn more about this issue.
In the long run, probably just as many of those unborn will die and for sure more women will with these extreme bans, which means ANY children they might have had if they had a safe abortion and lived on will also never be, so in the long term, is this really what will save the most "lives?" And let's not even get into the consequences of forcing women to go through a pregnancy they would have wanted to end. That's a whole 'nother layer to this issue but we Americans are not big on complexity and nuance, we tend to look at things as this or that, right or wrong, moral or immoral, good or evil. If only life were that simple.
@@RS-hs5lq you are wrong, the dems are very liberal on social issues, most of eruope dont even have gay marriage. whats right wing about a pro trans party? and also ask eny eruopean, are u ok wiht ur country becoming only 30% european ? most of them will say no, most of them according to all the data dont even like any type of diversity at all, so a lot of european laws speically on imigration are to thwe right of america but somehow america needs to acceept whatever the left wants ? when u came to america in the 70s this still was a 88% white country , now the left changed it all, so sorry i no longer care hwta that sides wants
I have always hypothesized that a lower population density in rural area has forced people who live there to be more reliant on themselves or close family and friends. Meanwhile a higher population density in cities actually presents more of a threat to people who live there (directly and indirectly) resulting in those people favoring more government involvement to (in theory) create a more orderly society. I think this may be part of the reason. In any case the partisanship has gotten out of hand and neither major political party is worthy of support.
Mmmh, I really don't know who to support between a crony theocratic party denying the biggest threat human civilization is currently facing (climate change) and some boring centrists.
@@_blank-_ What we have are two corrupt parties who both want to keep problems unsolved so that they can constantly run on the false promise that they will actually solve these problems. Neither party can accurately be called "centrist".
Also, your theory doesn't make sense considering that rural people are more scared of other people than urban people, the reason why they vote for the party of "law and order" (except for the rich).
It's not because we see others as a threat but because we believe that problems are better solved collectively rather than each of us alone. Also, city living requires big projects (transportation, housing) which require lots of investments so yeah, people aren't going to vote for a party that doesn't want to invest money in these.
@@_blank-_ Your understanding is partial. People in rural areas are used to taking care of their own problems themselves or with the support of the handful of neighbors they have. Therefore people in rural areas are more suspicious of government interference. They expect government to maintain security and stability but beyond that government should stay out of their lives and stop stealing their hard earned money (taxes).
The part that you got right is that urban problems typically require solutions that individual people could not reasonable solve and so urban problems must be tackled with collective action.
Neither approach is wrong, they are simply products of environment. The trouble is that both parties have discovered that if they never actually solve the issues their constituents face, they can keep tricking enough of their constituents to keep voting for them on the promise that this time they will solve the problem. Until the parties are willing to find compromise and common ground, no problems of note will be solved. The parties won't do this because the portion of American society that is still not jaded enough to vote wants the two parties to "own the other side". As such we are in constant gridlock...which is historically a situation that typically leads to the executive taking on more power.
@@_blank-_ that’s so funny you claim to be from a city but ik damn well your just some suburban kid from the way you talk. You’ve never had to walk women to their car because the evil fucks in the city. You’ve never seen a homeless guy assault someone. No matter how much you say we don’t care about these people ur wrong look how much money Cali gives to homeless people and they are still homeless. Taking more of the money I traded hours of my life for to give to others is something a lot of people don’t agree with
not sure why anyone would associate a failed business man with his name on a tower with working class folk in rural areas
People feel like he is able to voice their concerns. That's basically all it takes it this point
Because he's a conman
I'm so happy you made this video. Usually a lot of people just mention the rural/urban divide in passing and they don't go deeper into the subject matter. I've lived in cities my whole life but I've visited rural and suburban areas from time to time and the contrast is stark. It feels like I'm in another world sometimes.
Times are so bad right now for rural America. It's so troubling to me. Thanks for the kind words.
@@iammrbeat I also have been interested in split ticket voting. Just in my lifetime (21 years) in the United States Senate, the 4 senators from the Dakotas and 1 senator from Nebraska were Democrats and Rhode Island and Vermont had a republican senator (although Jim Jeffords switched party affiliation in May 2001). North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska are solidly Republican on the presidential level, and Rhode Island and Vermont are solidly Democratic states on the presidential level.
Well I live in a urban area and vote republican. So I’m kind of the rare people.
@@FabEdits2258 You’re not really rare. It’s more that you’re just out numbered.
@@iammrbeat it really is. I live in a rural area. Lived here my whole life. And it just gets worse and worse every year. More people leave, more buildings are left abandoned, and more drugs and crime fill the community. Everyone here just wants out concerns to be heard for once. Until that happens, nobody out here is going to take any type of politics seriously.
I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. We often talk about the “white flight” here, because in the 50’s-70’s there was a combination of racist laws and racist housing policies that pushed African Americans into areas with less public funding and worse amenities. Any time African Americans would fight to change these policies, white people would leave the city in large numbers, forming a strong white (largely Christian) suburban culture near St. Louis.
Just a snippet here:
I was in kindergarten when my parents were living in government housing. At first, we kids went to the nice school up the street.
Six weeks in, we were suddenly made to ride a longer distance to go to a crappier school further away. I don't know if that's because some of us were black, or all of us were low income.
The new school was not as good and the teacher was mean.
White flight if people leave, gentrification if they move in. Which shall it be?
I live in the fringe of the STL metro area and you are spot on about how it went down here in St. Louis.
same thing in chicago my g.
@@thecivilwarfiles777 They're two completely different things that, both, have different outcomes when it comes to the neighborhoods, schooling, services, and taxing. It's not hard to see what happens to a city or community when these things happen. So, there is no choice.
In Poland Rural/Urban divide is very ingrained in our culture. To the point that people from cities have a slur mildly similair to the Nword for people from rural areas "wiesniak". We learn about the divide in school with a whole book we have to read "wesele" by Stanisław Wyspiański. Especially because 40% of people live in rural areas here
,,Wieśniak" is not a slur, such role are playing words like ,,wsiur" or ,,wsiok".
Many people from big cities just consider people feom rural areas as poor and stupid just because they are from countryside.
Excellent job capturing the nuances of rural America by camping out in front of a Dollar General. It pains me how accurately symbolic that shot is.
If suburbs are the last hope for America...we really do live in the end times
Grew up in the intercity, rural and eventually suburbs. Parents were military. I can say there's a lot more similarities than people notice but everything is politicized.
A very good point
The Urban/Rural Divide was one of the primary reasons the Electoral College was created, and for most of the nation's history, it worked. Now, not so much.
Ironically, it helped out the urban areas upon the Founding with 90% of the country still being rural. Now, of course, it is the other way around.
I appreciate the information being given in a neutral way with plenty of modern analogies. I was surprised to learn that the places suffering economically would vote for Republicans when it seems that Democrats are more eager to try and distribute aid packages, it was quite the opposite of what I expected!
The problem is throwing money at a problem doesn't fix everything. Such things are only temporary and the economic situation still sucks. Communities die out because there no opportunity for jobs or tax money to maintain infrastructure. That's why the new deal was so great for the little man and gave Democrats a boost. It gave a lot of working class people jobs, and those jobs no longer exist.
Since rural voters are more traditional the beliefs line up with being your own person and working for your own stuff which does not really work well with goverment aid. Another factor could be rural voters thinking that aid mainly goes to urban people who are broke not rural people.
They vote against their best interest. They are manipulated by lies and don't spend the time to research the record of their candidates.
@@shadowolf7023 I mean the argument could be said that it truth
Well, when you're poor, angry and miserable, it's a lot easier to be convinced by strongmen figures like Trump that they'll come and fix that for you and also to take out your anger on out-groups like immigrants or black people, since the vast majority of these people are white and they interact less with these out-groups, so it's easier to scapegoat them. When these people vote Republican, they're shooting themselves in the foot, but that's not the narrative prominent Republicans are feeding them
I love how there was a Dollar General in the background of one of the rural shots. As a resident of Minnesota I can confirm the presence of Dollar Generals in random rural fields.
It's no different in Texas my friend.
They are everywhere in rural Tennessee. Makes sense because Dollar General is a Tennessee company
I didn't know they existed until I moved to rural Oregon.
Dollar General Corp. knows people are struggling economically, financially, and mentally, especially in these rural areas. So they slap a ton of them up and people go in there and buy junk food and pop. Depressed, hopeless, and bored people tend to eat more junk food and Dollar General capitalizes on this. I know cause I'm one of those people and I go in there and get junk food lol. A sign of the times economically. An ominous one. Anyone else feel this is a reason so many DG's are popping up in rural, economically struggling areas? (perhaps I'm wrong, I don't know)
*They’ve infested Arkansas, too*
There are two notable exceptions to this trend that pop into my head right away. First nearly the entire state of Vermont as a pretty rural area that seems to go against the rural=Republican assumption that many have, even hosting the state level Vermont Progressive Party that’s further left then most Democrats. Second being Staten island in being the only party of NYC that constantly votes Republican despite being near the center of the largest metro area.
It’s because Vermont was taken over by New Yorkers in the 70-80s
Staten Island makes sense
It looks less like NYC and more like Nebraska
But I do not understand Vermont
The entire region of New England is an exception
@@person3070 It breaks that trend because its highly college educated compared to every other mostly rural state.
@@chemicalfrankie1030 Staten Island ain't a suburb LOL. It's part of the 5 boros with its own heavy rail and walkable areas.
One note, a lot of those counties that are shown are your maps as being red or blue would more actually be represented as being purple. A 52% to 48% result is very common.
6:18 man i love how unbiased your videos are, you don't say that they're wrong or that they're right, you just say what they think and that's it. Good job!
In Norway, there is certainly political differences between urban and rural areas. Urban areas are more likely to vote for environmentalist, socialist and liberal (liberal conservative included) parties. Rural areas are more likely to vote for agrarian and christian democratic parties, as well as parties often seen as more populist. Social democrats seems to not be so much affected.
But isn't ixlamist on a rise in Norway , look what muslim refugees did in a sweden
@@karankapoor2701 The Islamic population in most European nations usually only make up around 5-10% of the population at most and they, like most immigrant populations, assimilate within a generation of being within their own country. The hard part is how you assimilate those that just moved in but we've been struggling with that question for over a century already.
@@luke_cohen1 they can never integrate , look at sweden and france , you can't educate those people who live and think in medivial era practices
@@karankapoor2701 Explain that to the millions of successful immigrants from the Middle East throughout Western Society. In fact, I would say that the West is usually getting their best and brightest since war isn't good for those that want success and genocide doesn't help minorities in the slightest. Hell, the owner of Chobani Yogurt is a Kurdish man from Turkey that doesn't even know his own birthday due to his parents poverty but now runs one of largest yogurt companies on the planet. Not to mention that the deadliest mass shooting in world history was committed by a Norwegian Domestic Terrorist and known White Supremacist.
There are exceptions to this rule (Cologne, Germany anyone?) and no group is perfect but you cannot broadbrush such a large population of human beings. We're are simply too complex a species to do so.
@@karankapoor2701 There are no islamist parties in any of the Nordic countries. In Sweden everyone votes for the established parties regardless of background. Muslims as well, there have been muslim members of parliament in the conservative party, a muslim minister from the environmentalist party
Another thing that has interested me coming from Utah is that even though many places in Utah, my local town included have grown dramatically from a farming town of 5,000 in 1980 to a suburb of over 50,000 they have stayed very republican.
Utah is very...um...Mormon, as well as people for whom large bunches of Mormons are ok. So reeeeally Christian people?
Sounds nice, can't say the same about my town sadly.
Isn't that because of the LDS church fertility rate?
I would guess that your town is much more purple than it used to be, meaning it probably still votes Republican, but not as dramatically as before.
It's interesting to look at Utah as a whole. When I was a kid, it was the most Republican state giving huge margins to the Republican presidential candidate. But now it's definitely dropped down the list. More out of Staters are moving in and changing the politics but the outcomes still are largely the same.
What's crazy is my parish in Louisiana, Lafayette, tends to vote so Republican despite being the 4th largest city in the state, and one of the fastest growing areas in the state as well. Just intriguing to me.
There are exceptions to the rule. Fort Worth, Texas has a population just under one million, but leans Republican
Lubbock, Texas. Montgomery county Texas. Provo Utah. All have vast majority population center being republican as well.
Another factor that may affect an area’s political party affiliation is colleges. As someone who attended Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, which is a town with less than 100,000 people and located roughly 50 miles away from Indianapolis, it is one of the most progressive parts of Indiana. The same could be said for West Lafayette and South Bend, which are towns for Purdue and Notre Dame. It goes to show that age demographics skew the area’s party beliefs, not just population and quantity of skyscrapers.
I feel triggered as a Louisianian that you don't add "or parishes" after you say "counties". Everyone's just jealous because we refuse to let go of Napoleon down here.
He should have also added or boroughs for us Alaskans, because we just have to be different than the lower 48
@@parker9012 different? You just copied New York.
I too felt extremely offended when the slight differences of my area to the overwhelming majority were ignored. Whatever shall I do with all this jealousy that I feel to be included in the conversation?
@@davidkelly4210 NY has counties, boroughs are really just a NYC thing
Ah dang, sorry to leave the parishes out.
It amazes me every time i pay $1k for a semester of a class and then Mr. Beat covers the whole thing in a 15 minute TH-cam video
School system is flawed
@@painvillegaming4119 you’re in high school. University/college is different
@@CorporateShill is there a difference it is completely costly and teaches stuff that anybody now a day can learn off the internet
@@CorporateShill is it though? sure, you're getting lots of information but youre' also getting yourself into a ton of student debt and getting a traditional education most of the time isnt gonna you make you many millions.
@@painvillegaming4119 umm just wait til you pay 4 years of college 4 years of rent and 4 years of overpriced junk food
I’ve thought on this a lot myself recently especially after seeing the voting maps the last two elections. You touched on a lot of the same thoughts I’ve had. Something I would add is I see rural populations being more into small government cause they have this mentality of independence and perseverance that was needed to endure rural life in the past. It was hard (and in some ways still is) and they had to do it on their own. Cities have to be able to care for many different demographics and trying to live communally and relying on government to provide and encourage that.
Rural people like small government because big government will not bring them any major change. The money goes to “infrastructure” (read: cities) and “living wages” (everyone’s on salary, retired, self-employed or unemployed anyways so the benefits are small). This is the perspective where I’m from at least. Either I pay x% in taxes and get little back, or i pay (x+y)% in taxes and get significantly less than y% in return.
There is some of that, but here's the other side of it: EVERY TIME AND EVERY PLACE where conservatives have been competitive in the big cities, and it doesn't matter whether you're talking 1960's LA & Boston or Singapore, 1990's Orange County, or Seoul, Singapore & Hong Kong now, social conservatism was a major part of it. The most dangerous lie in American politics today is that urban people are always and would always be socially liberal or libertarian, and it's a believable lie because when we think of a socially liberal person the image that comes to mind is almost always a well-dressed "man about town" who lives in a stylish high-rise apartment, whereas when we think of a socially conservative person we think of an old farmer who lives in a small town, but it's actually the opposite of what works politically and, when believed, this lie leads to conservatives becoming utterly insufferable to the people who live in the cities, which distorts democracy in to a politics of division and hate.
In truth, city people WILL NEVER accept the kind of individualism that leads to libertarianism, because the bigger the city, the less your own efforts and ability determine how well you do. Cities are the land of "nope": complex social environments where relationships, reputation and social connection are key to success, and as a result, are jealously guarded, and over time, that creates a world where people simply can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps. No job for you, no business for you, no meeting for you, in fact, we won't even let you in to the nicest night clubs or restaurants or let you rent the nicest apartments if we don't "like" you. And that matters, because everything that happens in a city is fundamentally about working with other people. Cities ARE however, in the religion business, and have been since the first great temple complexes were built in Ancient Egypt 6000 years ago. Almost all your great cathedrals, great temples, great seminaries, great schools of meditation, Protestant megachurches, great synagogues, et cetera, are located in big cities. Big cities are also a place where your actions effect other people profoundly and in ways that can be difficult to understand, and that makes "throw the bums in jail" an attractive political rallying cry, and creates actually much GREATER interest in the policing of social conduct and the ensuring that the kids on the street have a mother and a father at home, that the schools (which the parents are basically never at) are teaching good values, et cetera. In fact, there are still a few New Jersey suburbs of NYC that prohibit businesses from being open on Sundays!
@@alexanderfretheim5720 compares liberal with libertarian....
Me: no need to keep reading.
@@billweirdo9657 I actually didn't.
There is some of that, but here's the other side of it: EVERY TIME AND EVERY PLACE where conservatives have been competitive in the big cities, and it doesn't matter whether you're talking 1960's LA & Boston or Singapore, 1990's Orange County, or Seoul, Singapore & Hong Kong now, social conservatism was a major part of it. The most dangerous lie in American politics today is that urban people are always and would always be socially liberal or libertarian, and it's a believable lie because when we think of a socially liberal person the image that comes to mind is almost always a well-dressed "man about town" who lives in a stylish high-rise apartment, whereas when we think of a socially conservative person we think of an old farmer who lives in a small town, but it's actually the opposite of what works politically and, when believed, this lie leads to conservatives becoming utterly insufferable to the people who live in the cities, which distorts democracy in to a politics of division and hate.
In truth, city people WILL NEVER accept the kind of individualism that leads to libertarianism, because the bigger the city, the less your own efforts and ability determine how well you do. Cities are the land of "nope": complex social environments where relationships, reputation and social connection are key to success, and as a result, are jealously guarded, and over time, that creates a world where people simply can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps. No job for you, no business for you, no meeting for you, in fact, we won't even let you in to the nicest night clubs or restaurants or let you rent the nicest apartments if we don't "like" you. And that matters, because everything that happens in a city is fundamentally about working with other people. Cities ARE however, in the religion business, and have been since the first great temple complexes were built in Ancient Egypt 6000 years ago. Almost all your great cathedrals, great temples, great seminaries, great schools of meditation, Protestant megachurches, great synagogues, et cetera, are located in big cities. Big cities are also a place where your actions effect other people profoundly and in ways that can be difficult to understand, and that makes "throw the bums in jail" an attractive political rallying cry, and creates actually much GREATER interest in the policing of social conduct and the ensuring that the kids on the street have a mother and a father at home, that the schools (which the parents are basically never at) are teaching good values, et cetera. In fact, there are still a few New Jersey suburbs of NYC that prohibit businesses from being open on Sundays!
Matt, Thanks again for an excellent video. I lived most of my life in the suburbs so that is where I'm most comfortable. I like the middle road.
Agreed. As a person who has lived in small to medium sized towns (2,000 to 200,000) most of my life, I feel more comfortable living in the suburbs of larger cities (over 1 million) than the cities themselves. It feels more like a "bubble" living in a suburb (like a mid-sized city) but with probably more diversity.
My home county of Luzerne in Pennsylvania had historically been a predominantly Democratic county. By 2016 & 2020, it suddenly flipped Republican. Local politics for the most part have been Republican, but nationally had been Democratic. By the time Trump came along, it appeared as if the county had shifted right nationally, despite already having been so locally.
Other than some red counties in the south center of PA, nearly all of PA state population growth is in Philly or its blue surrounding counties.
@@Anthony-db7cs So a blue city and it’s surrounding suburbs, that’s not a unique thing, that’s pretty common, since most major cities vote democrat.
@@crusader2112 obviously. I’m referring to population growth in the state. Rural PA is mostly declining and Philly is the main place growing, including suburbs outside the city.
@@Anthony-db7cs Okay
I grew up in Grays Harbor County, WA. The last time it went Red was for Herbert Hoover in 1928, then Trump won in both 2016 and 2020
It’s not only an American thing it’s even common in authoritarian countries. My wife is from rural China, and she has more in common with my rural American grandparents than I (as a suburban American) do.
Excellent video Mr Beat. One aspect about the rural/urban divides I think you failed to mention tho: educational opportunities. Almost all notable colleges and universities are in urban areas (and in many cities, the university is at the literal and figurative city centers)- those without at least a bachelors degree tend to stay in the same hometown area they grew up in. Those with a degree tend to travel more and thus are exposed to new ideologies and cultures.
Just some food for thought.
Yeah can’t believe education wasn’t brought up. It is incredibly important.
Yeah because whos going to build a university which very few people will attend
I don't think it's as important as you say though. The vast majority of Americans (around 70%) don't graduate college. So, you have to keep in mind that the majority of Americans don't have that experience you're talking about.
@@mus6926 Dartmouth is in a rural area it is obviously a highly competitive school
A solid point.
It's incredible to me how effectively you turned your sponsorship into a comedy sketch
I think you left out that people in rural areas also stereotype people urban areas as murderous gangsters, drug dealers, rapist, dumb, poor, polluted, and fast talkers/fast. Also the suburbs are probably the only ones that hate both urban and rural areas, because they aren’t suburbs. Urban areas have too many people, and rural areas have too few people. Also suburbs hate both because of economics, while sure the urban areas have a lot of wealth it isn’t distributed anywhere close to equally and rural areas also don’t an equal distribution of wealth. It is economic opportunity in the suburban that is why people live there, in both rural and urban areas there is little economic opportunity.
I live in the suburbs, and while you’re correct that I hate urban areas because there are too many people, the reason I hate rural areas is because points of interest are so far apart. Suburbs provide the closeness of places I need/want to go with a low population.
@@Diphenhydra I'm in the suburbs and I don't hate rural areas, though the inconvenience of not having anything close by would mean I would not live there. I absolutely loathe the inner city though
@@Jamcad01 yeah, i exxagerated a little bit. I don’t hate rural areas but just wouldnt live there. I have friends who do and when i see them its always nice and peaceful. But yeah, cities are too much. Too busy and noisy, super confusing. I wonder if i would feel any different if i didnt live in the suburbs. Probably.
Very unbiased. I don't see that very often. Good job. 👍
I lived in Rural areas most of my life. Most people who live out there just want to be left alone, but since cities have the voting power, they can put political pressure on rural areas.
I have lived in cities most of my life and people who live in cities feel the same way rural areas having an over-representation politically, which is evident with the very existence of the electoral college system.
As someone who lives in Dallas I feel the exact same way - that people who live in rural areas care a whole lot about how us city folks live and just won’t leave us alone.
Hi, Pennsylvanian here. PA almost without exception (not 2016) votes blue nationally and for governor because Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and their suburbs massively outnumber the empty red counties around them. And yet, Pennsylvania also always has a Republican legislature. A Republican legislature that will not allow Philadelphia to curb its gun violence with its own gun laws.
Maybe read up on gerrymandering?
It's hilarious when people say the cities "have the voting power". Um, you mean, there are more of them than you?
Rural voting power is weighted more heavily than urban voting power. The minority deciding law for the majority is backwards af.
Except rural voters actually have much more voting power than urban ones due to the Electoral College.
It's literally why Republican candidates can easily lose the popular vote significantly and still win the presidency.
Wow, thanks for this video! Really explained things well. I remember my classmate and I talking about politics and he said that it was basically people living in rural areas vs urban. I was pretty confused! But now I understand :D
Thanks for the kind words, and glad the video helped. :)
I was born in a suburb, spent a negligible portion living in urban(temporary apartment), most of my youth in rural, and now back to suburb, just outside the urban city.
There are many reasons for the divide. One is that laws/policy for urban areas don't necessarily work in rural areas. Public transit, bus, subway, and trolley systems work in urban areas. This is largely due to cost and the number of people and places per mile. It makes sense in urban areas, because there are many people to pay for a few miles. Rural areas on the other hand, are flipped, few people and places over many miles. Even consolidated together in towns and villages, often the finances just are not there.
Another example is environmental regulations. Smoke, chemical, and noise pollution within rural areas are dispersed over many miles. Lots of dirty industries like power plants, steel mills, and general manufacturing were either on the outskirts of the city or within towns in rural areas. Those kinds of businesses often need a lot of cheap land for the massive factories and people don't like to live right next to a smelly factory. Within urban areas, they often are segregated into industrial zones. In rural areas, you'd find entire towns dedicated to a single factory/industry. Often called steel towns, or something similar depending on the business. Pollution from those businesses in rural areas is not as noticeable as within urban areas. Urban areas will have stricter controls over pollution within the city while rural areas don't feel as much of a need. When a state is dominated by urban voters, they will put in place statewide the strict pollution controls. This drives up the cost of business and those industries are forced to close and move over seas. The negative effect on urban areas is not as great, because there are many other businesses able to fill in at least part of the gap left behind. Rural towns on the other hand lose a significant portion of the businesses bringing money into the town. You can directly see the effects of this in the "rust belt" where many steel towns are now in poverty due to the steel industries moving out of the states. The final irony I see in this is that as soon as the business moved overseas the environmental regulations are absolutely worthless globally. Sure locally it is nicer, but the same and often greater amount of pollution is being made elsewhere.
You brought up a lot of great points. I think a lot of people tend to overlook the environmental regulations that have pushed so many businesses out of small towns, which is one of the biggest issues facing rural areas today.
This feels like a fair assessment of the situation to me, with a few caveats. It makes me wonder if progressive regulation enforcement could be enacted such that in cities with higher densities of people, stricter environmental policy would be enforced than in Nowheresville where there's more space to spread out damages. The only issue I take with putting the needs of small town America over big cities, and even the global sphere, is how reasonably easy it would be to take advantage of such a system. Not dissimilar to how companies have embraced globalism as a way to lower wages and avoid environmental policy of their home country, but more specific to a country not the whole world.
For instance, a company may locate from near a big city to down in the middle of nowhere because lessened regulations would allow them higher levels of air pollution or to get away with dumping some amount of waste into waterways. Problem being is that eventually higher level of air pollution would spread out and drift into cities anyways, or cause further ozone/climate damage which would then come back around to everyone. Perhaps too, water source pollution would flow back up to population centers, harming people or raising water treatment costs. Those are some examples of what comes to my mind.
Just because large amounts of pollution aren't localized doesn't mean they don't cause damage to the planet or ultimately affect other people outside a small town's sphere. Rural populations that don't "feel the need to" be proactive since impact in their immediate area is small shouldn't be totally let off the hook and pull in the businesses that want to skirt policy. While I don't really mean to cast away people so coldly, a town designed around one entire industry isn't sustainable and is highly likely to fail at some point as global conditions change. Think about all those mining towns from the gold rush which are now ghost towns. Their purpose was served and they were abandoned when the jobs and industry died or went elsewhere.
I do sympathize with the people trapped in towns like those in the rustbelt who have absolutely been destroyed by the industry they may have been built around or sustained by leaving due to cost increases associated with running the business. That said, I'm firmly against lowering our standards and returning to polluted water sources, smog-filled cities, and ozone holes just to be competitive with developing nations. The answer shouldn't be to lower our standard to compete, but rather to pressure other countries to raise their standards. Regardless of business justification for moving, we all share the same planet and all don't benefit from lowering environmental protection standards both on individual level for health concerns, and at the global scale for issues like climate and ozone destruction.
All this doesn't even address my opinion on the reciprocality of your first "urban policy doesn't work for rural areas" point, which I'll refrain from talking about since this reply is already more than long enough.
@@YaBoiScrumpo Thanks for the reply. Like the phrase, "A picture is worth a thousand words", a problem has a thousand variables. I'm not going to definitively say what I think is "the best" solution. Like in my public transit example, there would be times and places where it would work and where it would not. I find that the most difficult thing is to figure out how much weight should be given to a variable.
One thing to keep in mind what I call the 3Ls, Labor, Location, and logistics. No industry wants to move to nowheresville if there is not enough labor to work. The industry also wants lots of cheap land/location that fits their needs. Finally, even if a business has a factory in a town with plenty of people on plenty of good land, if they cannot get their products to market and bring supplies in, they will go quickly out of business.
Regardless, I'd like to explore a few solutions I know have been tried to the problem of "Environment and Industry".
"...if progressive regulation enforcement could be enacted such that in cities with higher densities of people, stricter environmental policy would be enforced than in Nowheresville...". In some ways this already exists through zoning laws and regulations. If you look at any city in the US, you will see that there are clear financial, shopping, industrial, and residential zones. Granted this is within urban areas and typically the goal is traffic controls and beautification as the city can segregate the dirty industries away from tourist/shopping zones. As for the Urban vs Rural divide, it is possible to set local rules that apply to only "within city limits". Issues come when the city population outweighs rural areas, dominating state office and advocating for rules statewide. The same is true in reverse. The difference I see is that it is easier to make stricter rules locally than have conflicting rules with the state. If the state bans dogs and the city/town/county allow dogs, the state rules win. If the state allows dogs and the city doesn't, the city rules win.
Here are a few other solutions that I know have been tried in the US and elsewhere, "Opportunity zones"(1), Tariffs on foreign goods, carbon tax credits, subsidies, exemptions, and nationalization of industry. Some of these solutions are clearly better/worse than others. To wrap this up quick, a lot of things have been tried with varrying results. If you think of something, I bet you that someone somehwere has tried it. Find it find out the positives and negatives. Why it did/didn't work.
(1). www.wellsfargo.com/the-private-bank/insights/planning/wpu-qualified-opportunity-zones/
@@Joseplh Yeah, that's the idea I was looking for but struggling to communicate for whatever reason. Local policy, which often is overlooked, vs the state policy at the larger scale. It might be wise to give cities more power to act locally without impacting the rest of their home state. I agree with you when you say "I see is that it is easier to make stricter rules locally than have conflicting rules with the state" for that reason. For the record, I do support higher environmental standards across the board locally, statewide, and nationally, but I can't in good faith go 100% in because of the effects it has on people who cannot afford the difference in cost or who may lose their jobs due to fleeing industry. Hence why I'm sympathetic to the argument against letting the city run the state even though it's technically where the most people live in the states run by their most major cities.
The story that stands out to me is that of Gary, IN. If I recall what I learned correctly, it was a city established and built by the steel industry from nothing for its workforce. Now that the industry that founded the city has left, it suffers and has not recovered economically since it was built by the steel industry for the steel industry. It still suffers from the effects of water pollution from the industry's dumping habits and lead pollution as well. I feel that putting regulations in place to reduce these impacts was worth it, but I'm not a person whose family lost their source of income when their employer fled the area after the regulations drove up the cost either. I don't think the decision between bending the knee to keep an industry at the expense of the health and safety of the area or trying to protect the people but then end up costing them their jobs instead is an easy one.
I like that 3Ls idea, and you've definitely caught me exaggerating regarding companies heading to literally nowhere. I'll also fully admit that I'm not very versed in industrial small-town/city history and tendencies. That said If a business can get the cheap land they need near enough to a highway or major railway and can incentivize enough people to move out there with them or move to their new area (possibly subsidized by the state just to retain them somehow), their 3Ls could be relatively easily fulfilled for cheaper than right by/in an established city. Presumably, that wouldn't happen so simply today as it did before globalism and the regulations we have in place today on companies. Still, I don't see what stops businesses trying to escape the environmental clamping of cities from doing this more often other than that due to globalization and advancements in technology, it's seemingly even less expensive to go overseas than to move within the country.
I'd stand by that statement even if small-town America was allowed to be less highly regulated in areas that cost businesses a lot of money to comply with than their big city counterparts. From my prospective, if the logistics of employing so many people overseas and sending supplies and finished products internationally justify the business costs more than functioning in American cities or establishing new industrial areas in less unregulated parts of the county, I can't really fathom a reality where we don't basically return to 3rd-world standards of living in terms of wages and environmental protection to compete. Hopefully that all made some sense haha.
@@YaBoiScrumpo I am familiar with Gary Indiana. That is an interesting case study. Did you know that it is technically within the Chicago Metropolitan area? Chicago rests on the border of Illinois and Indiana Much of the history of Gary is intricately tied to the history of the automotive industry in Chicago. With the collapse of the automotive industry, much of the waste today is due to the decaying remains of the former industries. When they were in business, the city could afford to pay to keep the streets clean and the business itself would be held responsible for their own messes. Not a perfect system though... Unfortunately, when the business collapsed the city no longer had the tax revenue to maintain the environment, keeping the streets clean, and you can't make a dead business clean itself up.
The irony in that is that the terrible mess today is because the industry collapsed. Whether it was from regulations/unions/cheap foreign goods it is hard to say.
To judge a nation's political character, just see how it treats their farmers, soldiers and teachers.
In all fairness teachers largely deserve it.
Great ending line! All of us and our little hypocrisies and blinders. You could do a whole series of videos on that topic!!!
Every time he does a video it’s on that topic!
A few more factors:
1) Cities are big melting pots, big international cities like LA and NYC especially so. People routinely exposed to global influences tend to be more liberal. Same for university towns.
3) Taxes, business & environmental regulations (especially agricultural runoff), water rights etc. issues that directly affect farmers
4) GOP embracing farm subsidies and protectionism over free trade. Farmers around the world, from Japan to France & the US tend to be the most subsidized and protectionist voting blocs.
5) Labor mobility (or lack thereof) from rural to the urban centers. Urbanization is the story of this century, and those who cannot/will not go to where the jobs are - they're missing out.
Edit: Yes I know #2 isn't there, I deleted it without reordering the others. Since Mr. Beat made references to the factors I'll leave it as it is.
Mostly agree, however I wouldn’t say living in Urban areas make people more “liberal” as in the social and economic side of things, I would say these conditions make urban areas more progressive. Unless you mean the shitty americanized version of liberal which has just been boiled down to someone who votes democrat, in that case I agree.
Very true.
But thats mostly changing I feel.
Alot of Indian immigrants where I live have farms and work in rural areas too.
Its not so much rural people being uncomfortable around POC or being racist.
Its more just rural people not caring I found.
While I see that broadening of experience results in broadening of the mind, your mention of university towns needs a caveat. The great majority of instuctors, administrators and policies at large universities are very liberal/left/progressive. The students are under enormous pressure to conform to the progressive policies that run their lives for 4-5 years. It's a form of indoctrination almost to the point of brain washing.
Some people think rural areas might grow in population now that working online from home is becoming more popular.
Cosmopolitanism is always a threat to very narrow ways of thinking yes.
Something I remembered while watching this video was something I saw on Wikipedia about how like 10% of bernie votes in 2016 voted trump and those 10% tended to be more conservative on social issues but populist on economic issues and they likely came from more rural areas
The reason for that is rural voters did not like Hillary. So country voters instead voted for Bernie as part of a protest vote. When the general election came those same communities voted for Trump. So those were people who were always conservatives. By 2020 Bernie did not do well in any rural areas since again those people had settled on Trump
Nobody liked Hillary.
I voted for her in the general, and I'm still mad at the DNC.
There's good evidence her primary win was assisted by them, at least.
Populists cannot not be stupid.
democratic socialist tend to do slightly better than neolib democrats in rural areas despite GOP calling anyone who isn’t MAGA/conservative a communist stalinist.
A lot of the people who support Trump come from constituencies which used to parts of the New Deal Coalition and they don’t tend to be particularly conservative on economic issues. It’s very similar to how the British Labour Red Wall and French Socialist heartlands, both of which are quite rural, have in recent years been attracted to the populist appeals of figures like Boris Johnson and Marine Le Pen.
Thanks for the video man! Learned alot
Thanks Mr. Beat!
I like the idea of giving up the things we are politicized over in favor of being divided on the whole foods vs. cracker barrel issue. why aren't more politicians talking about this vital issue facing America?
I know, right? We need more Whole Foods in rural areas, and more Cracker Barrel in urban areas!
I said this as a joke, before the whole veggie sausage option at cracker barrel controversy. I was silly, we Americans really can politicize anything 😂
@@jameshughes3014 Americans act like their country is so divided but they constantly vote right wing candidates into office.
@@m0z188 if you mean we sometimes vote Democrat and sometimes republican I agree. Americans have been programmed to believe that Democrats are the left wing. At the end of the day it really seems as if our choice comes down to right wing.. Or extremely right wing. We need more choice.. Just once I want the option to vote chicken wing or buffalo wing. Ranked choice would be cool.
@@jameshughes3014 I mean what happens most is that people who have left wing ideologies accidentally vote for Democrats. and when parties change in the oval office, house or senate absolutely nothing changes in Government.
One thing that I realized is that when you start to think from a purely economic standpoint given that Urban areas have lots of big businesses in the area and they benefit from low taxes you would think they would be more republican, and since rural areas are poorer and benefit more from welfare and farm subsidies you would think that they would be more Democratic.
Urban areas have more diverse businesses and better education systems. Rural areas have poor education systems and are mostly just farm land.
In Canada, the socialist movement was started by farmers and received support in rural areas. Now, it seems to me that they are no longer in touch with rural voters like they once were and as a result have lost many rural seats.
Because the majority of people who live in urban areas are working class to begin with and care about worker protection laws which is a Democratic Party objective. Most of the people who run big businesses in cities actually live in suburban areas. And suburban areas usually fall into the rural category culturally speaking. Since big business executives want lower taxes for their businesses, they vote Republican but in their rural-ish districts.
That's why I think the rural/urban is more based on social issues. Rural is more traditionally oriented, while urban loves societal progress and change.
It's kinda backwards. Those in the city working for big businesses have more disposable income than the rural people. So city folks feel everyone has some money to spare, so raising taxes to help others is worth it. The rural folks are just the opposite the thought of what little they have being taxed away fightens them.
I'm not American so not sure if you'd be interested in me taking the survey.
Anyway, just wanted to give you kudos for how seamless the mid-sentence transitions sound when you switch from urban to rural areas. It really sounds as if you said these sentences in one breath when in reality you must have recorded all these sentence fragments hours (day?) apart.
Well done!
What an amazing perspective 👏.
I agree with your hatred of the suburbs. Love, Steve Heimler (writing from the suburbs)
You can still get out. THERE IS TIME
Mr. beat your videos are always so well-made and insightful. I really appreciate creators like you!
Well I appreciate kind viewers like you. Thank you!
@@iammrbeat hahaha “viewers like you” ironic cause you’re like a better PBS!
This video is really insightful
I live in KC. Good to know I might bump into Mr. Beat at some point.
It also happened in Malaysia, where majorities of them support the left party came from urban/city while suburban/villages tend to vote right. And undecided voters are the main reason for the party to win an election.
Hello Amal my fellow Malaysian. How are you doing?
Thank you for this video. I have lived in rural US my whole life (so I can't really speak for people in urban areas) and I've noticed this divide is a pretty major component of why everything is so polarized. (Alright, book-of-a-comment time lol)
I'm sure urban areas have been in relative economic decline as well, but rural areas have been totally left behind. I know of many mills and factories and other places that used to offer low and medium-skill jobs to the people in my area that have shut down.
Oh boy, I'm about to say the buzzword, but this is why when so many rural conservatives hear "white privilege", with rural areas are predominantly white, they are offended because they feel like they're being left behind and they feel like their whole community is being attacked. Even if they wanted to help, there's not really anything they can do because there are no minorities that live near them (I'm exaggerating "low amounts of minorities" would be better). This contrasts with the urban areas, where white privilege could be (and I'm assuming probably is) very real, and a social problem to address.
Gun violence, is another huge talking point in urban areas but I simply do not see guns leaving rural communities. There are many hunters who literally take weeks off from work in the fall because it is their largest hobby. I can't tell you the number of people I know who define their whole personality around hunting and pickup trucks.
Minority representation is also a social issue that is alienating rural people more because the demographic in these areas are very dominantly straight, white, and Christian. When they turn on the TV (or browse the internet) and minority representation is in +75% of the ads and commercials they see, it doesn't reflect what they see in their real lives everyday. They feel like they are being shutout and left behind even more because of this (I just want to add here that ofc I'm for minority rights and such, I'm just explaining :)
These examples (as well as other things I haven't added here) explain why when orange man told them he was going to make everything great again, nearly every rural place in America supported him really hard and they still cling to him to this day.
I'm pretty young myself. 2020 was the first presidential election I was able to vote in and when I saw that the options were the two gentlemen in the thumbnail, I was pretty let down to say the least. There's roughly 150 *million* people who fill the 3 requirements to run for president and we narrow it down to those two?
Goodness gracious this comment is going to be very very long.
The political polarization of today is causing the US to absolutely dismantle itself. Personally, I think a solution (and if it's not a solution it would certainly help) is electoral reform paired with new restrictions politician eligibility as well as deliberate diversification of the political party landscape.
In simpler terms:
1.) Replace plurality and 1-person-1-candidate voting with ranked choice voting (or any other system that's better than what we have now)
2.) Deliberately broadcast and platform various 3rd parties during elections. I think the 3 final presidential debates would look much better with anywhere from 5-12 candidates (rather than 2 trying to convince the public they're not as bad as the other, that's ridiculous in my eyes)
3.) With the two previous reforms in place, I don't think there's a need for the electoral college
4.) Age restrict federal politicians to no older than somewhere in the 60-70 year old range.
I can't predict exactly the implications of these changes but I do think they would help. I get frustrated seeing so many people be so close minded and trapped in internet and real life echo chambers. Diffusing the abject polarization of US politics is something that should be talked about more.
Anyways, that's about all I have to say. Have a nice day! :)
Your solutions seem reasonable! Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I’ve lived here on my great grandparents ranch in southwest Virginia all my life, and although I may disagree with you on some points, you have a great point on polarization. Me as a libertarian really think both parties are authoritarian tools of the government ( Republicans and dems really aren’t that different policy wise) but when 2020 rolled around and the whole thing about Demonizing straight white males, really turned me off from the left, as did many others. The gun control issue has also been a big turning point for me as well. ( in my opinion the Govt shouldn’t be in the business of marriage, guns, drugs, etc.)
I hope that provides some insight on it from someone out here, if someone from an urban area wants to discuss their point of view, I’d love the insight.
@@joshdaniels5117 I'm from a suburban area but my suburb is just an extension of an urban area. If you want to discuss this then I'm here. I don't know what I can say about it honestly. I don't try to engage people on social issues because it just brings things to a boil real quick and I'm tired of people threatening to murder me online because they read something they don't like. But I most assuredly despise both parties with a fervent passion.
This is a great comment, although I disagree on a couple of solutions:
1) I personally think this won't solve the rural-urban divide. Rural areas will still vote certain candidates while urban ideas will vote other certain candidates. If we consider some compromises between Democrat candidates' ideology and Republican candidates' ideology as "the centre", then the centrist candidates will be unvoteable for Democrats as well as for Republicans. And I doubt ranked choice helps, as such candidate would likely remain unmarked for most people. (unless you require all candidates to be ranked, not just how-many-the-voter-wishes-to-rank, but then you get a good chunk of people filling the ballot randomly after their first two or three choices)
Don't get me wrong, implementing such system would without a doubt be a huge improvement for many reasons, but I don't think it would solve the urban-rural divide.
4) You essentially narrow down the number of potentially good candidates, which is not something I'd like to see.
I fully agree on #2, though. And #3 sounds fair enough.
Good video. Well done. States difference a without judgment. Very refreshing.
Great video, and very true! I’ve known this for decades since I started looking at election results in the newspaper years ago. One thing that is odd about America is that most of the wealthy people live in the suburbs while a lot of the poor people live in the urban city, whereas most other places in the world it’s the exact opposite.
Also, a lot of suburbanites tend to shun public transport and multifamily housing, and block every proposal for these two. This applies to BOTH Republican and Democrat suburbanites.
As a 4th generation iowa farmer living in the Phx, AZ metro area (6mil) i respect Mr. Beat for always staying pretty fair.
You’re such a great teacher and the way you explain things help me understand these kinds of things so much more. Thank you Mr. Beat!
I appreciate the kind words. It helps to keep me going. :)
Fantastic video!
i live in Magnolia, Texas, its 50 minutes north of Houston. when i moved here it was one high school, narrow two lane roads, and a brookshire brothers. then they built a shopping center closeby, with a Target as the anchor store, and then everything went suburbs.
This is also depicted in Grand Theft Auto 5. The main radio for Los Santos is left leaning while the main radio for Sandy Shores is right leaning
Well ya its based on L.A and Bakersfield
MAJOR POINT : A lot of conservatives living in URBAN areas are afraid to disclose their leanings due to *immense* peer pressure. When I lived in Atlanta, there were *alot* of secret conservatives who would rather fit in with the popular crowd, without wanting to feel ostracized.
I’ll bet this is true in MANY big cities.
Living in the great plains as a lefty, I feel the same way.
Great thing the bible belt is so open to alternative lifestyles and perspectives.
Conservatives are cowards. That's why they need to carry guns everywhere.
@@crenfick7750 as much as your average lefty is
@@crenfick7750 I would never, ever think about coming out publicly anywhere down there
I like to imagine that he got back in his car and drove all the way to the city or the countryside every time the background changes
What defines a suburbian area is that they are built in areas with nothing but houses followed by a massive shopping center a mile or less from there. These homes placement is usually next to each other in a mass production type of way.
I am an active Democrat, and I live in suburbs (that used to be rural lands). I think something we have to consider is that population density requires more regulations than in less dense areas. When I lived in an apartment, I would hear from my neighbors if I played my music too loud. In the suburbs, they are too far away for that to matter. Living closer together requires more people's needs to be met, sometimes at the cost of individualism.
Great point and I think climate matters too. Colder areas require cooperation during winter or everyone dies (exaggerating but point being that winter and lack of food force the need to work together) while hotter areas allow for longer periods of food growing. Throw in transportation with snow v no snow and I believe colder urban areas NEED centralization whereas warmer rural areas simply can't enforce or leverage the same political systems.
This might be why warmer rural areas tend to be more religious (at least it appears so in the US), given that a lack of governmental centralization forces society to be structured around SOCIAL centralization, often around religion and moral codes.
Sweden, UK, South Korea, Japan, Canada, Northern US, all temperate to colder climates, with well industrialized urban centers that serve as the cultural and political centers of their nations, lean democratic, secular and communalistic.
The southern US, south America, south east Asia, eastern Africa, and the middle East. Hotter areas with less centralized political structures with significant swathes of less developed, struggling rural areas susceptible to religious zealotry and political extremism
As a US Southern, I love my region and my people, and do not wish to paint anyone with a broad brush, let alone one simplifying their cultural and political identify. But I do feel as though there's a fascinating correlation potentially there worth diving into
@@pineapplepH Your obervations are incredible
@@pineapplepH Idaho says hi 👋
That would seem to make sense but in practice it often seems that those regulations still don't really benefit the people in denser population areas for some reason.
The problem I see, as an active conservative republican, is that the laws and regulations that may be practical in urban areas, often have disparate, negative impacts on us in rural areas. They are often passed state wide, and can have extraordinarily damaging effects to rural areas.
Thank you Mr Beat. One of your best videos
My definition for suburbs is: "the place that sucks the most"
I live in Rural Alaska, 200 miles from any town , we have 1 road connecting us with the world. I lean left politically but I hunt, fish and subsistence live among Native Alaskans. We all get along because life here is really tough.
Amazing video, well researched. Thank you for your efforts. Keep up the great work.
Very excited to watch this. Such an underreported phenomenon that explains almost everything.
I should have released this awhile ago :)
Interesting video, thanks mr beat
it seems the divide has become a feature of modernity. Yet the way it expresses itself can change very much from one area to another. I also find the motivations behind the divides, like fear of change, can be very elusive. Canada's Quebec is an interesting example where rural electors tend to live a far less traditional family values (lack of better term) lifestyle. Over time they may be more conservative in some respect, but it could be because of perceived unfulfilled desire as if they feel changes come at a high cost to them...that sort of thing, not necessarily because they truly fear change.
The fact that you got a shot of a dollar general for the "rural area" is absolutely perfect.
I'm glad you noticed the detail 😉
I had to laugh at that too.
Dollar Generals are popping up everywhere in the rural area of Pennsylvania I live in. They're literally popping up every 6 or 7 miles. Scary cause I feel it displays just how bad things are economically and even mentally for people. Not that DG is a poor person's store, or a bad store, cause it's not, necessarily...but I just feel it's a sign people are struggling financially and by extension, mentally, and DG's don't necessarily sell healthy food...so people like me go there and get junk food to stuff our depressed faces with lol. Not only that, but the local people they employ get lousy wages from them. (Do I make sense? I'm not sure but I see it this way kind of lol)
I also think cities tend to be more liberal socially because they are exposed to immigrants/people from all over the world and have many friends of different cultures, and want to support them.
Lot more crime too
@@realsgtstupid This doesn't seem related to anything I said, not sure what your point is. Poorer people with fewer options do have more crime, and there are also more people in the city/more wealthy people to steal from. Plus with a bigger population it's easier to get away with things. So yes, more crime, but not necessarily per person or anything relatd to the place people come from
@@CJsbro1 vote republican
@@CJsbro1 the wealth inequality in cities is much more drastic too.
@@alexanderhamilton9891 no thank you 👌 I tend to believe in democracy and human rights
Brilliant video!!!
Ultimately the problem also stems from the fact that we have 2 political parties and Politians that dont serve the people, but serve their team in this metaphorical game of capture the flag. Both sides will take ridiculously dumb stances on important issues just for the sake of disagreeing with the other party and nobody will make the reasonable compromise on anything. Then the media steps in to brainwash people into thinking the other party look like the scum of the earth, and their party look like geniuses. Its ultimately about trying to stay in power and keeping their careers. One important step to take is term limits on members of congress, but these days Politian's would never vote to limit their own power. I just hope we find some kind of solution before this powder keg goes off.
@Phillip Polk ok bud
My great grandfather was freshly married at 17 to my 16 year old great grandmother in the heights of the Great Depression. They were so poor they didn't even have food on the table. They were both from farm families but did not have any land of their own. Times were tough.
Fortunately, my great grandfather got a job as a result of one of the New Deal programs. Later he actually served at the Milan Arsenal in Milan, TN during the war. My mother told me that, even into the 70s, my great grandfather would thank Jesus and FDR before every meal. Sure, the New Deal programs may have not been the most efficient use of stimulus, but they sure gave people hope that things would be better when there wasn't much hope to spare.
This care for the little man made my great grandfather a lifelong Democrat and his kids all lifelong Democrats. Never underestimate the loyalty of the little man if you actually do something for him.
Well plenty of those people went red when Trump came along. The dems abandoned the worker for minorities, foreigners and women.
Nice of you to film part of this video in my hometown of Kansas City
Mine too 🙌🏼
I grew up in a deep red rural area, and I leaned to the right until the last year that I lived there. I live in a blue urban county now for college, and I lean slightly to the left, but the city still feels more foreign to me than rural areas.
Ethan that is definitely normal. You lived in a rural area for a long time, and in that time you’ve likely become accustomed to less traffic people knowing each other easily, and of course, the deep red politics. given that you’re in a urban area right now it is likely that things feel the way they are right now with you is because you’re trying to become adjusted in accustomed to your environment.
I grew up in Houston, and when I moved out on my own, I lived in some small cities, and it felt so weird to me wondering why a lot of those people or against the things that I thought was good living in a big city, especially when it comes to politics.
Very well done! Subbed!
I always find it most fascinating when areas subvert these expectations, they make for fascinating case studies.
Currently watching this video while my country (The Netherlands) is having the biggest farmer's protests in decades.
The rural/urban divide is everywhere, even in the most densely populated country in Europe.
That is a great shot of Downtown KC.
Great content!
Thank you!
There is a large divide but in my opinion it’s greatly exasperated by the way our class system works. The republicans love to fear monger about the “woke left communist elite whatever” and the dems love to demonize the “bigotry/prejudices of the right” all in the name of keeping the working class set against itself and people working their asses off to even maintain their current standard of living, while the politicians and the rich and powerful profit more and more. In this system, everyone is meant to blame the more disadvantaged yet distant people to their place in society for its woes, which for the right is the lgbtqia+ community along with immigrants and minorities in cities, while for the left it’s the rural communities that hold society back- even though they have in fact been left behind and rightfully so feel alienated. All of these communities need to realize that we are all on the same side and should work towards improving material conditions for all. It’s already happening in some instances but we need to continue improving and informing to the best of our abilities.
Absolutely true. I feel like the Occupy movements of the early 2010’s had some serious momentum against a proper target. Then Mitt Romney ‘accidentally’ leaked that video demonizing the welfare queens & suddenly there was a whole new scapegoat. The media all acted like he was stopping his own campaign dead in its tracks but I think he pretty obviously knew exactly what he was doing. The latte libtards battle the racist republicans while the rich laugh all the way to the bank buying up yachts, islands, and space colonies.
The real issue is WHY IS THERE A WOKE COMMUNIST ELITE ?!? Like damn the woke commie elite wants to steal from the upper middle class families making 80-150k a year and give it to people on welfare to buy votes WHILE GIVING THEMSELVES TAX CUTS, under Biden tax loopholes for the mega rich went UP 😫 like you can either be communists or rich but you shouldn’t pull up the wealth ladder behind you by over taxing the upper middle class to keep yourselves In power
The main issue is that they need radically different economic policies to improve living conditions. Rural areas need more job opportunities so they can keep enjoying the low cost of living that rural areas provide but democrat policies like minimum wage, immigration and welfare hurts that. Urban areas have all the jobs, but the insane cost of living makes most of them simply not worth it, so republican anti-welfare policies and keeping the minimum wage low hurts that as well.
We are now stuck in a scenario where we get the worst of both worlds.
Well said. If the farmers and workers of this country realized that it's the politicians, bureaucrats, and their corporate buddies responsible for their plight, we'd have a revolution overnight. That's why the gun control laws primarily target queer, indigenous, and non-white folk. The elites in this nation are afraid of an anarchistic revolt, and rightly so. We'd do a much better job of running ourselves rather than letting "elected" lords and masters do it for us.
I'll believe we're on the same side when they stop taking our rights away. I'm not "blinded" by being banned from public restrooms or from being forced to give birth. It's a false equivalence. The left, on social issues, has always been on the defense.
I’ve always seen these maps of red vs blue states. Very good video Mr Beat thank you
i used to live in a small rural town in Virginia, and now i live in a large suburb in the nyc area. the political differences between both areas is insane!
awesome video Mr beat. It must have taken ages to build
As someone who was born and lived in a small town (I'm talking barely 10,000 people and that's being generous, only 1 school and has only recently gotten a mcdonalds) for the first decade of my life, i can say that the difference between rural and urban is massive.
If the Welcome To and Come Again signs aren't on the same post, can you really call it a small town;).
lmao, 10'000 is not a small town.
@Sean Tyler M. Quilon In my country, everything above 10'000 is legally a city and even sometimes places with fewer inhabitants classify as cities if they were granted the privilege at some point in time. I would argue that everything above 5'000 is not small as then they usually have special infrastructure that a small town like mine doesn't (postal offices, train stations, schools for every level, super markets, etc)
@Sean Tyler M. Quilon well, there's only seven cities in my country with a population higher than 90'000 (the biggest one doesn't even have half a million) and my "state's" capital would not qualify as a city even with your 25'000 limit - and my hometown has barely a tenth of that. And I would never move to a town bigger than mine
@Sean Tyler M. Quilon Switzerland? That't the Swiss flag on my profile picture. You?
Thanks a bunch for this video! I have always found it confusing that the rural areas in America tend to vote more to the right and the urban areas to the left.
I felt like it would be the opposite as city folks are usually richer than rural folks.
But if there are no real differences economically and it's all about social issues, then it definitely makes sense.
City folk make a lot working jobs for big corporations and what not, but at the same time the price of rent, housing, insurance, and other essentials / utilities continues to skyrocket while alot of our pay continues to stay the same. Many people in the cities don't own their own houses or land.
I would say, as someone from a rural area, that it's both economic and social. Economically, urban Democrat voters often support environmental policies without knowing how large of an impact they have on rural jobs. For instance, I live in Oregon, and the Democrats in places like Portland often support aggressive environmental policies such as outlawing the sale of diesel fuel or requiring all trucks to have certain modern features that many used trucks don't have; such laws would cause the life work of many rural small-business owners to evaporate in an instant.
Well thanks for watching. :) Also, there are differences economically, but only because the industries tend to be different. I get what you're saying, though.
@@philipmcniel4908 but the environment’s degradation would destroy rural land to begin with
@@avinashreji60 I would say--and this hasn't necessarily always been true, but it's pretty true in modern times--that people who work in rural farming, ranching, and logging industries know better than to degrade themselves out of business. It's just that when someone from the city looks out their window and sees a concrete jungle or unnatural suburban sprawl, they're apt to see the environment as severely in danger and want to pass highly restrictive legislation without realizing how unrealistic it is (and yes, banning the sale of diesel fuel in an entire state would be unrealistic for rural workers and business owners) OR how good the rural environment is even without it.
Great video!
Nice to see someone in KC!