First, blue states have enjoyed higher economic growth rates on average than red states since the Great Recession. Since the mid-2000s, the business cycle of blue states has increasingly diverged from that of their red counterparts.
The average disparity in GDP growth between red states and blue states has hovered around 3.5% since the recession ended. For comparison, a previous study of 20 developed nations found an average GDP convergence among them of only 1.75%.
Differences in GDP growth also lead to differences in household income and household consumption — i.e., in living standards. Luckily, there are several transfer mechanisms that mitigate these gaps in GDP growth so that consumption shortfalls in red states amount to only about one-fifth of the growth deficits.
But Parsley and Popper found that red states and blue states smooth these consumption variations in very different ways.
Originally Posted by Walter Sobchak
Because the vibrant economies of America's large urban centers are full of winners, and the bass ackward rural evangelical south, not so much. But we need each other.
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