While leftists tend to spout their alleged virtuosity and spend their days virtue signaling about how ‘good’ and ‘equitable’ they are, in fact, blue states tend to have much more inequality than do conservative red states, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census data.
According to the Daily Wire, the widest chasm between rich and poor occurred in the deep blue states of New York, Connecticut, and California, as per a Census measurement known as the Gini Index. It measures how far a region of the country is from “perfect equality (where everyone receives an equal share). Meanwhile, three red states — Utah, Indiana, and South Dakota — had the least amount of inequality, according to the Census data, released last month and which spaned 2021.
Though Democrat liberals say they are the ones who are more focused on promoting “equity” among Americans, the Census data shows that the more left a state leans, the more likely they are to have inequality.
“This shows that all of the things that [Democrats] complain about actually come from Democrat policies,” David Gordon, a conservative political consultant, told the outlet. “When they complain about poor outcomes for blacks, for example, that is primarily in the areas where they have governed for generations, to catastrophic effect.”
The Daily Wire adds:
The Daily Wire focused on the 10 most-liberal and 10 most-conservative states by selecting those where one party controlled the legislature and governor’s mansion, and ordering them by the share of state legislature seats controlled by that party. Hawaii was the most liberal state, with 93% Democrats in its legislature, but it was excluded because it is not part of the mainland and is subject to unique economic forces.
That left Rhode Island, with an 87%-Democrat legislature, as the most Democratic state, followed by California, New York, and Delaware. The most conservative state was South Dakota, with a 90%-Republican legislature, followed by Wyoming, North Dakota, and Idaho.
“In California, the average foreign-born resident made only a third of what native-born Californians earned. By contrast, in Idaho, the average black resident made 85% as much as the average white person, the closest thing to racial equity of any state. In Indiana, Hispanics made close to 90% as much as whites,” the outlet reported, citing the Census data.
The Democratic left likes to repeat stats showing red states as being poorer, and according to the Census Bureau’s main poverty measure, that’s true. However, it is a highly misleading metric because it doesn’t account for a state’s overall cost of living and instead measures only a static dollar amount as the poverty line for every family of a certain size, the Daily Caller noted.
That makes the stat essentially meaningless because the cost of food, housing, fuel, and other everyday items in a place like New York City is far higher than in, say, rural Mississippi.
“The Census Bureau has another metric, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which partially addresses this problem. It adjusts for the cost of housing in an area, but not for other localized items. It also counts welfare benefits as income,” the outlet reported. “By this measure, conservative states have less poverty than blue states. The four states with the lowest poverty are also the four most-conservative states in the country. And California, the second-most-liberal state, has by far the highest poverty rate, at more than 18%.”
California has long had one of the country’s highest poverty rates, despite, overall, having the fifth-largest economy in the world. In September 2021, a Census Bureau report noted as much, stating “that 15.4% of California residents lived in poverty from 2018 to 2020,” according to Business Insider.
The only higher rate of poverty in the country at that time? Another deep blue enclave: The nation’s capital of Washington D.C., with 16.5 percent.
