The Big Sort On A State (vs. Local) Level

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In Q&A-29 through Q&A-31, John Karls reminded us of our focus for our 9/15/2010 meeting on The Big Sort by Bishop and Cushing, and how America’s super-wealthy congregate with each other in super-wealthy communities, the nearly-super-wealthy who cannot afford a super-wealthy community congregate with each other in a nearly-super-wealthy community, although the way down to the nation’s destitute class (untouchable caste) which is forced to live in our inner-city ghettos.

And how this not only means that nobody in America is likely to ever meet anyone with political views different from her/his own.

But also that the rate at which the super-wealthy pay property taxes on their multi-million-dollar mansions for their municipal services is a rounding error. While the value of property in our inner-city ghettos is virtually non-existent so that property tax rates would have to be virtually infinite in order to provide the nation’s destitute class (untouchable caste) with any municipal services at all, much less a decent level of municipal services.

The reason for this essay???

To point out that The Big Sort occurs on a state level as well as a local level.

The so-called Red (or relatively conservative) States typically provide minimal services for the nation’s destitute class (untouchable caste).

Which, of course, is why the nation’s destitute class (untouchable caste) has tended to congregate in the nation’s large inner-city ghettos (e.g., NYC’s Bed-Sty, Harlem, South Bronx, Chicago’s South Side, L.A.’s South Central).

Which are typically located in the so-called Blue (or relatively liberal) States.

Not only because Americans consciously sort themselves this way on a state-by-state basis in addition to sorting themselves by the local communities within which they congregate.

But also because the nation’s destitute class (untouchable caste) votes for state social policies which will provide some assistance for the inner-city ghettos, which tends to make the Blue States Blue.

Unfortunately, the nation has reached the point that we cannot continue to treat our destitute class (untouchable caste) as merely an inner-city problem, aka a Blue State problem.

When the federal government routinely reports that 30% of Americans are illiterate in terms of ability to read the warning label on a can of rat poison, it is time for the nation as a whole to do the heavy lifting that will be required for what is truly a national problem.

Otherwise, we should be honest enough to admit that America has an Apartheid System that is every bit as extensive and oppressive as ever existed in South Africa. And that upward mobility in America, aka the American Dream, is nothing more than the Great American Myth.