1. The weather
2. The culture
3. The restaurants
Me - "I don't pay state income taxes in South Dakota."
Minnesota Liberal - (scoffingly) "Yes, but you have to LIVE THERE! Huh huh huh."
Me - "I don't have to bail out billionaire professional sports teams."
New York Liberal - "Yes, but you don't have Thai food. Huh huh huh."
Me - "Unemployment is below 5% meaning I have a stable job and chance for advancement."
California Liberal - "Yes, but we have great weather. Huh huh huh."
Of course, they only do this because deep down inside they agree with you and hate paying taxes just as much as the other guy, but since they're liberal their ideology comes first, even before themselves, which is delusional. And since we're dealing with irrational and delusional people there's nothing we can do to convince them otherwise. This relegates us to the only thing left to do - mock them.
So here's some mockery.
"Hope the weather is worth it. Huh huh huh."
What about the chart for SD?
ReplyDeleteI frequent "Carpe Diem" an economic blog where this sort of info often comes up. I strongly believe that the low North Dakota unemployment rate only catches a small part of the picture of how good ND is versus California. The North Dakota oil fields (and associated activities) have imported tens of thousands of workers who still legally reside in their home states. The North Dakota oil boom has directly lowered the unmemployment rates in other states-plus workers in factories in places like Ohio making pipe and so forth.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that the national economic footprint of North Dakota is far larger than can be measured by unemployment statistics and so forth and is proportionately far larger than its small size.
Interestingly, South Dakota has the second lowest unemployment rate and an analysis of policies there VS California are a possible answer to liberal arguments here (MN) that ND is not comparable because of the geology.
Funny thing is that two of their points are highly ephemeral as in they wont necessarily stick around. To the New York liberal you could always say that once New York was a backwater town, and that it was only when the city grew wealthy that culture began to permeate the city. Just look at Cincinnatti, a town whose fortunes have drastically fallen, it is home to some superb art centers and theatres. Most of them having been built during its heyday, before their progressive policies drove out the very people that made it a cultural center of the US. Now a days no one would think of Cincinnati as such.
ReplyDeleteAs for the food, and usually they by good food they mean ethnic, what is too keep those ethnic restaurant owners around after you drive the city into the ground. These are individuals who were willing to pack up and leave their motherland, I hardly doubt that they would bat an eye at leaving LA to go to the black hills in South Dakota, or Boise in Idaho.
And as for weather, well I heard Texas is sunny like California and has beaches too.
What am I? Your mother? Look it up! ;)
ReplyDeletewww.stlouisfed.org
at bobc I mean. not CI weather.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting about your post (and I speak as a former, or should I say reformed, NYer here) is that NYers, CAers, etc... all honestly and truly believe that the things they like (Thai food for example) do not exist anywhere else.
ReplyDeleteWell, they might accept that another large city will have some stuff, but if your city does not have a professional sports team, then it is nothing but a bunch of redneck/hillbillies that sit around eating red meat and dating their cousins. And, they base that knowledge on nothing more than then rightous self assurance.
So, you are absolutely correct, when confronted about how much better the red states are doing, they always have some kind of response that is so far removed from the actual topic that the descriptor 'non-sequitor' springs to mind.
By the way, I do not think California weather is all that great, and some of the best meals I have ever had have been in small towns/cities, and frankly, the culture is quite often overrated. (Again, as a former NYer, I can tell you most people in NY almost never go to broadway plays, or cultural events. They will lie and claim they do, but...)
"California Liberal - "Yes, but we have great weather."
ReplyDeleteI usually respond to this with "My AR-15 keeps me warm." ;)
I am thinking that it isn't *really* poverty, and so "weather" can kind of come close to compensating.
ReplyDeleteA person standing with the clothes on their back and $5 in their pocket in any town in North America is automatically in the 1% of the worlds population.
Now, if you offer them a choice between nice weather, Thai restaurants, and bone crushing Calcutta-level poverty they can smell versus a minimum wage job in Melfort, Saskatchewan you might get a different result.
Captain, love the new look on the blog. I can read it now! :)
ReplyDeleteThe chart forcibly reminds me of how bad the 1980's sucked, and how much worse than Carter Obama is. He's like a big ol' commie wrecking ball.
I live in a small community on Vancouver Island ... we have three thai restaurants, two vietnamese, three chinese, two Italian .... and a few hip places that have sushi and whatnot .... many good pubs, great music mainly jazz, blues etc ... you know .. cools stuff.
ReplyDeleteWe have a lovely theater that just featured the likes of Jon Lovetts, (of Obama is an Fn A-hole fame) Norm MacDonald, the Victoria Symphony, many multi cultural type shows if you like that sort of thing ... and a host of variety acts ... etc.
We have a deep water harbor filled with yachts, mile of hiking trails, bike trails ... proximity to Vancouver, Seattle, Portland .... mild weather all year ...
But mostly we have affordable housing, lots of unfilled entry level jobs, great roads with tree and flower lined boulevards ... mostly all white and English speaking .... I have mountain and ocean scenery where I live ...
Sure ... it's not a hip as LA or NY .. but it's safe, clean and civil ....
In Beautiful BC we are developing and selling oil, gas, forest products, tourism ....
We are right next door to Alberta ... home of the oil sands .....
I don't think i can improve on that. I should mention that there are many other places just like this one.
I say all this just to rub it into the idiots who think big city life in the hip progressive cities is the end all and be all.
Further .... our prime minister Stephen Harper is a global warming denier and doesn't want to help the fools in Europe (who cannot be helped anyway they are retarded) we also are undergoing dramatic immigration reform ... to keep out the undesirables and he just trashed the long gun registry .... it's getting better all the time ....
Port Alberni? Nanaimo?
DeleteI am surprised by the remark that 'good food' to these people means ethnic food. Those are the ideas of a very ignorant person. In fact the best food is roughly the same from one place to another, but usually with local food - game, for example, or vegetables. And the key feature of good food is very good ingredients and a great deal of work. Getting to
ReplyDeletemarket at 5 in the morning is part of it.
I once watched an interview on Canadian television with a very successful and French-trained chef. He said that his training with Master so-and-so had been very difficult - so much that his two years of compulsory military service in the French army had been a holiday in comparison.
Typically it was thought in northern Germany and England that good weather weakened the will; that they were more successful than Italians and Greeks because they could work hard in their cooler climate.
ReplyDeleteIf I don't get the God-damnedkey characters right this time I'm going to say f*k it. Don't be so anal, Captain.
John Henry @ 2:29pm: Unfortunately, your premier and her centre-right government are about to lose to the marauding left-wing crazies, an event which will have catastrophic consequences. In Alberta, we've just elected a Progressive "Conservative" government bent on trashing anything conservative. It seems none of these self-satisfied elitist twits have learned nothing from their European cousins.
ReplyDeleteI would like to take this to international level. You can hear the exact same attitude from Europeans. "We have free health care, and so much more culture", are the type of things you hear from Europeans. They have socialism ground into their brains.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the people with some initiative tend to relocate, to more business friendly environments. The slackers get left behind. This has been true for thousands of years. This concept help build the USA, into a prosperous economy. On the State level, many productive people have recently left New York and California. You can bet the welfare recipients do not bother moving.
While I agree with your comments, I never make your claims to, or argue with, these idiots for fear some may actually realize I'm right and move into my area. Nice communities only remain that way when they aren't over populated. Cappy, it's best you keep quiet about your little paradise or risk it being ruined by an influx of assholes looking for another bed to shit in.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness you moved away from the hwie on black; now black on white is much more readable.
ReplyDeleteI hope that is not racist. Otherwise, we'd have to go to magenta on cyan. Anyone remember the hippy OZ magazine? Often unreadable.
I knew a hardworking engineer who knocked off two weeks every year to go visit his favorite Caribbean island. He said that the locals, blessed with 52 weeks a year in paradise, spend most of their waking hours drunk.
ReplyDelete"I am surprised by the remark that 'good food' to these people means ethnic food. Those are the ideas of a very ignorant person."
ReplyDeleteYou can be surprised all you want but its the truth and you can call it ignorant all you want, but it simply is the truth. I live in a progressive cosmopolitan city. And that is what they mean by 'good food'.
You can find a good burger, steak, and pancakes anywhere in the United States. Can the same be said about Thai?, Indian?, Vietnamese?, Chinese?, etc and so on? The answer is unequivocally no. In fact, I know a couple progressive leaning individuals that live in a red/rural part of our start in the largest city in that area due to continuing education. They were absolutely ecstatic when they found 'good restaurants' that had recently started moving into the rural city. Every single one of those restaurants was an ethnic one.
To a progressive cosmopolitanism is very important, and food is very much a part of that identity. Part of being cosmopolitan is access to unique and exotic foods not found elsewhere in a country. By eating, and enjoying, such foods they signal their 'worldliness'. Eating American food, in America, doesn't make you unique, interesting, stand out, or a citizen of a world. Eating foreign food does. It also helps that foreign food is pretty fantastic, I have a predilection towards thai food myself.
California is a great place for the rich, but it has been at war with its own middle class for decades. California lacks jobs, affordable houses and good schools.
ReplyDeleteMiddle class families are leaving the state by the hundreds of thousands.
Weather? Given the lesser of two weavils I would rather be impoverished in Sandy Eggo than Detroit. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteBe that as it may, all things are relative.... I think it was David Lee Roth, noted philanthropist and part time singer, who mused "Money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it."
Finally, "Captain, love the new look on the blog. I can read it now!" Hell Cap'n, I thought you just had a new hairdoo!
Carry on.
No one seems to understand. I'm a Californian, and besides the great weather, we have wonderful beaches. Yes, they are polluted beyond belief, since the cities and counties no longer can afford to keep them clean and safe, but so what? We have them! And yes, we have great culture, although most of the best theaters are closing since fewer people have jobs that allow us to use these once-great halls of culture. And yes, we have wonderful restaurants. And because of the lousy economy, they keep going out of business -- it keeps you guessing if your favorite Thai place will serve you good food or something that was cornered in the alley the night before...
ReplyDeleteBut we Californians are way cooler than the rest of you, out there. Or, at least we think we are.
And yes, we don't care if our high taxes drive out the fat cats for cheaper digs. Business? Employment? We don' need no stinkin' jobs...