Red Sex, Blue Sex... and apportioning blame.

[elfs]

Congratulations, Red Staters. You've finally figured out something is wrong with our values system. I'll give you a clue. It's not about feminism. It's about culture.

Comments

[tagryn]

A problem I have with the line of thinking that talks about 'blue' states having 'fewer but better quality of children' is that it easily slides into "the Reds are obviously too irresponsible/uneducated/stupid to know that fewer kids is the smart choice," and the history of that paradigm isn't a particularly pleasant one. It can also be taken into "there's plenty of high-skilled jobs for everybody, the proles/Reds just need not to breed as much and to produce higher-quality kids."

I think Rauch is also ignoring the problems that come with below-replacement fertility levels, something Japan and Russia are struggling with going forward. If all states had blue-state fertility levels, that would come with its own consequences.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Um... there's nobody calling for a government-imposed China style policy of child rearing.

There's just this observation: in a technologically advanced society, in which it takes upwards of 24 years to learn how to successfully operate advanced machinery, early and irresponsible child rearing short-circuits that learning and leaves early parents, and their children, desperately short on opportunities. Red state values talk about abstinence and waiting until marriage to bear children, but their educational system falls so short of hitting that mark that red states have would up welfare states-- taking in more in assistance than they generate in revenue.

Blue states not only succeed in hewing to their public values better than red states, they succeed better than red states in hewing to red state values.

If Romney/Ryan wins, I look forward to the blue states merrily enjoying the (undoubtedly moral) windfall of no longer have to support red states.

[tagryn]

In that last scenario, the satisfaction lingers until the failure to invest in the "red" state kids comes home to roost...which is where a majority of future native-born adults will be coming from, thanks to the "Blues" low fertility. Lower fertility isn't a no-consequences decision, either. Unless the "Blue" states decide to 'build the walls higher' and restrict cross-state migration (with all the consequences that would have for the Union), deciding to take-our-ball-and-go-home by hoarding resources for intrastate use only isn't an option, especially as the population ages and more and more dependents rely on the working-age population to keep the economy rolling. Where's that working-age population going to have to come from? Increasingly, from the "Red" states, bringing with them the values they were raised with.

The X-factor is the recent-immigrants population, who have a tendency to vote Democratic/"Blue" but also would be considered "irresponsible" by Rauch's formulation in terms of their fertility patterns. As the link above states, the "Blue" areas will increasingly consist of minorities who will take at least a couple of generations to level off to 'normal' "Blue" fertility, assuming that happens: changing cultural patterns doesn't happen overnight. Given the "Reds" higher fertility trends, plus recent immigrants also-higher fertility trends, the folks holding the "Blue"/'responsible' perspective may well be a dying breed who are less and less able to continue their traditions, simply because their descendents will be too small in number to matter anymore, even in "Blue" areas. Demography really is destiny.