The map is from a report by the Southern Regional Development Center at Mississippi State University. The report notes that "In urban counties, 5 percent of personal income comes from Social Security. In rural counties, an average of 9.3 percent of personal income arrives in the form of a Social Security check." And yet, these rural counties are mostly electing Republicans to Congress and those Republican representatives seem determined to gut Social Security even though it is clear that the people they represent want Social Security to remain intact.
"And yet, these rural counties are mostly electing Republicans to Congress and those Republican representatives seem determined to gut Social Security".
ReplyDeleteSen. Sanders made a similar statement recently on cnn.
What i think is more interesting is who in rural areas are voting for republicans and why.
Either poor,middle class blacks and other minorities OR poor,middle class whites?
This chart is slightly misleading...
ReplyDeleteIt indicates that the PERCENTAGE of total personal income attributable to SSI is pretty low in urban areas. However, urban areas(typically) have higher proportions of wealthy people than rural areas. This means that a relatively few number of wealthy people can offset a relatively large number of SSI recipients in urgan areas.
In other words, this chart does not take into account the percentage of people/families that receive SSI. In reality, the percentage of the population receiving SSI is probably higher in urban areas than this map would have you believe.
I do get your point about there being more wealth inequality in urban areas, and that there is some room for data distortion there, but I think the sheer amount of people in the urban areas would offset that somewhat.
ReplyDeleteEven taking your theory into consideration, taking it to the extreme that people in the cities depend of social security at least as much as people in the rural communities, it still doesn't make sense that rural denizens consistently vote for millionaires that want to cut their benefits. But I think, even without this study, that is something already on people's minds. (It also reminds me of a book. About Kansas. And what's the matter with it.)
And just for clarity, it's not just SSI, but SS transfer payments in general.