Is Trump country really better off under Trump? No. It's falling further behind.

[TexasTowelie]

Two years have passed since Donald Trump made his famous campaign promise in disaffected regions across the country: “We are going to start winning again!” For many voters who felt that they had lost ground in recent decades, the candidate argued, a vote for him would be rewarded with renewed prosperity and prominence.

It was a classic campaign promise, overly ambitious and cleverly vague. What exactly did “winning” mean? Certainly, many reporters believed voters perceived the promise as an economic one. So let’s measure the promise’s success that way. How have Trump voters fared economically, compared with Hillary Clinton voters?

Not noticeably better, according to the data. By most measures, my latest research shows, Trump counties — and especially counties with higher proportions of Trump voters — continue to fall farther behind the rest of the country economically. The story of our economy, like the story of our politics, continues to be a story of division and divergence.

Trump’s America vs. Clinton’s America

It is no secret that the country is as geographically fractured as it is economically unequal. In fact, the two trends are intertwined. In separate studies, economists Rebecca Diamond and Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag revealed a widening gap in incomes, skills and wages between low-income and high-income regions, beginning around 1980. After decades of converging, in other words, our cities and states have been growing apart. The wider the income gap grows between the regions, they show, the harder it becomes for those in service and even blue-collar jobs to afford to live in high-income, high-rent places with high-quality amenities such as clean air, good schools, low crime, strong job markets, transportation infrastructure and retail stores.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/18/are-trump-voters-better-off-than-they-were-two-years-ago-especially-compared-to-clinton-voters/

[sandensea]

1. Of course. Just as it did under St. Ronnie.

You'll recall that one of the looming economic controversies under Reagan was that, just as income and wealth were concentrating at the top, economic growth was likewise pooling in just a few hot spots - mostly along the Pacific and Atlantic shorelines, and downtown Chicago.

For the heartland and South, it was mostly even worse than the '70s.

But he liked punching minorities and unions in the face, and so they've loved the GOPee ever since.

Sad.