An interesting thought

We see a lot of musing about the reason for the urban/rural divide in U.S. politics. Yes, those depopulous rural states have disproportionate political power thanks to the undemocratic constitution; and within states liberals and Democrats are concentrated in urban centers while exurban and rural areas tend to be Republican, which gives Republicans the ability to win majorities in state legislatures and congressional delegations with a minority of the vote. It ' s true that people vote, and dirt doesn ' t, but the way our system is structured, having a lot of dirt does give you an advantage.The challenging question iswhy rural areas are more conservative.Will Wilkinson attempts to answer that, and he might just have a good point. People have been heading from the countryside to the city for a while now, but the people who make that move tend to be different from the people who stay behind. [U]rbanization is a relentless, glacial social force that transforms entire societies and, in the process, generates cultural and political polarization by segregating populations along the lines of the traits that make individuals more or less responsive to the incentives that draw people to the city. I explore three such traits — ethnicity, ideology-correlated aspects of personality, and level of educational achievement — and their intricate web of relationships. The upshot is that, over the course of millions of moves over many decades, high density areas have become economicall...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs