i’m stealing from @mtsw.bsky.social here, but we are seeing — on the national level — a very common red state dynamic. republicans tanking the economy and destroying the most dynamic sectors in order to *produce* a brain drain
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I cannot overemphasize that what Florida did in the Orbanification of New College of Florida is what this administration wants to do to higher education nationally.
There's also a weirdly misogynistic angle to it as well. Where only certain job sectors are looked on favorably, and those jobs all happen to be considered heavily masculine. So you end up in spots were being a crypto scammer is good, but making money from web based advertising is bad.
That can work on the local level - Florida chases out all biotech bc woke or whatever - great it will set up shop somewhere else & those guys will do it somewhere else & go to Disney on vacation
Try it on a national level , you get Russia - country that can't beat Ukraine in a war
Krugman pointed out something similar. They want a nation of sweatshops. An America where kids can sew cheap clothes, not go to school.
A vision of the country unspoiled by college graduates with opinions.
They’re not doing this intentionally. Thymes just don’t care about the harm and would rather be poorer on a societal level than broadly successful at that level with more taxes and such.
To what end? To allow super rich to have the rest of the money? Ppl are dumb and compliant if they can still buy a boat. Are they so greedy and cruel they’d kill the goose that lays the golden egg? They won’t get another by enslaving a workforce.
They want to create a future brain drain in the US by upending our higher education system. The technocrats feel especially emboldened bc they believe AI can replace the annoying educated white collar workers they currently have to deal with.
Hopefully that will take more time than they have. People are angry, seeing what's at stake and showing themselves willing to put in the work necessary to make changes.
Red state, Indiana, here. I'm constantly flummoxed over state Republicans who wonder why we have a brain drain? Why would young people want to come here?
Transit, climate, bike friendly? No.
Healthy women/mothers? No. Anti-diversity? Yes.
Anti-LGBTQ+? YES.
Gun-totin' yahoos? You betcha!
I'm not a math guy per se, but is it clicking for anyone else that the whole plan the oligarchy seems to have requires lots of cheap, uneducated labor?
And still requires smart people with money to buy their stuff?
Which states seem like they would be good sources to satisfy each clear need?
It’s like Hitler’s “Strength Through Joy” but the complete opposite, wholly based on rage, class wars, racism, misogyny, religious extremism, etc. This is likely leading to more control socially and in the workforce. Kicking them down and tricking them to think they’re the only hand up.
Except for fucking Texas and I don't get why. We're vacuuming up every big tech company that wants to flee liberal states and we've increased our population YoY. Texas should be left in the dust like every other red state. We're not a state that deserves good things anymore.
Then they blame the failures of those sectors on any excuse they can think (usually their target of the hour) of instead of the fact that they destroyed the sector and made it completely unsustainable themselves.
The most disheartening thing is how many people believe it every time.
Do you think it'll work? I have no actual understanding here I just suspect that people will become numb until election cycle. I've already stopped tracking what he's doing and just assume it's batshit
Brain drain is the movement of people from one location to another. People who get degrees in my state are more likely to move out of state than people who don't.
There are multiple reasons why this is happening but certainly a major contributor is the belief that the evil scientists are indoctrinating one's children into believing in evolution, etc., and so it's better to get rid of them entirely.
the more stagnant the economy and culture, the more stuck in a zero-sum mindset the typical voter, the easier it is for conservatives to win political victories
I used to work in higher education and I have said for years - defunding education at every possible opportunity has been a long-game strategy by conservatives, employed specifically to create a “low information” electorate. Because an ignorant electorate is an easily manipulated electorate.
Yup! The Nastier, more Brutish, and Short life gets, the more under-threat ppl feel, the more conservative they'll get. So Republicans want to make life Nasty, Brutish, and Short. And of course it also plays into their Hierarchical ideology and medieval fetishism.
This is why we really need an alternative out in the public.
Someone should already be running for president with a “Project2025” alternative to clean up politics, simplify spending, solve immigration once and for all, and create fair taxation policy.
A sicker, more impoverished populous will die off earlier and allow the wealthy tax cuts as SS doesn’t have to pay out. This is a goal. Republicans are a death cult.
I also think another “deliverable” is a compliant, deep in debt workforce that is ’Slavery-lite’ who has no choice but to work for low wages and smile at the boss. They don’t have to be smart - just obedient.
When your politics isn't based on solving problems but on telling people who's to blame for their sh*t life... it's actually fine to make their lives worse
A fundamental GOP/Dem split is that GOP follows the above, while Dems believe improving people's lives (or being seen trying to) is how you win
I know it’s cliched at this point, but I really can’t stop thinking of 1930s Germany. In this case, when Einstein, Szilard, Teller, von Neumann, et all fled to the US.
and this (kind of) works on a state level because the productive capacity goes to blue states and then the federal government, which kicks some back to the red states. can't do it to the whole country!
If you don’t believe this, ask yourself why only the majority of blue districts and counties in red states have the booming economy, diversity, hospitals, art and and education while the red areas immediately around it flounder in everything.
Exactly. Just look at the deep red south, where all standard of living metrics are the lowest, and where huge majorities would never dream of voting out the wingers who keep them stuck in the mud.
they don't care whether the country is prosperous, they care about increasing their relative power inside the country.
as jamelle wrote, it's a common red state strategy.
I think the idea of American Exceptionalism includes a sense of entitlement that persuades them that we can have prosperity, clean air and water (at least for the rich), security, respect, and power, and we get to have those regardless of what we do to the bases for these things.
Is it really as simple as "make everyone poorer so we're richer"? Bc at least in red states, they could count on blue states picking up the slack. But if it's national, there's no slack left?
Party due of the state's flyover status, the national press never internalized the utter self-destruction of Kansas by GOP Gov. Sam Brownback & its supermajority Republican legislature 12 years ago. But it really did provide a sneak preview of the chaos Trump is inflicting on a national level now.
I don’t understand why this isn’t getting more airplay. Indiana is currently running the same playbook that Kansas did and no one is bringing it up. Those that forget history…
It's especially frustrating because one political party has forever been going on about states being "laboratories of democracy," but when this party has 100% gotten their way and absolutely wrecked things, one would hope that the press would notice how badly these smaller-scale test runs have gone.
This is especially troubling in Texas which has some of the best universities and med schools in the country. I don’t know why any woman would go to Dell med school in Austin now.
I’m trying to reconcile this with what I know about housing costs. A lot of people I know are concerned about highly educated people moving to red states for cost of living reasons.
Of course these things don’t need to be reconciled.
If car dealers, real estate brokers, & MLM grifters are the backbone of American fascism, you can understand why there is no popular support for the aforementioned dynamic sectors.
The MLMers want more women out of the workforce as it creates a bigger downstream pool of financially precarious women
What are car dealers going to do if their international supply chain makes cars cost 6000 more each without attendant rise in incomes for regular people? 108 month financing terms?
Every single culture war move Republicans make has the end goal of “socially engineer more Republicans”. The attack on higher education is a big part of that.
Seriously it really isn’t any deeper than some GOP operative looking at a map of a close defeat and looking at the places that put the Dem over the top (cities, major college towns) and saying “less of that”.
And some of us are leaving the country, like back in the 1920s when a lot of musicians, artists, and writers left for Paris, although they were primarily people of color who felt displaced and disenfranchised in America. Now it’s those of us who cannot bear to see what is happening to our country.
I think the common theme here is Republicans tanking the economy because it creates an opportunity for their select cadre to EXPONENTIALLY PROFIT at the expense of the working class people.
Yep, and we shouldn't think that there was some meeting about how they're going to beat up on the nerds that all this came out of. This is an instinctual, libidinal thing for them. Cancer research just doesn't feel good to think about - it's gay and soy to want to help people.
I think we are once again making a mistake by attaching any sort of grand strategy or 3-D chess or master plan to any of this. It’s just pain and cruelty and knee jerk meanness. That’s the party today because it’s a cult of personality of a mean and cruel man.
It was always one of the goals. Keep people so ignorant that they not only can't fight back effectively, they don't even get close to having the ability to know how bad they're getting fucked.
Project 2025 was pretty explicit that they wanted to dismantle higher education in part because they want young girls popping out babies instead of any other goals like education or careers.
It also ensures wages remain low, faith in public goods erodes, property/business values drop so private equity can scavenge the remains, and people stay too destabilized and distracted to effectively organize and fight back.
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Try it on a national level , you get Russia - country that can't beat Ukraine in a war
A vision of the country unspoiled by college graduates with opinions.
It's easier to get them to blame the "others" for the misery.
They'll end up with highly talented people stuck in undesirable situations and strongly wanting change.
Reminds me of the civil rights movement.
Transit, climate, bike friendly? No.
Healthy women/mothers? No. Anti-diversity? Yes.
Anti-LGBTQ+? YES.
Gun-totin' yahoos? You betcha!
And still requires smart people with money to buy their stuff?
Which states seem like they would be good sources to satisfy each clear need?
I promise you - even the size of the recent buy nothing protests has got them spooked.
The tariffs are much worse.
The rebudgeting that is happening across industries is wild. The big bosses are sweating. That's not good news for anyone causing it.
The most disheartening thing is how many people believe it every time.
That is just what Republicans do.
What Democrats should stop doing is bailing them out.
Someone should already be running for president with a “Project2025” alternative to clean up politics, simplify spending, solve immigration once and for all, and create fair taxation policy.
Give people something to strive for.
Even the economy returns to crab.
🦀🦀🦀
A fundamental GOP/Dem split is that GOP follows the above, while Dems believe improving people's lives (or being seen trying to) is how you win
That way, they stay in power forever
See: AL, LA, AR, KY, TN
The top 0.1% live just fine in that scenario, as they squeeze money out of the population
Meanwhile, the currency steadily weakens, and multi-national corporate interests buy up assets for cheap
And the grind down continues
See: Any banana republic
It's almost to broken to believe, but here we are.
as jamelle wrote, it's a common red state strategy.
Of course these things don’t need to be reconciled.
The MLMers want more women out of the workforce as it creates a bigger downstream pool of financially precarious women
Get the educated (mostly lefties) to leave and MAGA remains.
Any correlation to other countries in history?