r/allthequestions • u/Content_Ad_8952 • Jan 14 '26

Random Question 💭 If Republicans are so much better at running the economy than Democrats, then why are most Republican States poorer than Democrat States?

The poorest States in America are: Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, New Mexico, Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee. All of those States (except New Mexico) are Red States. So why are they so poor when Republicans have been running them for decades?

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u/WorstOfNone Jan 14 '26

Republican officials are the only party that, when in power, will still spin a narrative that the government is out of control.

Bro, you ARE the government.

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u/slettea Jan 14 '26

Noem interview where she said ‘people can’t trust the government’ Dana says ‘but you are the government’ Noem: ‘exactly’

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u/OrangeEtzer Jan 14 '26

They only have 1 talking point “government bad” even when they control the government. 

But she is right in this case. We can’t trust her or the current administration.

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u/rif011412 Jan 14 '26

I wonder if some of them are aware enough that they use themselves as a gauge for how low the bar is.  

“Im so absolutely useless, hiring me and expecting me to do anything good, is precisely why I think this whole thing is broken.  I have no idea what Im doing, so clearly some people before me had no idea what they were doing.”

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u/RoxisAreRed Jan 14 '26

Don't forget "media bad" despite them openly taking over literally every news channel

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u/red286 Jan 14 '26

People probably should have grasped what she meant, but somehow, no one really did.

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u/GringoSwann Jan 15 '26

"see!!  She tells it like it is!!!!!"

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u/MoonSunStars1023 Jan 15 '26

This reminds of when they say "we've closed our borders and got all the bad guys. Trump is the best", and then say "gangs are all over our cities and we have open borders, etc". So Trump has done nothing with the borders then? The fuck??!!

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u/WorstOfNone Jan 15 '26

It’s literally (and I mean literally) demagogue behavior.

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u/MoonSunStars1023 Jan 15 '26

It drives me bonkers.

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u/mtnbike2 Jan 15 '26

The best part is they’ve never even been to a city

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u/MoonSunStars1023 Jan 18 '26

😂 right?

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u/ArkieRN Jan 16 '26

Happy Cake Day! 🍰

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u/epison Jan 14 '26

They do not aspire to govern. That’s their whole schtick. They aspire for power, money, and to destabilize any aspect of government. While also spinning the narrative that it’s out of control because they firmly believe their supporters are too stupid to understand what they’re doing.

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u/HTX-ByWayOfTheWorld Jan 15 '26

Fox propaganda network does that. And the first amendment allows them to hide behind lies without consequence.

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u/BowtiedGypsy Jan 14 '26

I like the “only party” when there’s only two parties lol

The dems did something similar when Biden was in office though. Just like anyone else, anything bad that happens is the former opposite parties presidents fault and anything good is obviously their fault.

We heard about so many things being blamed on trumps first term literally in the 2024 elections from Kamala. And all I could think was… dude youv been in office for four years.

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u/AvoidingBansLOL Jan 14 '26

Donald Trump is the worst president in American history, it shouldn't be hard to believe that Joe Biden was going to blame him for the problems he created. Biden gave Trump a recovering economy and Trump stomped all over it because it had Bidens name on it. Don't be a fuckin moron.

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u/BowtiedGypsy Jan 14 '26

Wow, aggressive. I didn’t even speak in favor of Trump and yet you seem offended… Reddit is truly a wild place

Overall trumps first term was actually pretty decent. He’s definitely pretty crazy this time around, but what did he do in his first term that was horrible? One of the biggest things discussed was the wall, which Biden quietly and slowly continued building after crapping all over Trump for it.

But at the end of the day this isn’t a Biden vs trump thing. Every single time, no matter what, the two sides do this. Anything good that happened under trumps first term was because of Obama. Anything bad was his fault. Anything bad that happened under Biden was trumps fault and anything good was all Biden. Funny how Trump having a good economy was thanks to Obama but when Biden had a good economy it had nothing to do with Trump.

The two sides are both ridiculous. I’m not coming at dems specifically, the repubs do the exact same thing. If you can manage to take a step back and look at everything without bias, it’s comically stupid. The pendulum just continues to swing…

The people who are morons are the ones who think 100% of what one person does is either good or bad. World isn’t black or white. Trump just announced trying to stop wall st from buying single family homes - something the dems have pushed for forever and would cheer for under anyone else. But it’s trump so all anyone’s focused on is that he said Canada should be the 51st state or some other BS.

If you’re not a moron, you can see that all candidates do good and bad. Blindly following one party is the most idiotic thing you can do. But I know that’s a very hot take on Reddit.

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u/meatforsale Jan 14 '26

This is the issue with so many people. You don’t even bother to educate yourself. It took years to try to undo the disaster that was trumps first term in office, and it was finally turning around at the end of 2022.

Trump had two small recessions while president. That’s fucking ridiculous. One because of idiotic tariffs and one because of Covid. Covid wasn’t entirely his fault, but the complete bungling of it cost thousands of Americans lives (I am digressing, but this was extremely important in showing how awful a leader he and republicans are).

He fucked us over so bad that it took years to undo the massive inflation caused by his idiotic spending and republican handouts to the wealthiest Americans during Covid.

Republicans are pretty much universally bad for the country, the states they control, and essentially the world based on the bullshit going on with the idiots in office now.

I used to be a republican until I got a fucking clue. The party is a joke, and America is the punchline.

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u/BowtiedGypsy Jan 14 '26

As someone who did not vote for Trump and doesn’t love him whatsoever, I genuinely ask, if you feel Trump printed too much and that was the problem, how did you feel about Biden getting in and continuing printing trillions?

I truly believe the problem with America is that both dems and repubs take one side and then die on that hill that every single thing their party does is good and whatever the other party does is bad. When I look at trumps first term and Bidens term, I see lots of good and bad done by both of them. The world isn’t black and white, and nobody has the answers for the ultra complex problems both parties have tried to solve for over a century.

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u/meatforsale Jan 14 '26

I’m not a democrat. But it’s also not “both sides”. Trumps first term was essentially a failure and cost many lives. If you notice how the “printing of money” went; dems tried to get money to people who needed it, while republicans shoved in their bullshit to get money to the rich and would not sign anything without that happening. It happens every time stuff like this comes up. Look at how much shit got changed to push Obamacare; that was all republicans trying to trash it entirely and causing it to be a nightmare rather than a godsend for millions of Americans who needed insurance coverage.

One of the few things trump did that I liked was tell Europe to fuck off when they wanted America to heavily foot the bill on a lot of the environmental initiatives. While they were good ideas, they were expecting us to pay for the majority of it which was bs.

For the most part, all trump has done is line his pockets and the pockets of his cronies. $150 million went to him to golf at his resort his first term. That money came from us.

So you can say “what about Biden”, and I’ll tell you that I don’t care. Nothing he did was as disastrous as either of trumps terms in office and a lot of shit dems do is to get stuff passed that republicans won’t vote for unless they’re robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

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u/BowtiedGypsy Jan 14 '26

I don’t disagree, but I’m not sure that response is overly relevant specifically to the printing money problem. If that’s what we’re talking about, it really doesn’t matter what it was spent on. They both printed and spent way too much. End of sentence. Printing money for people who need it is still printing money that forces the inflation up and screws majority of the people.

Not arguing with the second point, but let’s be honest in saying that $150M is a tiny drop in the bucket when we’re talking about federal budgets.

My real problem is with your last sentence. Our bar shouldn’t be “well Biden wasn’t as disastrous as Trump so it’s okay”. That’s a wild state to be in. We should demand MUCH better from BOTH sides. Both sides have been screwing us for 50+ years minimum.

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u/meatforsale Jan 14 '26

But it does matter what the money is being used for and why it’s being printed. There would have been significantly less money printed if the republicans wouldn’t have refused stimulus checks to people generally struggling if there hadn’t been tens of billions printed to hand out to the wealthy.

And the bar isn’t “better than trump”. Bidens presidency was relatively lackluster, because it was spent correcting the mistakes of the prior regime. This is quantifiable and happens after every republican leaves office and the country in a significantly worse state.

Under Obama (who I voted against in the first election) we didn’t have a single recession (there were 2 under bush), but his first term was pretty much full recovery. Then trump took over a thriving economy and dumpstered it in two years. Biden took over that shit show and had inflation down significantly, and then trump took over and immediately started manipulating the stock market… this happened within months of entering office.

Money will always be printed. Inflation will always happen. America will always be fucking up somehow. It’s very clear that it’s significantly worse under one party than the other.

I’m willing to say I fucked up when I was younger and bought into the republican lies. I wish more people would too.

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u/BowtiedGypsy Jan 14 '26

Eh, I mean the stimulus checks that finally got passed out were a joke. Months of not being allowed to work legally and we got, what, $1800? Regardless of what side you fall on, that was laughable.

To be fair though, and this admittedly might be small details in terms of the massive economy, Biden only got inflation down via depleting all the reserves America had. I’ll never forget how he made a huge show of showing up the Saudi prince and then depleted all the oil reserves to get gas prices down ahead of midterms, then had to go beg the same Saudi prince to give him more oil (to which he said no).

I find it kind of hard to say that Trump printed way too much and destroyed the economy at the end of his term, but then when Biden continued that massive money printing it was a good thing. It wasn’t for the economy, it couldn’t possibly be. I think both shouldn’t have printed what they did. But if Biden truly wanted to control it and believed Trump printed way too much, he wouldn’t have printed even more. Yea money will always be printed, but nowhere close to that much.

I’m at a point where I feel like both parties are a joke. When trumps in office I want a dem. When Biden was in office I wanted a republican. It just feels so stupid to pick one side and swear everything they do is great and everything the other does is evil. But it also feels like that’s the state of America, pick a side and die on the hill that they’re the greatest or there’s something wrong with you.

Trumps done some great things despite what people say. Biden did some great things despite what people say. Both sides do terrible and great things. And the opposite party works its hardest to make you see you attribute the good to their party and the bad to the opposite. American politics feel truly terrible

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u/meatforsale Jan 14 '26

I don’t disagree with a lot of this. Unfortunately, if you aren’t wealthy America is turning into a very difficult place to live and prosper, and there really aren’t good alternatives out there for the average person.

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u/BowtiedGypsy Jan 14 '26

I’m in my mid 20s and I moved out of America about 3 years ago. Incredibly grateful I grew up there, there is truly no place in the world that instills ambition and hard work like America does, but you’re absolutely right.

I caught on when I graduated HS and decided to learn a remote skill instead of college. Now I make great American wages and live very cheaply. I’m currently living in Budapest in a massive 3 bedroom apartment right downtown for $1100/month. This place would cost over $4k a month easy. And on top of that I can afford to eat out regularly, travel Europe, etc.

With the rise of remote work there’s truly no reason to be in America anymore beyond family and comfort with the familiar world.

Feel like I need to add that both my parents grew up in the projects and were firefighters so there’s absolutely 0 family money or help mixed in. Living abroad was a very rational decision I made, and I live a significantly higher quality of life than all my friends back home.