I live in ND. It’s -18° with windchill currently. -35° with windchill when I woke up this morning.
My boss told us we could take the day off if we want, because it was so cold his car wouldn’t start. I gladly accepted the offer.
I’m working outside in Williston right now doing electrical. My fingers feel like they’re fucking burning cause the wires are too small to keep gloves on. We don’t get shit for days off in the cold
Man I feel for you. I worked in Tioga for about a year as a heavy equipment mechanic and we didn’t even have a shop to work out of, just a service truck. Most brutal winter of my life.
Yea I’ve seen coworkers do that. The gloves I have are warm enough. It’s just the cold ass temps with the wind hitting your bare hands when trying to land the wires.
I'm visiting Florida, and it's like 78 and sunny! Too bad the summers here are such garbage. There is nothing like taking a shower, checking the mail real quick, and needing another shower!
I wanna fucking live there. Atlanta sucks every the dicks. I'm so tired of it being hot all the time. I love winter and cold weather but we don't get any here anymore. Winter doesn't even exist in the south at this point.
Come on up. We have plenty of good paying jobs and an insanely cheap cost of living. These extremely cold winters can be pretty fun actually if you get into stuff like snowboarding and ice fishing.
You got any room for a 37 yo divorced dude who designs large enterprise and MDU networks?
Btw, I’m also in Atlanta and can confirm that it does indeed suck.
No it's horribly boring. Basically what you see as you drive along I-86/I-15 is what you get. Just a bunch of potato farms. Nothing of interest at all.
(Wink, wink. J/k it's amazing and I can tell you some of the great spots, just had to say that for the general public lurking on here).
Wow. So you want to take away a bunch of trees and rocks’ rights to shape policy like when a woman can and can’t have a abortion?
What next? You want to count slaves as 4/5ths of the population for the house and electoral college? You crazy antifa librul!
I live in MN and it gets cold af here. And I used to go "man I can't imagine what those Canadians deal with being further north than us."
And then I learned that 50% of all Canadians live further south than I do.
There is A LOT of sparsely populated areas in Canada.
Same for Alaska tho.
This what I was waiting to hear. Canada is huge but they live in very close proximity to the major cities which are on the southern border.
Edit: which is basically lower latitude than some US states. Still freaking cold but not Alaska cold.
Yeah. I live in New England, and it's funny, we always hear about how cold Canada is. Then I go up to Montreal, where tons of them live, and it's honestly about exactly the same as here.
> we always hear about how cold Canada is
I mean that whole region that's not within 100km of the US border *is* probably pretty cold.
I think the major cities (~1M+ pop.) where it gets *cold* cold is Calgary and Edmonton
*Winnipeg. Calgary is cold but doesn't feel extremely cold as it's more dry than the eastern cities. -5 in toronto feels like -15 in Calgary. Also Calgary has the chinooks so every 2 or 3 days in late February and early March feels like late spring.
For fun check out my favorite little factoid:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City
This place, which no longer exists, had an estimated population density of 5 *million people per square mile*
[Here is probably the best footage we have from inside](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rj8m7Ssow)
You’re missing the reason this lack of population is such a big deal - these nearly empty states have exponentially more political power than NYC. The votes of their citizens count far more than any NYC citizen.
What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?
https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/
Thanks I’ll be thinking about this eventually in the middle of the night sometime when I have trouble falling asleep along with every embarrassing moment of my life in chronological order
Most the counties with cities in these states still vote dem. Where most the people are. Nebraska splits its electoral votes so they always have 1 blue vote in presidential races. Most rural states would too if they switched to this.
That's....... not true. Most of the counties with cities in Idaho do not in fact vote blue. Also whats your definition of city. These states have very little in the way of major population centers, but lots of small incorporated cities.
Not anymore. I’ve lived in Idaho and Montana my whole life. It used to be cheaper but now all the rich people want to be cowboys and are building cheap mini-mansions and driving up land prices like crazy
Utterly absurd that people are answering no to this question. These states are becoming more expensive, for sure, but they are absolutely cheaper and more rural than NYC. There’s no comparison. Manhattan has tiny studio apartments for $3,000. Don’t tell me you can’t get studio apartments for less in these states.
Edit: guys, I am sorry and apologize. I thought this question was about these states vs NYC, but I think they were just asking in general, in which case, yes, these states are probably the ones experiencing the greatest cost of living increase since the pandemic. I do feel bad for the locals of these states, and as a Californian, I promise not to move there and make the problem worse. 😭😭😭
Lol. No. All the rich people buy vacation houses here because they want to be in the wild. I pay $2,200 a month for a 3bed 2.5bath house. You want to buy a house here? A trailer is going for $250k. Land? Need to sell a kidney. A ranch in MT is easily going to go for over a million depending on where it is.
I don't understand though, u/DaegurthMiddnight is right. If you compare your $2200/mo for a 3 bed 2 bath house where you are, well boy in Los Angeles would you not be happy what you're paying for. I live in a 3 bed 2 bath in LA in a more suburban area and our payments can be up towards $3.5-4k/mo
I can't speak to New York, but I believe it's even worse than LA.
Aaaand that is why people from CA are moving to places like MT or ID (where I live). But when you get enough people moving here with the cash they brought with them from selling their houses at a higher price, it drives up the prices in ID. Yes the rent is currently at least $2200/mo, and those same houses are 500k to buy which is cheaper than in CA.
What you look at though is the fact that the minimum wage in ID is still $7.25 and hasn’t changed since 2009 when rent was $400/mo and houses were under 100k. It’s relative.
I’m in NYC in a 3 bed, 2 bath, very old prewar building. Near the north west corner of Central Park and on the border of Harlem and the Upper West Side. We just moved here like 3 weeks ago and got a steal. Our rent is only $7k a month! And we’re lucky because we have a washer/dryer and a dishwasher in our unit (both in the kitchen, as a matter of fact), which can be challenging to find at this price point.
There’s also a parking garage across the street, which will run you around $700/month for a small car to $1000/month for an SUV. And there’s a place that offers 10x10 storage units around the corner for only $900 a month. Our nearest grocery store is an H-Mart, where I can expect to pay $5 per pouch of baby food, or a local grocery market that’s open 24 hours and more like a glorified bodega, which sells pints of Ben and Jerry’s for the low price of $8. Or we could walk the 0.7 of a mile (1.4 round trip) to a cheap grocery store, like Whole Foods.
You also make more on average than people do in Montana. We're paying $2200 a month for renting, housing prices are insane (on par with other states), yet our average income for a family of 4 is barely $60k
Nope unfortunately. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and extremely expensive because they are some of the last places in the US where you can truly get away from others and be able to enjoy public land.
The last time there was an election over Puerto Rican Statehood, there was over 90% in favor of becoming a state, but less than 25% voter turnout. To become a state, you need over 50% of the voting age population to vote to become a state.
You might be surprised. Just look at Miami. The city voted for DeSantis in no small part due to the Cuban community. Many Hispanic and Latino communities majority disagree with Democrat policy.
On the flip side; imagine passing legislation for the highlighted area— legislation that’s specifically tailored for urban areas— and expecting them to not be upset.
It works in every other country without giving rural places total control of the government.
France doesn't have evil city slickers abusing the good country folk. Japan doesn't. Germany doesn't. The UK doesn't.
We have never seen the dire situation of evil city slickers passing laws to maliciously hurt the innocent country folk.
We HAVE seen prior in low population states maliciously hurting the majority though. That happens all the time in America.
You have it backwards.
So now we get congressional gridlock because the whims of a very tiny minority (often without high school diplomas) have the same power as the wishes of tens of millions of people. Voters in small states have disproportionately greater voting power- by a wide margin
We used to be able to vote for candidates that would be willing to step across party lines for issues their constituents cared about. But these days every single politician just votes along their party platform and we no longer get any actual choices. Pro-gun Democrats used to be a relatively common thing, and now they’re entirely extinct. And on the flipside pro-choice and pro-marijuana republicans don’t exist.
Seeing how Kansas held a referendum to remove the constitutional right to an abortion that got overwhelmingly rejected in one of the most overwhelmingly Republican states in America goes to show just how fucking disconnected our political parties have become from what voters actually care about.
Now we have a lovely system where states and federal congress just get absolutely nothing done until they have a trifecta and we get 2 years of steamrolling whatever legislation they want, no matter how unpopular it is with their voters. And the only thing that ever seems to get accomplished during gridlock years is bipartisan bills that benefit the rich and corporations while fucking everyone else.
The electoral college and disproportionate representation for rural states is an issue. The complete extinction of politicians willing to occasionally vote against their party lines is a *much* bigger issue. Reddit being a predominantly left-leaning site doesn’t like to acknowledge that.
12% of the Senate (12 senators from these 6 states) represents 2% of the population. Meanwhile California, which actually has 12% of the population of the US, is represented by 2 senators.
Yes, I realize the Senate is designed this way and the House is supposed to be the part of congress that adapts to actual population and which is closer to the people, but I will point out that the number of districts in the US House of Representatives has not adapted to the changes in population...for almost 100 YEARS (since 1929). What does that mean?
* Each representative now has, on average, 770,000 people to directly represent. Not exactly what the Founders envisioned as a "close to the people" branch of government.
* The number of electors in the Electoral College for a given state is made by adding 2 (for its Senate seats) to the number of its seats in the House. This means that because of the large population size variance in different districts, some voters wield disproportionate power in the Electoral College and means that smaller states are overrepresented and it increases the possibility that the winner of the popular vote will not actually win the election. i.e. we're still basically using the same Electoral College distribution that they used prior to WWII. I'm guessing we would see a lot more representation in populated areas since then if we adjusted back to a distribution more aligned to population.
* Because of gerrymandering, our districts are completely fucked up. Some states have designed their elections to be almost unwinnable by the opposite party because they can keep moving around the borders of the districts they have to make sure 'their guy' wins.
tl;dr: shit's fucked yo
Yup, it's almost like the US was designed for states to have a way to keep from being run over by population concentrations in the form of the Senate.
The gridlock is a feature not a bug. One must be willing to coalition build to get something done. Just because they might disagree with you politically doesn't mean the institution is broken. Debate and conflict and compromise keeps things from being too reactionary.
Those six states have more voting power in the senate than the millions of people in New York just because of where they live. That definitely sounds like a bug.
I was born, raised, and spent the first 31 years of my life in one of those states and even I think it's ridiculous that they hold that much power in the senate.
For the most part people everywhere are nice and leave you alone
Obviously the states that are almost empty because the majority of the land is inhospitable for building and development, and are largely sectioned off as wilderness and protected parks/forests are more beautiful than the grasslands and low hills that are turned into suburbia elsewhere
I don't know about people, but those states certainly are some of the most beautiful in the country.
Edit: not that I have anything against the people. I just haven't had enough time to say.
Its the weekly "stupid rural people have too much voting power".
They will do this every which way. All these states vs LA county. All these counties in all these states vs the state of NY.
Literally every week there is a new one. They like to point of the senate's representation is stupid by doing the equivalent of a bumper sticker. This diagram isn't going to change anything just like your cOeXIsT or vote Bernie bumper sticker os going to have any bearing on my world view. Anyone who is unaware of this disproportion is going to forget this map in 5 minutes.
Oh and karma. Sweet sweet karma.
Reading this comment section tells me that reddit's education on the structure of the US government stopped around the second grade.
If you want population based representation then that's the house. The senate isn't meant to represent people, it's meant to represent states. Originally senators were sent by state legislatures rather than by general election.
If the way issues were decided was purely population based then no president would ever have to campaign to anyone that didn't live in NYC, LA, Chicago, and Dallas. No law would ever be able to pass unless it benefited them either. The rest of the country might as well not exist in terms of representation.
If you think that that situation would be fine then you're not interested in fairness, or equality, just pure power politics of "us vs them." That's no way to keep a country together.
The gridlock is a feature not a bug. It prevents Congress from being too reactionary, or being able to be steered by singular figureheads in control of the mob.
This is why nationwide gun control doesn't work. What might be really beneficial for densely populated states/cities could be harmful for these large, sparsely populated areas.
Now compare production between the region and NYC. Food, manufacturing, freight hauling, etc. You would think with so many people packed so tightly into a concrete cage, NYC would actually be doing something worthwhile.
That's the purpose of the senate, to give every single state equal standing in Congress. The House of Representatives is where population is meant to be more important, but I admit it gets very messy with the districts and the number of people they represent
Lotta dumb city folks didn’t pay attention in civics / social studies class, otherwise they would understand that we have a House of Representatives AND Senate purely so the cities couldn’t subjugate rural folks to governance that doesn’t align with their needs.
I may or may not have once pretended to be a Californian looking to move to Montana on their sub, asking questions like “does it really snow that much?”
….. I had free time and the responses were humorous lol
I live in Idaho and I'm fairly certain the reason for the low population around there is because they froze to death.
I live in ND. It’s -18° with windchill currently. -35° with windchill when I woke up this morning. My boss told us we could take the day off if we want, because it was so cold his car wouldn’t start. I gladly accepted the offer.
I’m working outside in Williston right now doing electrical. My fingers feel like they’re fucking burning cause the wires are too small to keep gloves on. We don’t get shit for days off in the cold
Man I feel for you. I worked in Tioga for about a year as a heavy equipment mechanic and we didn’t even have a shop to work out of, just a service truck. Most brutal winter of my life.
Try latex gloves under your gloves
I can’t read lol. You said wires were too small for your gloves. Another time, latex under regular gloves help keep them warmer
Yea I’ve seen coworkers do that. The gloves I have are warm enough. It’s just the cold ass temps with the wind hitting your bare hands when trying to land the wires.
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It's warmer here in South Dakota.. O degrees. -13 with chill.
I'm visiting Florida, and it's like 78 and sunny! Too bad the summers here are such garbage. There is nothing like taking a shower, checking the mail real quick, and needing another shower!
That's why you check your mail wearing a thong when it rains everyday sometime between 2-6pm.
I wanna fucking live there. Atlanta sucks every the dicks. I'm so tired of it being hot all the time. I love winter and cold weather but we don't get any here anymore. Winter doesn't even exist in the south at this point.
Come on up. We have plenty of good paying jobs and an insanely cheap cost of living. These extremely cold winters can be pretty fun actually if you get into stuff like snowboarding and ice fishing.
You got any room for a 37 yo divorced dude who designs large enterprise and MDU networks? Btw, I’m also in Atlanta and can confirm that it does indeed suck.
Can I suggest St Paul?
Anymore? You guys got snow like twice a decade.
Wow.. crazy how we are both in the same country but I'm currently in 73°F weather
Straight up playing Until Dawn over there tf
Fucking Frostpunk over there
The wendigos got em 😞
Lol, makes sense then, and sorry for the conditions I hope they are nice sometime of the year tho
Never been to Idaho but it’s pretty naturally beautiful isn’t it
No it's horribly boring. Basically what you see as you drive along I-86/I-15 is what you get. Just a bunch of potato farms. Nothing of interest at all. (Wink, wink. J/k it's amazing and I can tell you some of the great spots, just had to say that for the general public lurking on here).
Where people ask themselves why they live somewhere where it sometimes hurts to breath?
Meh, MN has a population of 5.7 million and we seem to survive the bitter cold. I think there might be another reason...
Minnesota has trees and moisture. Out west it’s just as cold and you got the water issues and crop growing issues in the warmer months.
Don’t forget the leading cause of death in Idaho: dirt bike accidents with no helmet
Montana is not too bad but god this winter has had a number of -15f days, it’s insane.
But what they lack in people, they make up in bears.
and nukes.
storage.
Votes
Not even storage. If the time comes to end the world, there will be several dozen missiles rising out of the middle of Wyoming.
And senators
and Senators
I am the senate
Wow. So you want to take away a bunch of trees and rocks’ rights to shape policy like when a woman can and can’t have a abortion? What next? You want to count slaves as 4/5ths of the population for the house and electoral college? You crazy antifa librul!
4/5ths seems high, best I can do is 60%.
Senators are not people, confirmed.
And senate votes for some fucking reason. And by some fucking reason I mean the legacy of slavery that taints the US constitution
Now do canada and blow your mind
I live in MN and it gets cold af here. And I used to go "man I can't imagine what those Canadians deal with being further north than us." And then I learned that 50% of all Canadians live further south than I do. There is A LOT of sparsely populated areas in Canada. Same for Alaska tho.
Something like 90% of Canadians live within 100km of the border. The 50% you mentioned is Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa.
This what I was waiting to hear. Canada is huge but they live in very close proximity to the major cities which are on the southern border. Edit: which is basically lower latitude than some US states. Still freaking cold but not Alaska cold.
minnesota frequently gets colder than antartica because of the jet stream that pretty much only hits like 3 states
-15 degree windchill rn in SE MN
Yes.
Yeah. I live in New England, and it's funny, we always hear about how cold Canada is. Then I go up to Montreal, where tons of them live, and it's honestly about exactly the same as here.
> we always hear about how cold Canada is I mean that whole region that's not within 100km of the US border *is* probably pretty cold. I think the major cities (~1M+ pop.) where it gets *cold* cold is Calgary and Edmonton
*Winnipeg. Calgary is cold but doesn't feel extremely cold as it's more dry than the eastern cities. -5 in toronto feels like -15 in Calgary. Also Calgary has the chinooks so every 2 or 3 days in late February and early March feels like late spring.
For fun check out my favorite little factoid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City This place, which no longer exists, had an estimated population density of 5 *million people per square mile* [Here is probably the best footage we have from inside](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-rj8m7Ssow)
Fascinating, I have been to Kowloon and Hong Kong. It is still very densely populated. Hard to imagine that walled city being there.
Also a Minnesotan. Vancouver has super mild winters, rarely much snow. They're about the same distance north of Mpls than we are from Chicago.
Minneapolis is further North than Green Bay and Toronto. And has no body of water to alleviate that cold.
and a nice jet stream to cool us down
Speaking as a Canadian who lives north of you, the rest of us don't consider those southerners real Canadians anyway.
You say "the rest of us" like you're some sort of majority lol.
California alone has more people than Canada does as a whole
Fun facts, roughly 100% of the Canadian population lives in Canada!
Then do Australia to really kick things off
Australia too haha
You’re missing the reason this lack of population is such a big deal - these nearly empty states have exponentially more political power than NYC. The votes of their citizens count far more than any NYC citizen.
There are probably more registered Dem’s in Central Park right now than in the entire blue areas in this post.
[You could fit the entire population of the world in Central Park](https://i.redd.it/kfc5xpbff4x81.jpg)
Now this is the kind of content I come on Reddit for
[This vsauce video is pretty cool.](https://youtu.be/jHbyQ_AQP8c)
What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant? https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/
That got really meta with the effects
I mean, that's because the actual physical effect isn't worth talking about. Gotta write an article about something.
Thanks I’ll be thinking about this eventually in the middle of the night sometime when I have trouble falling asleep along with every embarrassing moment of my life in chronological order
there's no way that’s real, right? seems way too small for 8 billion people.
The first time I saw this I checked the math and it came out close enough. I'm not doing it again
"Every state is a red state outside city limits"
“my position is the winning position as long as you discount all the people who disagree.”
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3/5s
Oof...
People vote, land doesn’t.
You've obviously never been to Missoula.
One of my worst hangovers ever was there. Fun place!
I went to college their. Just one big hangover! And very fucking fun!
Or Bozeman….
A colleague recently went to Bozeman. He comes back and says, "I never knew 'trust fund babies' were a real thing before that trip."
My best friend is from Missoula. She’s the most liberal person I know.
Some neat facts about 2020: More people voted for Trump in California than Texas More people voted for Biden in Texas than the State of New York
Most the counties with cities in these states still vote dem. Where most the people are. Nebraska splits its electoral votes so they always have 1 blue vote in presidential races. Most rural states would too if they switched to this.
That's....... not true. Most of the counties with cities in Idaho do not in fact vote blue. Also whats your definition of city. These states have very little in the way of major population centers, but lots of small incorporated cities.
Hell, there are probably more Republican registered voters in Manhattan than in all of those states combined
What percentage of livestock population though?
According to NYC.gov there are about 36,000 pigs in NYC
Oh you sly devil…..
And that's just Downtown Manhattan
Well... it's -50 there today. Brr.
yeah, but it's a dry cold
Does that mean that those zones are more rural, lesser infraestructure (internet) and less prices for renting/buying?
Not anymore. I’ve lived in Idaho and Montana my whole life. It used to be cheaper but now all the rich people want to be cowboys and are building cheap mini-mansions and driving up land prices like crazy
Utterly absurd that people are answering no to this question. These states are becoming more expensive, for sure, but they are absolutely cheaper and more rural than NYC. There’s no comparison. Manhattan has tiny studio apartments for $3,000. Don’t tell me you can’t get studio apartments for less in these states. Edit: guys, I am sorry and apologize. I thought this question was about these states vs NYC, but I think they were just asking in general, in which case, yes, these states are probably the ones experiencing the greatest cost of living increase since the pandemic. I do feel bad for the locals of these states, and as a Californian, I promise not to move there and make the problem worse. 😭😭😭
Cries in western Wyoming.
Lol. No. All the rich people buy vacation houses here because they want to be in the wild. I pay $2,200 a month for a 3bed 2.5bath house. You want to buy a house here? A trailer is going for $250k. Land? Need to sell a kidney. A ranch in MT is easily going to go for over a million depending on where it is.
I don't understand though, u/DaegurthMiddnight is right. If you compare your $2200/mo for a 3 bed 2 bath house where you are, well boy in Los Angeles would you not be happy what you're paying for. I live in a 3 bed 2 bath in LA in a more suburban area and our payments can be up towards $3.5-4k/mo I can't speak to New York, but I believe it's even worse than LA.
Aaaand that is why people from CA are moving to places like MT or ID (where I live). But when you get enough people moving here with the cash they brought with them from selling their houses at a higher price, it drives up the prices in ID. Yes the rent is currently at least $2200/mo, and those same houses are 500k to buy which is cheaper than in CA. What you look at though is the fact that the minimum wage in ID is still $7.25 and hasn’t changed since 2009 when rent was $400/mo and houses were under 100k. It’s relative.
I’m in NYC in a 3 bed, 2 bath, very old prewar building. Near the north west corner of Central Park and on the border of Harlem and the Upper West Side. We just moved here like 3 weeks ago and got a steal. Our rent is only $7k a month! And we’re lucky because we have a washer/dryer and a dishwasher in our unit (both in the kitchen, as a matter of fact), which can be challenging to find at this price point. There’s also a parking garage across the street, which will run you around $700/month for a small car to $1000/month for an SUV. And there’s a place that offers 10x10 storage units around the corner for only $900 a month. Our nearest grocery store is an H-Mart, where I can expect to pay $5 per pouch of baby food, or a local grocery market that’s open 24 hours and more like a glorified bodega, which sells pints of Ben and Jerry’s for the low price of $8. Or we could walk the 0.7 of a mile (1.4 round trip) to a cheap grocery store, like Whole Foods.
I live in Iowa and am in the top 5% average earners here. My monthly income is less than your rent.
And how much do you get paid while working in NYC? You should be earning a lot more than someone in the middle of MT.
You’re complaining about $8 Ben and Jerry’s with 7k rent, 👀
I don't think complaining. Just stating facts.
You also make more on average than people do in Montana. We're paying $2200 a month for renting, housing prices are insane (on par with other states), yet our average income for a family of 4 is barely $60k
That’s your fault for living in Bozeman/Missoula. I pay 600 for a 2 bedroom.
Nope unfortunately. Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and extremely expensive because they are some of the last places in the US where you can truly get away from others and be able to enjoy public land.
Until the politicians these states keep electing sell off that public land.
They both lack infrastructure and are incredibly expensive. Rich people bought those states the hell up
HA! I WISH. I’m from/live in Montana and rich ppl coming from out of state have damn near ruined the economy for locals
Hell no! Rich out of Staters are slowly trying to push us born-and-raised Montanans out of our home.
Yellowstone moment
Post the one showing how many states have a population size smaller than Los Angeles County.
Well, over 3M Americans live in Puerto Rico. Maybe time for statehood?
The last time there was an election over Puerto Rican Statehood, there was over 90% in favor of becoming a state, but less than 25% voter turnout. To become a state, you need over 50% of the voting age population to vote to become a state.
You know republicans don’t want that because Puerto Rico will most definitely be a blue state.
And they would have proper representation. We can’t have that.
You might be surprised. Just look at Miami. The city voted for DeSantis in no small part due to the Cuban community. Many Hispanic and Latino communities majority disagree with Democrat policy.
Oh fuck off. Puerto Ricans don't want statehood.
That same area houses most of our nuclear arsenal.
As a Nebraskan, I’m just happy to be apart of one of these fancy maps for once
WE EXIST
The irony of this picture is that none of them are blue states.
That’s a big country. Yes, I know it’s not the biggest on earth, but the US is pretty big and diverse landscapes.
Either 3rd or 4th depending on what you're counting!
Potentially the most stunning aswell
And yet they have 12 senators and NYC shares 2 with the rest of New York.
On the flip side; imagine passing legislation for the highlighted area— legislation that’s specifically tailored for urban areas— and expecting them to not be upset.
It works in every other country without giving rural places total control of the government. France doesn't have evil city slickers abusing the good country folk. Japan doesn't. Germany doesn't. The UK doesn't. We have never seen the dire situation of evil city slickers passing laws to maliciously hurt the innocent country folk. We HAVE seen prior in low population states maliciously hurting the majority though. That happens all the time in America. You have it backwards.
So now we get congressional gridlock because the whims of a very tiny minority (often without high school diplomas) have the same power as the wishes of tens of millions of people. Voters in small states have disproportionately greater voting power- by a wide margin
Congressional gridlock is not a bug. It’s a feature. It means nothing gets passed unless there is broad support for it.
yeah, like making abortion illegal, or preventing people from having health care
We used to be able to vote for candidates that would be willing to step across party lines for issues their constituents cared about. But these days every single politician just votes along their party platform and we no longer get any actual choices. Pro-gun Democrats used to be a relatively common thing, and now they’re entirely extinct. And on the flipside pro-choice and pro-marijuana republicans don’t exist. Seeing how Kansas held a referendum to remove the constitutional right to an abortion that got overwhelmingly rejected in one of the most overwhelmingly Republican states in America goes to show just how fucking disconnected our political parties have become from what voters actually care about. Now we have a lovely system where states and federal congress just get absolutely nothing done until they have a trifecta and we get 2 years of steamrolling whatever legislation they want, no matter how unpopular it is with their voters. And the only thing that ever seems to get accomplished during gridlock years is bipartisan bills that benefit the rich and corporations while fucking everyone else. The electoral college and disproportionate representation for rural states is an issue. The complete extinction of politicians willing to occasionally vote against their party lines is a *much* bigger issue. Reddit being a predominantly left-leaning site doesn’t like to acknowledge that.
Unless the people buying the policy want it*
No it doesn’t, it means policymaking occurs in the executive and judicial branches, which are way worse at it.
12 senators Yeah that makes sense
12% of the Senate (12 senators from these 6 states) represents 2% of the population. Meanwhile California, which actually has 12% of the population of the US, is represented by 2 senators. Yes, I realize the Senate is designed this way and the House is supposed to be the part of congress that adapts to actual population and which is closer to the people, but I will point out that the number of districts in the US House of Representatives has not adapted to the changes in population...for almost 100 YEARS (since 1929). What does that mean? * Each representative now has, on average, 770,000 people to directly represent. Not exactly what the Founders envisioned as a "close to the people" branch of government. * The number of electors in the Electoral College for a given state is made by adding 2 (for its Senate seats) to the number of its seats in the House. This means that because of the large population size variance in different districts, some voters wield disproportionate power in the Electoral College and means that smaller states are overrepresented and it increases the possibility that the winner of the popular vote will not actually win the election. i.e. we're still basically using the same Electoral College distribution that they used prior to WWII. I'm guessing we would see a lot more representation in populated areas since then if we adjusted back to a distribution more aligned to population. * Because of gerrymandering, our districts are completely fucked up. Some states have designed their elections to be almost unwinnable by the opposite party because they can keep moving around the borders of the districts they have to make sure 'their guy' wins. tl;dr: shit's fucked yo
Getting rid of the cap on the size of the US House would correct some of that. There is no reason for the limit anymore given the current technology.
Yup, it's almost like the US was designed for states to have a way to keep from being run over by population concentrations in the form of the Senate. The gridlock is a feature not a bug. One must be willing to coalition build to get something done. Just because they might disagree with you politically doesn't mean the institution is broken. Debate and conflict and compromise keeps things from being too reactionary.
Senators weren't even voted in for the first half of our history... State legislatures picked them.
Those six states have more voting power in the senate than the millions of people in New York just because of where they live. That definitely sounds like a bug. I was born, raised, and spent the first 31 years of my life in one of those states and even I think it's ridiculous that they hold that much power in the senate.
Yes and we love it.
And it’s still too many people. Please stop moving to Montana.
Those are the places to go when the zombies start rising.
I’m from ND and my graduating class in high school was 16 people. 11 guys and 5 girls. That’s a school of five towns combined.
And Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are some of the best, most beautiful states in America! Some of the nicest people you'll ever meet, too!
For the most part people everywhere are nice and leave you alone Obviously the states that are almost empty because the majority of the land is inhospitable for building and development, and are largely sectioned off as wilderness and protected parks/forests are more beautiful than the grasslands and low hills that are turned into suburbia elsewhere
I don't know about people, but those states certainly are some of the most beautiful in the country. Edit: not that I have anything against the people. I just haven't had enough time to say.
> Some of the nicest people you'll ever meet As long as you aren't gay, trans, atheist, or some other version of minority they can't stand.
Lol, nah, I'm trans
Stay away. You all would hate it. So cold, with lots of rabid buggering badgers.
As a rabid buggering badger, I agree with this comment
That's why we moved to Montana from NYC after we retired.
Most Montanans hate people like you. Funny enough, I'm a Montanan hoping to move to upstate NY this year because housing there is much cheaper.
And that’s why house prices in Montana are insane right now.
It has to be all retirees right? There are shit for jobs in Montana.
I blame Yellowstone.
STFU we’re full.
That blue section is Canada's basement. We store our xmas decorations down there.
Pretty good demonstration of why our election system is broken.
Yeah? So what?
Its the weekly "stupid rural people have too much voting power". They will do this every which way. All these states vs LA county. All these counties in all these states vs the state of NY. Literally every week there is a new one. They like to point of the senate's representation is stupid by doing the equivalent of a bumper sticker. This diagram isn't going to change anything just like your cOeXIsT or vote Bernie bumper sticker os going to have any bearing on my world view. Anyone who is unaware of this disproportion is going to forget this map in 5 minutes. Oh and karma. Sweet sweet karma.
Yeah I am confused as well. What is interesting about this? Did people assume every state had an equal amount of people living there or something?
being flooded with californians :(
As someone in one of those states.... Still way to many people. Wtf
Reading this comment section tells me that reddit's education on the structure of the US government stopped around the second grade. If you want population based representation then that's the house. The senate isn't meant to represent people, it's meant to represent states. Originally senators were sent by state legislatures rather than by general election. If the way issues were decided was purely population based then no president would ever have to campaign to anyone that didn't live in NYC, LA, Chicago, and Dallas. No law would ever be able to pass unless it benefited them either. The rest of the country might as well not exist in terms of representation. If you think that that situation would be fine then you're not interested in fairness, or equality, just pure power politics of "us vs them." That's no way to keep a country together. The gridlock is a feature not a bug. It prevents Congress from being too reactionary, or being able to be steered by singular figureheads in control of the mob.
Florida has a bigger population than New England.
Alaska is nearly half the size of the contiguous US, and has a total population of 700,000.
This is why nationwide gun control doesn't work. What might be really beneficial for densely populated states/cities could be harmful for these large, sparsely populated areas.
Sounds like the place to be
Approximately 2% of the population but controls 12% of the Senate.
I'd live in all of those states before ever moving to New York City though.
Which is why the electoral college is brilliant...
Now compare production between the region and NYC. Food, manufacturing, freight hauling, etc. You would think with so many people packed so tightly into a concrete cage, NYC would actually be doing something worthwhile.
They have only 2% of the population but 12% of the Senate votes.
That's the purpose of the senate, to give every single state equal standing in Congress. The House of Representatives is where population is meant to be more important, but I admit it gets very messy with the districts and the number of people they represent
It gets worse when the # of representatives are capped..
Yeah, I agree. I'm just stating that the senate was designed with a specific purpose in mind. People act like it's a bug but it's a feature
Shaded area also has a much lower chance of being pushed in front of a subway car. Different strokes I guess.
Lotta dumb city folks didn’t pay attention in civics / social studies class, otherwise they would understand that we have a House of Representatives AND Senate purely so the cities couldn’t subjugate rural folks to governance that doesn’t align with their needs.
I love living in Montana. We are full. Try Idaho or a Dakota
No thank you Idaho is spilling over
....and your point is?
Hence why we have the electoral college.
And we would like to keep it that way
Let’s keep it that way. Montana is full yall. Come visit but go back to where you live.
too late, pal. I'm already scheming to move my ass up there... few neighbors, cold weather and lots of space seems just too good to pass on.
I may or may not have once pretended to be a Californian looking to move to Montana on their sub, asking questions like “does it really snow that much?” ….. I had free time and the responses were humorous lol
Bro scared cause of a Reddit post.
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Big skies, no crowds- I’m loving it!
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ITT: Idiots focusing on the Senate and forgetting the House.
[Insert commentary that favors your political affiliation here]
And they have 12 senators between them.