American Apartheid: the "Blue State" Blues

There is an irony in this land.

The "Blue States" of America, whose voters often adhere to liberal "favor the underclass" values, all too often close their doors to all but the wealthy. They often segregate the underclass in black urban ghettos or distant white "bantustans" reachable only by long highway commute.

Indeed for those not wealthy, life is often preferable in the "Red States," dominated by traditional conservatism, with relatively little ideological lip service to the underdog. Jobs may not pay as much, there may be plenty of poverty, but the basics of life can be purchased by the less well heeled, even sometimes by the poor.

Take a most extreme "Blue State" case, that bastion of "economic apartheid:" the highly "liberal" San Francisco Bay area.

In northern California houses routinely sell for more than one million dollars, even in the distant regional environs miles from San Francisco. An additional bedroom or bath may add more than one hundred thousand to the price.

Minimum wage minorities may have public housing and subsidized public services in urban ghettos. Students and other youth may bundle up in shared rooms or houses.

Working class non minorities may commute in by car one hundred miles or more. Huge sections of northern California "bar" new immigrants -- unless they are wealthy. The one exception is illegal immigrants from Mexico who are actively recruited into menial jobs while living in crowded low cost rooming houses or apartments -- with no need to commute the vast highway distances which a low income American citizen might need to travel.

The danger is that in milder form the San Francisco phenomenon is spreading: that "economic apartheid" can spread as Blue Staters help establish in Red States the "economic apartheid" they left behind.

As Blue State retirees migrate to retire into Red States with their lower prices and sometimes milder climates, they drive up Red State prices by using the nest eggs they gain from from selling their Blue State houses to buy and drive up the prices of Red State houses.

And that raises the cost of living for Red State folks, "stuck" as they often are on lower Red State wages.

Of course "Economic Apartheid" is nothing new. The songwriter Woody Guthrie picked it up in the 1930's when he wrote of California:

Do Re Mi

You want to buy you a home or a farm, that can't deal nobody harm, Or take your vacation by the mountains or sea. Don't swap your old cow for a car, you better stay right where you are, Better take this little tip from me.

'Cause I look through the want ads every day But the headlines on the papers always say: If you ain't got the do re mi, boys, you ain't got the do re mi, Why, you better go back to beautiful Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Tennessee.

California is a garden of Eden, a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi.