Random Thoughts

It’s the 4th of July and that means we celebrate our independence. This has me reflecting woefully upon the 2004 election that gave us George W. If I ever want to become president, I’m definitely hiring Karl Rove.

After the election I was staring in disbelief at the map of blue states and red states. Like George W’s missing year of National Guard service, I thought something may be missing from our electoral calculations. Money. Moolah. El Dinero. I had a hunch that the blue states were the heart of America’s economic muscle. I mean look at those red states. Is anything going on in there besides a whole lot of cousin marrying?

So I started poking around. The Bureau of Economic Analysis has some state by state economic data. After taking that data and trying to figure out how the hell to use Excel, I found out California has a monster of an economy. It makes up over 13% of our GDP. The next runner-up is New York at almost 8% of our GDP. So California and New York alone make up 21% of the US economy! Of the top 10 economic states in the US, 6 were blue ones and they make up 36% of the GDP, while the 4 red ones make up a meager 19%.

So what I found out is that the blue states are financing the red state country bumpkin bible thumpers that are now pushing us around. Independence Day has me thinking very independently. Why the hell am I bankrolling this insanity!? Maybe the blue states should break off and do our own thing. Anybody think I can get Karl Rove to lend me a hand with this project?

(special thanks to Michele for reminding me of this discovery)

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 3rd, 2005 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.