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If You Want To Die Young — Take the Red Pill
As giddy as Republicans are about “owning the libs,” the citizens they govern pay a tragic price for the sport
If dying young appeals to you, here’s a simple bit of advice: move to a state or county controlled by Republicans.
At first glance, the images below appear to be political maps. And in the most real sense of the word they are: the county-by-county differences shown by the map from Jeremy Ney’s brilliant American Inequality Substack newsletter and the state-by-state screen shot from the CDC’s NCHS below it.
Both reflect, in large part, decades of regional policy differences.
Long-lived parts of America have generally embraced progressive policies dating back to FDR’s New Deal; the early-death parts of our country most often reflect conservative opposition to everything from the working-class wealth that unionization and higher minimum wages bring, to the availability of healthcare through Medicaid expansion.