从政府关门谈美国人口“大分拣”

东湖珞珈

http://www.nbd.com.cn/articles/2013-10-07/777723.html

作者：于时语

美国众议院共和党多数以逆转奥巴马医改法案为勒索，阻挠通过政府预算，迫使美国联邦政府大部分职能部门关闭，成为全球要闻。这一发展会对美国经济带来难以估算的冲击，民调显示遭到大部分美国公众反对，而且怪罪共和党。

共和党本身有过前车之鉴：在1994年以类似手段迫使联邦政府关门，遭到选民强烈反弹。党内传统派，尤其是华尔街和企业界支持的上层精英，纷纷不赞同这样的极端手段。但是众议院内受到茶党势力支配影响的共和党新进议员却毫不妥协，终于导致这场被许多论客形容为“自杀肉弹爆炸”和“神风突击队”的轰动闹剧。

以我的看法，这一发展除了反映美国政治体系的特异，更在很大程度上是近年来美国人口分布演变的结果。特出的一点，便是美国人口分布的“大分拣”（Big Sort）趋势。

这是几年前一本政治畅销书《大分拣》（Big Sort）的题目，书的主旨是近年来，在各种因素驱动下，美国人口的移动分布展，现越来越明显的“物以类聚，人以群分”的自我分拣现象，大批社区逐渐演变成政治和文化取向相同或相似人口的聚居之地。

美国人口分布的自我分拣并不是新现象，美国南部长期的种族隔离是最好的例子。《大分拣》一书的贡献，在于引用大量人口普查和其他数据，揭示这样的人口分拣超越了种族，而日益受到文化价值和政治取向的支配。再加上美国是世界上搬家最频繁的国家：每年平均五户人家中就有一户搬家，大大加速了近年来按照政治文化趋向的人口自我分拣，而政治态度相同的居民，使得向一党一边倒的选区越来越多，造成美国政治的明显“巴尔干化”。

按照县这一级行政区计算，在1970年代，只有大约四分之一在总统大选中一边倒（两党得票相差20%以上）。到了最近的总统选举，这样的一边倒行政县区占了一半。国会众议员选区平均大约由七、八个县区组成，因此也出现了严重的一边倒现象。

《华盛顿邮报》曾经统计：超过九成的共和党众议员来自这样的“铁票”选区，所以尽管在全国和大部分州范围内，多数民众反对关闭政府，这些共和党众议员不必担心自己选区的反弹，所以坚持从共和党全党角度看来是自杀性的攻势。而必须面对整个州选民的共和党参议员，除非来自南部的“深红”州，态度就缓和许多。

还有一个重要的事实，便是共和党在众议院的“结构性”优势，虽然在去年联邦众议员选举中，全美范围内民主党比共和党多了136万多张选票，却仍然比共和党少了33个众议院席位。这里一个关键原因，是共和党在2010年中期选举获胜，因而掌握了按照该年全国人口普查重新划分选区的主导权，大肆施行“蜥蜴脚尾”游戏，最大限度地划分出自己的“铁票”选区。

还有美国两百多万监狱犯人世界第一，超过成年人口的百分之一。《纽约时报》新近报道，这些没有投票权的犯人，都被统计在监狱当地人口之内。由于监狱通常在郊外，大都属于共和党地盘，又无形中增加了共和党在众议院席位上的优势。

必须承认，大部分不惜关闭联邦政府的共和党众议员，确实代表了自己选区的强烈民意。这些共和党右翼草根选民，不仅九成以上是白人，而且越来越代表低教育程度阶层（没有大学学位）。这一阶层是美国经济向后工业化社会演变的最大输家，却未能正对自己日益明显的教育和技能劣势，而是把自身的经济沉沦怪罪到少数民族“不劳而获”，耗费社会福利。奥巴马全民医保改革，因此成为这一阶层的主要目标。

回到美国人口“大分拣”的题目。《经济学人》周刊曾经指出：一个主要动因是在近来的经济和社会竞争中，受过良好教育人口的“能动性”不断增加，纷纷向知识创造力旺盛和高薪职位丰盛的地区迁居，从而帮助促成了低教育白人人口集聚的选区。美国东部贫穷的阿巴拉契亚山区是个典型，在过去20年中，从民主党地盘演变成共和党的深红根据地。


@李根   肿桶你不用找理由来德州啦，去西佛吉尼亚等地吧  

李根

West virginia, mountain mama,
take me home, mountain road

tanis

给东湖帖几张图应景~：）

tanis

tanis 发表于 2013-10-10 05:13
给东湖帖几张图应景~：）

蓝点高加索裔，绿点非洲裔，红点亚裔，黄点貌似是拉美裔

Dracula

李根 发表于 2013-10-10 05:00
West virginia, mountain mama,
take me home, mountain road

Utah是铁杆的红州，民主党上次在那儿赢得大选是1964年，而且现在的经济非常繁荣，失业率只有4.6%，你如果对摩门教徒没有什么成见的话，那里到也值得考虑。

这是最近Economist上对Utah经济介绍的文章。

Utah’s economy
Busy bees

http://www.economist.com/news/un ... e-starved-busy-bees

Where taxes are low, jobs are plentiful and schools are starved
Aug 31st 2013 | SALT LAKE CITY |From the print edition

FEW things excite Gary Herbert, the Republican governor of Utah, more than trashing his own line of work. “Every sector is growing here except for one,” he says triumphantly. “You know which? Government!” He is right; private-sector employment in Utah grew by 4.5% in the year to July. Only the public sector shrank.

Unlike other states that have been piling on jobs, such as California, Utah is not merely rebounding; at its January 2010 peak unemployment was still well below the national average (see chart). Today it stands at 4.6%, the fifth-lowest rate in the country. And the diversity of Utah’s recovery, sniffs Mr Herbert, contrasts with the energy-fuelled boom of other low-unemployment states, like North Dakota.

Success has bred confidence; local boosters speak of the “Wall Street of the West” in Salt Lake City, anchored by a big Goldman Sachs office, or the “Silicon Slopes” around Lehi, half an hour south, where technology firms have begun to cluster. Google chose nearby Provo, one of America’s fastest-growing cities, as one of three pilot sites for its fibre-optic broadband network. Employers like Utah’s skilled workers (particularly young Mormons who learn languages on missions abroad) and its enterprising universities.

Even the state motto is “industry”
The handsome 1,100-worker Lehi campus built by Adobe, a digital publishing and marketing company, is a particular point of pride. Eye-catching murals adorn the walls; employees relax in breakout rooms with pool tables and vintage video games. Brad Rencher, an Adobe executive, says myths have been bust about Utah; potential recruits who once feared bad coffee and uptight Mormons now come for the hiking and skiing. Four miles away Stan Lockhart at IM Flash, a chipmaker, enthuses that the state government knows what business needs.

Indeed, Utah and its cities regularly top national rankings of business-friendliness. Officials gush about low taxes, wages and energy costs, light regulations and enterprising spirits. All this, along with some generous tax sweeteners, has seduced the likes of Boeing, Procter & Gamble and eBay into the state. “We really value capitalism,” says Spencer Eccles, head of the governor’s economic development office.

Yet it is a peculiarly cuddly form of capitalism. Income inequality is lower in Utah than any other state, and a recent Harvard/Berkeley study found that economic mobility was higher in Salt Lake City than in any other big American city. “People here aren’t trying to be Donald Trump,” says Stephen Kroes, president of the Utah Foundation, a think-tank. Thanks partly to the Mormon influence, Utahns volunteer more than anyone else.

Being small and homogenous probably helps; but that is changing. Between 2000 and 2010 Utah’s Latino population grew three times quicker than the state overall. They are now 13% of Utahns, and some areas are majority-minority. Some of Utah’s schools are struggling to cope: the high-school graduation rate among minorities is dreadful. Skeletal education budgets do not help; per-pupil spending has been lower than in any other state since 1988, according to the Utah Foundation.

Utah’s sky-high birth rate helps explain that; it must find an extra $75m a year just to keep up with swelling school rolls. But in neighbouring Colorado and Nevada, both swing states with higher Latino concentrations, lawmakers have seriously debated raising taxes to fund schools. In one-party Utah, by contrast, politicians with ambition speak of taxes only when they want to lower them. (Earlier this year a Republican state senator violated that rule and found himself all over the front pages.)

Businesses like the predictability of stable government, but there may be losers, too. In budget battles, says James Wood at the University of Utah, transport usually beats education. The state’s schoolchildren perform better than funding levels alone would predict. Still, Mr Herbert acknowledges the need for more money, so long as it comes from the proceeds of growth rather than new taxes.

Utah has enjoyed good luck as well as strong leadership. Like its neighbours, it has benefited from natural-resource wealth, plenty of cheap land and proximity to big population centres in California; unlike them, its biggest demographic challenge has been accommodating toddlers rather than minorities. That is changing, and Utah’s leaders will have to adapt.

李根

Dracula 发表于 2013-10-9 16:22
Utah是铁杆的红州，民主党上次在那儿赢得大选是1964年，而且现在的经济非常繁荣，失业率只有4.6%，你如果 ...

谢了。盐湖城俺去玩过，还看到了那个顶端有海鸥的纪念柱（中学英语课本上海鸥吃掉蝗虫救了庄稼的故事），摩门教徒们都很热情。

七月群山

李根 发表于 2013-10-10 05:30
谢了。盐湖城俺去玩过，还看到了那个顶端有海鸥的纪念柱（中学英语课本上海鸥吃掉蝗虫救了庄稼的故事）， ...

海鸥纪念柱在哪？我咋没找到

料理鼠王

没有主体民族的国家，如果不能维持强势的地位，解体是不可避免的。

李根

七月群山 发表于 2013-10-9 16:57
海鸥纪念柱在哪？我咋没找到

在一个大教堂的院子里面，并不高大。

Seagull Monument

雪个

tanis 发表于 2013-10-9 13:15
蓝点高加索裔，绿点非洲裔，红点亚裔，黄点貌似是拉美裔

嗯啊，湾区简直是红色的天下啊

oldnew

美国人口分布
http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/map
http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer

美国人口分布的自我分拣
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apa ... -2010/dp/030745343X

Featured Guest Review: Niall Ferguson on Coming Apart

Niall Ferguson is professor of history at Harvard, a fellow of the Hoover Institution and the author of numerous books, most recently Civilization: The West and the Rest and The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World.

Since the advent of "Occupy Wall Street," there has been a tendency to assume that only the Left worries about inequality in America. Charles Murray's Coming Apart shows that conservatives, too, need to be concerned.

This is an immensely important and utterly gripping book. It deserves to be as much talked about as Murray's most controversial work (co-authored with Richard J. Herrnstein), The Bell Curve. Quite unjustly, that book was anathematized as "racist" because it pointed out that, on average, African-Americans had lower IQ scores than white Americans.

No doubt the same politically correct critics will complain about this book, because it is almost entirely devoted to the problem of social polarization within "white America." They will have to ignore one of Coming Apart's most surprising findings: that race is not a significant determinant of social polarization in today's America. It is class that really matters.

Murray meticulously chronicles and measures the emergence of two wholly distinct classes: a new upper class, first identified in The Bell Curve as "the cognitive elite," and a new "lower class," which he is too polite to give a name. And he vividly localizes his argument by imagining two emblematic communities: Belmont, where everyone has at least one college degree, and Fishtown, where no one has any. (Read: Tonyville and Trashtown.)

The key point is that the four great social trends of the past half-century--the decline of marriage, of the work ethic, of respect for the law and of religious observance--have affected Fishtown much more than Belmont. As a consequence, the traditional bonds of civil society have atrophied in Fishtown. And that, Murray concludes, is why people there are so very unhappy--and dysfunctional.

What can be done to reunite these two classes? Murray is dismissive of the standard liberal prescription of higher taxes on the rich and higher spending on the poor. As he points out, there could hardly be a worse moment to try to import the European welfare state, just as that system suffers fiscal collapse in its continent of origin.

What the country needs is not an even larger federal government but a kind of civic Great Awakening--a return to the republic's original foundations of family, vocation, community, and faith.

Coming Apart is a model of rigorous sociological inquiry, yet it is also highly readable. After the chronic incoherence of Occupy Wall Street, it comes as a blessed relief. Every American should read it. Too bad only the cognitive elite will.

索伦

李根 发表于 2013-10-10 05:30
谢了。盐湖城俺去玩过，还看到了那个顶端有海鸥的纪念柱（中学英语课本上海鸥吃掉蝗虫救了庄稼的故事）， ...

入摩门教是有意义的事！入吧！

lucase

请教东湖大哥，北卡的夏洛特，莱利，教堂山的人口情况是如何的？黑人多么？红脖子多么？

可能去了米国以后，大部分时间会在以上地区活动了。

东湖珞珈

lucase 发表于 2013-10-10 15:13
请教东湖大哥，北卡的夏洛特，莱利，教堂山的人口情况是如何的？黑人多么？红脖子多么？

可能去了米国以后 ...

汗啊，北卡我可是从来也没有去过，也没有研究过啊
看看坛里有没有在那一块的，等他们来说说吧

oldnew

lucase 发表于 2013-10-10 15:13
请教东湖大哥，北卡的夏洛特，莱利，教堂山的人口情况是如何的？黑人多么？红脖子多么？

可能去了米国以后 ...

参考我给的网址, 输入邮编就能看到族群, 收入水平,房屋价格等等信息.

美国人口分布
http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/map
http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer

lucase

oldnew 发表于 2013-10-11 02:05
参考我给的网址, 输入邮编就能看到族群, 收入水平,房屋价格等等信息.

美国人口分布

谢谢！