One of the most unfortunate aspects of our current politics is the way tribalism has obscured policy differences. As we head into the 2024 election, few–if any–voters will base their votes on the candidates’ different policy positions. That’s not a criticism of America’s voters. At the top of the ticket, our choice is between a senile megalomaniac whose sole “policy” (if it can be dignified by the term) is hatred of “the Other” and an opponent whose sanity and competence outweighs other considerations.
This won’t be a Presidential election where thoughtful policy differences drive votes, and that’s frustrating for those of us who are policy nerds.
The situation is somewhat different at the state level, however. America’s states have settled into Red/Blue tribal divisions that may or may not hold. For those of us who follow policy preferences and their outcomes, those Red and Blue states provide a rather striking natural experiment, and Blue state policies have emerged as clearly superior.
For example, The American Prospect recently ran an article comparing Oklahoma–a very Red state–with Blue Connecticut.
In Oklahoma, nearly a quarter of children live in food-insecure households, one of the highest rates in the country. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT, its annual compilation of child well-being data, ranked Oklahoma 46th in the nation overall—as well as 49th in education and 45th in health.
Yet Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt rejected the roughly $48 million of funding for the 2024 Summer EBT program and announced in August the state would also not participate in the program next summer. Oklahoma was one of 13 Republican-led states that declined this year’s summer grocery benefit. “Oklahomans don’t look to the government for answers, we look to our communities,” a spokesperson for the governor said in a statement regarding the decision to decline the funding, which they referred to as a “handout.”
Halfway across the country, KIDS COUNT ranked Connecticut 8th overall, 3rd in education, and 11th in health. But the state, which also participated in Summer EBT this year, faces a hunger problem as well—more than 15 percent of children live in food-insecure households. In fact, Connecticut was one of the first states in the country to pilot its own program in 2011.
Research shows that, as political parties nationalized, state governments followed the governing party’s ideology. Differences in outcomes followed.
State government, after all, plunges into the day-to-day minutiae of our lives through decisions about health, education, social services, criminal justice, and more. For example, families in some states get money to keep their kids fed during the summer; in other states, they don’t.
The lengthy article illustrates the multiple ways in which these ideologically-driven policy differences affect both individual citizens and economic performance in the state. It’s well worth a read.
Another article–this one from the American Prospect—focuses on educational vouchers, a policy choice I frequently discuss. The article warns that Red state expansion of universal school vouchers is likely to have profound impact on the lives of young people.
As states race to pay for families to send their kids to private schools, blowing up state budgets in the process, the schools attended by the vast majority of kids will be left with far fewer resources, blunting their prospects. By design, funds are being shifted away from students in poor and rural areas and into the pockets of affluent parents, entrenching inequality in the process.
Among the other detriments of these programs is an almost-total lack of oversight. In Arizona, for example, parents are allowed to direct education funds, not just to the school of their choice, but to anything they might call “education.”
As Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction Tom Horne, a loud proponent of vouchers, admitted in an interview, the state’s emphatically hands-off approach means that there’s nothing to prevent parents from using public dollars to teach their kids that the Earth is flat. Indeed, state law prohibits any kind of public oversight over the burgeoning nonpublic sector of private schools, homeschooling, and microschools, which are for-profit ventures in which small groups of students learn online while being monitored by a guide.
If, as economists insist, economic development depends upon the existence of a well-educated workforce, vouchers don’t just shortchange the children in sub-par private schools. They eventually impoverish the state.
Policies matter.
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