Two maps that tell the story

You don't even need to play this clip, unless like to listen to President Trump talk.  You know this map, we all saw it election night.  But I want you to look at it in a different light.  The massive red areas are the parts of the country that voted for Donald Trump.  He won the electoral college with those votes.  Visually, the red of the Republican voters areas completely dominate.  But all those little blue spots are not only the places that voted for Hillary Clinton, they are population centers that gave Hillary nearly 3 million more actual votes than Trump.  So this map not only shows where the voters are located, it shows that over half the people who voted (which was only about 40% of Americans) live.  The little blue areas are where over half the people live.

Now, take a look at this map that shows where the highest incomes are in the U.S..   It's mostly the same places that voted for Hillary.  The maps are nearly identical.  Most of the higher incomes (meaning business owners and high income jobs) are in the bigger cities that voted Democrat.  Most of the high tech companies, old and new, are also in those urban areas.  Most of the innovation that leads to new products, businesses, and even new industries are also in those small blue areas.  Most of the U.S. economy is in those small blue areas.

What the comparison of these two maps really shows is that the huge areas of the country in red can't create high numbers of good jobs in the tech-enabled 21st century.  Much of the "red" part of the country are either struggling, or in full-on decline after the Industrial Age fizzled out.  I don't care who you voted for, if we want the U.S. to thrive, we need to get the people in the red states coming up with new ideas for businesses in the future to replace the millions of jobs lost to outsourcing, and the millions more lost to new technology. 

I've written about the Retail Apocalypse several times, and no one has made a good map of all the 4,000+ stores closing this year.  But there is a map of the Sear's/Kmart stores closing, and most of those are in the small cities, towns and rural areas east of the Mississippi.  In other words, the red areas in the East are taking the biggest hits and losing lots of retail jobs now. 

To re-strengthen America's economy, we need highly creative people in the red areas to step up their game, think up new ideas, new businesses, and even new industries to kick start the lagging economies in those areas.  Now you know.  Tell somebody else.