Richard Florida is full of ka-ka

He's one of those redistributionist snobs like Thomas Frank of What's the Matter with Kansas? fame.  Guys like Frank and Florida pull their hair out trying to figure out why the rubes of red-state post-America would actually go for policies that work.

Florida's NYT piece today posits that red states and blue states need each other economically, but look to be doomed to undermine each other's paths to sustained good times because the reddies won't share their bounty.

His reasoning for why they ought to involves more than a little snobbery.  You see, in Florida's formulation, red-state bounty comes from people who work with their hands, and those generating wealth in blue states are savvy and worldly:

Blue states, like California, New York and Illinois, whose economies turn on finance, trade and knowledge, are generally richer than red states. But red states, like Texas, Georgia and Utah, have done a better job over all of offering a higher standard of living relative to housing costs. That basic economic fact not only helps explain why the nation’s electoral map got so much redder in the November midterm elections, but also why America’s prosperity is in jeopardy.
Red state economies based on energy extraction, agriculture and suburban sprawl may have lower wages, higher poverty rates and lower levels of education on average than those of blue states — but their residents also benefit from much lower costs of living. For a middle-class person , the American dream of a big house with a backyard and a couple of cars is much more achievable in low-tax Arizona than in deep-blue Massachusetts. As Jed Kolko, chief economist of Trulia, recently noted, housing costs almost twice as much in deep-blue markets ($227 per square foot) than in red markets ($119).

Does anyone doubt that his mention of "suburban sprawl" is meant to be disparaging?  The professor fleshes it out a bit more in the next paragraph:

Thanks to loose land-use regulations and low labor costs, detached, single-family homes can be churned out quite cheaply, generating more middle-wage, low-skill jobs. And since red states spend less per capita on education, infrastructure and social welfare than their blue state counterparts (and many of them receive more federal dollars than they contribute), their tax burdens are lower, too.

Can't have those loose land-use regulations.  You know, people getting to do what they want with what is theirs.

Oh, and he says that an economic boom based on oil and gas extraction is "ultimately unsustainable," but never gets  around to explaining why.

He notes that a sizable swath of people in red states go in for the minimum wage.  Would like to see some internals on that, but it is what it is.  Let us also remember that restaurant owners in the Seattle area are now having buyers' remorse about the big minimum-wage hike out there.  He says that that impetus will soon put the reddies in the role of ingrates enjoying the collective largess while not ponying up proportionately for its continued flow:

Controlling for the cost of living, they will have wage floors that are higher than those of many blue states. Once Obamacare is factored in, voters in these states ironically benefit from a somewhat strengthened social safety net, even though it is one that their elected politicians mainly oppose and that is heavily subsidized by blue state tax dollars.
For blue state urbanites who toil in low-paying retail, food preparation and service jobs, for the journeyman tradespeople who once formed the heart of the middle class, for teachers, civil servants, students and young families, the American dream of homeownership — or even an affordable rental apartment — is increasingly out of reach. Adding insult to injury, rapid gentrification in these larger knowledge hubs brings the constant threat of displacement of creative workers. For even the much better paid techies, engineers, financiers and managers who are displacing them, the metropolitan version of the American dream is a cramped condo or a small house and a long commute. Many are opting to move to cheaper red states instead, further driving their growth.

And then he spells out what his complaint is: the reddies are keeping their earnings in the private sector and not turning it over to the sophisticated urbanites who make life in our otherwise dull society bearable, for which we all ought to be eternally grateful.

Blue state knowledge economies are also extremely expensive to operate. Their innovative edge turns on a high-cost infrastructure of research universities and knowledge institutions — a portion of which demand public subsidy. Their size and density require expensive subway and transit systems to move people around. Blue state cities like New York and San Francisco are booming, but they are hampered by potholes and crumbling infrastructure, troubled public school systems, growing inequality and housing unaffordability, and entrenched poor populations, all of which mean higher public costs and higher tax burdens.

And yet for all that, they are pioneering the new economic order that will determine our future — one that turns on innovation and knowledge rather than the raw production of goods.

Cry me a f-----g river.  We need your money because our superior way of life is "extremely expensive to operate" and "demand[s] public subsidy."

This is raw leftism dressed up as pointy-headed visionary public policy.  What Florida and the tech workers, artists, beatniks and homosexuals he celebrates in his books such as The Creative Class need to remember is that all their fancy-pants councils and foundations and bike paths and opera companies and esoteric start-ups come to a screaming halt if someone somewhere isn't risking capital to take good old basic materials out of the ground, increase their value by shaping them into objects with greater utility and selling them at a profit.  And get this, Mr. Fancy Pants: after a hard day's work performing such activity, they generally come home and enjoy their families and a home-cooked meal, often washed down with a mass-produced American pilsner.  Then they turn in and give thanks to God the father of Jesus for another day of opportunity in the greatest nation in the history of the world.