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The New York Times’ Upshot section, which was founded by Dave Leonhardt when the NYT let Nate Silver take his FiveThirtyEight to ESPN, has worked closely with economist Raj Chetty since 2013 to publicize Chetty’s findings about how to fight inequality by identifying which places in the country have the highest upward income mobility for working class Americans. Strikingly, #1 of all counties in America in Chetty’s 2015 study was Sioux County, Iowa, which is also the subject of this new Upshot article wondering why Sioux County is the most conservative in the upcoming Iowa Caucus.
But Upshot fails to notice the connection.
How a Quiet Corner of Iowa Packs Such a Fierce Conservative Punch
Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn DEC. 17, 2015ORANGE CITY, Iowa — A century of assimilation has blurred European ethnic heritage in much of the United States, but here in the far northwestern corner of Iowa, people still joke, “You’re not mutch if you’re not Dutch.”
It is here where the Iowa caucuses earn their reputation for backing the most conservative and religious candidates. Despite representing less than 2 percent of the state’s population, the region so overwhelmingly favors conservative candidates that it punches far above its weight. The area can deliver such lopsided margins to conservative candidates that it can cancel out the tallies of far more moderate and populous areas. This time around, the northwestern region might be a stronghold for Ted Cruz.
Without these areas, the Iowa caucuses — and indeed the Republican nominating process — might be very different.
The region’s leanings have their origins in Europe a century and more ago, when religious disputes in the Netherlands sent many conservative Dutch Protestants to the New World. …
Religiosity hasn’t dulled, either: 85 percent of Sioux County’s residents belong to one of the area’s 39 religious congregations, one of the highest rates in the country. “You could call this the Bible Belt of Iowa,” said Mark Lundberg, the chairman of the Sioux County Republican Party.
The election results speak for themselves. Sioux County and the surrounding Dutch areas voted for Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008, both of whom won the Iowa caucuses. They also threw their support behind Gary Bauer, a former president of the Family Research Council, in 2000 and Pat Buchanan in 1996, who did not win. In 2012, all of Mr. Santorum’s top six vote margins came from areas with a disproportionately strong Dutch heritage, including Orange City and Pella. It was enough to cancel Mitt Romney’s strength in more moderate and far more populous areas, like Polk County, where Des Moines is.
In state politics, the region overwhelmingly backed the evangelical kingmaker Bob Vander Plaats, whose name reflects his origin, in a competitive primary for governor. It also voted in the 2014 G.O.P. Senate primary for Sam Clovis, now a top adviser to Donald Trump. He was soundly defeated by Joni Ernst everywhere else in the state.
At a recent caucus training session for Sioux County Republicans, every voter I spoke with listed abortion first among their most important issues. The war with the Islamic State and immigration were mentioned later, if at all.
Sioux County voted 83% for outspoken immigration restrictionist Steve King for Congress.
The attendees were well spoken and well informed, often rattling off facts about the candidates that get little or no attention in the national news media, like which ones have political donors or super PAC backers who support same-sex marriage. …
Marco Rubio may be suffering from the same thing, and voters expressed reservations about Mr. Rubio on issues including immigration and same-sex marriage.
It was Mr. Cruz who seemed to garner more support here than anyone else, a view that is borne out by recent events and data. The next day, Mr. Cruz was endorsed by Mr. Vander Plaats — who supported Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Santorum in the last two caucuses. He was already endorsed by Steve King, the provocative congressman who represents the district.
Polls have since shown Mr. Cruz edging ahead of Mr. Trump in Iowa with strong support from conservative and evangelical voters, implying that Mr. Cruz might have an even larger lead in this particularly conservative and religious area.
I wrote about Sioux County in Taki’s Magazine earlier this year in Moneyball for Real Estate:
… take a look at Chetty’s 25 Best Counties for the lower half of the income scale. The top county, the positive doppelganger to Oglala Lakota County, is Sioux County, Iowa, where kids grew up to make 35 percent more than the national average would predict. Ironically, while Oglala Lakota County is almost all Sioux, Sioux County is 97 percent white.
Sioux County is an impressive place, sort of the Palo Alto of the recent Midwestern farm boom that drove land prices up steadily from 2004 through 2013 (before dropping in 2014). It has fantastic soil for growing corn, and climate change has been making the local weather more beneficent over the last three decades. In late 2011, some farmland in Sioux County sold for a Midwestern record of $20,000 per acre, which would be $3.2 million for a typical 160-acre farm. Sioux County also has some cultural advantages, such as ethnic homogeneity (in 1980 it was found to be the most Dutch place in America). It’s also quite socially conservative, with 80 percent of the population belonging to churches.
While growers in California demand more illegal immigrants, Sioux County voters prefer to use productivity-expanding technology to do the work themselves. Republican Congressman Steve King, an outspoken immigration restrictionist, earned 83 percent of Sioux County’s votes in 2012.
Chetty’s 25 Best Counties for the working class look an awful lot like Sioux County. There are five more in Iowa, six in Nebraska, four in North Dakota (with its energy boom), three in South Dakota, two in Utah, one in Kansas, one in Colorado, one in Montana, and one in Wyoming.
I’ve pointed out three big methodological problems remaining in Chetty’s analysis, but it is pretty interesting.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
Cruz wanted to quintuple H1B visas. Whatever else he says about immigration, this is a travesty.
Entire lines of work being forbidden to Americans, in America, but their legislators – kind of sucks.
But Upshot fails to notice the connection.
Numerous careers are dependent on not noticing.
Chetty’s findings about how to fight inequality by identifying which places in the country have the highest upward income mobility for working class Americans. Strikingly, #1 of all counties in America in Chetty’s 2015 study was Sioux County, Iowa,
Nice county you’ve got there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
Meanwhile, the dastardly Snidely Obama and his minions are hatching a secret plan. Clearly those people in Sioux County are hording all of the Magic Dirt and that’s just plain not fair. In order to help the impoverished, Snidely Obama unleashes his new superweapon, “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” in order to help impoverished blacks by allowing them to benefit from Sioux County’s Magic Dirt and also helping the residents of Sioux County by enriching their lives with diversity. I mean, 97% white and overwhelmingly supporting conservative policies, I mean, can you even? Wow, just wow. Imagine how much more improved life will be in Sioux County after they get a nice dose of Section 8 diversity to enhance the magic arising from their Magic Dirt bounty.
To be fair, Iowa's topsoil is the closest thing to actual Magic Dirt we've seen as an example.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @TangoMan
Numerous careers are dependent on not noticing.
Chetty’s findings about how to fight inequality by identifying which places in the country have the highest upward income mobility for working class Americans. Strikingly, #1 of all counties in America in Chetty’s 2015 study was Sioux County, Iowa,
Nice county you've got there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
Meanwhile, the dastardly Snidely Obama and his minions are hatching a secret plan. Clearly those people in Sioux County are hording all of the Magic Dirt and that's just plain not fair. In order to help the impoverished, Snidely Obama unleashes his new superweapon, "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" in order to help impoverished blacks by allowing them to benefit from Sioux County's Magic Dirt and also helping the residents of Sioux County by enriching their lives with diversity. I mean, 97% white and overwhelmingly supporting conservative policies, I mean, can you even? Wow, just wow. Imagine how much more improved life will be in Sioux County after they get a nice dose of Section 8 diversity to enhance the magic arising from their Magic Dirt bounty.Replies: @anon, @JackOH
Clearly those people in Sioux County are hording all of the Magic Dirt and that’s just plain not fair.
To be fair, Iowa’s topsoil is the closest thing to actual Magic Dirt we’ve seen as an example.
To be fair, Iowa's topsoil is the closest thing to actual Magic Dirt we've seen as an example.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @TangoMan
$20,000 per acre for dirt is pretty magical.
Anyway, thanks for making the Sioux County connection the NYT refuses to see.
I will say, though, that as a Sioux County native, the article seems pretty fair, at least as far as it goes. There's very little of the 'Gorillas in the Mists' tone you usually get in the NYT's faux-anthropological forays into the hinterlands, and they didn't lard up the story with half a dozen quotations from Orange City's resident lefties (there are a few!).Replies: @Barnard
My kind of town even though I’m not too crazy about religion.
I’m a little surprised he didn’t call them out for that shocking bit of unabashed “racism”.
To be fair, Iowa's topsoil is the closest thing to actual Magic Dirt we've seen as an example.Replies: @Steve Sailer, @TangoMan
Sorry about farting in the elevator, but that Magic Dirt is facing some serious problems. Here’s a very good long form investigation on the depletion of aquafers in the Midwest (well worth reading, IMO):
You're right about the aquifers too. Preserving our aquifer is something I hear about every month or so. People actually have bumper stickers on their cars like "I <3 My Aquifer" around here, believe it or not.
What sorts of churches?
When I was a child growing up in Sioux County, I just assumed that pretty much everywhere on earth had six feet of incredibly fertile jet-black topsoil, except for the deserts. Little did I know . . . .
Anyway, thanks for making the Sioux County connection the NYT refuses to see.
I will say, though, that as a Sioux County native, the article seems pretty fair, at least as far as it goes. There’s very little of the ‘Gorillas in the Mists’ tone you usually get in the NYT’s faux-anthropological forays into the hinterlands, and they didn’t lard up the story with half a dozen quotations from Orange City’s resident lefties (there are a few!).
For the Donald’s vice, how about Don King?
The Two Donalds.
I Have a Scheme.
These aquifer problems are serious, but they don’t affect Sioux County very directly, since its climate is just barely wet enough to avoid the need for irrigation to grow its major crops, i.e. corn and soybeans. The point at which irrigation is needed is a line that runs north-south about 150 miles or so west of Sioux County.
Oh, I know. It was more a joke than anything else.
You’re right about the aquifers too. Preserving our aquifer is something I hear about every month or so. People actually have bumper stickers on their cars like “I <3 My Aquifer" around here, believe it or not.
They’re mostly Reformed Church in America and Christian Reformed Church, i.e. both descendents of the Dutch Reformed Church. Viva Calvin!
Heavily subsidized by the federal ethanol subsidy, which the Godfather of Climate Change Al Gore, himself, admitted about a year or so ago was a “boondoggle,” something many of us concluded about 20 years ago. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ethanol-corn-drought-hungry/comment-page-1/#comment-366948 and http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ethanol-corn-drought-hungry/comment-page-1/#comment-367093 It adds to the price of corn, does nothing to decrease air pollution, adds to the price of gasoline, and damages engines, especially marine engines, all to enrich white farmers in Iowa at the expense of the rest of us. That’s why having Iowa start off the primary season with their bizarre “caucus” system is such a bad idea. Back in 2012, Mitt Romney was assumed to be the winner by a narrow margin over Rick Santorum on the night of the vote, until a recount was completed a month or two later which showed Santorum had edged out Romney for first place. No matter. Romney went on to trounce Santorum in New Hampshire and ultimately won the nomination. In 2008, McCain did miserably in Iowa and went on to win the nomination. No matter who wins Iowa, it will have no effect on the 2016 nomination, unless Trump goes on to win Iowa, N.H. and S.C., in which case the game may be over.
I don't understand Americans like yourself opposing this. You really think the Saudis near $50 million more from us every day?Replies: @tbraton, @Taco
Yeah, but ethanol is natural.
So are oil and gas.
BTW do you disagree that ethanol is a "boondoggle"? Even Al Gore, the high priest of Global Warming, finally admitted a year or so ago that it was and that the only reason he supported it was for the votes, first in his home state of Tennessee and later in Iowa (when he was seeking the Presidency).
How many Lutherans?
He was too busy making sure we all realize that
I wonder if, when reporting about political maneuvering in a primarily Jewish area, he writes, “Ariel Goldstein, whose name reflects his origin,” or concerning Somalis in Minnesota, “Ahmed Khalif Daar, whose name reflects his origin.” I’m unfamiliar with Nate Cohn’s work; maybe he does.
Numerous careers are dependent on not noticing.
Chetty’s findings about how to fight inequality by identifying which places in the country have the highest upward income mobility for working class Americans. Strikingly, #1 of all counties in America in Chetty’s 2015 study was Sioux County, Iowa,
Nice county you've got there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it.
Meanwhile, the dastardly Snidely Obama and his minions are hatching a secret plan. Clearly those people in Sioux County are hording all of the Magic Dirt and that's just plain not fair. In order to help the impoverished, Snidely Obama unleashes his new superweapon, "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" in order to help impoverished blacks by allowing them to benefit from Sioux County's Magic Dirt and also helping the residents of Sioux County by enriching their lives with diversity. I mean, 97% white and overwhelmingly supporting conservative policies, I mean, can you even? Wow, just wow. Imagine how much more improved life will be in Sioux County after they get a nice dose of Section 8 diversity to enhance the magic arising from their Magic Dirt bounty.Replies: @anon, @JackOH
Yeah, looks like magic-dirt animistic religion coupled with an unarticulated concession that many folks of Northern Euro extraction have some bad-boy farming chops. Chetty’s yet another public intellectual wriggling his way into a policy-making position, and, afterward, high-end consultancies or a cushy think tank gig away from the backbiting and tedium of academic life. Okay, Raj, we get it, we really get it. Time to move on.
Some. As you can see in this list of Sioux County churches, there’s a handful of Lutheran churches. So far as I know, though, they’re all pretty small, as are most of the non-Reformed churches in the county.
The Sioux County wikipedia page has the following logically fallacious sentence:The reference points to an NYTimes article which says this:What do they mean by "a major denomination church"?
Not many. Lutherans are detested in Iowa.
Only if they’re immigrating from Minnesota.
I remember reading here about the German town that outperformed its Anglo neighbors, I think in Indiana. The religiosity and Dutch character of Sioux County makes me wonder if there is something about a clearly delineated community with strong organization that leads to the success of these communities.
I know, there is a lot of IQ talk, but these stories make me think a strong Dutch Reformed Church or a Falangist Leader can make any sufficiently talented outgroup outperform its peers in a Amy Chua style manner.
Is this community deeply integrated into the surrounding Iowa community or does it produce its own network of Dutch banks, agribusinesses, and other institutions? Do talented young people from Sioux County migrate to Chicago and Denver or are they retained through some mechanism of early marriage or rejection of big city values?
I think the iSteve reading suggests that Sioux County is some distillation of White Rural American Values and Genetics. The Chetty reading suggests some sort of policy masterstroke. I would not be surprised if it is neither and some sort of Mormon-like group that has successfully stayed below the radar by being less overtly distinctive.
https://archive.org/details/protestantismand00troeuoft
On a related note, South Korea now has four times as many Presbyterians as the US, as the PCUSA has departed from its Reformed Roots while Koshin (and especially the HapDong) have remained more faithful.
Which is not to say that Protestantism per se is the way forward, though is seems clear that faithfulness is, given past performance and the widely-accepted importance of trust, and of go0d-faith toward building and maintaining it.
Right. I lived in eastern Kansas for about 8 years and it rains hard about once a month (at least) so that trees grow quite well once they are planted. Eastern Kansas was treeless when the settlers first arrived.
Yes, northwest Iowa’s about the same. When my ancestors settled it, it was covered in tallgrass prairie with grasses that were up to 10 feet high. The marvelous soil is the residue of that biome. If I recall correctly, when I was a kid we were taught that the tallgrass prairies just evolved that way, but now I think there’s a theory that they were a managed landscaped, i.e. the Indian tribes burned them periodically to keep them from becoming forested, because this area is indeed wet enough to support many types of trees.
As a former Iowan (although not from Sioux City) I mourn for the United States that might have been. I wonder if the politics of Pella and Marion County, also a very Dutch community in Iowa, are similar.
My father says, “You can tell a Dutchman, but you can’t tell him much.” Part of my own European ancestors are from West Frisia, so I have a touch of Dutch in me. Underrated people!
Can you elaborate?
Iowa is a very Nordic state. If you google images of Caucasian Iowan high school and college cheerleaders, the majority of them are blonde. Brunettes are in the minority. Which is not surprising for a state where 36 percent of the population self identify themselves as German. Also I am sure there a lot of Germans among White Iowans who reported their ancestry as simply American. So the real percentage of Germans in Iowa is most likely in the 40s or even 50s.
Actually it is, because Germans are not particularly blonde. Blonde hair is predominant around the Baltic and North Seas but not deep into Germany and Austria, where brown hair is more common.Replies: @Hail
The whole world has turned blonde quote from the Italian mother in The Karate Kid would have made a lot more sense if the film took place in Iowa instead of Los Angeles.
I know, there is a lot of IQ talk, but these stories make me think a strong Dutch Reformed Church or a Falangist Leader can make any sufficiently talented outgroup outperform its peers in a Amy Chua style manner.
Is this community deeply integrated into the surrounding Iowa community or does it produce its own network of Dutch banks, agribusinesses, and other institutions? Do talented young people from Sioux County migrate to Chicago and Denver or are they retained through some mechanism of early marriage or rejection of big city values?
I think the iSteve reading suggests that Sioux County is some distillation of White Rural American Values and Genetics. The Chetty reading suggests some sort of policy masterstroke. I would not be surprised if it is neither and some sort of Mormon-like group that has successfully stayed below the radar by being less overtly distinctive.Replies: @Taco, @Desiderius
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t it turn out that the “Anglo” neighbors were in fact Scots-Irish?
It was DuBois County and it was German Catholics outperforming the surrounding Scots-Irish rural communities. Although the Anglo settled communities were slowly sapped by urbanization themselves. I think the consensus was the success and cultural distinctiveness of the Dubois County allowed it to retain talent and institutional capital in a way its peers could not. The surrounding counties tended to retained those who valued rural liberty or had no other economic options.
Further research suggests to me that Sioux County is not particularly distinctive and simply reflects a shallow maxima in NW Iowa land prices. Articles suggest it is due to ethanol prices, the commodity cycle and perhaps a cultural element that has prevented significant consolidation into giant corporate farms. I still think it would be premature to draw wider conclusion regarding the Protestant Work Ethic or towards Chetty style policy conclusions.
Born: Aug 04, 1979 (age 36) · New Delhi, India
Raj Chetty, the magic Hindu who has been kind enough to parachute down here to enlighten us proles. The New York Times and its worship of third world totems.
“Yeah, but ethanol is natural.”
So are oil and gas.
BTW do you disagree that ethanol is a “boondoggle”? Even Al Gore, the high priest of Global Warming, finally admitted a year or so ago that it was and that the only reason he supported it was for the votes, first in his home state of Tennessee and later in Iowa (when he was seeking the Presidency).
Trump is Dutch or at least his ancestors were Dutch. People tend to be attracted to their own tribe so it will be interesting to see if the Sioux County Dutch support Trump more than expected, despite his lack of religious faith.
With the prospect of a brokered convention, the game is never over.
Using Ethanol employs tens of thousands of Americans in farming, distilling, transporting, and blending the fuel, and avoids purchasing 1 million barrels per day of crude from the Arab barbarians.
I don’t understand Americans like yourself opposing this. You really think the Saudis near $50 million more from us every day?
I don't know whether you realize it, but that is the same result you get any time you subsidize anything. You get more of the thing subsidized (and more people employed producing the subsidized item) than you otherwise would. For example, sugar is subsidized in this country (where it shouldn't even be produced), with the result that Americans pay twice the world price for sugar. I don't know if they still do, but years ago the Florida sugar producers had to import temporary foreign workers to harvest their subsidized sugar cane because they couldn't find enough American workers to do that hard, nasty work. If we are going to subsidize anything, why not subsidize wind farms that produce "clean electricity" and solar panels which do the same and electric cars like Tesla which run on "clean energy." There is a long list of items which can be subsidized (and often are). By "subsidizing" ethanol (by requiring gas refiners to add a certain minimum amount of ethanol to gas), farm land in Iowa is diverted from growing food to growing corn which is used to produce ethanol, which is then mandated by federal law to be added to gasoline. The resultant cost is much greater than any savings produced and the effect on the environment (not to mention engines) is negative rather than positive. That's why I (and now Al Gore) label the ethanol program in this country a "boondoggle." Sorry if I hurt your feelings.
BTW, if you really want to cut down on the consumption of gasoline, I would do what they do in Europe: raise the tax on gasoline. When the price goes up, consumption will go down. The federal government will have added revenues to pay for the deficits it is running up.Replies: @JSM
Seriously, ethanol is a net energy loss. The taxpayers pay billions of dollars so that rich multinational agribusiness billionaires can get a little bit richer. In return they give us a product that reduces fuel efficiency, destroys fuel systems, and makes food more expensive.
Ethanol is a perfect manifestation of team blue and team red joining together in the name of "the farmers" and "the environment" to screw over working stiffs and line the pockets of corrupt oligarchs. Big Ethanol represents the absolute worst of America.Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Reg Cæsar, @Former Darfur
Commodities are way down in this current deflation so that price is a peak and probably 5000 more than what it is going for now.
Interesting that these people seem to think like stereotypical “Evangelical” voters even though they belong to Calvinist churches. In any event it seems bizarre to me that single-issue Christian voters can vote for someone like Huckabee or Santorum then turn around to support Cruz who on the opposite end of the Republican policy spectrum.
Well, other commenters have already alluded to it but it may bear repeating; Raj Chetty and his handlers may be perfectly aware that while moving section 8 dwellers into prosperous counties will do nothing to increase the rate of movement upwards for the dysfunctional, it will certainly bring down all of the indices of communal good health for the host populations.
And that may be the real purpose of the exercise. By destroying the prosperity of these too-white counties the wrecking crew will have accomplished two things: they shall have brought everyone down to the same level and in the process destroyed any evidence that a state of meritocratic inequality ever had existed and/or ever could have existed.
Anyway, thanks for making the Sioux County connection the NYT refuses to see.
I will say, though, that as a Sioux County native, the article seems pretty fair, at least as far as it goes. There's very little of the 'Gorillas in the Mists' tone you usually get in the NYT's faux-anthropological forays into the hinterlands, and they didn't lard up the story with half a dozen quotations from Orange City's resident lefties (there are a few!).Replies: @Barnard
Do you know any lefties who don’t work for one of the colleges? I know they both have plenty of staff that would love to add vibrant diversity to Sioux County.
You're right that the colleges -- Northwestern in Orange City, and Dordt in Sioux Center -- have some typical academics who fit this latter mold, but it seems as if both colleges have done pretty well in sticking to their mission as genuinely Christian, unlike so many others. They depend heavily on pleasing the conservative Dutch-American parents of most of their students, so they haven't drifted too far institutionally.Replies: @Desiderius
When I attended last year’s Tulip Festival in Orange (the county seat for Sioux County), Rep. Steve King rode in the parade in some classic car, and the official announcer basically endorsed his political career, saying something like “Here comes own Congressman, Steve King, an honorable man who’s a fine champion of our Constitutional liberties, and the American way of life.” Its not every day the local community Establishment heartily and publicly embraces someone who could reasonably be described as part of the far-right in American politics.
I don't understand Americans like yourself opposing this. You really think the Saudis near $50 million more from us every day?Replies: @tbraton, @Taco
“Using Ethanol employs tens of thousands of Americans in farming, distilling, transporting, and blending the fuel, and avoids purchasing 1 million barrels per day of crude from the Arab barbarians.”
I don’t know whether you realize it, but that is the same result you get any time you subsidize anything. You get more of the thing subsidized (and more people employed producing the subsidized item) than you otherwise would. For example, sugar is subsidized in this country (where it shouldn’t even be produced), with the result that Americans pay twice the world price for sugar. I don’t know if they still do, but years ago the Florida sugar producers had to import temporary foreign workers to harvest their subsidized sugar cane because they couldn’t find enough American workers to do that hard, nasty work. If we are going to subsidize anything, why not subsidize wind farms that produce “clean electricity” and solar panels which do the same and electric cars like Tesla which run on “clean energy.” There is a long list of items which can be subsidized (and often are). By “subsidizing” ethanol (by requiring gas refiners to add a certain minimum amount of ethanol to gas), farm land in Iowa is diverted from growing food to growing corn which is used to produce ethanol, which is then mandated by federal law to be added to gasoline. The resultant cost is much greater than any savings produced and the effect on the environment (not to mention engines) is negative rather than positive. That’s why I (and now Al Gore) label the ethanol program in this country a “boondoggle.” Sorry if I hurt your feelings.
BTW, if you really want to cut down on the consumption of gasoline, I would do what they do in Europe: raise the tax on gasoline. When the price goes up, consumption will go down. The federal government will have added revenues to pay for the deficits it is running up.
No, this idea is better: thorium-burning liquid fluoride-cooled nuclear reactors. Proven technology; it's much safer than light-water-cooled uranium burning nuclear reactors because no pressure vessels needed; and thorium is vastly abundant in America. We could tell the Middle East, (including our "stationary aircraft carrier" --that we've never used,"best friend forever" foreign-aid-welfare queen state of Israel) to go pound sand. We American-Americans could have good jobs mining coal -- for the THORIUM not the coal!! -- and running the LFTR nuclear plants to power everything, including your electric Tesla cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZYReplies: @tbraton, @Former Darfur
About a month ago I heard a story on NPR about Arizona selling water Saudi Arabia it seemed insane at the time. Yet it continues.
I meant to post about it back then but forgot. Seems somewhat relevant now.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2015/11/03/montini-saudi-arabia-drought-arizona-hay/75116656/
Making a place like Sioux County into a magical diverse place will just reliably turn Evangelical SWPL type people into hard core biker type rednecks. There is no place to White flight to, any more, meaning White Fight. Donald Trump is evidence of that. Just four years ago Republicans nominated Mitt Romney and before that McCain. Now its Trump as the leader, solely in his fighting spirit and willingness to fight.
It's not redneck country, but organic farmer heaven.Replies: @Grumpy
Conservative Dutch? Not many left in Holland. I guess the conservative ones emigrated to Iowa or South Africa. Funny how the Afrikaners stand out above their neighbors, like the Dutch in Iowa. Still, like the old saying goes, “You can always tell a Dutchman, but you can’t tell him much.”
I wonder if any of the Sioux County residents is named Koos Van der Merwe….
Trump is German, not Dutch.
When I read that this guy was telling the FBI all about attacks that he had helped Farook plan in 2012, all I could think was, “Seriously? Is he stupid enough to talk to the FBI without having a lawyer at his side? A lawyer who knows all about how easy it is for some dumb schlub to satisfy the elements for the crime of conspiracy and can kick his client under the table to make him shut up?” I guess the answer is, Yep, he’s that stupid.
Does the equality of this county mean that they have a much more narrow standard deviation (IQ) than 15?! Small SD = Equality. The places with the most inequality have the greatest IQ disparity. If Sioux county is the most equal one, then it has to be the one with the least IQ disparity.
And I guess that a non-disfunctional culture has a positive effect on the behavior of their residents.
I think the “you’re not much if you’re not Dutch” fell out of use a long time ago. My family is from the region and I’ve never heard that said.
There’s brain drain to Denver and Chicago, but the ones who remain are still pretty sharp and there is still decent, honorable employment for them.
My family says that there’s also Chicago mob money in Sioux City, but I’ve never gotten specifics or been able to find anything about it. During Prohibition a lot of farmers made bathtub gin and beer.
Ethanol subsidies are the best EFF-you to all blue-state cities.
There's a country to run.
Ethanol from sugar cane would make sense if we were tropical. Ethanol from switchgrass might make sense if you actually could economically make ethanol from switchgrass. Methanol from wood waste would make more sense, but methanolproofing engines and fuel systems is much more expensive.
There is one more thing to consider. Just because something the Republicans want does not get subsidized does not mean nothing gets subsidized. The principled position just makes one a loser, where tax money is redirected toward the benefit of Leftists.
There’s always the Driftless, in the other corner of northern Iowa. The only diversity there was in Postville, and that was raided out of existence by ICE agents.
It’s not redneck country, but organic farmer heaven.
The Midwest is just beginning to learn what this is like. Tale a look at California's gigantic Central Valley if you want to see what's coming.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
I wonder if any of the Sioux County residents is named Koos Van der Merwe....Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @5371
Never been to Grand Rapids?
How do the urban reps vote on the issue?
They get their money from Big Agra.
I know, there is a lot of IQ talk, but these stories make me think a strong Dutch Reformed Church or a Falangist Leader can make any sufficiently talented outgroup outperform its peers in a Amy Chua style manner.
Is this community deeply integrated into the surrounding Iowa community or does it produce its own network of Dutch banks, agribusinesses, and other institutions? Do talented young people from Sioux County migrate to Chicago and Denver or are they retained through some mechanism of early marriage or rejection of big city values?
I think the iSteve reading suggests that Sioux County is some distillation of White Rural American Values and Genetics. The Chetty reading suggests some sort of policy masterstroke. I would not be surprised if it is neither and some sort of Mormon-like group that has successfully stayed below the radar by being less overtly distinctive.Replies: @Taco, @Desiderius
Another possibility is that they’re living in a way that once made the better part of the country, and before that the Protestant world, great. See:
https://archive.org/details/protestantismand00troeuoft
On a related note, South Korea now has four times as many Presbyterians as the US, as the PCUSA has departed from its Reformed Roots while Koshin (and especially the HapDong) have remained more faithful.
Which is not to say that Protestantism per se is the way forward, though is seems clear that faithfulness is, given past performance and the widely-accepted importance of trust, and of go0d-faith toward building and maintaining it.
You’re welcome to give them an EFF-you on your own dime.
There’s a country to run.
I wonder if any of the Sioux County residents is named Koos Van der Merwe....Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @5371
There’s still a Bible Belt in the Netherlands.
If conservative Calvinism is so great then why are Afrikaners so much less successful than the English? Also Afrikaners whine a lot about oppression by the English, blaming their lower economic status on the Boer War over 100 years ago. (Totally ignoring how they were in charge for most of 20th century South Africa.) Part of Apartheid was just a gigantic welfare scheme to provide make work jobs to Afrikaners.
I don't understand Americans like yourself opposing this. You really think the Saudis near $50 million more from us every day?Replies: @tbraton, @Taco
And don’t forget all the Americans who are employed repairing the fuel lines, carbuerators, injectors, and other vehicle components destroyed by ethanol!
Seriously, ethanol is a net energy loss. The taxpayers pay billions of dollars so that rich multinational agribusiness billionaires can get a little bit richer. In return they give us a product that reduces fuel efficiency, destroys fuel systems, and makes food more expensive.
Ethanol is a perfect manifestation of team blue and team red joining together in the name of “the farmers” and “the environment” to screw over working stiffs and line the pockets of corrupt oligarchs. Big Ethanol represents the absolute worst of America.
But ethanol is #2.
OTOH lots of small engines are not alcoholproof. This is sheer cheapness on the part of manufacturers.
I don't like fuel alcohol because it makes no thermodynamic sense, but, it is idiotic to have a non alcoholproof gas engine today. Yes, the old ones can be updated.Replies: @Taco
Lutherans are a large part of the population in Eastern Iowa.
Sioux County sounds like a great place. What’s wrong with the rest of Iowa? Romney actually did worse among whites there than in Minnesota and Wisconsin. A rural, Midwestern, almost all white state voted for Obama twice, handily. As Steve said once, if Republicans can’t win a place like Iowa, what’s wrong with them?
Now that Cruz has pulled ahead in Iowa, he is getting attacked from many fronts, including the GOP establishment. They’re saying he can’t win the general election, which is something that doesn’t have much credence if you look at recent polls (the most recent one actually has him beating Hillary in Iowa, for instance). But I’m shocked Mike Huckabee hasn’t been more of a player this campaign; there is nobody that stands up for persecuted Christians like Huckabee. With more than a month until the caucuses, I’m looking for a potential late surge by Huckabee if Trump and/or Cruz falter.
Seriously, ethanol is a net energy loss. The taxpayers pay billions of dollars so that rich multinational agribusiness billionaires can get a little bit richer. In return they give us a product that reduces fuel efficiency, destroys fuel systems, and makes food more expensive.
Ethanol is a perfect manifestation of team blue and team red joining together in the name of "the farmers" and "the environment" to screw over working stiffs and line the pockets of corrupt oligarchs. Big Ethanol represents the absolute worst of America.Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Reg Cæsar, @Former Darfur
Disagree slightly. The “perfect manifestation of team blue and team red joining together” is uncontrolled immigration. Dems get voters and clients for the welfare state, Repubs get cheap labor, the lower class get unemployed, and the middle class gets to pay the costs.
But ethanol is #2.
Yes. For example, there are also some German Catholics who tend to be pro-union democrats, plus others who take pride in being enlightened rebels who can ‘see through the hypocrisy’ of all the churchy Calvinists.
You’re right that the colleges — Northwestern in Orange City, and Dordt in Sioux Center — have some typical academics who fit this latter mold, but it seems as if both colleges have done pretty well in sticking to their mission as genuinely Christian, unlike so many others. They depend heavily on pleasing the conservative Dutch-American parents of most of their students, so they haven’t drifted too far institutionally.
They've even come up with a decent cure or two over the years.
Seriously, ethanol is a net energy loss. The taxpayers pay billions of dollars so that rich multinational agribusiness billionaires can get a little bit richer. In return they give us a product that reduces fuel efficiency, destroys fuel systems, and makes food more expensive.
Ethanol is a perfect manifestation of team blue and team red joining together in the name of "the farmers" and "the environment" to screw over working stiffs and line the pockets of corrupt oligarchs. Big Ethanol represents the absolute worst of America.Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Reg Cæsar, @Former Darfur
Some of those working stiffs are bought off with food stamps– from the Dept of Agriculture.
“Which is not surprising for a state where 36 percent of the population self identify themselves as German.”
Actually it is, because Germans are not particularly blonde. Blonde hair is predominant around the Baltic and North Seas but not deep into Germany and Austria, where brown hair is more common.
Yes, you were right.
It was DuBois County and it was German Catholics outperforming the surrounding Scots-Irish rural communities. Although the Anglo settled communities were slowly sapped by urbanization themselves. I think the consensus was the success and cultural distinctiveness of the Dubois County allowed it to retain talent and institutional capital in a way its peers could not. The surrounding counties tended to retained those who valued rural liberty or had no other economic options.
Further research suggests to me that Sioux County is not particularly distinctive and simply reflects a shallow maxima in NW Iowa land prices. Articles suggest it is due to ethanol prices, the commodity cycle and perhaps a cultural element that has prevented significant consolidation into giant corporate farms. I still think it would be premature to draw wider conclusion regarding the Protestant Work Ethic or towards Chetty style policy conclusions.
It's not redneck country, but organic farmer heaven.Replies: @Grumpy
If only. The diversity in Postville was not “raided out of existence.” Far from it. Once diversity is in place, it never leaves. In a few rarified environments, it might change from one type of diversity to another as the result of Herculean forces of gentrification, but that doesn’t happen in places where regular folks live.
The Midwest is just beginning to learn what this is like. Tale a look at California’s gigantic Central Valley if you want to see what’s coming.
Many upper Midwest rural counties have been 2-4% Hispanic since the bracero days, at least during the planting and harvesting seasons. Friends of mine went to school with their kids.
The Mayans were sent packing, and I would assume the rabbis left, too, when their bosses were jailed. (For financial chicanery, not immigration stuff.) they never liked being forced to mow the grass, something they never did in Brooklyn.
You're right that the colleges -- Northwestern in Orange City, and Dordt in Sioux Center -- have some typical academics who fit this latter mold, but it seems as if both colleges have done pretty well in sticking to their mission as genuinely Christian, unlike so many others. They depend heavily on pleasing the conservative Dutch-American parents of most of their students, so they haven't drifted too far institutionally.Replies: @Desiderius
Funny thing about that – Calvinism properly practiced sees through it too, and further than most want to look.
They’ve even come up with a decent cure or two over the years.
I don't know whether you realize it, but that is the same result you get any time you subsidize anything. You get more of the thing subsidized (and more people employed producing the subsidized item) than you otherwise would. For example, sugar is subsidized in this country (where it shouldn't even be produced), with the result that Americans pay twice the world price for sugar. I don't know if they still do, but years ago the Florida sugar producers had to import temporary foreign workers to harvest their subsidized sugar cane because they couldn't find enough American workers to do that hard, nasty work. If we are going to subsidize anything, why not subsidize wind farms that produce "clean electricity" and solar panels which do the same and electric cars like Tesla which run on "clean energy." There is a long list of items which can be subsidized (and often are). By "subsidizing" ethanol (by requiring gas refiners to add a certain minimum amount of ethanol to gas), farm land in Iowa is diverted from growing food to growing corn which is used to produce ethanol, which is then mandated by federal law to be added to gasoline. The resultant cost is much greater than any savings produced and the effect on the environment (not to mention engines) is negative rather than positive. That's why I (and now Al Gore) label the ethanol program in this country a "boondoggle." Sorry if I hurt your feelings.
BTW, if you really want to cut down on the consumption of gasoline, I would do what they do in Europe: raise the tax on gasoline. When the price goes up, consumption will go down. The federal government will have added revenues to pay for the deficits it is running up.Replies: @JSM
If we are going to subsidize anything, why not subsidize wind farms that produce “clean electricity” and solar panels which do the same
No, this idea is better: thorium-burning liquid fluoride-cooled nuclear reactors. Proven technology; it’s much safer than light-water-cooled uranium burning nuclear reactors because no pressure vessels needed; and thorium is vastly abundant in America. We could tell the Middle East, (including our “stationary aircraft carrier” –that we’ve never used,”best friend forever” foreign-aid-welfare queen state of Israel) to go pound sand. We American-Americans could have good jobs mining coal — for the THORIUM not the coal!! — and running the LFTR nuclear plants to power everything, including your electric Tesla cars.
No, this idea is better: thorium-burning liquid fluoride-cooled nuclear reactors. Proven technology; it's much safer than light-water-cooled uranium burning nuclear reactors because no pressure vessels needed; and thorium is vastly abundant in America. We could tell the Middle East, (including our "stationary aircraft carrier" --that we've never used,"best friend forever" foreign-aid-welfare queen state of Israel) to go pound sand. We American-Americans could have good jobs mining coal -- for the THORIUM not the coal!! -- and running the LFTR nuclear plants to power everything, including your electric Tesla cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZYReplies: @tbraton, @Former Darfur
No argument here. Hell, I was even a supporter of uranium reactors to generate clean electricity. I don’t understand the climate change fanatics who are opposed to nuclear since it is very clean. We spent billions constructing a safe depository for the spent uranium in the mountains of Nevada, and Harry Reid succeeded in blocking it, unfortunately. I believe France gets over 80% of its electricity safely from nuclear. If there is an even better way, I’m for it. I don’t think windmills and solar panels can produce all the energy we need. I hope you didn’t conclude I was a supporter of Tesla. Not opposed to Tesla (based on all reports, the Tesla is a great car), just opposed to federal tax subsidies for all electric vehicles, including Tesla. I made some money shorting Tesla a while back and may do so again. It’s a greatly overpriced stock whose price is built on fantasies.
Good faith has been tried and found wanting. Perhaps game theory would suggest an alternative.If the Mouth of Sauron were here and walking among us in person, he would be difficult to distinguish from Harry Reid.
Seriously, ethanol is a net energy loss. The taxpayers pay billions of dollars so that rich multinational agribusiness billionaires can get a little bit richer. In return they give us a product that reduces fuel efficiency, destroys fuel systems, and makes food more expensive.
Ethanol is a perfect manifestation of team blue and team red joining together in the name of "the farmers" and "the environment" to screw over working stiffs and line the pockets of corrupt oligarchs. Big Ethanol represents the absolute worst of America.Replies: @Jim Don Bob, @Reg Cæsar, @Former Darfur
There aren’t any significant numbers of cars with carburetors any more, and if you have one it needs a fuel system overhaul anyway if that hasn’t been done recently. Almost all fuel lines and injectors now are ethanolproof because they are also used in E85 flex fuel vehicles.
OTOH lots of small engines are not alcoholproof. This is sheer cheapness on the part of manufacturers.
I don’t like fuel alcohol because it makes no thermodynamic sense, but, it is idiotic to have a non alcoholproof gas engine today. Yes, the old ones can be updated.
No, this idea is better: thorium-burning liquid fluoride-cooled nuclear reactors. Proven technology; it's much safer than light-water-cooled uranium burning nuclear reactors because no pressure vessels needed; and thorium is vastly abundant in America. We could tell the Middle East, (including our "stationary aircraft carrier" --that we've never used,"best friend forever" foreign-aid-welfare queen state of Israel) to go pound sand. We American-Americans could have good jobs mining coal -- for the THORIUM not the coal!! -- and running the LFTR nuclear plants to power everything, including your electric Tesla cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZYReplies: @tbraton, @Former Darfur
Then we’d have one less excuse to be in the Middle East.
It’s a damn inefficient one. It mostly benefits Big Agribiz and otherwise creates maybe a thousand ethanol plant jobs at an average cost of probably a million dollars a year each.
Ethanol from sugar cane would make sense if we were tropical. Ethanol from switchgrass might make sense if you actually could economically make ethanol from switchgrass. Methanol from wood waste would make more sense, but methanolproofing engines and fuel systems is much more expensive.
It is impossible to stand under them, because they’re already there.
Good faith has been tried and found wanting. Perhaps game theory would suggest an alternative.
If the Mouth of Sauron were here and walking among us in person, he would be difficult to distinguish from Harry Reid.
The Midwest is just beginning to learn what this is like. Tale a look at California's gigantic Central Valley if you want to see what's coming.Replies: @Reg Cæsar
I may have exaggerated, but… The 2010 Census says Postville is still 77% white, and the counties it straddles are 96% and 98% white. I think most iStevers could live with that.
Many upper Midwest rural counties have been 2-4% Hispanic since the bracero days, at least during the planting and harvesting seasons. Friends of mine went to school with their kids.
The Mayans were sent packing, and I would assume the rabbis left, too, when their bosses were jailed. (For financial chicanery, not immigration stuff.) they never liked being forced to mow the grass, something they never did in Brooklyn.
OTOH lots of small engines are not alcoholproof. This is sheer cheapness on the part of manufacturers.
I don't like fuel alcohol because it makes no thermodynamic sense, but, it is idiotic to have a non alcoholproof gas engine today. Yes, the old ones can be updated.Replies: @Taco
I own a car with a carbuerator, and no it doesn’t need a fuel system overhaul. It just needs ethanol-free gas.
I had a mid-eighties Ford Thunderbird built with the turbo engine that locked up and would have cost more than the car was worth to fix it, so I decided to convert it to a V-8. In so doing I dropped the gas tank and found an enormous amount of rust and crap in the tank. There were still radiator shops operating in the area I then lived in and they boiled it out and sloshed it for a reasonable fee. Today, the EPA has run most of them out of business and so one just buys a new Chinese gas tank. I replaced all the hoses and fitted a much better fuel filter system. (The old hoses, on a car then less than fifteen years old, were scary: I literally pulled the return hose off with my fingers.) The 5 liter V8 I installed had EFI and the superb Ford crank triggered ignition and I never made the least effort to avoid alcohol fuel: it ran flawlessly until I sold the car years later.
Even if you avoid alcohol in the fuel, modern gas has enough other things in it that any rubber or plastic parts made more than twenty years ago, and many made today for small engines, are going to be attacked. Particularly in California where "highly oxygenated" fuels are mandated for emissions reasons.
I run the carbureted engines on my lawn equipment and the old generator set I have at the vacation house on aviation gasoline. It's the only fuel that won't go bad in three or four months anymore, but its availability is going to end sooner or later. The general aviation community has known this for a third of a century and has refused to do much about it, so I am going to ignore their howling as I do the howling of old car owners now.Replies: @Taco
The last car with a carburetor sold in the US was probably a 1990 model, and so yes, it probably does need going through.
I had a mid-eighties Ford Thunderbird built with the turbo engine that locked up and would have cost more than the car was worth to fix it, so I decided to convert it to a V-8. In so doing I dropped the gas tank and found an enormous amount of rust and crap in the tank. There were still radiator shops operating in the area I then lived in and they boiled it out and sloshed it for a reasonable fee. Today, the EPA has run most of them out of business and so one just buys a new Chinese gas tank. I replaced all the hoses and fitted a much better fuel filter system. (The old hoses, on a car then less than fifteen years old, were scary: I literally pulled the return hose off with my fingers.) The 5 liter V8 I installed had EFI and the superb Ford crank triggered ignition and I never made the least effort to avoid alcohol fuel: it ran flawlessly until I sold the car years later.
Even if you avoid alcohol in the fuel, modern gas has enough other things in it that any rubber or plastic parts made more than twenty years ago, and many made today for small engines, are going to be attacked. Particularly in California where “highly oxygenated” fuels are mandated for emissions reasons.
I run the carbureted engines on my lawn equipment and the old generator set I have at the vacation house on aviation gasoline. It’s the only fuel that won’t go bad in three or four months anymore, but its availability is going to end sooner or later. The general aviation community has known this for a third of a century and has refused to do much about it, so I am going to ignore their howling as I do the howling of old car owners now.
I had a mid-eighties Ford Thunderbird built with the turbo engine that locked up and would have cost more than the car was worth to fix it, so I decided to convert it to a V-8. In so doing I dropped the gas tank and found an enormous amount of rust and crap in the tank. There were still radiator shops operating in the area I then lived in and they boiled it out and sloshed it for a reasonable fee. Today, the EPA has run most of them out of business and so one just buys a new Chinese gas tank. I replaced all the hoses and fitted a much better fuel filter system. (The old hoses, on a car then less than fifteen years old, were scary: I literally pulled the return hose off with my fingers.) The 5 liter V8 I installed had EFI and the superb Ford crank triggered ignition and I never made the least effort to avoid alcohol fuel: it ran flawlessly until I sold the car years later.
Even if you avoid alcohol in the fuel, modern gas has enough other things in it that any rubber or plastic parts made more than twenty years ago, and many made today for small engines, are going to be attacked. Particularly in California where "highly oxygenated" fuels are mandated for emissions reasons.
I run the carbureted engines on my lawn equipment and the old generator set I have at the vacation house on aviation gasoline. It's the only fuel that won't go bad in three or four months anymore, but its availability is going to end sooner or later. The general aviation community has known this for a third of a century and has refused to do much about it, so I am going to ignore their howling as I do the howling of old car owners now.Replies: @Taco
I have no intention of converting my classic American muscle car into a fuel injection system, sorry.
All the modern carb rebuild kits are now made that way, but there are a lot of NOS tank senders, fuel pumps, et al. that aren't. Best case scenario is that the fuel system plugs up slowly and you decide to fix it the right way. Worst case scenario is a fuel leak followed by a fuel fire.
I don't care what you do. I don't have to drive your car, and if you choose to ignore good advice the consequences are on you.Replies: @Taco
Poor effort at trolling.
This is interesting,
The Sioux County wikipedia page has the following logically fallacious sentence:
The reference points to an NYTimes article which says this:
What do they mean by “a major denomination church”?
Actually it is, because Germans are not particularly blonde. Blonde hair is predominant around the Baltic and North Seas but not deep into Germany and Austria, where brown hair is more common.Replies: @Hail
According to the work of the Germanophone physical anthropologists contemperaneous with Dr. Carleton Coon, there was a steady deBlondization of “Germans” (speakers of the German language) between the Voelkerwanderung and the 20th century. (Essentially all this anthropological work stopped in 1945, of course, which is a shame.
Osteen-free.
You don’t have to do that. You do need to make sure all the rubber and plastic in the fuel system is of the modern formula, though, because otherwise it’s going to turn to goo. Alcohol or no alcohol.
All the modern carb rebuild kits are now made that way, but there are a lot of NOS tank senders, fuel pumps, et al. that aren’t. Best case scenario is that the fuel system plugs up slowly and you decide to fix it the right way. Worst case scenario is a fuel leak followed by a fuel fire.
I don’t care what you do. I don’t have to drive your car, and if you choose to ignore good advice the consequences are on you.
All the modern carb rebuild kits are now made that way, but there are a lot of NOS tank senders, fuel pumps, et al. that aren't. Best case scenario is that the fuel system plugs up slowly and you decide to fix it the right way. Worst case scenario is a fuel leak followed by a fuel fire.
I don't care what you do. I don't have to drive your car, and if you choose to ignore good advice the consequences are on you.Replies: @Taco
The carbuerator is new.