It's worse. A large portion of people in red states get their information exclusively from Movement Conservatism, which is comprised of think tanks, publishing groups and media assets (TV, Radio, Internet) that share one goal: to convince Americans that the government is bad and the market is good. Here is the problem: the distinction between market and government - the simplified version told by the owners of capital - has never existed. It has always been a complicated partnership
between government and business; and the partnership has had many successes and many failures. Corporations have always depended, more or less, on government for infrastructure, subsidies, legal protection, patent protection, military protection of overseas resources and trade routes and a variety of regulations that [do things like] protect American Pharma from having to compete with foreign drug makers. [Does the average rightwing voter understand why American Business pours trillions a year into Washington? Business lobby government for subsidies, and regulations that provide competitive advantages. Think of the amount of ultra cheap money the financial sector gets through the Fed discount window - for investment or to loan out at a killing. Most of the people on the right don't know any of this. This sort of information control would make Stalin cream his government jeans.]
The real problem is that most people on the "talk radio Right" can't explain the
actual relationship between government and business, much less provide an analysis of the upside and downside of this relationship, especially over different periods when it has changed shaped according to the prevailing national mood or who was in control. The "Talk Radio Right" tends to over-rely on bumper stickers like "Government is bad". Problem is: this kind of simplification fails to account for the difference between the
government supplied patent system (which drives and protects investment) and welfare slums. Seriously, it's one thing to disagree with protectionism, and to be able to list how it has mostly failed. It's another thing not to know anything about protectionism or trade barriers, and the degree to which Reagan was a protectionist in some very crucial areas.
We literally have a class of American voters who know nothing about the trade liberalization that began under Reagan, or how this has hurt the worker but greatly helped big business. Indeed, most Republican voters can't talk about this stuff. They only have an extremely limited range of repetitive talking points which have been given to them by a very narrow range of admittedly charismatic pundits. One of the reasons we can't intelligently discuss our most pressing issues is because a very powerful political movement has successfully exploited under-educated people who have neither the time nor the resources to question what they are told.
Regardless, the wealthy individuals and corporations who own rightwing media talk only about the admittedly very real downside of government, but they never mention the benefits - the subsidies, the regulatory favors, the infrastructure, the bailout protection, etc. In fact, if you want to test this theory, ask your average rightwing voter to list the things the Koch brothers get from government. You will get a blank stare. They literally lack absolutely crucial information that would enable them to see the hoax. Ask your average rightwing voter how much the American taxpayer provides Exxon through the military stabilization of Iraq and middle east. You will get blank stare. Ask your average rightwing voter how the patent system and legal system helps the private sector. Again, you will get a blank stare. They don't understand these things; they don't know who pays for them or who administers them of what they do. Tragically, The rightwing voter only has a very limited range of anti-government cliches fed to them by a machine that is funded by [wait for it] corporations who rely heavily on government. [Again, most rightwing voters have no idea what I'm talking about. They've been coached not to trust any information that does not come from their trusted sources].
Ask your average rightwing voter to describe where our energy grids came from. Ask them to describe government's investment in the Colorado River Basin and how it effected the carrying capacity of the modern Southwest. You will get a blank stare. Ask them to describe how the technology that came out of the postwar Pentagon and NASA budgets was fed into the 80s consumer electronics boom and you will get a blank stare. Ask them how aerospace technology or the internet was originally funded? Most of this stuff came out of the Pentagon, which means the Left can't take credit since they wanted to defund defense.
But the point remains: the relationship between government and the private sector is insanely complex. In our long history the relationship has been both good and bad for business. But let's not promote the illusion that business doesn't take from government. Seriously, take a close look at the lobbying empire in Washington, created mostly so corporations can buy politicians and suck at the taxpayer's teat. What's scary is that we have raised a generation of rightwing voters who know almost nothing about the
real relationship between government and business, yet these people have fully formed opinions about it, molded by special interests who have a lot to gain by their ignorance. Do you think business wants the TeaParty to know how much they draw from government? The whole mountain of bullshit would come crashing down if the TeaParty knew who really owned government.
To the point at hand. Of course the rightwing voter has been given talking points to refute the fact that Red states tend to have the highest poverty rates and tend to rely most heavily on government. Walmart workers are huge takers because their salaries don't pay enough for workers to survive. So the Waltons make trillions off ultra cheap labor and the taxpayer picks up the tab. Just like the taxpayer pays for the military stabilization of the foreign oil fields... the ones whose oil ends up in the refineries of some very large donors to the GOP.
Nobody is fooled by this shit, except for the low information, under-educated rightwing voter who deeply trusts Rush Limbaugh and FOX News.
And before you folks on the right reply, please keep this mind. I know the Leftwing also engages in opinion management. Second, I'm not advocating for more or less government control of anything. I'm asking people on the right to make more of an effort to understand the complicated relationship between government and business before they launch very simplistic and tired talking points that have been in heavy circulation for over 30 years.