Krugman writes: "We share a common language; the unrestricted movement of goods, services and people is guaranteed by the Constitution. Shouldn't this lead to convergence in the way we live and think?"
Economist Paul Krugman. (photo: Getty Images)
04 December 19
Why does falling life expectancy track political orientation?
pluribus unum” — out of many, one — is one of America’s traditional mottos. And you might think it would be reflected in reality. We aren’t, after all, just united politically. We share a common language; the unrestricted movement of goods, services and people is guaranteed by the Constitution. Shouldn’t this lead to convergence in the way we live and think?
In fact, however, the past few decades have been marked by growing divergence among regions along several dimensions, all closely correlated. In particular, the political divide is also, increasingly, an economic divide. As The Times’s Tom Edsall put it in a recent article, “red and blue voters live in different economies.”
What Edsall didn’t point out is that red and blue voters don’t just live differently, they also die differently.
