Re:Most Americans support using the popular vote to decide U...
by danaris on Wednesday August 10, 2022 @11:02AM
(#32413172)
I think part of the problem with this is the common characterization of rural people that we are "farmers".
I live in rural NYS. I know farmers, to be sure (there's a community-supported agriculture farm just about 5 minutes' drive away). But despite the fact that a lot of the land around here is farmland, the vast, vast majority of people here are not farmers. They are teachers, shop owners/workers, factory workers, computer programmers, doctors, lawyers....basically everything you get in most places in the country. The only types of people we don't have are the types you only get in the very biggest cities, like hedge fund managers, and the types that only make sense in certain areas, like sailors.
The question isn't and shouldn't be about "should farmers have as much political weight as not-farmers;" it's "should people who live in a mostly-rural state have as much political weight as people who live in a state with big cities"?
I live in rural NYS. I know farmers, to be sure (there's a community-supported agriculture farm just about 5 minutes' drive away). But despite the fact that a lot of the land around here is farmland, the vast, vast majority of people here are not farmers. They are teachers, shop owners/workers, factory workers, computer programmers, doctors, lawyers....basically everything you get in most places in the country. The only types of people we don't have are the types you only get in the very biggest cities, like hedge fund managers, and the types that only make sense in certain areas, like sailors.
The question isn't and shouldn't be about "should farmers have as much political weight as not-farmers;" it's "should people who live in a mostly-rural state have as much political weight as people who live in a state with big cities"?