Can public policy actually fix what ails poor areas of the south?

Nope, only white privilege can. White privilege, as in:
1. Get married before you have kids
2. Graduate from HS
3. Work for a living and pay your bills

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If you wait ten years, would you actually see Mississippi become a southern version of Massachusetts on the issues..aka very high rankings on prosperity, education, etc?

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Ten years?


More like 3 generations.

10 years?

As far as I know, I don't think Mississippi also has a Harvard and MIT.

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People always bring up the fact that all the poorest states are red, and draw the conclusion from that that GOP policy does not work.

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Texas ain't poor.

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my question is: let's say tomorrow the state of Mississippi adopted every single economic, social, regulatory, educational, etc policy of Massachusetts.

If you wait ten years, would you actually see Mississippi become a southern version of Massachusetts on the issues..aka very high rankings on prosperity, education, etc?

Let's flip it around. Let's say every rich blue state adopted every single policy of a typical "poor southern red state"....after ten years, would you see these blue states plummet on various rankings?

I think the answer to both questions is no.

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I am not an anarcho capitalist. I see the benefit to some social and government frameworks, especially things like public education and strong infrastructure. So while I want to agree with your premise, I think it's the nirvana fallacy. We should strive to make the government better and we should strive to make markets better and we should strive to make communities better. This is independent of historical red state failures and historical blue state failures.

That shite is generational. They’ve convinced themselves that they can’t do better, and anything outside of their little world is scary and rigged against them.

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People always bring up the fact that all the poorest states are red, and draw the conclusion from that that GOP policy does not work.

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People that leap to that conclusion are idiots.

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If you wait ten years, would you actually see Mississippi become a southern version of Massachusetts on the issues..aka very high rankings on prosperity, education, etc?

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Nope.

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Let's flip it around. Let's say every rich blue state adopted every single policy of a typical "poor southern red state"....after ten years, would you see these blue states plummet on various rankings?

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Nope

Yeah, people all over the country point and laugh at the south and says all of its problems stem from the dumb rednecks that always vote republican. They never mention that the south (especially La, Ms, and Al have the highest concentration of black people that are on welfare and commit insane amounts of crime. Those same type of people all run the largest cities, and are crooked, want white people to pay more taxes, and are fine with skyrocketing crime because 1.) "It's culcha." and 2.)"it isn't our fault after all." Baton Rouge is a good example. The city is divided in two. North of Florida boulevard, things get real shitty real quick and in every respet. I'm not saying south Baton Rouge is a paradise, but if you look at just that area's statistics it would be a decent little city overall when compared to national averages.

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The poorest areas of the South are run by liberal democrats.

So sick of hearing this false narrative from liberals that the South is a poor because of republicans.

New Orleans hasn't had a republican mayor since the Reconstruction era.

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Thank you for injecting some common sense into the TD.com Poli forum.

You should listen to Thomas Sowell discuss this. He grew up in Harlem in the 30s and 40s. His family was dirt poor, and it was just his mom. He went to a high school with only black kids and teachers, because of segregation. But his mom, and all of his class mates parents, along with the school faculty, were hard but fair with the kids. Told them that if you get an education, doors will be open to you that otherwise wouldn't. Every single person he went to high school with graduated. In Harlem. At a public school. In the 1940s.

Now.

Was the nation less racist then? Was the system less prejudiced against blacks? So what changed?

The creation of the welfare state in the 60s that's what. The federal government telling single mothers they didn't need a man, because uncle sam would be there.

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So how does one make it so an inner city (or rural, really) child born into poverty isn’t a long shot to accomplish those?

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Stop incentivizing fatherlessness.