Red Counties Dependence on the “Deep State”
“One of the most enduring conservative myths is that of the self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth, rural-dwelling American who pulls himself up by his bootstraps…If that were ever true, it hasn’t been for a while. These days, rural America is largely dependent on the federal government it claims to hate.”
This quote is from an article in Daily KOS (“Look just how much red counties depend on the government they hate,” July 10, 2025). The article points out that, “far from self-reliant, rural America is subsidized by blue states.”
Dr. Paul Krugman is a Nobel prize winning economist, author and commentator. He recently wrote, “The first thing you need to understand is that while rural Americans like to think of themselves as self-reliant, the fact is that poorer, more rural states are in effect heavily subsidized by richer states…” (“MAGA Will Devastate Rural America,” Substack, June 23, 2025). He says, Trump’s policies will hit the American heartland hard, very hard.”
Krugman cites the cuts to Medicaid as an example. Forty percent of children are covered by Medicaid in America. Medicaid covers a higher percentage of the population in rural counties. Forty two percent of births are paid for by Medicaid especially in red states.
Another example discussed by Krugman is West Virginia. He says coal mining no longer employs many people in the state and is not the base of the economy anymore. It is “more accurate to say that the foundation of West Virginia’s economy is federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid. That is, in deep red West Virginia, Medicare and Medicaid are directly and indirectly a major source of income.”
The Economic Innovation Group is a bipartisan public policy organization. It has analyzed personal income by county to see which areas of the country use the most federal assistance from transfer payments (Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, unemployment compensation and veterans benefits). They have a nice website with national maps displaying some interesting findings (see “The Great Transfer-mation: How American communities became reliant on income from government,” https://eig.org/great-transfermation).
The Economic Innovation Group’s research reveals, “Not long ago, money from government programs like Social Security or SNAP…featured minimally in Americans’ personal income.” In the 1970s “only people in areas of chronic economic distress depended on transfers for meaningful shares of their income.” But today these support payments are a significant source of income for many people. Today transfer payments average 18% of total personal income, up from 8% in 1970. Today, people in “the majority of counties rely on transfers for a significant portion of their income, while low-transfer places have gone from the norm to nearly extinct.”
Why is this happening? One reason is that the population is aging. More people are receiving Social Security retirement income. Another reason is that since the 1970’s wages (adjusted for inflation) have remained stagnant for many workers and have declined as a percentage of their income. More people are also receiving Veteran Administration and Social Security disabilities. Generally rural areas have higher percentages of elderly populations as younger people migrated to urban areas for jobs.
Dr. Gbenga Ajilore, Chief Economist, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explains what is happening because of Trump’s tariffs, budget cuts and other policy changes in a recent online interview (text and video at “The harm to rural communities embedded in President Trump’s reconciliation bill,” Federal News Network, Terry Gerton, June 17, 2025).
Ajilore points out that all 50 states have rural and small town communities and they are very diverse. We think of them as being agricultural but many have other businesses and industries (like logging, mining and small manufacturing). But still the service sector – tourism, hospitality, medical care and government – is the largest source of employment.
Some of these jobs are seasonal and low wage. Ajilore identifies some rural areas as “persistent poverty communities” with unemployment rates of 20% or more over the last 30 years. He says 86% of these are in rural communities. So when you cut public services like Medicaid or food stamps, you are going to hurt rural communities.
What is needed is bottom up economic investment and support for people. Exactly the opposite of the trickle down tax cuts for the wealthy that are “paid for” by cuts to vital federal programs like Medicaid, food stamps, support for education, rural development like national parks and other public infrastructure and programs.
Republican voting farmers are being hurt by Trump’s deporting of immigrant and undocumented workers. Agriculture relies heavily on immigrant and undocumented workers Native-born workers do not want these jobs. Even with significantly, inflationary wage increases, crops are going to rot in the fields. Everyone will pay significantly more for food.
The military has always recruited heavily from poor and rural areas. There are 4.4 million veterans living in rural communities (25% of the total veteran population). These veterans are aging, are more likely to be disabled, and have higher rates of poverty and homelessness than urban veterans. Veterans Administration funding cuts and staff reductions will harm these veterans. Cuts to Medicaid will reduce available rural healthcare facilities. This is the way Trump thanks veterans for their service.
The Economic Policy Institute identifies 100 specific actions by the Trump administration (in the first 100 days) that “threaten to slow wage growth while also raising prices, constraining workers’ purchasing power.” Their report concludes that from, “attacks on workers’ rights to his chaotic implementation of historically high tariffs, and his dismantling of critical federal agencies and programs…Trump’s actions have left workers with fewer rights and have put the U.S. economy on a path toward an almost certain recession” (“100 ways Trump has hurt workers in his first 100 days, April 25, 2025).
We know Republicans have historically, consistently opposed almost all government actions to improve people’s lives. The examples are too numerous to list here. Over the years many people have harmed themselves by voting for Republicans and their shortsighted anti-worker, anti-government, and anti-regulation agenda. Now the Trump administration is taking this harmful obsession to extremes and is dismantling all the social and economic progress of the last 150 years.
Rural people are not self-reliant, rugged individuals. They, like all of us, depend on government as the base and mainstay of our economy and society. We all need to reject the false rural-urban divide and unite to defeat Trump’s destructive agenda.