Real Capitalists Do Not Live In The USA
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GunHuggers Are Despicable Socialist Parasites
Blue State, Red Face: Guess Who Benefits More From Your Taxes?
Picking up on yesterday's theme, the fiscal cliff, let's look
at the wider context to the argument between left and right
over taxes and spending cuts.
Michael Moran Michael Moran
Michael Moran is an author and geopolitical analyst.
There are serious economists who study the difference between
what our states pay in taxes and how much they get in return
from the U.S. government. These people generally don’t draw
political, let along moral, judgments from these numbers.
I’m under no such constraint. The numbers, for decades now,
have been quite clear: With some exceptions, what we regard as
red states are sent a whole lot more of your hard-earned tax
dollars than the traditional blue states. In effect, supposedly
indolent, “tax and spend” liberals actually subsidize the
individualistic, pure, and hard-working lifestyle of our
conservative countrymen.
Don’t believe me? Well, there’s plenty of room for quibbling
about what constitutes a tax payment vs. a federal benefit.
Let’s hash that out below in the comments section. But for
simplicity's sake (and to account for the fact that it’s hard
to label some states as purely red or blue, I’ve taken the most
recent Electoral College Map from RealClearPolitics—which shows
how these states would likely vote if the presidential election
were today—and cross-referenced it with numbers from one of
those places peopled by serious economists: the nonpartisan Tax
Foundation.*
ElectoralOct23
The results will stun many people, though not me: I’ve been
telling my Tea Party relatives this for years. Here’s a list of
the top 10 states that got the most back in terms of federal
benefits, followed by the bottom 10. I’ve added the reasons
why, when they’re obvious, in the space to the right.
To save space below, “pension benefits” include both Medicare
and Social Security; “anti-poverty aid” includes Head Start,
Low Income Home Energy Assistance, Food Stamp and nutrition
programs for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and several
school-lunch-style benefits.
Top Ten (Source: Tax Foundation):
1. New Mexico Indian reservations, military
bases, federal research labs, farm subsidies, retirement
programs
2. Mississippi Farm subsidies, military
spending, nutrition and anti-poverty aid, retirement programs.
3. Alaska Per capita No 1 recipient
of federal benefits; infrastructure projects, DOT and pork
projects.
4. Louisiana Disaster relief, farm
subsidies, anti-poverty and nutrition aid, military spending.
5. W. Virginia Farm subsidies, anti-poverty
and nutrition aid.
6. N. Dakota Farm subsidies, energy
subsidies, retirement and anti-poverty programs, Indian
reservations.
7. Alabama Retirement programs, anti-
poverty and nutrition aid, federal space/military spending,
farm subsidies.
8. S. Dakota Retirement programs,
nutrition aid, farm subsidies, military spending, Indian
reservations.
9. Virginia Civil service pensions,
military spending, veterans benefits, retirement, anti-poverty
aid.
10. Kentucky Retirement programs,
nutritional and anti-poverty aid, farm subsidies.
Now consider the bottom 10, i.e., the ones that give more to
the federal government in taxes than they get in return. From 1
to 10, they are:
New Jersey, Nevada, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Minnesota,
Illinois, Delaware, California, New York, Colorado.
Anything strange about that list? Yes, they are all blue states
(or the deepest of purple).
Adding to this fallacy are the assumptions surrounding Mitt
Romney’s now infamous comments about the indolent “47 percent”
of Americans who regard themselves as victims and therefore pay
no taxes. As the American Conservative magazine (no less)
pointed out recently, nine of those 10 states are in the red-
as-ruby Old Confederacy.*
non-payers-by-state
Put another way, again by the American Conservative, “On the
other hand, eight of the ten states with the highest non-
payment rates are solidly Republican. The exceptions are New
Mexico and Florida.”
Is your mouth agape?
Now, one more cross-reference: these facts compared with the
know-nothing rhetoric of the Tea Party. There are only two ways
to parse that result: one is ignorance—which we should be
willing to forgive in anyone as long as they revise their views
when faced with reality.
And the second? Selfish hypocrisy. How else can you explain the
fact that the denizens of the most welfare dependent states in
the country—dare we say, those who enjoy the most benefits from
socialism—profess to abhor welfare?
This is a far cry from what most people think. My sense is
that, if you asked the average American, they would assume that
states benefiting most from federal spending are exactly the
opposite—you know, those populated with Ronald Reagan’s
“welfare queens” and lazy unionized auto workers.
I’ll be the first to admit this isn’t a black-and-white
exercise. Plenty of questions need to be settled before clear
judgments can be made. For instance, does an Army base and the
federal money that goes into keeping it running and paying its
troops count as a benefit? (It does in my book.) What about a
federal prison? (Yeah, jobs and the tax revenues they generate
should count there, too.) A private university that is showered
with federal research dollars? (Again, yes, those funds count,
too.)
But those questions get harder.
Agricultural subsidies? How do we count them—and do we subtract
the tax revenues generated by the jobs the farm creates or the
export earnings it provides?
And what about defense contractors? Connecticut, Washington
state, and California are chock full of weapons merchants. They
provide jobs, export income, and many other benefits. Should we
count as a federal inflow to those states the money spent, say,
on Sikorsky aircraft contracts in Connecticut? And how do we
factor in the taxes those companies paid (assuming, unlike
nearby General Electric, they actually paid taxes)?
And I admit, maybe we should dock Connecticut and New Jersey
for the remaining outstanding balance of the TARP program?
All these accounting issues are over my head, I’ll freely
admit. But I trust the figures above, compiled by the rock
solid economists at the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research
group—as a good indicator of the general state of our fiscal
reality. When the reality has veered so far from the prevailing
political bullshit, it’s time for someone to point it out.
So spare me all that red state angst about the federal deficits
and national debt. When you stop spending New Jersey’s money,
Tex, and produce a plan to replace it with your own revenue
stream, then you've earned an opinion in the matter.