Quote:
Originally Posted by 1blackman1
Or those states like Cali, NY, NJ, MA, IL, WA and CT can stop funding just about every other state. They get back about 60 cents on the dollar of money sent to the federal govt whereas basically all the red states except NE and a Dakota receive more than a $1 for every $1 they pay in.
Without those states and their tax money l, nearly every other state in the union would go broke. States like MS, AL and SC would be bankrupt 2-3x over.
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Wrong on SO many levels.
First and foremost - states do NOT pay money to the federal government. Only citizens in those states do. If NY residents pay a lot in federal income taxes, it is because NY has a lot of billionaires and megamillionaires. Those same federal tax dollars, however, also pay to prop up NYers living in Schenectady and Buffalo.
BTW, I'm pretty certain the red states of TX and FL pay their own way. You left them out.
Also, check your numbers on IL. That state is broke and on the edge of bankruptcy. I'm pretty sure they are not paying more to the federal government than they are getting. Chicago is not enough to float the state. Chicago cannot even cover its own nut.
The poor folks in Alabama do not get any more federal support than the poor people in Oakland.
Funding disparities tend to be tied to military bases and agricultural supports, without which blue states would starve. Also, we all benefit from interstate highways. CA and NY don't pay for interstates in NV and CO out of the goodness of their hearts. That highway funding benefits them even if it spent in Colorado.
There is an uneven distribution of billionaires and multimillionaires. They are concentrated in large coastal cities. If your state happens to have a city like that, then you are fortunate, but it has nothing to do with the wisdom of a blue state government.
A lot of highly successful states started out as Republican, then slowly turned Democratic once they became prosperous, and are now deeply in debt. CA used to be a GOP state that everyone moved to. Now look.
GA has been red for decades and has been booming. But it may be turning blue. How long do you think the prosperity will last once progressives start voting for high taxes, public sector unions, and defunding the cops? The same goes with Texas.
The truth is that there are no red states and blue states. There are blue cities surrounded by red suburbs and red rural areas. Take a look at the election maps. Even CA is mostly red.
If your state has a high percentage of people living in a big city, then your citizens will probably pay higher income taxes to the federal government simply because of demographics. But that is mostly an accident of history, not government planning. NYC and Boston were big cities even before there was a United States. Because they had good harbors, not because of government.
Also, I thought it was a tenet of progressivism that the rich are supposed to pay more to support the poor. When you see rich states paying their "fair share", why are you offended by that?
And my favorite indication of how precarious things are in blues states is this: In CT, they had to appoint someone to monitor a group of about 20-30 super rich Wall Street types living in and around Greenwich. The problem was that if any one of them moved out, the tax loss would have a noticeable impact on the state budget. Wrap your head around that. How is it possible that a state could be that dependent on a small clique of moguls. And they didn't even make their money in CT. They made it on Wall Street in NYC and commuted home to Greenwich.
If a state withdraws from the republic ....
