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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Spanky, this makes no sense. You admit that the red states like to grab a disproportionate share of federal spending. (Much of this comes from funding things like agricultural subsidies that simply cannot be justified on your holier-than-thou patriotism/free market/conservatism grounds -- it's not just contriving to move military bases and FBI offices to their states -- but whatever.)
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A large proportion does not come from Agricultural subsidies. As much as I hate them they are are really small part of the GNP and a small part of the income of even the most agricultural states.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop Then you try to suggest that there's some larger anti-government principle at work, but what's the basis for the crazy idea that "when they have total control over the size of Government it is smaller"? We have a system that doesn't give any region total control (although the (red) South is coming as close as anyone has in a while and thanks to that we have a massive spending spree).
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You guys are taking an insignificant statistic and blowing it way out of proportion. So the average red state pays .85 cents in for every $1.10 it gets back. That doesn't mean that all these states are sucking up vast quantities of tax dollars and are dependent on bloated bueracracies. These smaller states have much smaller state governments and their federal revenue per capita is a little bigger than the large states. For example they spend a great deal less on education and on average get better results for their expenditures.
You guys are making it sound like that amount of money they pay less in taxes is made up by the extra revenue paid to them by the federal government. The two numbers are not even close.
The average Californian or New Yorker has a much higher tax burden than the average person in Arizona or Montana. And this is not because they are being subsidized by the large states. The extra federal revenue does not even come close to explaining the lower tax burden. They have less tax burden because they have less government. It is that simple.
In the large states a much larger percentage of the GDP is spent on government and larger percentage of the economy is dependent on government. Those are the numbers that matter.
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Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop Why not just admit that red state politicians like to talk a good line about reducing the size of government, but most of that are hypocrites who just say this to be elected? Fact is, government subsidies -- agricultural, railroad, military -- made those states' economies what they are, and they don't want to change.
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As usual, with your typical socialist thinking, you think government revenue and expenditures drive the economy instead of draining the economy. Small states economies are not driven by federal expenditures. Like the rest of America most of these states GDP is produced by small businesses. Federal revenue is just frosting on the cake. In addition, they don't have the huge state bueracracies the large states have. California and New York have a higher percentage of their people employed by the government, because they have huge state buercracies. Yes - more people are employed by the Federal government in small states but that does not even come close to making up for the amount of people that are not employed by their state government (as compared to the large states).
