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Originally posted by Spanky
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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You are not really responding to what I said. I referred to things "like" agricultural subsidies.
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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.
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What are we blowing out of proportion? All we said is that politicians from these states make a lot of noise about big government, but that these states are subsidized by those of us in the blue states. This is true.
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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.
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One, I don't know what this has to do with what we said. Two, show me the numbers.
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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.
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Since the average Californian or New Yorker is much more economically productive than the average Arizonan or Montanan, it should not surprise you that, having more money, they decide to tax themselves more so that their government can do more things.
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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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Matter to what? The truth remains that the small-government-talking red-state conservatives are happy to use the federal government as an instrument to siphon wealth from our states to theirs. And since this crowd has been running the federal government in recent years, they have spent money like drunken sailors, run massive budget deficits, and generally screwed up the country's fiscal house, all the while spouting this pablum about small government.
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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.
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When did I say any such thing? You're hallucinating.
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Small states economies are not driven by federal expenditures.
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Senator Thune and most of the residents of western South Dakota disagree you with you, but so what? Even if you're right, it's not stopping conservative politicians from spending federal money for their constituents.
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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).
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So? Is this supposed to be responsive to something I said?
