"Red and Blue and the Color of Money"

[Bigmack]

More on the Red-State "Welfare Queens"...
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(snips...)
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/211080_sciglianomoney.html

P-I Focus: Red and blue and the color of money
Only five blue states are net recipients of federal subsidies; only two red states are net payers of federal taxes

Sunday, February 13, 2005 By ERIC SCIGLIANO

November's presidential election sparked a boom in amateur political geography. You remember the maps that flew like rumors of war over the Internet. First, there was the plaintive spectacle of the election outcome: the blue-tagged Democratic states clinging to the Pacific, Great Lakes and North Atlantic shores, beachheads of civilization wrapped around a vast red wilderness.

One version showed how closely today's blue states matched the free states and territories before the Civil War while the red matched Dixie and the slave territories.

Another showed the United States broken up, Yugoslavia-style, into the various cultural and ideological divisions that this election seemed to reflect: Cascadia, Dixie, Yankeeland. One even showed the blue states as southern arms of a "United States of Canada," with the red bloc renamed "Jesusland."

In 2003, the top subsidy-sucking state, in percentage terms, was red-lite New Mexico, which received $1.99 in federal money for every dollar it sent to Washington, D.C. All the next eight net recipients of federal spending were redder yet: Kentucky, Virginia, Montana, Alabama, North Dakota, West Virginia, Mississippi and Alaska, which received $1.60 to $1.89 back for each tax dollar.

The list of net losers in the state-federal exchange, by contrast, reads like a Who's Who of Blue.

Only five blue states were net recipients of federal subsidies.

But according to the Tax Foundation, the main reason so many blue states pay so much more than they get back is that their residents tend to earn more money and pay more income tax. .......red-staters, who are less well off, would stop supporting Bush and instead defend the progressive taxation that favors them.

Blue-staters earn more on average and pay more in taxes, because they are better educated, more productive, less likely to be retired or disabled and generally healthier; rates of obesity, smoking and alcoholism (not to mention divorce and suicide) all peak in the South or West.

........Tom DeLay and his posse, who have pressured K Street lobbying firms to hire Republicans rather than Democrats, look for ways to feed the red and starve the blue.

In 2003, according to the Tax Foundation data, the blue states contributed $966 billion to the federal Treasury and got $830 billion back. The reds paid $697 billion and received a whopping $909 billion. Welfare queens, indeed.

What if Red America and Blue America split up and each had to live according to its means? ............ if the blue states could cut loose from the reds (granting the South the divorce it sought 144 years ago), they'd start out $136 billion to the good.

[hickman1937]

1. I've been watching this for awhile.

Red states sucking the Blue dry. Its time to stop it. I'm sending Big Ed a letter tomorrow. He needs to start hitting hard on this one.

[TwentyFive]

5. Yes - I'd be happy to wall off the Bigoted, Racist, Homophobic Southern US

We should starve these inbred christian a*sholes. After they get rid of all the queers, coloreds, liberals, intellectuals, foreigners, etc....who would they blame for their own miserable lives?

[rogerashton]

2. It fits the pattern.

The recent secessions have been net-taxpayer more developed regions dropping out of federal relations with less developed net tax recipients. The major exception is Czechoslovakia, which looks opposite -- less developed, subsidized Slovakia declared independence. But the Czech republic pretty much chucked them out of Czechoslovakia, leaving it to the Slovak strongman to go through the formalities.

[Igel]

4. Opravdu? Really?

In '93 the Czechs I spoke with had a "good riddance" policy to the upstart Slovaks who wanted to be separate. There was a bit of bitterness, because Czechoslovakia had invested tons of koruny in Slovakia, building infrastructure and new factories with largely Czech-produced tax revenues. Everybody thought that Slovakia would start up trade with the EU; everybody was sort of new, and how things would turn out wasn't clear at all.

The currency conversion was irritating: I barely get used to one currency, and there's a new one.

In '94 there was more than a bit of ... not glee ... but a "serve's 'em right" attitude in Brno and Prague. Slovakia found that most of the plants were built to Soviet standards or slightly above, and were out of date by EU standards. So Slovakia's biggest trading partner was Russia. Meciar was back, and Slovakia wasn't attracting investment. And the Slovak koruna was worth less than the Czech koruna.

Ahoj.

[rogerashton]

6. I believe that's pretty much what I said.

The Slovaks may have taken the initiative, but the richer Czechs were happy to see them go -- I guess there is no case of some of the members of a federation litterally expelling the others, but this comes as close as I can think of.

[Frances]

3. I wish someone would do a national poll

and ask

Do tax dollars from Blue States go to Red States?

I'll bet that 99.9% of Red Staters think that they subsidize the Blue States.

[rogerashton]

7. and believe other falsehoods as well.

But -- if they really believe that -- maybe we can talk them into letting us secede.