You can cherry-pick data as you want. The left does this with “gun violence”. You can point to say, Tennessee, and say they have a lot of murders.
But ignore dark blue Memphis that has around 6% of the state’s population but accounts for about 68% of the murders.
Same holds true with Bessemer, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi, etc.
Welfare is the same way.
I think the welfare state accusation is based on the pure transfer of federal dollars out vs taxes paid. But what isn’t accounted for is that federal dollars paid out includes social security, Medicare, military pay and pensions, etc. Many folks retire to southern “red” states. Their associated federal dollars follow them. Perhaps a more honest number could be ascertained by eliminating such dollars from the aggregate numbers, and then see how the “welfare” balance-of-payments shakes out.