Posted on 01/17/2017 4:32:40 AM PST by expat_panama
Which state gets the biggest share of its budget from the federal government?
Nope, not even close. As a matter of fact, those two jurisdictions are among the 10-least dependent states.
And if you’re guessing that the answer is New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Connecticut, or some other “blue state,” that would be wrong as well.
Instead, if you check out this map from the Tax Foundation, the answer is Mississippi, followed by Louisiana, Tennessee, Montana, and Kentucky. All of which are red states!
So does this mean that politicians in red states are hypocrites who like big government so long as someone else is paying?
That’s one way of interpreting the data, and I’m sure it’s partially true. But for a more complete answer, let’s look at the Tax Foundation’s explanation of its methodology. Here’s part of what Morgan Scarboro wrote.
State governments…receive a significant amount of assistance from the federal government in the form of federal grants-in-aid. Aid is given to states for Medicaid, transportation, education, and other means-tested entitlement programs administered by the states. …states…that rely heavily on federal assistance…tend to have modest tax collections and a relatively large low-income population.
In other words, red states may have plenty of bad politicians, but what the data is really saying – at least in part – is that places with a lot of poor people automatically get big handouts from the federal government because of programs such as Medicaid and food stamps. So if you compared this map with a map of poverty rates, there would be a noticeable overlap.
Moreover, it’s also important to remember that the map is showing the relationship between state revenue and federal transfers. So if a state has a very high tax burden (take a wild guess), then federal aid will represent a smaller share of the total amount of money. By contrast, a very libertarian-oriented state with a very low tax burden might look like a moocher state simply because its tax collections are small relative to formulaic transfers from Uncle Sam.
Indeed, this is a reason why the state with best tax policy, South Dakota, looks like one of the top-10 moocher states in the map.
This is why it would be nice if the Tax Foundation expanded its methodology to see what states receive a disproportionate level of handouts when other factors are equalized. For instance, what happens is you look at federal aid adjusted for population (which USA Today did in 2011). Or maybe even adjusted for the poverty rate as well (an approached used for the Moocher Index).
P.S. For what it’s worth, California has the nation’s most self-reliant people, as measured by voluntary food stamp usage.
P.P.S. And it’s definitely worth noting that the federal government deserves the overwhelming share of the blame for rising levels of dependency in the United States.
That's the phrase that got me going too. I googled "intergovernmental revenue” and census.gov and found Descriptions of Intergovernmental Revenue Categories and from there I found the numbers at 2014 Annual Survey of State Government Finances Summary Table.
There's a lot to this, but fortunately we live in an age were we don't all have to dig thru this on our own any more.
golly, very well done.
All federal spending is for vote buying. The Dims do not need votes in the solid blue states. But if you can coax the red states onto the dole then they will eventually turn blue. Ohio is a great case study. Now that kaysick has signed up for billions of Mediscare moolah we will see how big Ohio is, in future elections, on scaling back the Fed. My guess is that Ohio goes blue.
Entitlement dollars from the feds to the states make the states dependent on the fed. Which tends to delegitimate the states, and thus to delegitimate the Senate and the Electoral College.
The article has too much liberal attitude. That is a red flag. It almost guarantees poor analysis. I’m not convinced that their ratios make much sense.
Your analysis is much better. A Per capita measure, as you developed, is generally a good start. But what does it tell us? Since these are Federal payments, it may say more about the Feds than about the respective states.
What do they mean by Federal welfare? Do they consider social security to be welfare? This is one, perhaps not the only, payment that deserves contemplation.
I have seen claims similar to those in the article that focus on all Federal spending (not just welfare). Liberals claim that conservative states receive “too much” of the Federal spending pie.
One thing they fail to notice is that many of the Federal dollars go to military bases. There are a few reasons for this. Southern States welcome the military and lobby for military installations during Base Realignment And Closure (BRAC) efforts. My experience is that some northern states are indifferent to the military mission. Also Southern states often have lower utility costs. There may be more valid reasons.
Federal spending per state can be skewed by Federal land holdings. According to one site, Federal land holdings by state range from .3% to 81.1% of total land. That could skew statistics on per capita spending. Should we classify a western state as a moocher just because the Feds took their land?
The ratio I would like to see is a lot of analysis and a few conclusions. This article has a lot of (mistaken) conclusion and little analysis.
My take is a little different.
1) is there that much PRACTICAL difference between 30% and 40%? What is the agenda of the article?
2) What is the goal here? make it equal?
3) The big question should be, what is all that federal money being spent on.
4) As I have said often NOTHING changes till the money runs out.
P.P.S. And it’s definitely worth noting that the federal government deserves the overwhelming share of the blame for rising levels of dependency in the United States.
Maine has a pile of Somalis receiving federal money.
There are some undeniable truths about these statistics, that basically on some ways, Red states tend to be subsidized by Blue states. I have never really heard a satisfactory answer to that one.
One other factor is that highway expenses per capita tend to be higher in states with smaller, rural populations. For example, liberals in Washington State love to claim that conservative Eastern Washington gets disproportionate federal dollars, but a big chunk of that is for basic infrastructure such as highways, the electric grid, and irrigation.
States that have (or had) sufficient wealth to rationalize very generous welfare states because “we can afford it” have gone Democrat over time. States that can’t afford it and they know it tend to be Republican. The cycle repeats in states with strong economies and growing populations. We tend here on FR to say that the influx brings liberal thinking and ruins the state, and that’s true to an extent. But, it’s also a symptom of “affluenza,” they begin to believe that they can afford it and so Democrat policies begin to appear rational, whereas they were rejected before.
Still not valid, though better.
Need to include Earned Income Tax Credit and deduction of state taxes.
Leaving out the deduction of state taxes is especially egregious in their comparison!
You need to put more color into your map. The three step approach actually fogs the picture from what you are trying to say. I would make the color theme more gradient as they move from the lower bound to the upper bound in your map. The gradient theming is your choice. This would actually separate the states a lot more and more accurately reflect what you are trying to say. Right now it looks as if a majority of states are in the 1.32 per capital ratio when this is not actually the case. There are more than three categories so your map should reflect this with a gradient theme rather than a three step theme.
naw, I spent too much time massaging it as it was. The prob was that I couldn't find the map website I'd used a couple years ago where they out much better, just like the ones in post 20.
These graphics are really not that hard to do, u just upload the numbers and they spit out the pic. Easy peasy. It's the time & energy to tweak that's hard; now if I were being paid to do this or something...
I use Tableau but that is because I find Tableau fun to use and much better than Excel as a stand alone BI tool. Gradients take less than a minute to do. Tableau already has a map graphic and I just import the numbers. I was playing around last night with birth rates of different countries, just for fun and to answer another forum thread.
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