Understood. I had thought NC paid more in taxes than it received in Federal funds. Hurricane Floyd proved that point to me vividly, when the Federal Govt left us with over $6 billion in cleanup costs we had to pick up ourselves.
Where can I find this info. Let me know, thanks!
A chart for 2005 can be found here and a more extensive one here.
As usual there is more to the story on most states. Agricultural subsidies were designed to help farmers in trouble but have become a method to maintain a "cheap food" policy for the cities. Ag states get the money but the benefits are shared with the entire population. Large states with small populations (Wyoming) just don't have the people to match even modest federal outlays. Military bases were purposely located in the South to pump money into local economies but they had to be put somewhere. States like Arizona or Nevada with high growth rates will eat Federal dollars as infrastructure is built out but the turnaround should be fairly rapid.
The income tax was born of the populist movement and has become somewhat of a monster but in the first half of the last century many parts of the South were beginning to resemble a Latin American country, a few rich and a lot of poor. It became federal policy to prevent and reverse that.