[JoSixChip]

A comparison based on raw numbers is pointless.

Complete BS on your part. Post the verifiable bases for your assertion that federal tax payers in blue states receive a smaller percentage of their federal taxes back. Otherwise you are just blowing smoke. My personal belief is that liberal cities would die in less then 3 days without the federal government paying the lions share of their food, utilities, housing, education, law enforcement and Iphone bills. But I don't make that assertion because I don't have the facts to back it up.

[Alberta's Child]

Like I said ... I'll post more links tomorrow. I'm posting on my phone right now, and it's a pain in the ass to post links on it.

What you're going to find is that these liberal cities that get a lot of Federal money also have a lot of taxpayers -- and in cities these taxpayers are in higher tax brackets than their rural counterparts. That's why small, densely populated states pay a disproportionate amount of Federal taxes. They have a lot of middle-class people paying in upper-income tax brackets because wages and the cost of living are higher.

And two of the biggest factors in the gap between Federal taxes paid and Federal expenditures received are military bases and Indian reservations ... because these places get a lot of Federal money but don't have wealthy taxpayers.

That last point explains why rural states like New Mexico and Oklahoma proportionally have a lot of people on food stamps, by the way.

[Alberta's Child]

P.S. — West Virginia, which has no big cities at all, is one of the biggest welfare states in the U.S. Every other road and building in that state is named after former Senator Robert Byrd (D-KKK) because the place would have been completely depopulated years ago without massive Federal government support.

[Alberta's Child]

Here are a couple of links for you. The second one is the detailed report with the numbers cited in the first one.

The details of the numbers themselves are subject to a lot of questions and clarifications, but the general trends identified here are consistent with almost any similar study you read on the subject. Poor rural states and those with large Indian reservations and military bases tend to be the biggest "recipient" states when it comes to Federal taxes paid vs. Federal expenditures received, while wealthy urban/suburban states tend to be the biggest "donor" states. Maryland and Virginia are anomalies because a lot of their residents work for the Federal government in D.C. -- so they are much higher on the list than they would be otherwise.

LA Times article on tax reform bill

Who Subsidizes Whom? The State and Local Tax Deduction Compared with State Balances of Payments

Just for the heck of it, I posted the ranking of the states according to the "balance of payments" figures in the Rockefeller Institute study -- and color-coded them by the 2016 presidential election results.

1. New Mexico
2. West Virginia
3. Mississippi
4. Alabama
5. Virginia
6. Kentucky
7. Maryland
8. Hawaii
9. Maine
10. South Carolina
11. Arkansas
12. Alaska
13. Arizona
14. Missouri
15. North Carolina
16. Tennessee
17. Idaho
18. Montana
19. Vermont
20. Louisiana
21. Oklahoma
22. Georgia
23. Oregon
24. Ohio
25. Rhode Island
26. Delaware
27. Michigan
28. Florida
29. Indiana
30. Pennsylvania
31. Nevada
32. Iowa
33. Kansas
34. South Dakota
35. Utah
36. Wisconsin
37. Washington
38. Texas
39. Colorado
40. California
41. Nebraska
42. Wyoming
43. New Hampshire
44. Minnesota
45. Illinois
46. North Dakota
47. Massachusetts
48. New York
49. Connecticut
50. New Jersey