Monday, January 20, 2014

Fancy a fiscal transfer?

So, more for bookkeeping than anything else, I wanted to post this counter-intuitive map of fiscal transfers among US states. In other words, the green give money and the red states (in this map) overall receive federal funds.


This is from the Economist. Now, lemme see... so the top states sending money out of their states to pay for stuff in other states are Minnesota, New York, Illinois, California, Washington, Colorado, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and Delaware. These are all known as liberal states, which all likely have generous social safety nets (by US standards). All I'm saying is the talk of producers versus takers is disingenuous at best and shouldn't exist in polite society.


Postscript (01/21): Another way to think about this is that many states with generous social safety nets are not only supporting their own citizens, but also those who reside in stingier (or more conservative) states.

3 comments:

  1. I find it interesting that the GOP manages to convince their base to vote against their own financial self interest. All they have to say is BOO! Gun control! Abortion! Gay marriage! and everything else is forgotten.

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  2. Yeah, that reminds me of the book What's the Matter With Kansas (which is quite good). Maybe I'll blog about it. Have you read it? Hope you guys are doing well.

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  3. I haven't read it, put I'll put it on the list!

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