Schmide
Diamond Member
- Mar 7, 2002
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Your data point only covers TANF, which is one form of government welfare. There are many others.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/states-federal-taxes-spending-charts-maps
1, 5, and 10 are blue states. 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are red states.
Meanwhile, out of the 16 states that receive $1 or less for every $1 they contribute, only 4 were red: Texas, Nebraska, Indiana and Arkansas. The other 12 were blue states (CA, CO, MN, IL, OH, NY, NJ, DE, MA, RI, CT, NH).
Red states are takers, blue states are makers.
This is kind of a misnomer. If you look at just the ins and outs, it's easy to draw this conclusion that certain states are leaches. It's just as easy to show that this data is skewed due to other factors. Maryland is by far the state with the highest income (i.e. richest), yet still ranks as a debtor state. Why? Well most of the government spending skewing the above graphs is on Military, Research, National Security, Medical, etc. Other states with large land mass and low per capita income are equally mis-represented, in the above graph.