On Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:39:57 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:02:41 -0500, the infamous "Ed Huntress"
scrawled the following:

snip

There are three situations that will get a state in the positive column.
One
is to have a lot of very poor people. The second is to have a lot of
federal
land or military facilities. The third is to have an extra helping of
defense contractors.

OR has very few people (mostly poor) + a lot of federal land.
NM has Los Alamos. NM is #1, we're #25.

But you're still in the positive column. Note that the number of states that
pay more than they get back is smaller than the number who get back more
than they pay. In other words, states like NJ, NY, CT and so on are
disproportionally screwed.

I'm so sorry, Ed. cuing violins So, what causes that? Progressives?
(avoiding the L word here)


In general, the deep South and the mountain West make out the best. In
past
years, California has (IIRC) made out a lot better. And Alaska, of course.

Isn't it because they have to -pay- people to -live- in the Fort
Stinkin' Frozen Norths of ND and AK?

It's because they've put most of their federal legislative effort into
sucking up everyone else's tax money. That's what they do best. Alaska is a
giant tax tapeworm.

They sure as hell learned how to use oil (or oil barons) as their
ally.


These tend to be the same places that have the greatest number of people
who
bitch and moan about how they're getting raped with taxes. In fact, as you
can see, they be the rapists, not the rapees. PV is right: NY state is
taking it in the rear almost as badly as NJ. New Jersey and Connecticut
usually have the two highest per-capita incomes in the US. Thus, we get
screwed.

Take another look. Judging by the IRS total and tax per capita
figures from D.C., they've got the lion's share of wealthy and/or
income kings.

Jesus. D.C. isn't a state. It's a wall-to-wall city. Including D.C. in those
statistics was just stupid.

D.C. is a statelike entity, oui?


Minnesota and Delaware also pay more taxes per capita
than you and NY do; right up there with CT.

If you want to start picking apart the individual states, rather than the
general trends by region, you have a much larger task ahead of you. DE is
home to many of America's corportate HQ's because they designed their laws
of incorporation specifically to be attractive. It skews their true GDP and,
as you'll notice, their per-capita tax revenues. You could argue about that
one for an hour -- but with someone else, please. g

MN is odd. They seem to get everything wrong on taxes. I don't know why.

They sure have fun with governance, don't they?

--
Even with the best of maps and instruments,
we can never fully chart our journeys.
-- Gail Pool