"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
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)
Conservatives, in the western and southern states. Look at the list: Of the
10 states getting the most federal pork, 7 of them were red states in last
year's election.
They're the ones who bitch about spending and then make sure they load their
own states with pork. This is the basic profile of US politics, Larry, and
it's one of my gripes against conservative politicians. They're hypocrites,
through and through. And don't try to tell me that they're all the same.
They're not.
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.
Their "ally"? You mean, their tool of extortion? On top of all the federal
bennies that Alaska gets, they lard the oil being pumped in their state with
big taxes and, recently, "windfall" taxes. It pays every man, woman, and
rugrat in the state several thousand dollars per year, in the form of nice
fat checks. They actually just hand it out to all of those independent,
free-market, small-government conservatives. It appears that they have very
flexible ethical ideas.
And whose pocket do you think that's coming out of? Bwaaaahhaaaaa..
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?
Yeah. Like American Samoa, only with big buildings. g
Where do you think all those federal buildings are located, hmmm? How do you
think they manage an average per-capita federal tax bill of $31,250, when
the next highest "entity" is $15,714? Do you think it's all the poor people
in D.C. who are paying those $31,250 tax bills? Think about it. Now, what is
D.C. doing on that list of states, eh? It's a federal district fer
chrissakes! Of course it's getting a lot of federal money. They build
federal buildings and run services and build infrastructure for them in
federal districts. Jeez. g
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?
Next year they're going to run The Dog-Faced Boy against the Bearded Lady.
--
Ed Huntress