I recently found an interesting report outlining how the income and expenditures of the federal government broken out by state. In partcular, the report highlighted the fact that there are some states in the union that historically consume more tax dollars than they generate; they are subsidized by the country as a whole. Conversely, there are states that generate more in taxes than they receive from the government.
Take a look at the report here and see where your favorite state (or maybe the states you love to hate) stack up. The most important columns are the last two showing the received-to-spending ratio (values over $1.00 mean the state was subsidized, values less than $1.00 mean the state did the subsidizing) and the ranking of the state in terms of dollars received.
I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether citizens should be proud or not of their states' abilities to attract federal spending. Some call it "bringing home the bacon" and they vote based on who they think can bring the most money to the state. When it comes to tax dollars, though, its a zero-sum game; federal dollars flowing into the state have to come from somewhere and it will largley be taxes collected from another state. This is another way to look at federal taxes as wealth redistribution: money moving from "rich" states to "poor" states (or something like that).
So, is the federal spending everything - including national parks, military bases, public lands? In other words is it all federal money that is spent in the state, or is it federal money sent to the state for certain programs?
ReplyDeleteI couldn't say without reading the details of the report but I'm assuming that it is all federal dollars flowing into a state, regardless of the program.
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