More on the Culture War (or not)
It is often noted that we evil red state residents get a lot of free federal funding. Moreover, we get more in federal dollars than we pay in taxes. I tend to think this is more like incumbent syndrome, but I don’t have time to compare incumbents in red vs. blue states.
However, it seems that since we get all this free federal money, we are more charitable. That seems to affirm the Libertarian notion that if you’re not taxed ’til it hurts, you give some back.
Also, why are the blue staters so fond of pointing out that their tax dollars go to red states when they supported a candidate who was wanting to raise their taxes? Seems like they wouldn’t mind, since it’s for the common good and all.
Update: One of the Brutal Huggers (I can’t tell them apart) says it’s a sham. Gee, I wonder if the folks who did the study are trying to motivate wealthier folks to give more?
November 10th, 2004 at 11:55 am
I was thinking about that also. It was the blue states who wanted to raise the taxes and give them to the poor. (which because the blue states raise the average income, it makes the red states where the cost of living is lower look poorer), and then when the poor do not vote with them they complain.
To me this is the same a complaining when the federal goverment takes school money away from your state, because you state has shrunk in population or has started doing better. The federal gov. is doing the job you assinged to them.
November 10th, 2004 at 12:46 pm
I remember reading that part of the reason for the discrepancy is that the formula for apportioning medicare/medicaid dollars penalizes California and New York in particular because its based on median income and doesn’t completely factor in the actual amount of need or something like that.
November 10th, 2004 at 1:16 pm
And there’s also a large portion of elderly in the south (florida to retire, and all) so i tend not to believe it.
November 10th, 2004 at 2:22 pm
For fuck’s sake. These issues are not connected at all. If the red states are so goddamned charitable, then they won’t mind giving the Blue states their money back.
I’m not in to demonizing the Red States culturally, because I was born there and lived there for 37 years before moving to New York.
BUT…
Getting more tax dollars than they put in and getting more of a voice in the elections goes against my libertarian streak. Why should someone living in the heartland benefit from a federally sponsored redistribution of wealth? Why should his or her vote count more than mine? Is there any rational reason?
Fuck no there isn’t.
This Urban funding Rural shit happens on the local level as well. Check this out from today’s NYT:
November 10th, 2004 at 2:45 pm
ooops in my ranting
link
November 10th, 2004 at 2:52 pm
I was being a bit smarmy there LG and don’t think the two are related at all. As manish pointed out, the allocation of tax dollars is skewed so I for one don’t even buy the tax dollars given to red states arguments really due to the age of the population in the south (retirees and all with their mediX programs). That really skews the numbers. If you took the MediX out of the equation, I wonder how it’d look.
And i agree on your assessment regarding pork, which is why I alluded to incumbency.
November 10th, 2004 at 3:25 pm
Sorry. I’m just cranky today in general, and I can’t bring myself to hit the taps before 4:00 pm.
Maybe a run would be better.
November 10th, 2004 at 4:39 pm
Open Wallets, Closed Minds
The Catalogue for Philantrhopy publishes a Generosity Index that ranks states according to how generously people donate to charity. As they admit, the index was “conceived in 1997 as a concise way to summarize Massachusetts’ and New England’s greate…
November 10th, 2004 at 4:56 pm
Uncle, that charitable giving link is such a ridiculously shoddy application of lies to numbers. I started looking at it and ended scrawling a long post and recalculating a more rational ranking.
You can check the blog for the details, but the center of it is that the red/blue distinction is bogus, so when you do the numbers fairly (i.e. without trying to achieve a result that maligns New Englanders, which is what the Index explicitly admits to doing), you discover that there is no correlation between red/blue states and charitable giving.
November 11th, 2004 at 10:12 am
Matt Edens shares the love.
http://www.metropulse.com/dir_zine/dir_2004/1446/t_commentary.html
This will help the push for Metro Government in Knox County. Right?