Friday, March 2, 2018
Is There a Standard List of Red States?
The left constantly claims that they subsidize the red states. It just occurred to me that this may be because people work in blue states then move to red states at retirement because they can afford to live in red states. Perhaps the supposed transfer of taxes is largely Social Security checks? In this case, the blue states are not subsidizing the red but only moving money from where earned to where retired? I have percentages of population by state receiving Social Security checks; is there a standard list of red states?
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That would seem to be just the beginning. For example, I went to a Blue state for college, stayed there for a dozen years earning good money, moved to another Blue state for a dozen years doing the same, and now I'm back home where my Social Security disability payments allow me to live comfortably.
ReplyDeleteAh, another wrinkle is how the current regime of financial repression is forcing a lot of seniors to get a disproportionate amount of their cash from Social Security, since their more conservative investments on large sums of money aren't earning much, such is true of my parents.
I don't have an answer to that.
ReplyDeleteBut, the "subsidize red states" tends to have a lot of nonsense in it. For example, considering military spending as "subsidy."
Also many Red states have significant percentages of "federally owned land (BLM, Forest Service, National Parks, Fish & Wildlife Services)" that require transfers of federal administration money into those states.
ReplyDeleteYou can think of "blue"-state policies as a luxury good. Wealth produces the blue-state policies and also a tendency to pay more federal taxes.
ReplyDeleteIOW, the reason blue states have more government is that they are better able to get away with counterproductive policies. For example, NYC can have a gun-control law that would cause a gang takeover of any other city. (Similar laws in Chicago did cause a gang takeover.) Since NYC is too big for one gang to take over, it can get away with it.
California can have environmental regulations that would mean the fast bankruptcy of any state that didn't have Silicon Valley in it. Since California has Silicon Valley, it's undergoing a slow bankruptcy instead.