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Originally Posted by PaulS
Right. Doesn't change any of the facts that the red states all depend on the blue states, are subsidized by them and are all at the bottom of all the social welfare stats.
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When you do a ridiculously simple univariate look at the data, you know what the potential issues are. If you're comparing red states and blue states in terms of what they pay in federal taxes and what they get, you need to make adjustments, off the top of my head I can think of - you need to adjust for federal money for massive military bases. The money that the feds spend on huge military bases in red states, isn't an example of red states getting handouts. Its something that all 50 states benefit from. Also, there's always been a big federal income tax deduction in high state tax states (blue states) that's not available to residents of states with low tax states (red states), the SALT deduction.
You need to make it specific to welfare type spending, not all federal spending. But that doesn't tell the right story.
And for sure, we need to adjust those numbers to reflect student loan forgiveness, which is a big transfer of money from red states to blue states.