You're All WelcomeFollow

Break out your apologist hats and spin-books, GOP folks because the latest and greatest assessment of states giving and taking from the federal dole was released. Illinois ranks #2 (shared with Minnesota) and just under Delaware for supporting all your other dead asses with a paltry 56¢ coming back to the state out of federal taxes paid to the government. I'll let you all be "surprised" by the other results including the "red state/blue state" breakdown. Anyway, being at the top allowed me to formulate some thoughts about the other 97%.

All right, there are 97 percent who are with federal welfare, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for federal welfare no matter what. These are people who don't pay enough income tax for what they take. Ninety-seven percent of Americans don't pay enough income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.



Edited, May 7th 2014 10:40am by Jophiel

Hey, Georgia is pretty close to getting back what we pay in, at $1.05 returned for every $1 paid in. Significantly better than our neighbors, and I'll chalk that extra nickle up to the CDC.

Edited, May 7th 2014 11:48am by Catwho

Hmmm, Hawaii has about the same number of federal employees per capita as Maryland...and far more than other states.

Don't forget all the breweries.

Economic incentives: we know how to use them properly.

California has you beat on the breweries thing though.

Lil' old Maine is 6.

Just yesterday we awarded one of our local breweries an Environmental Excellence Award.

"Federal Employees Per Capita" is a horrible name for that metric. It's also a bad metric.

seriously bad.

Apologist welfare state!

It's not the numbers that shouldn't be taken seriously, but the assumptions about political correlation and intent versus outcome which certain people have created out of thin air.

Let me tell you another correlation. The need to address poverty tends to poll higher in areas with high poverty, so that must mean that people who care about poverty are causing poverty! OMG!!! Hmmm... Or maybe we just can't draw that kind of conclusion.

"Certain people" being the researchers, and "thin air" being available data, I'm sure.

Still supporting your dead welfare asses in Tennessee, I see

Boohoo tears about a select city fall flat when the state government is overwhelmingly Republican controlled and state government controls the incoming federal monies to a huge degree. If these states cared at all about it, they could pass legislation or a state constitutional amendment that they can not take in more than they contribute. Hahaha... like you welfare addicts would ever do that.

You do realize both that and Joph's link basically are showing the same thing right?

I mean it's clear it's a slightly different mix of data, but all the same basic trends are there.