Paul Krugman lays it out. Blue states provide massive outlays to Red states

[Roland99]

Link to tweet

So I gave the lunchtime keynote yesterday at the Boston Fed conference on regional divergence. I didn't use slides; but one point I made is that the feds effectively give large aid to lagging states. Here's Federal outlays and receipts by state by state per capita income 1/

Link to tweet

Outlays slightly declining in income, probably bc of means-tested programs; sharply declining as share of income. Receipts strongly increasing in income. So poor states like Kentucky receive gigantic net inflows, ~20 percent of state GDP 2/


Paul Krugman
@paulkrugman

This aid creates jobs too! KY has <6K coal miners, around 250K jobs in health and social assistance. Who do you think pays for that? 3/

[safeinOhio]

1. Well Hell..,they

need to start pulling themselves up by those boot straps. Or, Taker states vs Maker states.

[TheBlackAdder]

10. They sure love that socialism, especially when they're taking it from the Libs.

.

That was one of the excuses I would hear when posting the same thing elsewhere.

NJ, CA & NY are the largest 'donor' states. NJ loses the equivalent of their yearly state budget ($30B) each year.
Imagine living in a state where you lose your entire state budget's worth of money, and find yourselves cutting back on infrastructure, education (though it's still one of the top states), healthcare and providing tax relief.

Many retiring people leave the state because the effective single person poverty rate is above $28K a year! So that makes it really difficult for the elderly to live here without struggling. All because some states can't pull their own weight, take money for socialist work projects, and then vote against the very people who bail their fucking economies out!

.

[smirkymonkey]

22. Cut them the fuck off!

Let's teach them a lesson about "socialism".

[DFW]

2. The taker states (mostly red)" have long been mooching off the giver states"

The „giver states“ are, of course, mostly blue.

In other words, Republicans are against taxes except when Democrats pay them, and Republicans take the money, giving back nothing. No wonder they like Trump.

[Newest Reality]

3. That makes...

us classic enablers by proxy. I bet many of us have seen the stats on this over the years since it comes up now and again.

They get to play in the grease and mud of delusional, conspiratorial Red-think fueled by resentment and animosity while we finance it, so to speak. They could at least be polite and say, "Thank you!" Instead they sling vitriol and confused memes at us along with false accusations. It's an abusive relationship, for sure.

When somebody has a bad or harmful habit, you are supposed to cut them off and not yield to their desperation, otherwise, that's enabling.

That was just tongue-in-cheek, but it makes the point.

[yardwork]

5. People are misinformed by hate radio, Fox News, and internet sites.

People have been told a pack of lies that are the opposite of the truth. They believe these lies. That's why they vote for Republicans.

[Newest Reality]

9. You said it!

That makes me think we have a deeper flaw in our system than is evident superficially. If we just say "they" and focus on Republicans, (who clearly exploit this flaw) then, in such a high tech time and culture, we have evidence of a systemic failure that goes deep.

The fact that we have so many people in a country with compulsory education, megalithic mass media and access to just about any information on the Internet makes this very troubling. I can see that people can be swayed emotionally online, but the ability to discern things clearly can be learned by the acquisition of critical thinking skills.

So, if you have misinformation from mainstream media and on the Internet, the remedy to that might be better education in regards to logic, reason and critical thinking in general early on. Just focusing on the fundamentals is not working very well.

I am not saying that every American would someday be propaganda-proof, but the sheer gullibility of such large numbers of people is not a matter for ad hominum attacks, (which tends to reinforce their belief-fueled biases) it is a symptom and a symbol of a crisis of the American intellect in general. There is little excuse for that.

That's a collective problem and it seems to be overlooked. Maybe Betsy Devos has a solution or something to say about it since she is at the helm and, oh, I bet she's on that? I am being sardonically sarcastic of course.

[DemocracyMouse]

14. Yes yes yes! We need media literacy from K-12.

That means learning a rich host of skills in understanding image, sound and text.

Please make this happen future Democratic government. In the 21st century media literacy is NOT a luxury. It's a necessity.

[pangaia]

21. Such an obvious observation, one would think ...

But we DON'T think about it.

However, you did!

--but the ability to discern things clearly can be learned by the acquisition of critical thinking skills.

I was challenged to THINK in junior high school and high school in the 1950's.

And in college in the 1960s. I went to a music conservatory...

For example, I will never forget, in my freshman music history survey class-- like ALL western music history :&gt ) We studied the usual suspects.. Machaut, Gabrielli, Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, etc etc... On the listening part of the the midterm the "professor," did NOT play ANY of the particular pieces we had studied and ask us to identify them, as one might expect. Instead, he played pieces we had NEVER listened to and we had to describe what we heard, name the period and THEN, if possible the composer., and WHY !!!... Brilliant !! Nobody was ready for that. But I tell you, by the final we WERE READY !!!

Later I had a course on Mozart and Haydn. Can you tell the difference between the two? :&gt
Anyway, as part of the final, each student had to SING and aria from a Mozart opera !! In front of the class!!

I sang Belmonte's "Konstanze, Konstanze, dich wiederzusehen - O wie ängstlich..." from Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Serail).

Turns out that later on, this was the first opera I ever conducted... HA HA !!

Just for fun, here is Fritz Wunderlich.

That's it in a nutshell. Thanks..

[paleotn]

12. The same outlets are available in New England and California

yet we're solid blue. There's more to it I think, like cultural norms, religious zealotry (I really hate that one), class mobility, income inequality and on and on. These factors create fertile ground for hate media to take hold...or not in some areas. After living in the deep southeast and New England, I find it fascinating that though we have much in common, there are huge differences.

[AllaN01Bear]

17. i live in a red district . most of the sacramento valley , foot hills and

orange county are extremly red.

[paleotn]

20. We have the NE kingdom in Vermont.

Rutland county tends to lean red. But for state wide races, Republicans fair poorly. Granted, our Governor is a Republican. Why I don't know because back home in TN he'd be considered a flaming liberal and tossed from the party. He did an executive order mandating VT stick with Obama's net neutrality rules no matter what the FCC did.

My point being that the majority of people in CA and VT aren't swayed by hate media. In Alabama and West Virginia, they eat it up.

[Danascot]

4. Let 'em secede

and we'll see how that goes for them. Maybe they can get aid from Russia.

[pangaia]

23. Then from where do we get our food?

[pwb]

6. They should all lose a Senator if they were a slave state.

They don't deserve to have the hold they do on the rest of us.

[KPN]

13. And a share of electoral votes to put them into balance per contribution to GDP and federal

receipts. The Rs are all about money, individual responsibility, State rights and responsibilities -- this should make sense to them, right? .... Never happen.

[Python boot]

7. SALT

Limiting state and local tax (SALT) deductions was a kick in the head for blue states.

Andrew Gillum proposed a modest two percent tax on large corporations to be used for public education. Republicans accused him of "trying to turn Florida into Venezuela."

[KPN]

15. The Rs and especially tRump have intentionally "punished" blue States repeatedly. I sure hope

we Democrats have learned a lesson from this and act accordingly if and when we are once again in control. At a minimum, we need to reverse those punitive acts.

[RVN VET71]

18. That, that right there, is "traditional Republican thinking."

The GOP historically has been firmly against any taxes on the wealthy, on corporations, on trust funds, etc. Trump has brought this huge, festering boil to a head is all.

The GOP has always, always, always, felt that the "little people", the workers and farmers, the city policemen, and other first responders should, alone, bear the burden of the costs of the government that the rich pillage and spoil. The so-called "good Republicans," I mean.

[azureblue]

8. I think this is despot Don

is all bluster about CA. The state is the world's fifth largest economy and they really don't need the rest of the US , except for a place to export to. CA is probably singlehandedly supporting at least three red states

[Farmer-Rick]

11. As a farmer in a red state, I can honestly say the citizens here need to get off their lazy

butts And hold their corrupt system to account.

So many of these state's governments are swarming with crooks, cons and criminals mostly hiding in plain sight. The citizens shrug when a con is identified. The citizens do not care about the graft and good old boy back slapping thieves. As long as they allow themselves to be conned over and over again because someone with darker skin got screwed too, as long as they allow preachers to politic from the pulpit and discourage logical thought, as long as they go along to get along then they are going to be poor, depressed and ignorant.

Truly these state's citizens need to pull themselves up and out of this corrupted, destructive and lackadaisical approach to government.

[UniteFightBack]

16. This. nt

[paleotn]

19. Exactly.

I've seen much of that in the south. Texas is a case in point. Low voter turnout election after election. Tennessee, where I'm from, is even lower.