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United States News Title: Red State Welfare Queens Red State Welfare Queens by mistermix This map and accompanying discussion (via) should be more widely disseminated. As Kevin Drum notes, rural life is more expensive, and it is subsidized by city dwellers. Rural state Republicans used to know this, so they would often vote for pork-barreling blue dogs who were perceived as more effective in bringing home far more than their fair share of tax dollars. But in the past few years, they started to believe the Tea Party line that they were the last real Americans laboring under the oppressive yoke of elite urban taxation. They aren’t, and they ought to be reminded of that. When you have to start driving 20 miles to get to the Post Office, or a couple of hundred to get to the airport, then voters might start remembering who brings home the subsidies that allow unprofitable postal and air service. vhh - August 9, 2011 | 9:34 am · Link this is the crux of the matter. Publish the map over and over again. Propose legislation to cut the red state subsidies every week every month every year and you break the Tea Party. The Republic of Stupidity - August 9, 2011 | 9:40 am · Link ... then voters might start remembering who brings home the subsidies that allow unprofitable postal and air service. Seeing as our Randian masters like P Ryan are getting their way, those voters are about to find out the hard way… I wonder how much a repossessed Medicare scooter will fetch on eBay? Nutella - August 9, 2011 | 9:41 am · Link Yes, it’s always been true that the people who like to think of themselves as rugged individualists are subsidized, living on other people’s money. Metropolitan areas subsidize the rural areas, as you note. The east pays for the west, the north pays for the south, the cities pay for the suburbs. When Newt Gingrich was whining about welfare queens, his suburban Atlanta district had the second highest ratio of federal money coming in to federal taxes paid in the whole country. About the same time in Atlanta an enterprising reporter investigated the common belief that neighborhoods with big lots and single family houses are better for the tax base than ones with apartments and small lots. He found that the cheaper neighborhoods were net contributors of local taxes and the richer ones were not paying their own way. We need to publish more of this analysis of tax winners and losers. False stories like ‘50% of Americans pay no taxes at all’ get all the publicity. dr. bloor - August 9, 2011 | 9:48 am · Link Eric Cantor, Deadbeat. Nice to see that the Old Dominion is carrying on it’s tradition of lionizing assholes determined to destroy the republic. North Dakota? South Dakota? Wyoming? Montana? Iowa? Maine (Giant Teabagger contingent in Maine)? Indiana? Oregon? These are not states that have a higher proportion of minorities relative to the rest of the country. But they’re all places where “rugged individualism” and “keep the gubmint out of my bizness” attitudes are flaunted. You’re missing the forest for the trees – not everything is about the idiots in the South who continue to celebrate Treason In Defense Of Slavery – the problem exists outside of the South. Chris - August 9, 2011 | 10:02 am · Link Thanks for this. I posted the same thing on facebook a couple days ago and have been reading stuff about it for years now. Yes, the “rugged individualism” thing is pure myth. They’re the biggest welfare queens in the country. Rural state Republicans used to know this I think they still do. Remember when Rand Paul was elected in Kentucky and one of his first actions was to go on the air and reassure his constituents that despite his anti-pork stance, he would make sure farm subsidies weren’t cut? Once again with the Matt Taibbi quote: “The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending – with the exception of them money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about.”
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One of the reasons why rural living is in many ways so much more expensive than urban or suburban living is that the private sector doesn’t want to bother with low density customers. Take telecommunications, for example…the major telcos (there are only three or four in the entire country now) only want to cherrypick customers in urban areas where their cost of reaching them is substantially lower, on a per customer basis, because they don’t need as much infrastructure to plan, build, and maintain to service that customer base. Contrast with rural customers who live at the end of very long telephone lines that are expensive on a per customer basis to plan, build, and maintain. The private sector gravitates to where the profit is, and it’s not in rural areas. Which is why airports, which are expensive facilities to build and operate, in rural areas, just don’t have the bang for the buck that airports in higher density areas do. Ditto medical facilities, post offices, I could go on all day. This is a pretty good example of how markets don’t work well for utility type enterprises, but don’t tell the free market clowns that.
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