Mr. Kurtz points out this Mother Jones article which documents South Dakota's continued dependence on the federal government for its economic well-being. Crunching 2010 Census and IRS data reveals that South Dakota receives $1.58 from Uncle Sam for every dollar it pays in federal taxes. As has been the case for several years, urban, "blue," Obama-lovin' states tend to subsidize the rural, "red," Republican states.
Oh, the tyranny.
The New York Times offers this fun nationwide interactive map that shows federal benefits county by county. In 2009, Lake County received $6,727 in federal transfer payments per capita. The map tells me that's 17.37% of all county income. In other words, if we got rid of that darned federal government, we'd see local income and quite possibly local sales tax revenue drop by a sixth.
Interestingly, Hanson County, Rep. Stace Nelson's stomping grounds, gets $9,026 in transfer payments per capita. That's more than the $8,105 per capita received by Shannon County, on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
The New York Times highlights the conflict between the desire for self-sufficiency and the reality of life in community with this anecdote about a conservative Minnesotan:
Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.
He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region's long-serving Democratic congressman.
Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice [Binyamin Applebaum and Robert Gebeloff, "Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It," New York Times, 2012.02.11].
Shrinking the federal government sounds great, until they take away your kids' lunch, or your mom's surgery, or your veterans' hospital, or your local B-1 bomber base. Gulbranson, just like Kristi Noem, finds conservative sloganeering doesn't fit with the human urge to help:
"You have to help and have compassion as a people, because otherwise you have no society, but financially you can't destroy yourself. And that is what we're doing."
He paused again, unable to resolve the dilemma.
"I feel bad for my children" [Applebaum and Gebeloff, 2012]
South Dakota, Minnesota... we're all on welfare.
Cory,
The country as a whole pays more out than it takes in. The dollar we pay in comes back to us. The extra 58 cents we borrow from our children and grandchildren.
We are gouging it from the Earth, Mr. Black: so are our children.
"Crunching 2010 Census and IRS data reveals that South Dakota receives $1.58 from Uncle Sam for every dollar it pays in federal taxes."
Only 60% of the 1.58 is paid by federal taxes. So the truth is that for every dollar we get 95 cents. The remaining 63 cents is borrowed from future generations to fund schools that indoctrinate them with New Age theology. If we would eliminate federal funding of education, the cost per student would become less than half of what it is now and we would have the freedom to have our children educated in the worldview that we agree with. Perhpas then children would actually be educated by 12th grade, instead of joining their parents who are living in a world of delusion, drunk on the Kool Aid from the New World Order.
Larry... a sidenote... I thought of you as I was realizing this. The following words are all anagrams one aother: EARTH. HEART. HATER. THERA.
(Thera, of course is an island near Crete in the Mediterranean [aka: Santorini] which many think is the source of the Atlantis legend.)
Who says Sibby's the only one who can come up with weird cool stuff?
hater i knew upon designing the phrase as a counter-terrorism response to Ellis' "America haters."
Rolls off the bowel nicely, i think....
The two largest handouts in Rapid City consist of Section 8 housing payments (which drives up rent for everyone) and TIF payments to the wealthy developers (Hagg, Hall and Shafai.) The middle class pays the bill for the poor and the rich.
You people talk about welfare!!!! Check up on your senator john thune's life from high school to the present.
He has been on the government pay roll for his whole life starting from pierre,sd to his present lolly gag in washington,DC
And Thad, the rich roll up a much bigger tab on the middle class's backs than the poor. Priorities!
These are just the high points but it sure got me to thinking about the real cost of driving a car. Im not sure the green tech industry is getting a fair shake when everything else is considered.
You can read the rest here.
http://www.progress.org/gasoline.htm
The true price of gasoline is as high as $15.14 a gallon, according to a new report released by the International Centre for Technology Assessment
Artificial, anti-free-market subsidies don't end at the federal level, as the group said most state income taxes are in turn based on oil firms' lower federal tax bills, which result in companies paying $123 million to $323 million less in state taxes.
In addition to tax breaks, the federal government provides up to $114.6 billion to the wealthy industry in giveaways and subsidies annually that support the extraction, production and use of petroleum, such as research and development and export financing.
The federal government also spends up to $1.6 billion yearly on regulatory oversight, pollution cleanup and liability costs connected to the oil industry, the group said.
In addition, U.S. military spending allocated to guard the world's petroleum resources totals $55 billion to $96 billion a year, according to the group.
The Blindman
Cory,
You were crititical of my suggestion that we were lower the voting age to 16 because sixteen year-olds are not informed on the issues. This NYT article that you have referenced suggests that there are a large number of adults who are not informed on entitlement programs and a variety of issues. I know that you are already aware of this, but democracy is never perfect.
I'm not sure that "critical" is the right word for my response to your earlier suggestion. I just noted that we'd need to do some serious educating. But I suspect you're already doing that educating!
Indeed, democracy is not perfect. It puts faith in people who do not and probably cannot pay attention to all of the big issues to make decisions that affect all of those big issues. You and I could likely go through our student bodies and identify a whole bunch of students (start with the debaters!) who are better informed about the nature of entitlement programs and the federal budget than the folks mentioned in the NYT article.
We let them drive cars; can we let them drive democracy? It's a fascinating question! Anyone else care to weigh in?
Well, Herman Cain just weighed in just recently. He says 50% of us are either stupid or ignorant. (I wonder if he knows what the difference is.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/herman-cain-calls-half-the-electorate-either-stupid-or-ignorant/2012/02/18/gIQABBIwLR_blog.html
I think we have here another example of willful GOP irony. They accuse the other side of something, when what they say is most true of their own side. Cain was banking on ignorance; informed voters could never support his ignorant policy pronouncements.
Red states: eat your hearts out: having two Democratic senators has its rewards.
"Federal health officials Tuesday announced that the Montana Health Co-op will receive a $58 million start-up loan, to help it become a new health insurer offering coverage to Montana individuals and businesses."
#SD History from 1889 - Today, Congress split the Great Sioux Reservation into 5 smaller ones, undoing the 1868 Ft Laramie Treaty. @SDMagazine
Time to re-purpose Ellsworth Air Force Base? "Denver Post, on the air tanker issue:" MT @wildfiretoday:
http://wildfiretoday.com/2012/06/17/denver-post-air-tanker-issue/
Bill,
He does speak for his 50 percent, which is so confounded by 999 tax and foreign policy.