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- Dec 18, 2019
Gotta ask our North American friends here, but does this talk Robert likes to yap about Blue States having to subsidize the red ones stands?
As usual, astrotard Bob likes to simplify things to make it seem like his side good, other side bad. To be fair, a lot of this went around in the past few years when a few Chipman-friendly publications drew conclusions based on the "donor vs. recipient" state data, measuring how much each state contributes to the federal government against how much they receive for all programs. The way it's sold is that the following eight states contribute: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Minnesota, Colorado, and Utah(!). The rest draw more from the government than they contribute.
Subsequently, Bob types examined this and tried to explain why these predominantly blue states were carrying the nation on their backs. Plenty of theories, such as union membership, education - anything that framed these states as intellectually superior (minus Utah, because gross, red state) were and still are popular.
It turns out the answer is a lot simpler than that, and it's not popular because it doesn't make these blue states the heroes they think they are. Compare that list against the states with highest median housing prices:
Hawaii ($615,300)
California ($505,000)
Massachusetts ($381,600)
Colorado ($343,300)
Washington ($339,000)
New Jersey ($335,600)
Maryland ($314,800)
New York ($313,700)
Oregon ($312,200)
Utah ($279,100)
See some overlap? Matches fairly consistently with with cost of living, too. See, what happens is that these states pay higher salaries due to higher housing costs and cost of living. Higher salaries mean greater tax revenue because progressive taxation means the federal government takes a bigger cut of those earnings - hence, "donors."
Here's the best part. A lot of people can't afford to RETIRE in these states because of the high cost of living. What do they do? Well, during all their productive, working years, they contributed in those expensive states, but then they RETIRE in "recipient" states. By retiring, they're now collecting benefits in those places, doubling the effect.
7 of 8 of those "donor" states are on the bottom half of percentage of population aged 65 and above. "Superior" means pricing out the elderly.