Tony,
The Irish built the Great Wall of China…
Steve Featherkile said:
Tony,The Irish built the Great Wall of China…
Then who build the Pyramids? They have been around thousands of years, so my guess is that LGB and the Germans build them, because no else can build or engineer anything better.
Tony Goatz said:Steve Featherkile said:
Tony,The Irish built the Great Wall of China…
Then who build the Pyramids? They have been around thousands of years, so my guess is that LGB and the Germans build them, because no else can build or engineer anything better.
Nah,
Germans didn’t build them. They just moved them to their current location.:lol:
Ralph
It’s quite interesting to describe a state, like Iowa, which is HEAVILY dependent on farm subsidies, as “ruggedly independent” and “not seeking a handout.” Maybe that’s because iowa already got its handout–16 BILLION in farm subsidies went to Iowa between 1995 and 2006. That’s more than a billion of my tax dollars a year to a state with a very low population density.
So spare me the cant about the rugged midwesterners not seeking help from the Gummint!
Here are some examples, taken from the Cedar Rapids Gazette: (http://www.gazetteonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070611/BUSINESS/70611013/1004)
"For example, Greenview Farms, operating in four Eastern Iowa counties, is
the state’s top subsidy recipient, with 2005 payments totaling $879,535. Those
payments are divided equally among one individual and five limited liability
corporations, with a total of six individuals receiving payments.
The new data shuffles the ranking of the top recipients.
In Linn County, John Munier of Springville moves to the top, having
received $194,747 in 2005, the latest data available.
Second is Michael Lucas of Central City, who received $157,375 in 2005.
Third is Louis Zumbach of Coggon, who received $152,903 in 2005.
In Johnson County, the top recipient in 205 was Joel Grabin of Oxford, who
received $168,895. Ranking second was Joel Schillerstrom of Lone Tree, who
received $122,652; and third was Joan Welsh Grabin of Oxford, who received
$111,290.
The payments were for conservation practices, disaster coverage and
commodity subsidies."
Maybe you noticed the bit about payments for “disaster coverage.” So they got coverage not from private insurers, but from Joe Taxpayer, who is inexplicably expected to protect Corporate farmers in Iowa from natural and marketplace disasters–to the tune of 3500 for every man, woman and child in Iowa. That is, an average farm subsidy of more than 1 billion a year to Iowa in the last decade, divided by Iowa’s 2006 population of 2,982,085
So who’s not taking handouts? Much much easier to just imply that black people are lacking something
Mike,
But how do subsidies to Iowa compare to other states? I wonder how many states have higher payments per resident.
These numbers have very little meaning unless we know where they rank among the 50 states.
What did the average taxpayer in Iowa pay to the Federal Treasury? This would also be helpful in giving some meaning to the numbers you provided.
Try looking up what was spent per resident in the three Katrina states. The figure is staggering. And no, I’m not comparing disaster funding with standard yearly subsidies.
It is just interesting to see what was spent.
Ralph
Iowa varies from year to year but it’s always in the top five in farm subsidies. That’s one reason why Iowa always wants to be first in the presidential primaries–so that anyone opposing farm subsidies will lose big in the early going, which is in turn one reason why we will always have very large handouts to farmers
From this website: (http://farm.ewg.org/farm/region.php?fips=19000)
Louisiana:
• $3.71 billion in subsidies 1995-2006.
• Louisiana ranking: 18 of 50
Iowa:
• $16.0 billion in subsidies 1995-2006.
• Iowa ranking: 2 of 50
Iowa got what–five times as much? And Louisiana, at 4,287,768, has roughly twice as many people in it
Who gets more federal tax money? I’m not sure. Both states have benefited enormously from billions of our dollars spent to channelize the Mississippi, which works well except when it catastrophically fails. Louisiana is a much much poorer state, per capita, than Iowa, and I doubt very much that the average Louisianan gets anywhere near 3500 a year
My point was simply that it’s sheer fantasy to imagine Iowa as some kind of repository of rugged self reliance.
Who pays more in to the feds?
Some states receive more Federal money than they pay. Some states pay more than they receive.
I think you would find a few surprises in each category.
Ralph
I checked on that–typically the “red” states get more in fed money than they pay out. But Louisiana and New orleans are, as far as I can tell, solidly in the middle on that score
I just looked at some data on The Tax Foundation Website (link) and it shows that in 2005 (most recent data shown), Louisiana received $1.78 in federal spending for every $1.00 in tax paid, ranking 4th state from highest in receipts / dollars sent.
Iowa received $1.10 / $1.00, ranking #24, which I would put “. . . solidly in the middle on that score . . .”.
FYInfo: My home state of California got only $0.78 for every $1.00 sent, ranking #46. Guess it was all the Mexicans here! Anyone up for a protest?
It’s interesting that the anti-farm subsidy site Mike linked only shows the amount of the federal subsidy, not how much is coughed up by us federal taxpayers. Wouldn’t be nearly as attention getting if the other half was shown.
Ralph, you’re right: Some real surprises in the results I found!
Happy (Well Taxed) RRing,
Jerry
Jerry,
Very interesting.
I guess Teddy Kennedy was not bringing home the pork. Mass. was ranked 40th, getting .82 for every dollar sent to Washington.
Ralph
I suspect the 2005 figure reflects post Katrina spending–the figures I was looking at referrered to the decade between 1995 and 2006, I think
mike omalley said:I seriously doubt the 2005 figure includes Katrina spending. The funding for all three states was 150 billion. Louisiana has a population of 4,287,768. Alabama has a population of 4,599,030. Mississippi has a population of 2,910,540. This is a total population of 11,797,338 for all three states. This is around $125,000 for every single resident of all three states. Not just the coastal areas. How much of this money do you think really made it to where it was supposed to go? Ralph
I suspect the 2005 figure reflects post Katrina spending--the figures I was looking at referrered to the decade between 1995 and 2006, I think
mike omalley said:For the years 2000 through 2005, Louisiana ranked 13th, 13th, 11th, 8th, and 4th respectively in federal spending / federal taxes paid. Doesn't look to be Katrina related at all, but rather a common pattern of getting something between $1.43 (in 2000) and $1.78 (2005) for each $1.00 sent to D.C. Not to single them out, but it looks to me like the folks in Louisiana are getting something of a free ride.
I suspect the 2005 figure reflects post Katrina spending--the figures I was looking at referrered to the decade between 1995 and 2006, I think
Iowa by comparison ranked 21st, 21st, 30th, 25th, and 24th for the same period, with between $1.21 (2002) and $1.04 (2003) in spending against $1.00 in taxes. I assume those figures include the farm subsidies.
I am generally against federal subsidies of most types, including those for large corporate farmers, but I would think the place to start saving money is with the biggest drains on our economy. Right after New Mexico (almost always #1 in the federal spending / federal tax paid list), Mississippi, Alaska, Louisiana (the top 4) and the other top 20 states are straightened out, we can go to work on those farm subsidies.
And I have yet to see the folks in the flooded midwest standing around waiting for the busses to come, committing mayhem on each other, or crying out because they think the federal government owes them. The pictures and interviews on TV tend to picture them as all working together, using anything that is available to lessen the damage and help themselves get back on track.
Happy RRing,
Jerry
Yes, the deep south has been broken for a LONG time–you’ll get no argument from me on that. I’m a yankee. It’s not surprising that a state which would not allow its black citizens to vote, which consistently maintained a state of institutional apartheid for two hundred years, would find its poor citizens lacking a certain degree of civic-mindedness, to put it mildly. I mean, into the 60s mississippi had a law on the books making it illegal for a black person to pass a white person in a car. You think that kind of thing doesn’t have an effect? Louisiana has worked systematically to keep its black citizens on poverty for a long tong time.
If people don’t see themselves as stakeholders in a society, they have little loyalty to its laws. In Iowa, a smaller state with far less population and less population density, with no racial diversity to speak of until very recently, with no history of legal segregation or systemic poverty, a state whose only real industry is subsidized by us at over a billion a year, a state of happy civic-mindedness prevailed.
I’m all for civic-mindedness. But you can’t build it simply by lecturing people. You have to give them a reasonable path and a stake in their society.
To make real sense of the dollars per taxpayer figure, we’d need a lot of info. How much of that money went to military bases, for example? How much went to maintaining the mississippi levees? But yes, the deep south has long gotten more in taxes than its given back. But I’m from Pennsylvania, a state which has long given back more than its gotten
Jerry Bowers said:I'd like to see the per capita income for Iowa and see how it ranks nationally. I know per capita income in Louisiana is low. Why has Iowa been a "Federal welfare state" all these years? Although Mike's figures did not fairly represent the whole picture, clearly Iowa has received more than they paid on a regular basis. Ralph
Iowa by comparison ranked 21st, 21st, 30th, 25th, and 24th for the same period, with between $1.21 (2002) and $1.04 (2003) in spending against $1.00 in taxes. I assume those figures include the farm subsidies.
Per capita income
Connecticut – $28,766
District of Columbia – $28,659
New Jersey – $27,006
Massachusetts – $25,952
Maryland – $25,614
Colorado – $24,049
Virginia – $23,975
New Hampshire – $23,844
New York – $23,389
Delaware – $23,305
Minnesota – $23,198
Illinois – $23,104
Washington – $22,973
California – $22,711
Alaska – $22,660
Michigan – $22,168
Nevada – $21,989
Rhode Island – $21,688
United States of America – $21,587
Florida – $21,557
Hawaii – $21,525
Wisconsin – $21,271
Georgia – $21,154
Ohio – $21,003
Oregon – $20,940
Pennsylvania – $20,880
Vermont – $20,625
Kansas – $20,506
Indiana – $20,397
North Carolina – $20,307
Arizona – $20,275
Missouri – $19,936
Iowa – $19,674
Texas – $19,617
Nebraska – $19,613
Maine – $19,367
Tennessee – $19,393
Wyoming – $19,134
South Carolina – $18,795
Alabama – $18,189
Utah – $18,185
Kentucky – $18,093
Idaho – $17,841
North Dakota – $17,769
Oklahoma – $17,646
South Dakota – $17,562
New Mexico – $17,261
Montana – $17,151
Louisiana – $16,912
Arkansas – $16,904
West Virginia – $16,477
Mississippi – $15,853
Here, when comparing this chart to Jerry’s information, we see the Feds actually are pretty good at spending the money where it is needed. Texas, which is ranked low in income, gets the short end of the stick. Texas regularly pays more than it receives.
Ralph
mike omalley said:WRONG Since 1992 Pennsylvania has received more than it has paid. So Mike, I guess Pennsylvania is broken like the deep south. Except income is higher in Penn. Ralph
But I'm from Pennsylvania, a state which has long given back more than its gotten
So, the bottom line here is that’s it’s ok to stick around after a flood and rob your neighbors blind
because you get less from the government than other states?
Ken Brunt said:Who said that? Louisiana gets plenty from the Fed. They ranked 4th highest in dollars received versus dollars paid. They also had the 4th lowest per capita income. From what the Fed supposedly has spent in Katrina states, the streets should be paved in gold. Seems to me they would have had better results if the Fed had written a check for $125,000.00 to every resident. Ralph
So, the bottom line here is that's it's ok to stick around after a flood and rob your neighbors blind because you get less from the government than other states?
My point being what difference does it make how much welfare a state receives from the government when in two separate but almost identical crises’, chaos and anarchy prevail in one instance and a thousand miles away, it’s the complete opposite?