re: Why should the people and taxpayers of America be bailing out poorly run states?

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Why should the people and taxpayers of America be bailing out poorly run states (like Illinois, as example) and cities, in all cases Democrat run and managed, when most of the other states are not looking for bailout help? I am open to discussing anything, but just asking?

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US taxpayers shouldn't even entertain the idea of giving Illinois a dime until they actually transfer newer employees to a defined contribution plan.

As of now, the bleeding hasn't stopped. They still offer unsustainable benefits.

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Defined as what? Welfare programs or pension/benefit/healthcare costs for retired government workers? How about military based and their costs, etc?
Subtract those numbers from the equation and rework the numbers.

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I don't disagree that we need to exclude certain spending in this analysis, but posting a link that states that NYS spends the most on welfare per capita without noting the source of funding is no less misleading than including non-welfare expenditures in these federal dependency rankings. Without providing the breakdown of federal vs state funded, it's not a meaningful link in this context.

Without having to run all the numbers I can look at census reports and see that NYS is not the top recipient of federal money for food assistance programs, for example.

It's also meaningless to ignore the collections side of things. Take into consideration relative Internal Revenue collections vs federal dollars going into welfare programs and NYS is not going to come out nearly as bad as you're hoping they will.

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Because you say so?

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California takes in more federal dollars than they give, this changed during the Trump presidency

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It's all a joke, but liberals cite the BS all the time as if because the "data" is sourced to a website ending with .org, it has credibility.

It would be interesting to do a well thought out detailed analysis.

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it ain't just liberals. See the 93 link earlier in this thread. Absolutely pointless.

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Excluding business income taxes from the collections table doesn't really change the order, though.

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Why just business income taxes?

You live in California and own some producing wells in Wyoming, make $10 million per year from this operation and pay $2.5 million to the federal government in income taxes. Why doesn't Wyoming get credit for any of the taxes sent to Washington for oil that is produced in its state?

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Why just business income taxes?

You live in California and own some producing wells in Wyoming, make $10 million per year from this operation and pay $2.5 million to the federal government in income taxes. Why doesn't Wyoming get credit for any of the taxes sent to Washington for oil that is produced in its state?

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Why does the proprietor care about Wyoming receiving credit when its not their residence?

Moreover, how do we know examples like yours are even material to overall collections?

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Moreover, how do we know examples like yours are even material to overall collections?

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Well, look at the reality for a state like Wyoming. Tiny population, huge state that's half owned by the federal government, and it's a major producer of coal, oil and gas (and electricity) - most of that production owned outside of the state.

Uhhhhh.....

A large portion of the country has been dumping federal money into Louisiana for years.

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That's not what's being discussed here. We're talking about states and how/how much they send to the federal government and what they receive in return.

In my hypothetical, on the state of Wyoming's "ledger" there's a lot of federal dollars sent to Wyoming to manage federal lands there (federal government owns about half of Wyoming), but taxes generated by oil produced on the same land is credited as a funds outflow for California.

Does that make sense to you given what we're trying to measure?

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Yes, I understand what you are saying. I agree that you can't take the federal dependency rankings put out by various outlets at face value for the exact reason your example illustrated.

However, while your example demonstrates how those dependency figures can be skewed, particularly on the receipts-side, I'm not convinced that the collections-side would be materially impacted. I also think there is an argument to source the collections to the residence of the taxpayer, especially when looking at this from the perspective of where the money goes back.

But yeah, I agree it isn't a straightforward exercise. Of course, I also don't think posting a welfare spending per capita by state was particularly useful.

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However, while your example demonstrates how those dependency figures can be skewed, particularly on the receipts-side, I'm not convinced that the collections-side would be materially impacted. I also think there is an argument to source the collections to the residence of the taxpayer, especially when looking at this from the perspective of where the money goes back.

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I haven't thought a ton about this, but I wonder if the eventual conclusion wouldn't be that it's impossible to do this type of analysis in an unbiased/equatable way. You simply can't treat states the same - there are far too many variables that merely reflect certain characteristics (of states) that have real impact on results.

I wonder how are agriculture subsidies accounted for by the organizations doing this.