Republican States Are More Dependent On Government

dbphoenix

dbphoenix

Republican-leaning states are a lot more dependent on the federal government than Democratic-leaning ones.

That's according to a recent analysis from the personal finance site WalletHub, which ranked states based on how much they rely on Uncle Sam to support their state finances.

To calculate states' dependence, WalletHub analyzed three metrics: how much a state gets in federal funding per every dollar it pays in federal income taxes, the percentage of state funding that comes from the federal government and the number of federal employees per capita, both military and civilian.

Check out the map below to see how dependent your home state is compared to the rest of the country. The most-dependent states are shaded white, and least-dependent states are shaded blue. A ranking of 1 indicates least-dependent, while 50 represents most-dependent. link
 
It really gets boring slapping liberals around every time they trot out this ridiculous argument, are liberals really so stupid they believe the majority of people on welfare vote against the party that provides them their government cheese??



Are Welfare Recipients mostly Republican?

Paul Krugman is in puzzlement, having observed that Red States get more welfare funding, while Republican voters oppose the welfare state. He portrays Republicans as “Moochers” who are either hypocritical or too stupid to know their own best interest.

But as we know, states do not vote, individuals do. There is only a paradox if Republican voters receive welfare at above average rates while voting against it. From the Gellman-paradox we know that the low-income voters who drag down the Red States average tend to vote disproportionally for Democrats. Republican voters earn significantly more than Democrats, even though Red state earn less than Blue states.

Krugman reports no individual level data, so let me. The Maxwell Pollhas detailed information about welfare use. The data is from 2004-2007. During this period in these polls a plurality of voters supported Democrats. I will graph the two-party vote, more data is at the end.

maxwell.png

Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split, 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats, while full time Workers are evenly divided between parties.

You have similar results in this recent NPR-Poll. Among the Long Term Unemployed, 72% of the two-party support goes to Democrats.

It appears that once more common sense is right and the impression left by the New York Times wrong. Indeed, people who live off the government disproportionally support Democrats.

Given that Krugman is aware of the Gellman-Paradox, he should have reported the individual level data first instead of wasting everyone’s time with state-level aggregation that we already know is wrong. Instead he acknowledged that state level data is probably wrong (to get cover), then goes ahead and relies on the wrong method anyway, since it produces the results he wants. The false impression that Republicans use more welfare is already spread around the internet by liberals who still trust Krugman.

Appendix:

Share of Recipients of each program that self-identified as supporters of Republican party in 2004-2007 Maxwell Poll:

Gov. Subsidized Housing 12%
Medicaid: 16%
Food Stamps: 20%
Unemployment Compensation: 21%
Welfare or public assistance: 22%
Disability benefits from government 25%

http://super-economy.blogspot.ca/2012/02/do-welfare-recipients-mostly-vote.html
 
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This comes up every so often - the left is running out of talking points apparently, that they feel the need to recycle stuff addressed a dozen or so times before.

Gelman Paradox.
 
This article from USA Today "New Yorkers lead pack in government benefits" compiled data showing which states had the highest per capita expenditures for every type of government-provided benefit and blue states top the list and red states made up most of the bottom 10.

Top 10 - Most dependent on government aid
1 New York
2 West Virginia
3 Rhode Island
4 Maine
5 Pennsylvania
6 Massachusetts
7 Vermont
8 Kentucky
9 Michigan
10 Connecticut

Bottom 10 - Least dependent on government aid
41 South Dakota
42 Nebraska
43 Wyoming
44 Idaho
45 Georgia
46 Texas
47 Nevada
48 Virginia
49 Colorado
50 Utah
 
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