Sunday, June 21, 2009

Federal taxes vs. Federal Outlays by State

Often times, when reading various articles about tax policy, I see references that such-and-such a state pays more in federal taxes than it receives back. Today, I read that California gets only $0.80 back for every $1.00 it sends to Washington. People in Connecticut often point out that Connecticut gets somewhere between $0.60 and $0.70 for every dollar spent.

Often times, people say that Republican-leaning states in the South take much more than they provide, while more liberal states in effect subsidize the Republican states.

For Connecticut and New York, this has almost certainly inverted due to the AIG bailout alone. AIG received $170 billion in bailouts: this would almost all be going to New York and Connecticut. AIG is headquartered in New York, and its financial products group that caused most of the problems was in Connecticut. $170 billion is $7,394 for every man, woman and child in the two states, which should easily make up the difference between what's paid in and what's paid out.