On June 30 2025 02:12 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2025 19:03 Acrofales wrote:On June 29 2025 10:27 KwarK wrote:On June 29 2025 09:15 BlackJack wrote:On June 28 2025 17:26 KwarK wrote:On June 28 2025 09:35 Acrofales wrote:On June 27 2025 18:38 oBlade wrote:On June 27 2025 15:12 Acrofales wrote:On June 27 2025 14:29 oBlade wrote:
Grocery stores could potentially have a public option, it sounds good in theory, but on closer inspection that seems stupid for the government to get into when it specifically has public assistance at every level already. NYC has food banks, they have local assistance, state assistance, and of course they have SNAP and WIC which are federal. And the government subsidizes farming and food production in certain ways too.
What do people do with assistance? They load up on lobster, steak, and soda, and use their disposable income on flagship phones. Or they use the benefits to clean out grocery stores of all the cases of bottled water, open and dump the water out in the parking lot, return the bottles for the 10 cents deposits and use the redeemed cash to buy drugs and go use them at a government-designated site.
Like I'm sorry if personal taxi burritos cost $30 in NYC but the answer is not raise minimum wage to $30 and whatever else is in the socialist pipe dream. Eat something else.
The closest analogue is ABC states. States that control liquor/spirit sales. Because that, like food, is something people directly consume. If you, like me, are from somewhere where the state monopolizes retail sales of liquor/spirits, the effect is you don't notice anything. But that's because it's a monopoly. On paper the alcohol is supposedly more expensive than other states, because they jack it up a little to use as state revenue, in practice it's not noticed because the state liquor stores are the only place to get liquor so it's just like a local cost of living quirk (like oh housing is a bit higher in this state than that state, gas is a bit less expensive in this one, alcohol is this much here).
Prices are higher than they otherwise would be because the state wants tax money and wants to discourage rampant alcoholism. This is different than like a state running a train/bus service, which is a public good or necessity, which the market couldn't otherwise fill due to the investment needed, roadblocks involved in public projects, and low margins or operating losses.
If you were to open public supermarkets with the goal of undercutting actual businesses that exist on the taxpayer's dime, basically that scheme is assbackwards. You have consumers paying taxes, and businesses paying taxes, to fund a public grocery store that erodes the very tax revenue that supports it. The welfare queen myth is a perfidious lie that doesn't exist in the real world. Stop propagating it. Nobody gets lobsters from the food bank and then spends their money on (other) luxury items. Have you ever lived in America? No, I haven't. So please educate me on how if I lived there I would frequently share the line at the supermarket with people using food stamps to buy lobster... and you aren't still talking about that one case of food stamp trafficking more than 10 years ago? + Show Spoiler +
Don't get me wrong. I'm sure people with food stamps sometimes save them up and buy a fancy meal for a special occasion. And maybe that's lobster. But that's their choice. They probably go without other stuff to afford that special birthday meal. They can budget that the same way you or I budget that.
Food stamps are loaded onto a debit card that can be used for basically anything you can put in your mouth (SNAP is different). The allowances are actually quite generous. I qualified for them after I stopped working and left thousands unspent because I just couldn’t buy enough expensive food to get through it all. My spending habits didn’t change whether I was spending taxpayer money or my own and so I didn’t switch to the steak and lobster diet. But after eating normally for a bit I could have done a government funded lobster month. None of that is to say that the program shouldn’t exist. It’s a godsend for people who need it and America is an absurdly wealthy nation that spends its money in absurd ways (golden dome for example). If we’re cutting wasteful government spending then the one that makes sure people have enough to eat but sometimes goes too far is not going to be a priority. Anyone who treats it as a priority when it comes to waste is likely motivated by ideology rather than any kind of objective analysis. But to the core point, the benefits are unrestricted and extremely generous. It’s absolutely nothing like my understanding of the system in the UK. If you normally have brand name more expensive preprepared food then you can continue to do so without change once on food stamps. If you practice any kind of grocery budgeting and cook your own meals then you can very quickly afford “luxury” items. SNAP works a lot more like people think food stamps work. It has a prescription for specific items your family is entitled to like baby formula if you have a baby. But food stamps is unrestricted. Hard to believe, honestly. What was your monthly allotment? Google says an individual is getting a couple hundred bucks a month, on average. Maybe if you are eating beans and toast and chip buttys regularly you could splurge on a month of lobster but I doubt you could buy it frequently. Also Ive been to Walmart. I see what lower income people have in their cart. It’s not steak and lobster, it’s Doritos and Mountain Dew. Nobody is gaming the system by giving themselves diabetes and obesity. Family of 4, got about $2,500/month for food. Wasn't able to spend anything close to that, though it's not like I was trying to use it all. Gotta remember this is on top of WIC (what I meant when I said SNAP earlier) etc. so there's already an amount of bread/milk/cheese/fruit/veg covered there before you even start using the food stamps. I assume at some point they'll just claw back the unspent money but there is an lot of it. But I've paid an awful lot more in taxes, if the government has too much money then that makes sense, they've got a lot of mine. Some programs are state specific so your mileage may vary. That sounds like a rather insane amount of money to spend on food. My wife and I don't hold back on spending on food, and if we go out a fair amount, we'll spend maybe 600 euros a month between the two of us. 2500 USD is roughly double that per person. It is also considerably more than the maximum unemployment allowance awarded here in Spain per person (if both my wife and I were to lose our jobs simultaneously we would be entitled to that amount each, though), which is meant for food, but also rent and any other costs (not education or healthcare, which are public). So yeah, that is not what I was thinking of. I clearly remember John Oliver doing a special on SNAP and the max amount was far lower and you had to jump through all kinds of hoops to even be eligible. A quick search also leads me to see the same numbers BJ mentions, a maximum allowance of 292 per person. That is what I thought we were talking about when discussing food stamps, but yeah, I was mistaken. Apparently US social security is in a reasonable place, despite all the news to the contrary? Or maybe this is a special program that only white people can access? It's always been far more generous than popularly perceived because it's a political football. Show nested quote +On June 30 2025 00:37 Billyboy wrote:
I'm not sure on the city level, but by state level it is very clear that the Red ones use more than the blue.
1. Federal Funding Received vs. Taxes Paid (Net Balance)
This is the most common metric used:
Republican-led states generally receive more federal dollars per dollar they send in taxes.
Democratic-led states often contribute more in taxes than they get back.
Example Data (based on recent studies, such as by Rockefeller Institute, WalletHub, and Pew):
State $ Received per $1 Sent in Federal Taxes Governor’s Party (as of data year)
Mississippi ~$2.09 Republican
West Virginia ~$2.03 Republican
Kentucky ~$2.00 Republican
New Mexico ~$1.90 Democrat
New York ~$0.91 Democrat
California ~$0.99 Democrat
Massachusetts ~$0.83 Democrat
So, many red states are "net takers" while many blue states are "net donors".
2. Why This Happens
Several reasons:
Red states tend to have lower income levels, so they pay less in federal income tax.
They may receive more in social programs like Medicaid, SNAP, and infrastructure aid.
Many have large rural areas that rely more heavily on federal support.
3. Federal Spending Categories
Republican-led states may get more from:
Military spending (many bases are in Southern/red states)
Agricultural subsidies
Social assistance programs due to higher poverty
Democratic-led states tend to get more:
Scientific research grants
Urban transit funding
Tech and infrastructure innovation
Summary
Red (Republican) states tend to receive more in federal funding than they pay.
Blue (Democratic) states tend to pay more in taxes than they receive back. Not sure why you picked the states you did instead of just using the list. There are a number of reasons why this simplistic metric is not helpful. For example, there's no reason include military bases imo, and several red states, like Floirda, are places people move AFTER they made their money and paid their taxes (although Florida, right wing boogeyman state, is still a net contributor). Now obviously evey state wants their nose in the trough. But I've always found this metric too reductive to be useful. There are three additional reasons for that. 1) collapsing huge businesses to a single state. Apple and other tech companies do business everywhere but iirc for this state metric thst all gets lumped in as "California" 2) Many states have industries (like ag) that almost eveyone has an interest in helping subsidize, "rescue", "protect" pick your reason 3) even as politics have changed many of these states have probably been net takers or contributors for a very long time, so it's not clear what the point is? Has there been a single year in the history of the Republic where NY was not a net donor, and yet it used to be a more competitive state, even back in the early 1800s. So what's the point here? 4) internal state dynamics. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I think the blue areas of many red states are the places a lot of that federal money is going. People try make some partisan point out of this but the truth is, bluster aside, pretty much no state would take a deal whete they keep their own tax money if they got nothing from the federal government in exchange Edit: holy typos
Chat GPT picked em, I've found it is a decent tool when you do not have time to a whole pile of resources. He asked and I was looking for a non partisan answer and that was what came out. I'm sure it is not perfect, but I think there is a pervasive myth that the blues are on the governments tits taking from the hard working reds and at best it is a tie but more likely reds get more. Is it justified? Probably in a lot of cases yes. Is it strange that the Reds then HaTe dA GoveRnment, yes it is.
Everyone should be looking for more value from their government not flat more or less.
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