Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the Providers, Red States Are the Parasites

[abelenkpe]

Ayn Rand Worshippers Should Face Facts: Blue States Are the Providers, Red States Are the Parasites

http://www.alternet.org/story/154338/ayn_rand_worshippers_should_face_facts_blue_states_are_the_providers_red_state_are_the_parasites

Last week, the New York Times published a widely discussed article updating an argument that progressive bloggers noticed a very long time ago. It's now well-understood that blue states generally export money to the federal government; and red states generally import it.

TPM published a great map showing exactly how this redistribution works:

Progressives believe in the redistribution of wealth, so we're not usually too upset by this state of affairs. That’s what it means to be one country. E pluribus unum, and all that. We’re happy to help, because we think we’ve got a stake in making sure kids in rural Alabama get educations and seniors in Arizona get healthcare. What’s good for them is good for all of us. We also like to think they’d help us out if our positions were reversed. It’s an investment in making America stronger, and we feel fine about that.

But maybe it's time to admit that we're being played for chumps, and that there are people in the rest of the country who are taking way too much advantage of our good nature. After all: it's now a stone fact that the blue states and cities are the country's real wealth creators. That's why we pay more taxes, and are able to send that money to the red states in the first place. We're working our butts off, being economically productive, going to college, raising good kids, supporting reality-based schools, keeping our marriages together, tending to our busy and diverse cities, and generally Playing By The Rules. And the fates have smiled on us in rough proportion to the degree that we’ve invested in our own common good.

(more at link)

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[Drale]

1. The people who worship Ayn Rand

worship her because they refuse to face reality.

[DJ13]

2. K&R

[tularetom]

3. Maybe our schools in CA would be as good as they used to be

if we didn't have to keep sending our tax dollars to places where they want to use them to teach kids that Jesus rode around on dinosaurs.

[stopbush]

11. About $40-50 BILLION a year in Fed taxes paid by Californians gets redistributed to other states.

Yet the red states love to call us disfunctional.

We run a budget deficit of $12-24 Billion a year. Yet if we got $1 back for every $1 we send to DC in Fed taxes (ie: the way it was when Reagan was president), we'd be able to cover two years of budget deficits for every one year of getting back the money we've sent to DC.

In the meantime, states like NM get over $2 back for every $1 they send to DC.

[Fawke Em]

21. The don't teach that in schools.

Trust me - I have two school-aged children and we live in a so-called "red" state.

The problem in most red states has more to do with low wages and a propaganda machine that vilifies unions.

[libtodeath]

4. Try to tell them that though

and they will just say you are lying.
Ignorance cant be reasoned with.

[ParkieDem]

5. OK, I wholeheartedly agree with the purpose and premise of this argument ...

... but I could poke a bazillion holes in many of the points made here.

First, I agree with the general idea - we distribute tax revenues on a somewhat unequal basis, but that's required in order to get broad-based benefits from our tax system. And people who complain about that are either misinformed, misguided or mean-spirited.

But using state-by-state comparisons to argue red-state hypocrisy is way too generalized to be considered a coherent argument.

First, let's look at the map. You can find plenty of "blue states" that would Rand would consider "moochers." Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Maine, Vermont, etc., are all "blue states" that accept a lot more in taxes than they pay out. Meanwhile, "red states" like Texas and Utah are paying more in taxes than they receive. Based on the map, the argument isn't nearly as clear-cut as the author would like us to believe. Going further into detail, the only four states that get "double their money back" are relatively small. Two are very "red" (MS and AL), but the other two aren't as clear-cut (NM and WV). And many states have a ratio somewhere between 0.9 and 1.1, which, in the scheme of things, is pretty close to parity.

As an aside, after the 2008 election, it's hard to tell what is a "red state" and a "blue state." Is Nevada red or blue? Its Senate delegation is split, and it went for Obama in 2008 but Bush in 2004. It's a big "parasite" state, according to this analysis. Same with Virginia. I tend to think of it as "red," but it's got two Democratic senators and went for Obama in 2008. It's a "producer." Maine, another big "parasite," has voted consistently for Democrats in presidential elections but has two Republican senators. Is it "red" or "blue?"

Second, simply claiming that the "producers" are concentrated in "blue" states or cities still tells us nothing about how these "producers" actually vote. Mississippi and Alabama may receive more federal money because they have large pockets of poverty - poverty that very well could be exacerbated by their conservative sate-level policies. Likewise, New York pays out quite a bit in taxes because it has loads of wealthy Wall Streeters - and these people may in fact be (and probably are) die-hard right-wing voters.

Third, the author claims that red-staters "can't complain" if their economy depends on a dam, air force base, national park, etc. He also suggests that these people shouldn't claim their mortgage interest deduction or other tax breaks. Well, believe me, few of the conservatives I know would have a problem with this (and here in Texas, I know plenty of conservatives). Their central argument is that these types of deductions, programs, etc. should go away - and that the economy would be better off long-term without them. I vehemently disagree, but this is their argument. What Alternet is doing here is the same thing the right-wing is doing when it calls on Warren Buffett to just "write a check" to the government if he is upset about his taxes being too low.

I could go on, but this gross categorization of people into producers, parasites, red states, blue states, etc. is just annoying, whether on the right or the left.

[zbdent]

6. wasn't it, oddly enough, a CONSERVATIVE GROUP who first pointed out that most of the

RED states receive more of the federal $$$ than they generate???

[former9thward]

7. Yet another attempt to divide the 99%.

The 1% and their agents never stop.

[abelenkpe]

8. It is those who follow Ayn Rand

and are working and voting to stop this redistribution that are unwitting agents of the 1 percent. Not those pointing it out that they work against their own self interest.

[former9thward]

9. You are just throwing Rand's name out there to give you cover to divide.

The article is nonsense. Most of the food you are eating comes from a red state. So YOU must be the parasite. California gets a majority of its energy and water supplies from neighboring red states. So that makes CA a parasite. See how that works?

[jeff47]

10. Actually, if you're in CA, most of your food comes from CA.

And most of Southern CA's water now comes from Northern CA, since AZ tapped the Colorado River upstream from CA.

As for power, CA's paying handsomely for that. So that's not being a parasite either.

The idea here is to weaken the propaganda that allows the 1% to keep the general public in line. That propaganda says the "red" states are bad since they're mooching off the "blue" states. Since people don't want to believe they're bad, that weakens the propaganda.

[abelenkpe]

12. I'm doing nothing of the sort

I simply posted an article someone else wrote and you clearly did not read.

[fascisthunter]

17. you are insane

[former9thward]

18. Given your past history that is a compliment.

Thank you.

[white_wolf]

13. Oh please.

Anyone who supports Any Rand or Objectivism is not a friend to the 99% at all. Ayn Rand was a despicable excuse for a human being who admired a child killer. Any one follows her or her philosophy is not worthy of my respect, it is the ideology of greed, a justification for sociopathy. To quote the National Review, a conservative magazine, review of Atlas Shrugged: "From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!”

[former9thward]

15. Oh please. No one is supporting Rand.

Go build another strawman to knock down.

[DonCoquixote]

14. Best summary of Ayn Rand

http://www.theprovocation.net/2011/09/tea-party-owes-more-to-church-of-satan.html

This article paralells Satanism and Ayn Rand, and points out tjhat much of modern Satanism is influenced by none other than Rand. Toq quote the founder "we are Ayn Rand with trappings."

[fascisthunter]

16. you are asking insane people to acknowledge reality

who else looks up to and follows the ideology of a sociopath?

[napoleon_in_rags]

19. Third: Don't come crawling to us to support those kids you couldn't afford to have

but refused to allow contraception or abortions or actual fact-based sex education to prevent. It's just that simple. Our blue-state babies are better off in every way that matters because we plan our families. A failure to plan on your part does not create an obligation on ours. Your policies force women to have kids, even when they're patently not ready to have them. Now (as you’re so fond of telling women who find themselves unhappily pregnant), you get to live with the consequences of those choices.

Wow. This article really casts the birth control debate in a new light.

[DesertRat]

20. k&r