I'm shutting down Google+ for the night and quite possibly for the weekend. Why? This stupid #gifwars thing people are so proud of. This Adam Black guy said he doesn't like gifs and now everyone is mass trolling him. Having been mass trolled like this I can relate to him easily enough. Have an opinion and the collective might of Google+'s lower class denizens jump on a bandwagon. I just saw a post where someone wanted to jump on board and had to get clarification she was tagging the proper Adam Black. She wasn't even connected to him ! Nor was she a part of the original discussion. She just wanted to follow the herd. When I called her out of it she claimed, "one gif doesn't make a troll." Perhaps not, but she's contributing to a larger troll effort. One straw doesn't break the camel's back, but thousands will. So, tonight, Google+ disgusts me. It probably will tomorrow as well. And possibly Sunday. I gave up Google+ for two months this spring
Comments
Not what people normally consider 'welfare'.
If you want to talk about welfare as it is generally understood: one third of all welfare recipients in the nation live in Democrat controlled California.
And yourself.
A State getting more than it gives in is usually not because of social welfare programs, but fed spending on roads or military bases or the like. That was my point, which is what is missed by those talking about 'red welfare states'. That is done to mislead people into thinking people that vote Republican are more likely to get welfare. Spending on roads and military bases is not what people consider 'welfare'.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/26/blog-posting/red-state-socialism-graphic-says-gop-leaning-state/
Or this one from 2015: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-REB-24093
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/which-states-rely-most-federal-aid-0
So, I believe my premise was correct: red states, those states where the voters tend to vote Republican, are moochers off the remaining, more liberal, states.
From the PolitiFact citation:
"How do you define red and blue states?
The graphic defines Republican states as those "that have voted Republican in a previous presidential election." Because the data is from 2005, that means states that voted for George W. Bush in 2004, which is a larger number than voted Republican in 2008.
But the definition of states as Republican or Democratic isn't immutable. Just four years later, in the 2008 election, six states in the right-hand chart and three states in the left-hand chart switched from Republican to Democratic, making both charts more heavily blue.
We should also note that some of the margins of victory were quite narrow. In fact, a dozen or more states can be characterized in most elections as swing states, which might be more appropriately shaded in purple.
The data is seven years old
As we noted, the data is for 2005. To the author’s credit, this is disclosed prominently, and because it’s the most recent data of its type available, we can hardly fault the creator of the graphic for using it. Still, since the data has almost certainly shifted in the interim, particularly with the 2009 stimulus and the general increase in deficit spending, those patterns could have shifted as well.
"Because of the high deficit spending we’re seeing at the federal level, it’s likely that every state is currently receiving more in federal spending than its population paid in federal income taxes," the Tax Foundation's Morrison said."
Pretty weak.
You know what it is. And it's not based on any reality.
No reason to do so. It was tedious enough the first time.
Wealthy live in NYC for proximity. They tolerate a great deal of shakedown from municipal factotums to do so.
Overtaxing of the wealthy will only drive them offshore, as many have already done.