Tax Blue States To Pay Red States. Red States Suck Money From Blue States.

Do Blue States really pay more in taxes than they receive from the federal government, and do Red States get more?

Dr David Brin, a scientist, and an author of power and imagination, wrote recently of the dangers we face if a severe solar storm, similar to the Carrington Event, were to strike today. Essentially, civilization as we know it would fall to a mid-nineteenth-century level, at best, and millions would starve, unable to escape the cities when their cars failed and the water was shut off. Go read the article. The danger is real.

I'd like to turn to another issue he raises. He returns in the comment section to say the following: ...By the way, BA pays most of the taxes (Red America receives net largesse) yet we are willing to pay for the research and education to move and stay ahead. RA *sucks* net taxes, yet screams that taxes are too high! (They are the lowest in 40 years.)...

This is buried in a screed going on for several paragraphs, explaining at vitriolic length just how stupid and backwards the Red States are, and how intelligent and wonderful the Blue States are. Now, on his field of expertise, I have no arguments. When Dr Brin talks astronomy, physics, or how to write a great novel, I'm smart enough to shut up and take notes.

But when the man says something like this:
...Dig this and dig it well. Blue America is where all the terror targets sit. It is where nearly all the smartypants scientists and journalists and teachers and skilled labor and all the other bunch of people who know stuff -- who Fox preaches that average folk should hate - all live...

Well, it just goes to show that no one can know everything about everything. Dr Brin's political commentary suffers from his apparent lack of empathy, to say the least. It's sad, really. I was no great fan of George Bush Jr, certainly, but he was handed a bag of sh*t shortly after he took office, and did about as well with it as any president could have. Did he make serious mistakes? Sure, and so did all those wonderful Blue State politicians who voted for war right along with him. They must have great eyes in their butts, hindsight being twenty-twenty.

Dr Brin states, and I have heard this repeatedly from the Left, that Red States are net consumers of taxes, and Blue States are net contributors. I suppose this is probably true. But I have to ask, from the liberal perspective, what's wrong with that? The Red States, with a few exceptions like Texas and Florida, are mainly internal states, with no ports or really large cities. Agriculture is the main industry in most of them. So, the people tend to be of modest income. The states are not rich. Now, isn't it a truism on the Left that the rich should pay more to help the poor? Then, it makes perfect left sense for the rich Blue States to send money to the poor Red States.

I could go a step further with this sort of analysis. It is dogma amongst the far left that the rich are rich and the poor poor, because the rich stole that money from the poor. How you like them apples? A bit sour? If you are a progressive, or other far left stripe, you very nearly have to believe this. So, the tax money taken from the Blue and given to the Red is simple justice. If you live in a rich Blue State, you should pay more.

But, and here is the real but, the Red States seem to want LESS money spent, lower taxes, less government interference. At least, that's what lots of them say. This means, doesn't it, that the Blue States could easily STOP sending money to people who seem not to want it anyway? People who don't value the aid, don't appreciate the guidance. So, why don't the politicians of the Left just stop? They could vastly decrease Federal outlays, deeply cut Federal taxes, and keep all of that money at home, in the Blue States to be spent by true Blue, left-of-center politicians, in states where the people are so much more appreciative of it. Where the people love those sorts of top-down social engineering programs.

Cut the Red States loose. Stop the money spigot, make them live on their own resources. The recipients of most of that federal largesse are not the poor anyway, but big agribusiness, so-called family farms that are actually huge, multimillion-dollar enterprises. Little of that money filters down to the poor. So little would be lost. Keep sending the food stamps, if it makes you feel virtuous, but cut off the money to the rich.

Chop out of the budget all farm subsidies that don't serve legitimate, liberal values like the environment. The government pays farmers to allow poorer, easily eroded land to rest and sit untilled. This fulfills a legitimate liberal (and conservative) value, the environment, but is only pennies compared to the money the left sends to the agribusiness rich.

I laugh. We all know this will never happen. The money the left spends has little to do with helping the poor, and a lot to do with power and influence. Show me please, the politician since Washington who GAVE UP influence, control, power. It's a very rare bird indeed, if not quite an extinct dodo. Even the Republicans, so-called conservatives, who crow about the virtues of the Laffer Curve, which purports to show how reducing taxes can actually increase tax revenue, still want to INCREASE the power of the government. What does it mean when you increase the government's income? It means more power to the government, and less to the people.

So please, Republicans, forget the Laffer Curve, unless you go so far to the left on it that you slide right on past the revenue-maximizing point and on into uncharted territory, where the government is taking in LESS than it possibly could. That is where freedom lies. Where the people control the fruits of the economy. Where there is money overflowing in our pockets, to be spent by us, as we freely choose, not as some left or right-wing nut-job with a god-delusion thinks best.

Dr Brin's bizarre rant against the Red States, in the middle of a calm discussion of a real, scientifically validated threat to our very existence as a civilization, demonstrates exactly why we are in the muck, hip-deep in trouble. If a man of his intellect can't set aside petty partisan squabbling around the edges, what are we to do? To blame the Red States for the war in the Middle East, or to state baldly that ALL or nearly all the scientists, teachers and skilled people live in the Blue States. Well, that's just stupidity. Sorry Dr Brin. Call a colleague at the University of Iowa or Texas A&M, ask them about it.

Liberals, take us at our word! We really do want you to cut YOUR taxes, and spend less on us, the lower income people in the Red States. Keep it. Keep it all. Keep every thin dime more than we are willing to spend on you. Please. Spend that money at home. Make your states bastions of liberal goodness, with great universities, cornucopias of social programs, free condoms for all.

But, also, please stay home. For generations, the Red States sent our brightest and most restless youth to the Blue States. How do you keep Johnny down on the farm, when the bright lights of LA or The Big Apple call? You don't. Now though, and for several decades, your best and brightest have been fleeing the Blue States for the Red. Florida, Texas, Colorado have all seen mass migrations of ambitious folks moving from New York, California and Illinois, all looking to escape. What? Escape what? Remember Detroit? That once-great city, now a Left wasteland. The Right didn't kill Detroit. The Right doesn't control Chicago or LA. So why are so many leaving? Think about it, liberals. Why are your most productive heading out to the bright lights of the Red States?

If liberals move out of liberal states, and into Red States, and then vote like they did back home, well, that's like the dog, dragging home that skunk he killed. He's so proud of that d*mned skunk, but we don't want him in our house. Move to the Red and vote Red. Or stay in the Blue and vote Blue. Let's let Red and Blue both get what they deserve, good and hard.