Go Bill. I’ll be voting early and often.
There we go… voter fraud! How much is Soros paying you???
That is a woefully misleading graph. This is one of those times where the numbers outright lie.
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Many people in FL are retirees and as such do not make income. Since this measurement is just against income tax and, say, not estate tax then of course the numbers are skewed. Meanwhile, those same retirees are collecting the Social Security and Medicare benefits they have already earned and paid for. Yet that chart makes it appear that FL residents get a free ride. They do not. Any true metric regarding federal aid shows FL comes in about in the middle of Federal aid.
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FL is the largest swing state in the nation. 29 electoral votes, third only to Texas (red) and California (blue). So long as they are able to sway elections they will always get a bit more than their fair share. Which party wants to piss off the large voting blocks of FL and lose the Presidential election?
This is not how SS works, I think? I mean, you don’t get X dollars if you put X dollars in. Otherwise you would be better off with some other type of insurance, and SS would start to need to do rationing its services. Otherwise SS would not be in the precarious state it is now in.
Just to be clear, “The Palmetto State” Is South Carolina, not Florida.
Also, Florida does in fact get a massive amount of federal aid that other states often don’t, in the form of disaster relief for Hurricanes every damn year.
Finally, for states like Florida and South Carolina, a lot of that federal money is due to military installations.
Hey, it’s all right. I’m feeling generous – Florida can get the same deal, no riders!
I heard once that SS paid out out 6/7 of what it collects from an individual on average, while medicare pays out about 7 times what it collects.
My problem has always been that SS taxes is capped, making it on of the most regressive forms of taxes there is.
I realize that the Palmetto State is SC but that graph was woefully misleading.
We do not get massive amounts of disaster relief every year. Until last year we had not been hit by a hurricane in a decade whereas other states get aid more frequently for wildfires, flooding, The states that have received the most FEMA aid the past 5 years (as of August, 2017 before Irma which might put FL on this list) are PA, AL, VT, CN, GA, IA and ND.
It is not military bases either. CA has more than anyone and per capita I think MD and VA have the most. We have our fair share but not anything out of balance to the population.
Florida has a shitload of retirees which is probably a lot of federal spending.
I’d be interested to see that source.
According to this, that’s not remotely true:
https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/states-receive-disaster-aid-year/#10
For instance, PA received $125M over the past 5 years. Florida received $295M over the same period.
But it’s fair to note that Florida doesn’t top the list, which is topped by places like NJ and Louisiana.
It’s not just military bases, but all kinds of federal and DOD infrastructure. You have NASA, as well as a ton of DOD installations in Tampa and Orlando. There are a ton of federal employees in Florida. According to this, there are around 138,000 federal employees in FL, total.
Random Florida tidbits:
The whole “go to Florida to die” meme isn’t actually accurate; Florida has FEWER deaths per 100k people than average in the US. The “In Florida, people don’t have to pay state estate tax” thing is also misleading, because as it turns out most states don’t have one. People go to Florida to retire, sure, but only when they can afford it and they frequently leave before death.
edit - random aside: it’s also not the oldest state, although by total population it carries more elderly en masse. The oldest state (average age) is actually Maine
No doubt this is a big portion of it. Looking into the numbers it seems retirement benefits, and non retirement benefits, are categories where Florida ranks second overall, behind only California. Others, such as grants, federal employees, and contracts it ranks 5-6. Which given the size makes sense.
They also rank about 20th for reliance on federal funds for their budget, at about 1/3 of the state budget being from federal dollars. Ranking per capita and Florida doesn’t rank especially high, about 20th, behind clear winners in Maryland, Virginia, and Alaska.
Florida is a net taker though, and there is no skirting around that fact. It recieves roughly $3,200 more per capita in federal spending than it sends in taxes. While Illinois is about net -$2000, New Jersey, New York, Minnesota, all at that or higher.
Certainly. My grandparents are snowbirds, a common thing. They head down for the winter. When my grandmother had what we thought was a stroke, but turned out to be late stage brain cancer that gave stroke like symptoms, she was in Florida. However, a month later when she died, she did so back in Illinois. I doubt her story is unique.
I was looking at that graphic and nodding at all the sense it made until I got to #10. WTF North Dakota?!
So I went digging, and it turns out ND has had a pretty rough time of it the past couple of decades between wildfires and floods. My condolences to the people of North Dakota, I had no idea.
Why is New York on a completely different magnitude compared to the rest of the list? Is that all from Hurricane Sandy?
Without looking deeply, yes. New York and New Jersey have a lot of economically critical infrastructure, and high development areas, that broadly speaking aren’t built with hurricanes of that magnitude in mind. Unlike, say, Florida. So the flood abatement and other mitigation was not up to the task, leading to higher overall damages, particularly along Long Island with its very expensive communities such as the Rockaways that got hit particularly hard.
All four of them appreciate your concern.
I’ve told you guys that my current relationship is more or less based in (or at least arose from) tater tots and LotR, right?
I think we all pretty much assumed.
Yeah, I think that went without saying.