Talk:Federal taxation and spending by state

message: This page is so old and poorly done.  I would recommend deleting it.  So out of date!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.202.62.180 (talk) 18:00, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: irrelevant

message: how do I add categories? how do I add links that are in wikipedia? are they internal links? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Crosbyk (talk • contribs) 
 means: go to other articles and create links to this one. I am going back to bed now so you will have peace fro me for a while. -- RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 08:18, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: I thought this was the best place to add this table, instead of creating a new article.  I tried to add it in a way that doesn't disrupt the flow of the article, by placing it at the bottom.  I did think that the article itself was better represented by a general introduction, so I moved the historical material about Sen. Patrick Moynihan to a separate section.  My general intro is a quick generic version and should be expanded.  Jaywilson (talk) 09:16, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Discuss addition of table

message: Hi all. I like this article but I have a few suggestions:
*The article title should be changed to "Federal spending and taxation by state" to make it more accurate and encyclopedic; the term "across states" is a bit colloquial.
*I think the chart that compares federal spending and taxation violates by WP:OR and WP:BIAS. If we want to include a section on the political debate over federal spending, then that should be included with sources. But to create a chart that links federal spending with the result of a single presidential election is too much.
*Instead of direct federal spending in each state, I find that the calculation of total federal grants to each state is much more interesting. Federal spending in each state is largely for the benefit of the nation, whether it's a military base in Texas, disease research in Atlanta, or the operation of the federal departments in D.C. Grants that go to each state and local government more directly reflect the amount of federal "aid" that goes to each state and such calculations should likely be included here as well. See: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/11051/how-much-federal-money-does-dc-actually-get/ 
Best, epicAdam(talk) 15:41, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions for change 

message: * I agree about the title.
* I added the chart, including the last column.  The pattern linking taxation, spending, and voting patterns is not my original research.  The links I provided, including an article from the very mainstream and respected publication The Economist, show that this pattern is already well known and much discussed.  I agree that a more comprehensive indication of political affiliation  may be desirable, but it is hard to find and harder to choose.  What period of time is appropriate to choose?  The last 5 elections?  The last 10?  I chose to use the presidential election that was closest in time to the data I was using, using the 2008 election data with 2007 economic data.  I will put the link to the Economist in the references section as a response to the suggestion.
* As to bias, the referenced WP:BIAS article does not provide constructive guidelines.  In regard to bias in general, I do not believe that drawing attention to patterns linking economic level to voting behavior is inherently biased.  The sources I have used are mainstream and impeccable.  There is a very high threshold for true, indisputable facts being considered biased or incendiary.  One example that would be incendiary in my opinion is (even if any reputable research supports it, which I don't know) any links between race and intelligence.  But links between economics and voting are matters of group choice, a valid topic from the perspectives of sociology, political science, and economics.
* Thank you for the link to an interesting article with compelling data.  However, this data only includes grants directly to state and local governments.  It doesn't include payments to individuals such as social security or disability, or payments to providers such as medicare.  These have to be considered in terms of total aid given to states, and the amounts are huge.  As for payments for programs such as NASA or the military that benefit the whole country but happen to be located in particular states, I will concede that these are a grayer area.  But they do boost the state economy and those dollars still do "trickle down" to state residents who pay state taxes, so it's not unreasonable to include those monies as well.  If a change here were warranted, the suggestion of a data source that included all aid, to state and local governments as well as directly and indirectly to individuals, would be helpful.
Thanks, Jaywilson (talk) 16:56, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Re: Suggestions for change

message: ::Hi Jaywilson. Information presented here should be limited to what those sources actually say. They should not be used as a basis to include additional data that may conform to those conclusions but isn't provided in the original source. For example, the table should list information as it is shown in the Economist without any additional calculations, or any additional information that was not included (such as who won the last presidential contest).
::When an editor adds extraneous information like that, it often leads to a greater perception of bias; as if the editor is trying to prove a point using Wikipedia as a tool to disseminate a particular point of view. All the data included in this article appears to use many examples that come to the same conclusion: that conservative-leaning states are hypocrites. That may be true, but those conclusions should always be attributed to their source and presented without further uncited commentary. For example, after the information is presented in a chart, additional text can say "The Economist magazine found that many states that accept more federal money are conservative-leaning" etc. As for the amount of money each state gets in proportion to its budget, I meant for that to be included as an additional section; not to replace other information. Best, epicAdam(talk) 17:36, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Re: Re: Suggestions for change

message: There is a difference between data and conclusions.  I haven't pointed the reader toward the conclusion that conservative states are hypocrites any more than I've pointed the reader to the conclusion that liberal states are foolish for advocating policies that send their money away.  I'm merely combining several reputable sources in one table, just as any article is allowed to cite more than one source.  By the way, the reference that included the link to liberal and conservative states was the Tax Foundation article, which I've now cited, and not The Economist.  All I've done is put a column of data from the New York Times next to columns of data from the IRS and the Census Bureau, added one prefatory (and cited) sentence that explains why I added that data but not commenting further, and put in references to the pattern as discussed on some popular web sites.  I have not referred to hypocrisy or foolishness on anyone's part.  This is an interesting trend, an ironic trend, but it is one that has developed from our national politics and should be known and discussed in an informed manner.  It does not make anyone a hypocrite or a fool individually, by state, or by region.  
You seem to be saying that data about the federal budget cannot be juxtaposed with data about politics, when the federal budget is all about politics.  It is not extraneous data. This is absolutely the correct place to put this data, juxtaposed so that readers can evaluate this trend (to the extent that it is one) for themselves.  Otherwise, under a pretense of being "unbiased" we may purge the very data from Wikipedia that would allow people to make informed decisions about an issue that they could otherwise actually be ill-informed and biased about.  I am not referencing fuckthesouth.com or trying to put a rant in wikipedia.  In fact, the data show that "red" states like Texas and Nebraska are way up the contributor list, while "blue" states like Maryland and Hawaii are way down it.  And unless people read the table, they won't know that.
However, out of deference to you, since I see you are a regular contributor especially in regard to taxes, and you are a fellow Washingtonian (I'm from Fairfax but now live near London) I'll try to revise the sentence in the text so that it is even more circumspect in its wording.  I do value your feedback.  -- Jaywilson (talk) 18:53, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Re: Re: Re: Suggestions for change

message: Hold on, Adam, I'm making some more changes you may like...  Jaywilson (talk) 19:09, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: In line with the above argument, I just added in the 2012 results. Manning (talk) 00:31, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

text: Let me just say "Thank you" and I think this page is looking very good. Jaywilson (talk) 18:27, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Further improvements to table and added section

message: Accepting that it's 5 years out of date, either things have changed a lot in those 5 years or there's some sort of disconnect in figures (or I'm reading something wrong) - this article, with figures from 2010, suggests that DC only gets back 30 cents in federal spending for every dollar it pays in federal taxation: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/the-map-that-proves-red-staters-use-the-safety-net-too.php?ref=fpb --82.35.251.109 (talk) 02:59, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The map and the table are showing different things, one's a ratio and the other is a per-capita difference.  Still, I find it odd as well, you'd expect the direction to be the same in both of them. —johndburger 04:02, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: DC is a hard one to reliably define - it's not a "state" so decisions about what should and should not be included vary. Some analyses include certain items as "federal" expenses - eg. secret service protection of foreign embassies -  and others regard them as "DC expenses". This naturally results in wildly different figures. Who's "correct" is a judgment call. Manning (talk) 00:29, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

text: Those benefits and pension payments are not dead-end transactions, though. The recipients are likely to use those funds to make purchases & investments in their respective states of residence, in which case federal taxes will eventually be paid - if not by the direct recipients (ex - investment income), then by the companies which report their sales of goods & services which the previously non-taxed income was put towards. One way or another, the influx of one-time untaxed benefits to a state's residents will increase the federal tax which the state sends back to DC. Farolif (talk) 01:05, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table accuracy 

message: Can we rename this article to make it clearly US related? As currently titled, this article could also apply to India or Australia (to name but two). Manning (talk) 00:34, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page rename 

message: I don't know what the deal with the previous tables was, but after getting annoyed at not being able to find this information on Wikipedia and having to hunt it down myself, I've replaced them with two new and hopefully NPOV tables from the Pew Charitable Trusts. (If someone wants to clean up the table header formatting, make them sortable etc. that would be great.) Chronodm (talk) 05:01, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  New tables 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Problems with collecting comparable data led to this page only having spending. So it's very misleading to have a title "Federal taxation and spending by state."
Or someone could take the time to update it with both sets of data, but that hasn't happened since October 2015 when the taxation data was removed.
Bposert (talk) 03:30, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I came to the talk page to find out why there was only spending data, and not tax data. I don't have the time right now, but later today or tomorrow I'll take a look at what this page had in the past, and the data on Federal tax revenue by state, and see if I can create (what I think is) a reasonable table comparing the two. Geoff Canyon (talk) 15:42, 13 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename page to Federal Spending by State?