Quote:
Originally Posted by bm bradley
folks live in the country generally aren't looking for a handout
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That's odd because they get more handouts than people living in the major metropolitan areas. The red states generally receive more subsidies from the federal government than they pay in taxes, and the majority of those subsidies are coming from wealthy blue states.
One reason is that the red states on average have lower population, so their Senators give them higher per capita representation in Washington than the blue states get, which translates into more federal handouts. Another reason is those red states in middle America, which are all represented by "conservative" republicans, get heavy farm subsidies. About 10 billion a year is given out in farm subsidies to, mostly, those heavily red states like Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Texas. Michelle Bachman's family farm received $250,000 over the past ten years in subsidies.
The numbers might surprise you:
http://farm.ewg.org/
Yet another reason is the federal government?s permanent policy of ?universal service? in postal delivery, phone service and other utilities (electricity, perhaps now broadband or fios). Universal service means subsidizing those who choose to live in remote places like Alaska, where the cost of supplying these services is much higher than in the coastal cities.