When you look at this study, the numbers are surprisingly close. Take out west Mississippi and South Carolina and the "Red States" get out what they put in. That is really surprising because FEDGOV runs a trillion dollar debt every year. You would think that the average state would be getting much more money from FEDGOV than its citizen's pay in, since so much spending is with borrowed money and not taxes. But FEDGOV is so spendthrift that they can borrow a trillion every year and the states don't really get more than they put in. On a per-capita GPD basis they do pretty well too considering that there are more retired people in red-states.
Big, empty states tend to do the worst. They are most dependent on federal funding. Overall though, it seems like FEDGOV is spending so much on empire that the states could do without them just fine. Not that I advocate that. FEDGOV could try ditching imperial ambitions and keeping the money home in order to foster national cohesiveness.
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