The Real “Welfare Queens

By Popper's Ghost

It’s extremely frustrating to see government reduced to one immature man’s midlife crisis. Whatever happened to billionaires building libraries and museums?

So instead we have this walking parody of a 18 year old meme-lord in a middle aged man’s body. Who has attached himself to Trump, talking about how he will make the government more efficient by cutting waste.

The name of this effort?, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DoGE ( God help me ). Yes let’s name it after a meme coin which was started to basically parody creepto-maximalists, but has now become an ‘investment’ in some circles.

At least the ultra wealthy in my great grandparents time didn’t dress like like basement dwelling failsons and jump around on stage like some performing monkey desperate for the affirmation that his parents, multiple ex-wives, and children don’t provide him. They had some self respect and sense of civic duty.

So lets say Ol’ Musky gets his way, and they cut programs. What does this mean?

Well…

Why Blue States Can't Have Nice Things

Blue States, the “Makers”

First some terminology:

Now when you when you hear the GOP talk, they would have you believe that cities are a net sink on taxes. But how can this be? Yes, cities have a lot of civic programs. People want to live in cities. And because of this popularity, cities have their own unique problems to deal with.

But where is most of the money generated?

70% of US gdp is generated in blue counties, counties that voted for Biden[1]. Those counties are mostly urban/suburban.

The Metropolitan Policy Program at The Brookings Institute

Money is mostly generated IN cities. And cities have high local taxes because that money is shipped out, to the federal government or state government, to then subsidize rural infrastructure. So blue cities raise their sales taxes, and blue states raise their income taxes, to offset the outflow to the federal government, and the red states.[2]

No really, you should visit this site. Its very interesting.

( Sorry folks, TX and Florida flipped to being net-takers in 2016)

For example Washington state has a 6.5% sales tax. Regressive, I know. Cities can add an additional % on top of the state sales tax, and that money stays LOCAL. Seattle has a sales tax of 10.1%. Why is that?

Well if you do some digging, you eventually can find out that King County only gets back about 50 cents from the state for every dollar collected in taxes. Meanwhile some rural counties get 4x as much as they pay in.

Wow, it seems Seattle raised their local sales tax to offset the outflows to rural counties. And while these outflows do help build schools and libraries, and pay for fire service, they also allow rural counties to keep their local taxes artificially low.

You can repeat this analysis for Federal taxes as well. California only gets back 65 cents of every dollar paid in Federal taxes. Maybe thats why they have a income tax. That money stays local.

And these people voted against their own interests and now Musk says he’s gonna cut waste…

Cuts to USAID could impact farmers with a $2 billion cut in sales, as the Government bought US crops to ship out as food aid.[3]. Billions in ongoing farmer infrastructure contracts are being affected by cuts to the various “Inflation Reduction Act” programs[4].

Red States, the “Takers”

Most red states are heavily dependent on federal payments for a significant chunk of their government funding and operations. Whether through direct payments to its citizens, or money for infrastructure.

You gotta hand it to Mitch McConnell ( R-Ky ). He was always hammering home about how people and states and cities need to be boostrappy and get off welfare, even as he helped the Federal money flow to Kentucky. For every dollar paid in Federal taxes, Ol’ Mitchy helped ensure they got nearly four dollars back! Its why he keeps getting elected, he brings the pork-barrel spending home, ensuring that Kentucky gets it ‘fair’ share of California tax payments.

When Musky starts cutting programs that benefit YOU

He doesn’t practice what he preaches.

The Grand Bargin

If you were born to a farmer, you likely would stay a farmer. So would your kids, and your kids’ kids, all the way down the line. Besides the rural gentry who usually controlled some form of trading on top of farming, and regular farmers, who had land, there were also itinerant farmers or sharecroppers who were mobile farm labor, or worked shares of land.

The rural poor usually had one advantage over the urban poor, in that, barring famine, they rarely went hungry.[5] The poor health of urban recruits during WW1 in fact led to the first school lunch programs.

That said, not everything was rosy. Other than a possibly fuller belly, poverty was still rampant. People used outhouses. Rural electricity or phones were nearly unheard of.

During the Great Depression, the government sent out workers to document it. For the farmers, the one good thing about farming was disappearing, having a full belly. People in urban settings also saw the extent of rural ( and urban ) poverty for the first time. Monied elites and the church agreed the task at hand was too hard to tackle with private charity, and so they petitioned the government for programs to fight rural ( and urban ) poverty. The US Military was behind it as well. Urban recruits were often rejected for being malnourished or underweight.

So as part of the WPA, the Federal Government poured BILLIONS into rural development, as a way to provide jobs and improve the economy. Infrastructure would make moving food to cities easier and cheaper, relieving the urban poor. Sanitation and switching from outhouses to public sewers and septic systems would massively increase IQs and school performance[6] in the south, over time eliminating the popular perception of the Southern rural poor as being inherently mentally slow.

There were big pushes by liberal, progressive urban groups to fund massive programs to tackle poverty. Healthy kids were healthy workers, and healthy soldiers. Rural electrification and utilities, funded by Federal grants and ratepayer fees paid by people in cities, allowed even the most remote farms to have electric power and phone service.

It was seen as a civic duty, a social positive and good for business.

Well, the DOGE is now undoing this great social experiment. And ironically, the Blue States will benefit most of all. The “Grand Bargin” is ending. Maybe we can finally get some good high speed rail in Blue states now…

  1. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/biden-voting-counties-equal-70-of-americas-economy-what-does-this-mean-for-the-nations-political-economic-divide/ ↩

  2. https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-payments-portal/ ↩

  3. https://www.kcci.com/article/usaid-trump-cuts-iowa-agriculture-impacts-trade/63696477 ↩

  4. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/usda-freezes-farmer-funding-some-programs-conservation-contracts-2025-02-08/ ↩

  5. Some future date I will write about urban vs rural poor, school lunch programs, the Black Panthers and Richard Nixon. Its a crazy story. I’m sure the GOP will try and kill it too now. ↩

  6. https://www.science.org/content/article/do-parasites-make-you-dumber Post WPA the same effect can be seen in the South, with IQs climbing rapidly as disease rates fell and nutrition improved. ↩