Federal tax receipts in California, Illinois and New York subsidize Florida, Texas and much of the south.[0] The hypocrisy of fiscal conservatism is that it is enabled by giant high-tax Democratic states.
[0] https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...
The US produces a ridiculous surplus of food with a tiny portion of the population because we're incredibly good at doing it cheaply. High volume and low cost == low prices == low tax revenue. It doesn't mean low real-world value or produced value.
You could "fix" it by trying to balance revenues by playing with tax rates, but all you'll accomplish is making food expensive in CA/NY, shifting dollars around, and making everything more complicated than it is now.
There are plenty of other reasons tax revenue registers in NY/CA; anyone -- from anywhere in the country -- with a retirement account is funneling it through some NY mutual fund, and entertainment is still mostly produced in CA. If NY didn't exist, it would be managed somewhere else; it's not that NY is producing magical value nobody else understands. It's just most convenient.
If Hollywood stopped producing movies... we'd all be a bit more bored temporarily, but it's again going to get bought from somewhere else.
Sugar is particularly regulated, with the government strict quotas and tariffs on imports, and domestic allotments to produces. If you produce more than your allotment, it is illegal to sell in the US. The whole scheme is to hold prices high to support famers (agribusiness really), not low.
And yes, I'm pretty much OK with my portion of California taxes going to Alabama, because society is not a zero-sum game.
Being a liberal and complaining about high tax rates, while blaming those against high taxes is kinda rich no?
Another point, those places also would be more amendable to pushing more responsibilities on the states away from federal govt reducing even more the imbalance of higher federal taxes paid by higher cost states.
The other thing I am not sure about is why OP highlights high tax Democratic States, no doubt that is what they are, but it is not applicable applied to Federal Income Taxes where everyone, regardless of State, is subject to the same progressive tax rates.
The poster above highlights not the tax rates, but ratio of receipts vs. expenditures of federal taxes in given states. Poorer states get well over one dollar in federal program spending for each dollar they contribute, while richer states have a net outflow, subsidizing the poorer states' programs.
What this study does to get the red/blue divide dividing federal revenues by state revenues. So low tax, low spending states look bad because the Federal inflow is a bigger percentage of total spending.
However, take the post argument, Blue States (CA, NY, IL) subsidize red States (FL). Revising my position from tax rate (which is equal across the board) to State expenditures (taxes the States pay to the Federal Government) CA is #1, NY is #3, IL is #4. Still FL is #5 (and another red state, TX is #2).
I think my point remains it is not hypocritical that Red States are getting more (receipts) back under the current system while simultaneously pushing for reforms.
Let me try rephrasing the hypocritical point from the pro progressive tax position. Warren Buffett is always pushing for tax reforms to raise taxes on the wealthy, and to highlight his issue he always points to the fact his secretary annually pays a higher tax rate than he ultimately does. However, nothing stops Warren Buffett from not taking advantage of the tax loop holes and personally paying more himself, but he doesn't. In my mind it doesn't make him a hypocrite for taking advantage of a system he wants to change.
The urban areas tend to have people who insist upon higher taxes, while the people in the rural areas commonly want the reverse. Meanwhile, because of those taxes being redistributed in the way they are, money that could go toward mass transit in cities is instead being funneled to road projects in rural areas. With all that money, the rural areas are able to secure funding (but not in any way, shape, or form afford) oversized infrastructure so they can turn their places into post-apocalyptic wastelands of Walmarts and car sewers.
Rural towns may develop in horrendously bad ways, but at least if they were less well-fed by federal and state programs they might come to meet the reality that their development patterns are completely unsustainable.
Having not actually researched it, I'd be interested to see the breakdown of cost-per-policy-per-party.
Based on your comment, do you find it ironic that those states seems to continuously vote "stop helping me"?