Every single Blue state is much better off than all other red states.
With the exception of Texas, every other red state is a freeloader that contributes nothing to the United States - they would be nothing without blue state tax money.
So everything is about money? Agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining, drilling, manufacturing, R&D, military recruits and bases, tourist destinations, federally managed lands, road rail and riverine transport mean nothing? Supply chains are just fictitious constructs invented by illiterate rednecks to make themselves feel better?
If anything, all of America’s resources are being hoarded by rich people in big cities and assigned a dollar value, so although they “pay more in taxes,” that ‘wealth’ is actually rent stolen from the productive classes and hoarded by the idle rich, whose so-called ‘wealth’ is solely a product of inheritances, dividends, intellectual property royalties, and speculation with other peoples’ money. If contributions were measured in ‘Net Material Product’ AND assessed at the county rather than the state level, you would be struggling to explain why New York City and San Francisco don’t pull their weight compared to, say, Petroleum County, Montana and Alaska’s Unorganized Borough.
Do I need to paste the entire ‘Cross of Gold’ speech here to prove my point?
They’re all varying levels of, “this fucking sucks”.