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The Real Value of $100 in Each US State
- enraged_camel 10y agoNice! I would be interested in a more granular version of this to be able to compare different cities.
- repiret 10y agoAgreed - this would be really interesting broken by county. Santa Barbara County versus Modoc County in California; Multnomah County versus Lake County in Oregon; etc.
- netghost 10y agoThen you're in luck, because the article links to the original data, which includes this. See the links in the right hand side bar. http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/rpp/rpp_newsrelease.htm http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/rpp/rpp_newsrelease...
- doctorpangloss 10y agoThe crazy thing isn't the real value of $100 spent on private goods and services. It's the value of $100 spent in taxes. 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-federal-government/2700/ https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the...
- Omniusaspirer 10y agoThere's nothing inherently hypocritical about fiscal conservatism as your comment tries to imply. Republican != fiscally conservative (barring some lip service). I suspect you'd find most people who are genuinely fiscally conservative are the most well off people around.
- nugget 10y agoThere are a lot of ways to look at contribution of natural resources. Per capita the military is disproportionately made up of recruits from poorer rural states. Alaska, Texas and Louisiana contribute oil and gas. The Midwest allowed tens of millions of immigrants to move to the US, assimilate, and raise large families which then fueled the economies of larger states like California. Most importantly the diversity of viewpoints represented by 50 states introduces some modicum of competition into the political sphere allowing the United States to remain a real life laboratory of democracy wherein citizens are able to observe different approaches and vote with their feet to promote good governance.
- thinkloop 10y agoDiversity has an optimal threshold. The more thoughts and viewpoints the better, until agreements can no longer be reached. I think the general feeling right now is that we've crossed into a suboptimal zone where government has trouble acting.
- vehementi 10y agoThat's, uh, not due to diversity...
- Retric 10y agoNatural resources are fungible, importing oil is a non issue when when it costs more to subsidize Alaska then we gain in Oil. It's important to at least recognize that Republican ideas result in worse economy's. After all insanity is doing the same thing over and over thinking this time will be different.
- rayiner 10y agoI wonder what that looks like when your factor out military expenditures (which most conservatives would say is one of the few legitimate federal expenditures).
- brightball 10y agoJust curious, which parties pushed the federal policies that created those subsidies? 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"?
- talmand 10y agoDoesn't matter, they will complain no matter what. The current system of sharing wealth with poor states from rich states is exactly the system they advocate, then complain when they realize what it actually means. Anyone that makes that silly comparison is just complaining about the people who are benefiting; they want to help their poor people, not the other poor people.
- bpodgursky 10y agoOther comments have good points, but the main thing IMO is that tax receipts are low in the midwest / south is that what they produce (food) is incredibly cheap now days. 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.
- vacri 10y agoHollywood = $30B. California's economy = $2.2T. California agriculture = $40B, bigger than any other state's, and bigger than Hollywood.
- talmand 10y agoShall we compare what California grows as compared to what any Southern state grows?
- dalore 10y agoYou realise food is cheap because of taxes/subsidies. If we had to pay the true cost of food it would be expensive. And the politician that did wouldn't be liked much as well.
- jws 10y agoTotal USDA agricultural subsidies amount to $0.10/capita/day. It adds up to a large number, but it doesn't move food from expensive to cheap.
- labster 10y agoThis continual transfer of wealth between different regions and cultures is what allows the U.S. to be successful while the EU is a quagmire. Federalism ftw. Federalism even works great in Germany. And yes, I'm pretty much OK with my portion of California taxes going to Alabama, because society is not a zero-sum game.
- PKop 10y agoThose are the same states that would be for a flat rate tax or even more so a flat fee tax, but I'm sure you wouldn't be, so where's the hypocrisy? Progressive tax rates exacerbate the issue you're pointing out and they are strongly opposed by conservatives, and supported by California, New York liberals. 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.
- will_brown 10y agoExactly! It is hypocritical for proponents of progressive taxes to complain simply because the fiscal conservative states are benefiting from progressive taxes. Certainly it is not hypocritical for the fiscal conservative States to want to change a system that is current benefiting them to make it flat for everyone. 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.
- talmand 10y agoI'm not sure if you are trolling or being serious.
- yompers888 10y agoI recommend erring on the side of helping people understand their misconceptions.
- talmand 10y agoHow can they help me with understanding misconceptions if I can't understand what they are saying?
- vonmoltke 10y agoTheir methodology leaves something to be desired. The resident dependency score unfairly penalizes states that have large federal presences to to geography (like Texas and New Mexico). Furthermore, the idea of measuring state government dependence as a ratio is pretty much guaranteed to make states with low overall budgets look bad. The per-capita state budget contribution would be much more interesting.
- yompers888 10y agoI think the effect of this is most insidious in infrastructure spending. And I'm not talking about major highways, which naturally go through rural and poorer areas while actually serving the urban areas they connect. 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.
- panzagl 10y agoYou're confusing suburb and rural- rural areas have well water and septic tanks, 2-lane roads that eventually lead to the Walmart near the interstate. And the money is state and local, not federal, unless you have a senator that really swings above his weight class (like a Kennedy or Byrd).
- yompers888 10y agoI should have been more diligent by including suburbs in my comment. Furthermore, you're very right that the water and sewage is even more important than roads, and that overbuilding happens in the suburbs. But you may also have an overly optimistic picture of rural areas, because I can think of quite a few four lane highways where I grew up that go out into relative nowhere, and do so at huge cost. There's a town of 20k people there that has a beltway!
- thowfaraway 10y agoFrom 1876 to 1992, 116 years in a row, Mississippi had a Democratic governor. Do you think it is poor because The last 2 guys running the state were Republicans, or that 116 years of policy, and the legacy slavery on top of that?
- grandalf 10y agoOne other consequence of this is that a cleaning lady in San Francisco may make $70K per year and be near the poverty line, yet be in the same tax bracket as a professional living in Nebraska who is living well above the poverty line. It would be interesting to see an illustration of how regressive Federal tax brackets are when you consider the state-by-state cost of living differences. Some of the most populous states have the highest cost of living.
- DougN7 10y agoMy first thought was "why doesn't the cleaning lady move?" And that lead to a thought experiment: what if everyone moved to Nebraska for a more comfortable life. Prices would go up. The people would experience a Nebraska winter and be willing to have less 'real' money and move back to California. And that's right where we are in the real world. You can't balance just part of life (taxes) when there are other imbalances (benefits of place) that can't be balanced. If costs/life style were comparable in cost between CA and NE, there would be a massive influx into CA. Economics is awesome - it explains so much!
- pmiller2 10y agoThe other side to that is the cleaning lady barely makes enough to survive in SF, much less fund a cross-country move.
- duaneb 10y ago...much less start a business on the other side.
- thesimpsons1022 10y ago...much less abandon her family and friends
- netghost 10y agoIf you're curious, "Nickel and Dimed" is a great book that explores some of this.
- eslaught 10y agoI wonder what this would look like applied specifically to housing. I suspect that people in expensive areas are paying significantly more (both absolute and as a percentage) on housing. In some ways, this is just a side effect of that phenomenon---housing prices eventually trickle down to everything else.
- codeddesign 10y agoRelatively speaking. I live in the mountains of North Carolina and the housing prices are double that of Charlotte. Everything is custom build, there aren't prefab houses. Labor is relatively the same, but food and gas cost's more. You can't really go by state. You'd have to go by county with multiple variables to get a real picture.
- Pamar 10y agoDoes anybody know of a comparable study for Euro countries?
- pibi 10y agoNot exactly the same but you can find comparative prices for 100€ in EU here: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Comparative_price_levels_of_consumer_goods_and_services http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
- wodenokoto 10y agoSearch for "purchasing power parity". I believe Wolfram Alpha has it, as well as OECD.
- RangerScience 10y agoNote that DC is the most in the low direction, at ~$84.
- cbr 10y agoCities in general have higher costs, so it's not too surprising that the only entry in the data that is just city is going to have the highest costs.
- thearn4 10y agoI do a moderate amount of travelling for my job (in the federal gov't), and DC is one place that I find very, very hard to make things like meals fit within the prescribed allowance. Bay Area? no problem eating on the cheap, even right around where I need to be (e.g. moffet field). DC? it's usually much harder. Lodging, on the other hand, is one where the Bay Area seems to be happy to compete with DC's expense levels...
- nether 10y agoHow does this affect online pricing? Assuming something bought online has the same price for all shipping locations, this would mean that people in expensive states are more likely to save money by shopping online?
- ryporter 10y agoMuch of the difference is in land/home values, but, yes, it would mean that people in states like Hawaii would save more by shopping online. (This of course assumes that the online store doesn't pass along the increased transportation cost in the form of higher shipping.)
- ghaff 10y agoAlaska and Hawaii are pretty much outliers. Essentially everything is expensive whether it's at a local store or because of shipping surcharges. (Although Amazon Prime still covers both states--which I imagine is quite a big win for residents of those states compared to historically.)
- wodenokoto 10y agoShouldn't one of the states act like a baseline? I couldn't find anywhere, where $100 was worth $100. That seems kinda odd to me.
- Confusion 10y ago$100 is worth $100 on average
- imtringued 10y agoAnd the average person or state doesn't exist.
- xyzzy4 10y agoTrue but in an Indian city you can get 30 taxi rides with that.
- smcl 10y agoI thought it peculiar that there was no state whose nearest-whole-dollar value was $100 - Florida at $100.91 was the closest. There's a surprising number of states which are _substantially_ higher or lower than the average. I'm sure there's some term in statistics where the mean is pretty far off the median - but not sure what that is, or what it implies
- tricolon 10y agoI think the national average is the baseline. ...which raises the question: what about foreign markets?
- mcguire 10y agoThe baseline is the national average, according to the map's caption. (Yes, it's poorly written.)
- dredmorbius 10y agoKnow your source. The Tax Foundation: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tax_Foundation http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tax_Foundation
- pc86 10y agoWhat are you implying? The article is basically a graphical representation of some math done on publicly available figures. If the figures or math are wrong, or if the graphical representations are disingenuous, explain why. But to just say "yeah, well it's The Tax Foundation so whatever" is a cop out to avoid actually discussing the point the article attempts to make.
- dredmorbius 10y agoI'm implying that knowing the source of a study or policy paper is useful context. I'm not making further judgement. I am highlighting SourceWatch (and similar resources) as useful and pointing out their existence.
- ryporter 10y agoI'd be more interested in the real value of $100 of income in each state, which would account for differences in state income tax. On such a map, WA would look significantly better, and states such as CA and NY would look even worse.
- aacook 10y agoNow I'm curious about Puerto Rico and other territories. Anyone know the basis of the research?
- ArtDev 10y agonumbeo.com is quite good: http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Puerto+Rico http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?coun...
- pc86 10y ago> In other words, by this measure, if you have $50,000 in after-tax income in Mississippi, you would have to have after-tax earnings of $68,000 in the District of Columbia just to afford the same overall standard of living. I imagine it is much easier to earn $68k after taxes in DC than it is to earn $50k after taxes in Mississippi.
- yompers888 10y agoAnd that is why people move to cities (yes, I know that MS has cities). What point are you trying to make?
- pc86 10y agoAssuming the $68k in DC / $50k in MS is the benchmark, my point was that while it's much cheaper to reach that benchmark in MS, you're probably much more likely to reach it in DC. So a random person in DC is probably more likely to earn $68k or more than a random person in MS is to earn $50k or more.
- mkane848 10y agoCan someone please explain why NJ is such a fucked state? Is it just because of the population density, is it the years of government corruption? I just don't get how cost of living here is so nuts and how our economy feels so..."poor"?
- drewg123 10y agoThere is a vast difference in the value of $100 within states too. For example, western New York state (eg, Buffalo area) is far cheaper than NYC in terms of median home prices, supermarket prices, etc. Similarly, Richmond VA is far cheaper than the Northern Virginia / DC suburbs area.
- nathanvanfleet 10y agoI really wondered that when I saw this. Oregon looked really good but I really wondered about Portland specifically. It's a no brainer that the bay area is maybe even worse than the average (?) for California.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agox2. Cape Cod and Boston prices vs Springfield, New Bedford, Fall River and Worcester prices. South of Portland and east of I95 prices vs Bangor prices. There's a lot of interesting information lost by looking at state sized areas. Doing this on a county, or even town level would be far more interesting IMO. More contrast on the map would be nice too.
- John23832 10y agoAs a Virginian, let me tell you, NoVa might as well be a different state.
- sbjustin 10y agoTrue. One of the reasons I left VA :)
- yompers888 10y agoAs a mountain Virginian, let me add that even the coast is a completely different story from the great place where I live.
- cpastre2 10y agoTax Foundation here. This is a great point and we have a county-by-county breakdown in the works. We will publish that next week, so stay tuned!
- rahelzer 10y agoThis is kind of like saying why should you buy a $200 mechanical keyboard when you can get a perfectly serviceable model for $15? Its not even false.
- camiller 10y agoI'm not suggesting a cause/effect relationship here, but there is an interesting rough correlation between the map in the article and the red/blue political map... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#/media/File:Red_state,_blue_state.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states#/me...
- mbillie1 10y agohttps://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
- mkstowegnv 10y agoFunny I saw a definite "you get what you pay for" correlation - with the "highest dollar value" states tending to align with the states with the lowest measures in health, education and other quality of life indicators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_educational_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_educati... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_ex...
- micahbright 10y ago> Commiefornia: 80% High School Graduation Rate Correlation not found
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoHow can most states be above average?
- virtualSatai 10y agoI'm in no means an expert in this, but I think it's because of the relative sizes of the economies in each state [1]. California and New York are very large in terms of GDP/GSP and will therefore move this weighted average accordingly. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP
- umanwizard 10y agoLook up Simpson's paradox
- wnevets 10y agoso the places with low population densities tend to have lower cost of living. Not really breaking news.
- ecesena 10y agoIt would be nice to compare cities to countries. For example, I think Nevada vs Las Vegas would be radically different.
- cptskippy 10y agoI was thinking the same thing and also on the cities to state level. My though is that dense urban cities (e.g. New York, LA, San Francisco) are going to have a lower value due to the high cost of real-estate and also rural areas where a lack of population density leads to distribution inefficiencies in material goods raising their cost. States like Ohio and Georgia with large suburban areas have a balance of cheaper real-estate and high enough population density lower the distribution costs of material goods.
- sorokod 10y agoIf I squint just a little this looks very similar to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states#/media/File:ElectoralCollege2012.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U....
- MrMullen 10y agoThey need to break the states up too. Southern California $100 is a lot different than a Northern California $100. $100 living along the coast is a lot different than $100 living inland.
- djrogers 10y agoSoCal and NorCal aren't as different as you'd think - having lived in both places and as one who spends a lot of time between them, I doubt there'd be much noticeable at all. Now Central Valley life can be a lot cheaper than coastal life - no doubt about that. I have a vacation home in he Central Valley and everything we do here and for the home is cheaper. Painting, repair work, labor, gas, auto and boat repairs, everything.
- MrMullen 10y agoI have lived in both and along the coast and there is a difference between North and South.
- guoqiang2 10y agoThink it the other way: if you work for one state, and live in another, e.g., near the boundary area, can you take advantage of that? Question: give the $100-valuation map of 50 states, find the two neighboring states that has the biggest difference percentage.
- fma 10y agoI see that the tax foundation says Georgia is $108, but there is a huge caveat. I've lived in Georgia the past 8 years. I've lived in both middle of no where and currently live in Atlanta. The value of $100 is vastly different between those two areas. Georgia is mostly rural, except for Atlanta. My old apartment, 1 bedroom a bath, I can still rent for $575 a month. Lakeside view with a pool, 10 minutes from work. Anyone reading this, most likely will be moving to Atlanta. The COLA is still cheap, but understand the caveat. Meanwhile, I grew up in Florida, where it says $100 is pretty much $100. There are lots of major cities in Florida and cost of living is more distributed.
- pklausler 10y agoThe correlation between their map and the 2012 electoral college map is striking! The light-colored (expensive) states are the blue states and the dark-colored (cheap) states are the red states, more or less.
- munificent 10y agoLike others note, using states as your unit of granularity here because nullifies any useful conclusions you could take from this. This is basically just a map of "how many dense cities does each state have?" and tells you nothing more interesting than that. A per-county map would be much better.
- ArtDev 10y agoOh look, all the places I will never move to. Oregon is no longer the bargain it once was. Though I am sure I could move to a cheaper area. Living internationally is where its at. Numbeo.com gets down to the details (thought their interface is due for an overhaul). http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Spain&country2=United+States&city1=Malaga&city2=Portland%2C+OR http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
- RRider 10y agoThis is a helpful graphic, but I think it’s incomplete -- and substantially understates CA's COL. That’s because it measures what AFTER TAX dollars buy (as I understand it). Hence income tax free states have an even bigger “bang for the buck” advantage. I prefer to use the Missouri COL comparison of states: https://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/ https://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/
- RRider 10y agoThis is a helpful graphic, but I think it’s incomplete -- and substantially understates CA's COL. That’s because it measures what AFTER TAX dollars buy (as I understand it). Hence income tax free states have an even bigger “bang for the buck” advantage. I prefer to use the Missouri COL comparison of states: https://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/ https://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/