I'm not sure that is quite correct ( http://www.businessinsider.com/the-states-the-most-and-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government-2015-7 http://www.business

I'm not sure that is quite correct ( http://www.businessinsider.com/the-states-the-most-and-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-states-the-most-and-least... , http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/03/27/which-states-take-the-most-from-the-u-s-government/ http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/03/27/which-states-take-... ) are just a few of many references that show where the tax dollars are distributed in the United States. Here, states that tend to be more fortunate/productive subsidize the other ones (note: most of the charts specify return on their own tax dollars, and are likely sourced from same data). This has come up in several recent elections, blogs, etc. Not to the point of the EU debates, however it is definitely a source of animosity to some. I don't have data to back up why each state is the way it is (a very complex web to unravel). We can speculate all we want (I'd rather not since political ideology invariably trumps factual discourse, pun intended)...however, if somebody has a definitive answer, they should definitely write a paper :).