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What is your reason for saying this? That was quite an interesting comment, but after working to verify it - it seems to be simply false? States by tax level #

What is your reason for saying this? That was quite an interesting comment, but after working to verify it - it seems to be simply false? States by tax level ##: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-us-states-have-the-highest-and-lowest-taxes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-us-states-have-the-highest... States by poverty rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty... --- Wyoming - lowest tax rate, 3rd lowest poverty rate Alaska - 2nd lowest tax rate, 8th lowest poverty rate Nevada - 3rd lowest tax rate, 29th lowest poverty rate South Dakota - 4th lowest tax rate, 23rd lowest poverty rate Florida - 5th lowest tax rate, 37th lowest poverty rate - New York - highest tax rate, 32nd lowest poverty rate California - 2nd highest tax rate, 35th lowest poverty rate Nebraska - 3rd highest tax rate, 15th lowest poverty rate Connecticut - 4th highest tax rate, 4th lowest poverty rate Illinois - 5th highest tax rate, 24th lowest poverty rate --- I'm not going to map out all 50 states, but at least for the top and bottom there seems to be no correlation at all. The low tax nations average to the 20th lowest poverty rate. The high tax states average out to the 22nd lowest poverty rate. To be clear, that means the high tax states suffer more poverty - at least when just considering the top 5 for each. --- ## = The reason I used that article instead of Wiki's list of states by tax level ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_tax_levels_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_tax_levels_in_the_United... ) is that the Wiki page just offers data on state tax income, not about the actual rates.

nkurz 9y ago
Fabulous comment, thanks for researching and reporting back on this!
AnodyneComplex 9y ago
It's hard to do this just based on raw tax numbers. For instance, Alaska, Wyoming and South Dakota all have large scale extraction operations as a fraction of population. These supply a large fraction of income and are obviously tied to a particular geographical. My guess is that states with more social services aren't necessarily going to have fewer people below the poverty line, but that being poor is not as bad there (via access to health care, food/rent subsidies, etc). That's obviously harder to pin a number on though.

nkurz 9y ago

Fabulous comment, thanks for researching and reporting back on this!

AnodyneComplex 9y ago

It's hard to do this just based on raw tax numbers. For instance, Alaska, Wyoming and South Dakota all have large scale extraction operations as a fraction of population. These supply a large fraction of income and are obviously tied to a particular geographical. My guess is that states with more social services aren't necessarily going to have fewer people below the poverty line, but that being poor is not as bad there (via access to health care, food/rent subsidies, etc). That's obviously harder to pin a number on though.