>You have this backwards. California and New York subsidize the nation (along with other productive, higher tax states), not the other way around. The overwhel

>You have this backwards. California and New York subsidize the nation (along with other productive, higher tax states), not the other way around. The overwhelming majority of federal money is spent on safety nets (SS, medicaid, etc) and military. Whether a state is a net contributor or recipient basically depends on ratio of rich people to poor people and how many military installations you have. Even transportation spending is a drop in the bucket compared to those and it's mostly based on area (kind of hard to fit hundreds of miles of interstate in RI). It's really not as cut and clear as many here would like it to be. Edit: Since apparently it is that cut and clear would anyone care to elaborate why?