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I'm curious how conservatives will find that this supports their existing political opinions. "Red states deserve more of those tax dollars that are evil and sh

by ender7 15y ago

I'm curious how conservatives will find that this supports their existing political opinions. "Red states deserve more of those tax dollars that are evil and shouldn't have been paid?"

temphn 15y ago
Well, if you disaggregate it, the Republican voters in blue states are statistically net tax payers, and Democratic voters in red states who are statistically net tax recipients. It's a Simpson's paradox type phenomenon, where the aggregation at the state level conceals the individual level trends. Believe the analysis is on the net somewhere, or you can drill down to the Census micro data to confirm it yourself.
- jbooth 15y ago
  Citation needed? Low-to-middle income whites are the Republican bread and butter in red states. They split college degree whites, lose masters+ whites 3:1 or so, and lose blacks 95:5. But their base in red states are typically not the big-ticket taxpayers, aside from maybe in Texas. (cite, stan greenberg's book from 2004).
  - temphn 15y ago
    FWIW I didn't downmod you. Both high and low levels of education correlate with voting Democrat. And higher income generally correlates with voting Republican. The tricky part is that higher education also correlates with higher income. I believe I saw the data disaggregated in a post on Gelman's blog. Will post in an edit if I can find it. EDIT: www.historycentral.com/elections/12008/exit/Income.html [sound] http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/03/income-and-2008-us-election.html http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/rich-and-poor-voters-in-2008.html The second link is the same as the third link from Gelman's writeup (syndicated by Nate Silver), except the image links in the second link aren't broken. The data shown indicates that Republicans tend to be on average wealthier than Democrats, until you get to the ultra high income levels. If you think about it, this does start to suggest that there are aggregation issues going on; in general the rich pay more in taxes than the poor, and the middle class and rich tend to vote Republican, so something counterintuitive is going on if "red states" are net tax recipients. I can't seem to find the original post that did the analysis, but hopefully it seems more plausible now; if you really want to explore the issue you can get into the PUMS sample: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/data_main http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/data_main
    - jbooth 15y ago
      Hm, it's definitely not as clear as I thought, thanks for clearing that up. I'm typically suspicious of "average" when it comes to income as Bill Gates into a bar makes the patrons much richer on average. But at a glance those seem to be pretty good faith. Dunno why I was so certain, I'll have to dig up that Greenberg book again.
kevinpet 15y ago
You could spin it as Republican-leaning states support smaller government out of principle even though their short-term self interest favors the status quo.

by ender7 15y ago

I'm curious how conservatives will find that this supports their existing political opinions. "Red states deserve more of those tax dollars that are evil and shouldn't have been paid?"

temphn 15y ago

Well, if you disaggregate it, the Republican voters in blue states are statistically net tax payers, and Democratic voters in red states who are statistically net tax recipients. It's a Simpson's paradox type phenomenon, where the aggregation at the state level conceals the individual level trends. Believe the analysis is on the net somewhere, or you can drill down to the Census micro data to confirm it yourself.

jbooth 15y ago
Citation needed? Low-to-middle income whites are the Republican bread and butter in red states. They split college degree whites, lose masters+ whites 3:1 or so, and lose blacks 95:5. But their base in red states are typically not the big-ticket taxpayers, aside from maybe in Texas. (cite, stan greenberg's book from 2004).
- temphn 15y ago
  FWIW I didn't downmod you. Both high and low levels of education correlate with voting Democrat. And higher income generally correlates with voting Republican. The tricky part is that higher education also correlates with higher income. I believe I saw the data disaggregated in a post on Gelman's blog. Will post in an edit if I can find it. EDIT: www.historycentral.com/elections/12008/exit/Income.html [sound] http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/03/income-and-2008-us-election.html http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/rich-and-poor-voters-in-2008.html The second link is the same as the third link from Gelman's writeup (syndicated by Nate Silver), except the image links in the second link aren't broken. The data shown indicates that Republicans tend to be on average wealthier than Democrats, until you get to the ultra high income levels. If you think about it, this does start to suggest that there are aggregation issues going on; in general the rich pay more in taxes than the poor, and the middle class and rich tend to vote Republican, so something counterintuitive is going on if "red states" are net tax recipients. I can't seem to find the original post that did the analysis, but hopefully it seems more plausible now; if you really want to explore the issue you can get into the PUMS sample: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/data_main http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/data_main
  - jbooth 15y ago
    Hm, it's definitely not as clear as I thought, thanks for clearing that up. I'm typically suspicious of "average" when it comes to income as Bill Gates into a bar makes the patrons much richer on average. But at a glance those seem to be pretty good faith. Dunno why I was so certain, I'll have to dig up that Greenberg book again.

kevinpet 15y ago

You could spin it as Republican-leaning states support smaller government out of principle even though their short-term self interest favors the status quo.