An op-ed piece in today’s times contains:
The writer goes on to say that the truth is more complex. My perception has always been that the cities pay more than their share of taxes and get back less than their of services, but I am quite ready to admit I could be wrong. Does anyone know where the actual data can be found?
You have to specify if you count social security and Medicare as a service. You also need to dole out military protection costs among the counties. On the revenue side, you have to determine whether sales tax counts based on the corporate headquarters, the store, or the shopper’s residence. And a lot of other things.
I don’t know that this is computed by county. Many/most Federal programs give money or benefits to the states, and then the state decides how to divide it up among the counties. For example, funding for highways is given at the state level, and the state decides which highways to spend it on.
At the state level, there is this map showing how dependent each state is on Federal funding. It’s based on:
In general, it shows that ‘Red’ states (those that generally vote Republican) are about twice as dependent on Federal funding as blue states. A partisan view would be that Republican states are getting Welfare from the Democratic states.
I don’t see how large cities could come close to rural areas and small towns on a per capita basis just going on first principles. Low density areas need more roads and other infrastructure per capita pretty much by definition. Prisons are a mainstay of rural areas and provide employment to the surrounding area. Not a lot of old people flock to the big cities and collect Social Security and Medicare.
And it’s not like no one in rural areas are on welfare. There’s just no way whatever difference in welfare reciepts might be between cities and non-cities* would make up for the structural differences.
*Whatever that may be. It might be higher in rural areas for all I know.
Don’t forget about all of the agricultural subsidies.
As someone one generation from a farm, I wonder what the county breakdown is between family farms and agribusiness for those subsidies.
As I recall, studies put it at 80-90% of the money goes to big agribusiness corporations.
But it’s hard to quantify, because the ag programs mostly don’t care about how the land is owned, just about the crops on that land. Also, many family farms are being organized as family corporations now, to facilitate passing on the farm to the children when their parents retire from active farming.
Most people, towns, counties and states get more in government services than they pay in taxes. After all, the federal government spends more than it takes in. It would be rare to meet someone who pays more than he gets.
The issue is some people do not feel that payments to welfare payments to farmers (or to poor people) is a service they value too much. You do not get to pick and choose.
Error
Wrong. 
IOW, there is no hard data and perhaps cannot be. It occurred to me after I posted that if an agrobusiness has its headquarters in a big city, do its subsidies count for the city or for the counties where their farms are?
Two things I would add: judging from the article I was quoting from, rural people are convinced that the cities get all the goodies because, for example, their roads are crumbling while the city streets are not (but I would comment that the cities tax themselves for these roads). Second, every once in while you read claims how much better off NYC would be if it were its own state or country since they pay out much more in taxes than they get. I cannot verify that, however.
But one thing I can say is that, generally speaking, rural areas dominate the legislatures, thanks partly to gerrymandering, but also to the concentration of democratic voters in cities.
On a more personal level, it’s statistics like this that encourage the UK government to cut back on benefits.
And also because half of our democracy is built on the premise of pieces of land voting, not humans.
I think this probably covers it, though it’s worth noting that there are government services available to city-dwellers that may be unavailable or difficult to access at all for rural folk (county health services and such). And lots of infrastructure is built privately and doesn’t necessarily count as a “government service” - cable, power and telephone lines, for example.
NYC pays much more in taxes than it “takes” in state and federal spending because it’s the commercial hub of the United States. An independent New York would suddenly find itself pretty broke since it would no longer be the de facto commercial center of the US.
London is probably going to have the same problem post-Brexit; it’s the world’s de facto financial hub primarily because it is the financial center of the world’s largest single market.
Agriculture subsidies are just peanuts compared to Social Security and Medicare. Those two programs account for roughly $2 trillion in spending each year, and subsidies are closer to $20 billion. The top reason that many states appear to be “takers” and others “donors” is a combination of two questions: (1) How many retirees live in the state? and (2) how many high income earners live in the state?
States like California, New York, and Massachusetts have high proportions of high income earners – who will pay more in tax simply because of the progressive tax system we have – and a lower percentage of retirees than sunbelt states. These large factors tend overwhelm other considerations, like for example, California does extremely well in defense spending (usually more than Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Florida combined).
Back to the OP, I’ve never seen a comprehensive analysis of spending and revenue by county. I’ve seen IRS data by county, and Social Security data by county, and those are easily found with Google. But if you want to add in all other spending – defense, transportation, education, whatever – I’m not sure if that is readily available.
Is it fair to count SS dollars?
Those are payouts from a Ponzi scheme participants have invested in. It’s not fundamentally a wealth transfer program (although I’ve heard that COLA is a bit enhanced), is it?
Medicare is more … complicated.
It is fair to count net SS dollars when making relative rankings of “taking vs. giving”. It is possible to work in one state or county and retire in another so the dollars will come “out” of one county and “into” another. This is relevant because the dollars spent will contribute to the local economy. Whatever disparity remains amounts to a transfer of wealth from one county/state to another.
Which isn’t to say that this is wrong or should be stopped, simply that it should be recognized. Especially, it should be factored in in arguments that amount to “well, WE can survive on low taxes so I don’t understand why those OTHER places can’t!” (When those other places have low percentage of retirees who are being subsidized by Washington and high percentage of high income people who are sending money to Washington.)
Respectfully, I would say that you are wrong, as written. Cities don’t pay taxes. Nor do towns, counties, and states. People and corporations pay taxes. Analyses that purport to say that “State X pays more in taxes than it receives” are inaccurate if not meaningless, because it’s not the same people in State X paying and receiving. Localities that “take in more taxes than they pay” just happen to have fewer affluent people in them.
Indeed, your question really breaks down to “where do wealthy people and large corporate headquarters reside?” There may be data about that, but I don’t think one can draw fairness implications from the answer. After all, if one believes in the principle of progressive taxation, then taxes should flow from wealthy people to people who are not wealthy, and the location in which one or the other lives should be irrelevant.
Fair point.
Still, I think the question tries to unravel a point that people who live in state X demonstrate (by voting patterns) dislike of policies that favor people in state X, while at the same time people in state X may favor media that editorializes that people in state Y are freeloaders who live on the backs of state X’ers.
Ag subsidies are closely tied to thre farmland, even specific fields on the farm. That’s the way they are calculated and paid.
But how you ‘count’ them is up to you.