Texas is a massive welfare state that lives on federal contracts
You’re not wrong. Was looking at this for a different reason today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
Texas is bolstered by their hill country tech sector, gulf port refineries and west Texas crude. The rest is a lot of prairie land and mountain ranges. What surprises me is that Texas has lower productivity per capita than Alaska (another oil rich, wide open spaces state), and Nebraska, which I can only assume one man is doing some very heavy lifting there.
Many of the more large-population liberal states have higher gdp, even with their typically higher taxes.
This chart you shared identifies Texas as having the 44th highest GDP per capita out of every region in the entire world out of 454 regions, which is actually really good. It's especially good given how much rural land Texas includes, where an entire state's per capita GDP is being compared to much smaller urban regions like Luxembourg, Warsaw, and London.
I live in Texas. I love where I live, and also fuck this place, but either way what you're saying just isn't true. Sure, there are a number of defense contractors plus NASA and military bases operating in Texas, but between energy, healthcare, education, tourism, tech, and over 50 Fortune 500 companies, Texas's economy is actually really diverse. California has a ton of military bases and defense contractors too, because like Texas they have the workforce to pull it off
You have no idea how much of all those industries you just named get corporate welfare or other federal grants. Texas is a net tax sink not payer to the federal government
What is your evidence of this?
Rockefeller Institute of Government and analyses by the Tax Foundation. Texas consistently receives more in federal funding than it contributes in federal taxes. In 2023, for every dollar Texans paid to the federal government, the state received approximately $1.20 in return. This net inflow of federal dollars places Texas among the states that benefit most from federal redistribution.
Have a link to these? All the sources I see indicate Texas pays more in federal taxes than it receives back in aid
Not OP; here’s the most likely link.
https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-payments-portal/
And here is a screenshot of the relevant data
Texas clocks in at $1.21 receivers for every $1 sent to the federal government.
According to this, all but 3 states receive more than they contribute, and Texas is roughly 17th out of 50 in terms of receiving the least amount back. I guess I don't understand how Texas could be singled out in a dataset like this
Because of how much Texas screams.
Ok, and that has nothing to do with the original claim, which your data demonstrates was false
Point to where it shows the falseness
This net inflow of federal dollars places Texas among the states that benefit most from federal redistribution.
Your data shows about 33 out of 50 states benefit more from federal redistribution than Texas does
Ok, but we’re talking about Texas.
If Texas became it's own nation, it would probably become a cross between Russia and Switzerland. It would quickly develop a highly centralized oligarchy, basically operating off of oil and gas exports, while still having good relationships with it's larger neighbors and have beneficial tax policies.
It would become a great safe place for super rich people to hide money while it's actual population declines economically.
I don't know much about Texas. Is this meaningfully different from how it is now?
The biggest difference is that the state is still controlled by the federal government. If it wasn't subservient to the US Federal government then a lot of things about it would have to change.
It would be a completely different place. I imagine it would closely resemble a Christian version of Turkey in a lot of ways.
Nope. Pretty much all already checked off. Though those "beneficial tax policies" are only for the wealthy of course just to be clear.
They're already trying to annex counties from New Mexico
"They" are not.
It's just one dude and that's not going anywhere. It would require agreement of not only New Mexico (which is a non starter) and the federal government, which is equally not going to happen.
The most powerful elected official in the state, who won his election by a very clear majority, is representative of the state. I agree it's not going to happen, but it's not like it wouldn't if they had the power to.
“Texas” is not a monolith. It’s like five different states staple-gunned together.
"staple-gunned" there is a word for that. stapled.
The "gunned" is a good rhetorical effect.
maybe
I’m not sure I get it… some ports can stay open all year, some cannot. The ones that can are called warm water ports. It’s a very helpful geographic feature for any country to have so they can enjoy uninterrupted shipping for trade and transport. Dude is making the case that Texas could stand alone as a country.
Because its an "inglourious basterds" three raised fingers giveaway that tje poster is not American, probably Russian
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/major-hellstrom-sees-three-fingers
Russians care about warm water ports because they have few of them and the ones they have are inconveniently located.
Americans don't even think about specifying that a port is warm water because they all are in the contiguous 48.
Ergo the poster is probably a Russian bot.
It's the same how certain spellings give away Yanks trying to Larp as British
I see, thanks. I consider it a general term but I can see how it may have strong associations with Russia, especially because many Americans probably heard the term for the first time after Crimea.
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