@swalve: Apologies if I'm reading too much into your comment, but it sounds like that was meant to imply that the blue states are subsidizing all those poor hayseeds in the red states . . . If so, it would probably make sense to do a Google Map showing the net inflow and outflow of FOOD from each region as well.

Hey, I like movies as much as the next guy, but I can't eat them, and it's the sparsely populated RED part of California that provides all the bountiful catering for the movie sets in the very blue Los Angeles, and similarly it's the vast red interior of the country that feeds all of us in those coastal blue states.

And come to think of it, the Red/Blue map [en.wikipedia.org] actually shows quite a density of earmarks in the blue states.

Maybe just maybe the country needs both red and blue to survive . . . you know, like *United* States??

--Jason

Jason

How 'bout making a map showing net outflow and net inflow of federal dollars to a region?

(Hint, it looks just like the red-state, blue-state map)

swalve

...or support national tax reform. I prefer the Fair Tax, but anything would be better than the current system.

eeefresh

Oh please: "Members of Congress know where the money is going". That just isn't true. The IRS alone loses billions every year.. the money just vanishes, and the IRS is only a small portion of USA's tax income. End the IRS. End the Federal Reserve. I want that map to be almost blank. Let the states portion out their own taxes.

-=Ron Paul in 2008=-

corndog8

I think Area 51 should have at least a few hundred of these icons.

knvb1123

It's always important to look at other data in relation to what is shown on a map. Not looking at the whole picture can be misleading. For example, regions with higher population will clearly receive more government services because they have more people to help and larger infrastructure needs. If you overlay the tax map with population densities, you can see this.

Also, if you zoom into the defense funding map you can see that funding is appropriated to specific private companies. Therefore, certain geographic regions will appear to be favored by congress when in fact it often has more to do with where private companies are headquartered. Many defense contractors are located on the East coast with easy access to Washington DC or in large population centers across the country where they can find the employees they need.

I'm not trying to justify where congress has appropriated money, but sometimes it's important to look at why things might be, and overlaying more data on a map can provide more insight.

courtenayt

@Jason:
The cheapest way for the U.S. to get food is to trade for it. Thanks to technology, it's possible to have agricultural goods shipped from other countries and have those goods be price competitive... unfortunately, our government subsidizes large farms out of romantic symbolism, which not only unfairly bars Third World nations from entering the market, but also smaller family farms here in the U.S.
That said, the red states do have a lot to offer (I live in one)... except in the way of picking presidents.

cloudspitter

The IRS isn't a small portion of the federal budget income. Form 1040 instructions, page 86 has two simple pie charts of where the money comes from and where it goes. Personal income taxes: 39%. Corporate income taxes: 13%. The IRS has a pretty large role to play on both of those, and 52% isn't a small portion. If they're also involved in collecting Social Security taxes, that's another 32%.

It is a very small portion of the budget outlay (around $10B). And spending $10B or so to collect around $2T is pretty efficient. Don't know how much they lose each year, but still.

mwrenfro