Red States Love Their Food Stamps

[Panama]

Did the people in these states vote to keep their entitlements?

Well here is a picture of states/counties that were either red/blue by total votes.

 

[88GT]

Ok, no one is reading the second link, so I'll post the rankings

1. Mississippi 20.7
2. Oregon 20.1
3. Tennessee 19.8
4. New Mexico 19.8
5. Michigan 19.7
6. Louisiana 19.2
7. Kentucky 18.8
8. West Virginia 18.7
9. Maine 18.6
10. South Carolina 18.2

I don't have time to peruse the links now (gotta hit the grocery store). But I see the graphic explains it as a percentage of population, yes? Percentages are always a little bit sketchy since they don't allow for the comparison of the size of the pie.

California has a much larger pie than Alabama. It can have 3x as many people on food stamps as Alabama but show a lower percentage of the population. Is that a fair comparison?

Methinks there are much better ways to compare the data than the ugly simple percentage.

 

[cesna250]

Oregon, Maine, Michigan and New Mexico are never red states.

 

[CountryBoy1981]

Here is the map from: Food Stamp Usage Across the Country - Interactive Map - NYTimes.com


upload picture

 

[Panama]

All 3 stacked for comparison

 

[2ADMNLOVER]

Is there a map that shows how many of the recipients are immigrants versus native born Americans and the states they live in ?

 

[printcraft]

This bears repeating....

What do you think OP?

That blue seems to line up pretty well.

 

[Sylvain]

Is there a map that shows how many of the recipients are immigrants versus native born Americans and the states they live in ?

What's your thought behind that?

 

[Hohn]

A couple thoughts on this:

-- First, it is rather telling that Romney never proposed to cut the money spent on food stamps. He only mentioned TANF (Temporary? HA!) by way of indicating how the explosion in usage was in an indicator of Obama economic failure.

-- Obama probably considers the huge increase in TANF usage to actually be a success. He had actually recruited foreign governments to INCREASE food stamp enrollment, and the program has about as much supervision over the qualifications of applicants as Fannie and Freddie had in 2005 (read: none).

Obama is going full-tilt Cloward-Pivens. He has no intent of even slightly reducing federal transfer payments of any kind. America is an unjust country that deserves to taken down a couple notches, and if he can do that will "spreading the wealth'-- well, that's just bonus.

 

[ArmedProgrammer]

I don't think this has a thing to do with Red / Blue? As someone above said, that's just intellectual masturbation on the part of the blog author.

There's simply no correlation.

Can't get states that are much redder than Wyoming and Utah - and yet... very little in the way of food stamps. If you plotted % voted R vs. food stamp usage I'm sure that the correlation would be low.

Education level, cultural factors, etc. All play into it.

 

[pirate]

Didn't Maine and New Mexico vote democrat this year?

 

[printcraft]

This bears repeating....

What do you think OP?

That blue seems to line up pretty well.

 

[indymike]

This has been the case for quite a while since manufacturing started leaving the US decades ago. The more comprehensive way to look at the whole blue states subsidize the red states issue is to see how much a state gets for every $1 it sends to DC.

This data is from 2004 but the current data are not far from this.

 

[hornadylnl]

This has been the case for quite a while since manufacturing started leaving the US decades ago. The more comprehensive way to look at the whole blue states subsidize the red states issue is to see how much a state gets for every $1 it sends to DC.

This data is from 2004 but the current data are not far from this.

Indiana gets back more than California or New York along with several others.

 

[atvdave]

The unemployed by state...

someone is providing them with money to live... and most are blue states...

Unemployment Rates for States

 

[bingley]

Did the people in these states vote to keep their entitlements? It would seem that if these people, who are part of the "47%," got out and voted to keep their entitlements, then the president would have easily carried a good number of the "Red" states that went against him.
Apparently, the logic of people voting to keep their welfare isn't entirely based on fact.
What's the deal?

Politicians are really good at getting people to vote against their own interest. People who are poor and on the dole are the same people who are more easily swayed by rhetoric about patriotism, self-reliance, the family. They are also less informed about the entire platform of a candidate, or at least they're willing to turn a blind eye towards actual economic issues for the sake of ideology.

Another factor, in terms of actual voting patterns, is that the poor tend not to vote as much. The people who consciously want to be parasites on society probably are less likely to vote -- just think about what kind of people they are.

 

[indymike]

Indiana gets back more than California or New York along with several others.

Which makes us the socialists and they the capitalists....or in the parlance of this election cycle, we are the takers and they are the makers.

 

[Phil502]

I see Florida is high, I assume Medicare is a factor here. Theres probably a lot of factors not accounted for here.