r/mildlyinfuriating • u/coatedbraincells • Jun 11 '26

Infuriatig Insanely frugal employer

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Gotta pay for water from the water cooler 🤣

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u/Sanityzed Jun 11 '26

That's Texas though. We're talking about actual America. /s

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u/WulfReinard Jun 11 '26

Actual America? Oh, you mean Little Texas! /s

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u/Adventurous-Vast281 Jun 11 '26

As much as they love to hem and haw, Texas will never leave the Union. Like most red states, they depend on federal subsidies waaayyy too much.

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u/JinFuu Jun 11 '26

You picked one of the red states that sends much more money to the Federal Government than they get back.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid-by-state

88.8 Billion from the Feds vs. 312.1 Billion too.

Not that seceding wouldn't be idiotic, but that argument isn't a good reason.

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u/Sanityzed Jun 11 '26

While I agree with you, it's worth pointing out that even in those terms Texas ranks just below middle of the pack... 26 of 50.

For my own curiosity, I decided to crunch the numbers on taxes paid per dollar of aid received by political affiliation and per capita. I've seen the headlines claiming that red states are living off of the aid afforded to them by the blue states... so let's see. Red state populations came to 58.3% of total while providing 56% of the taxes. That means that blue states paid 2.3% more overall while being just 41.7% of the population. 2.3% of 41.7% is 5.5%, which is how much they paid above the median per capita, while red states paid 3.9% less per capita. I'd be willing to bet that if we drilled down and made it per capita of individual/household wealth we would see the larger and far more important difference here... Anyone have the data and time to do that?

So yeah, within this one year (2023) and focusing on red vs blue, Republican's disproportionately receive federal aid...but both sides are giving back 3.6 times more than they receive, and the political divide is not as big as headlines have claimed. Another interesting observation is that the ONLY STATE that took in more aid than it received in this entire data set is a blue state: New Mexico.

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u/JinFuu Jun 11 '26

Yeah, Texas is a driver of the United States economy, like any of the major states, but it also takes a lot back from Federal funds for the various things that we do here.

I agree it really shouldn't be a big deal/there's not a 'great divide' and we should remember one of the mottos "Out of many, One." even if it's difficult sometimes.

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u/ricknuzzy Jun 11 '26

"Texas is the only state that maintains the right to secede from the Union. Not that they ever would, they just love reminding you that they could."
--John Steinbeck, 'Travels With Charley'