Fun with hypocrisy

By now you probably all know that I'm a political agnostic--I align myself with neither party, and consider myself something of a pragmatic libertarian. I just made that term up. I don't really even know what it means, but everyone needs a category, right? Good talk. At any rate, with tax season upon us, I was drawn to this infographic which was posted by the always-interesting Barry Ritholtz.

In short, it charts the per capita federal tax payments by state, matches it up with federal tax distributions by state, and then uses complex math (division) to sort the states by their status as "payers" (states whose citizens pay more than they receive back) and "takers" (states whose citizens receive more than they pay). Here it is (click for super-large version):

Not surprisingly, I was most intrigued by the bottom portion, the ranking of states by their status as payers or recipients. I noticed a couple of strange trends that seemed to be shaping up, and I decided to do a little digging (I do that every once in a while) to confirm my suspicions.

Maybe it was the red map/blue map thing that got me thinking along these lines, who knows... but I got to wondering, what does a state's status as a net payer or net recipient tell us about its likely voting behavior in federal elections? Focusing on our most recent Presidential election (Obama vs. McCain, 2008), I decided to do a quick rundown on the data. And here's what I found (ranked from 1 to 50, with 1 being the highest net payer, 50 the greatest net recipient):

Notice anything? Yeah, me too.

Of the 25 states who pay the most and receive the least, a whopping 22 of them voted for Obama, the Democrat, the man whom the right has vilified for taxing and spending us into oblivion since taking office (for what it's worth, I tend to agree with their assessment). As for those federal tax-mooching states who receive more than they pay, 19 of the 25 worst offenders (and 9 of the "top" 11) voted Republican. Huh?

Off the cuff, none of this makes any sense. Are we just a nation of self-loathing hypocrites? Or do we simply not realize just how much we receive in federal benefits when we receive them? It hardly seems logical that someone who was so heavily reliant on the federal dole would knowingly vote for the party who promised to cut them off, but that's exactly what we're seeing. And we're not just seeing one or two isolated examples, it's instead a systemic, widespread phenomenon.

I think all of this speaks to how out of sync the political rhetoric has become with the actual economic and practical reality. You'll often hear people in the Republican-voting recipient states harping on the welfare state, complaining about how the Democrats are bankrupting the nation... while riding on Medicare-funded electric wheelchairs and cashing their Social Security checks. It's an odd dissonance that Matt Taibbi covered at length in his piece about the Tea Party, and the implications for our society are somewhat troubling.

How can we expect honest and productive debate in Washington when it seems like our voters have no idea what they're voting for and why? Maybe I'm missing something here, and the Republican voters in these states are in fact voting based on other principles rather than economics and taxes. But if that's the case, then that only serves to drive home the point as to how economically f**ked up our nation is.

Any of you have any brilliant explanations? Because I'm honestly baffled.

[Visual Economics]
(h/t Barry Ritholtz)