(ThyBlackMan.com) After passing Phase 4 of coronavirus relief legislation, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he had little inclination to go further: including providing needed aid to state and local governments. He blithely suggested they consider bankruptcy. McConnell even went so far as to say that helping states hardest hit by COVID-19 would amount to a “Blue State Bailout.” But let’s be clear about who really pays the freight in America.
The Gross Domestic Product of the United States is about 21trillion dollars. According to Statista, the six states with the highest GDP are (in order):
- California
- Texas
- New York
- Florida
- Illinois
In fact, California and New York alone account for almost 23% of the nation’s GDP. When looking at the metropolitan areas that are the greatest contributors to GDP we find:
- New York City-Newark-Jersey City
- Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim
- Chicago-Naperville-Elgin
- Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington
- District of Columbia-Arlington-Alexandria
- San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward
These are the places where the wealth of America is generated, and four of the six are metro areas on the coasts. Without these cities, the American economy would be the size of a third-world country.
Drilling down, Governing Magazine defines “donor” states and “dependent” states: Those that put in more revenue to federal tax coffers than they get back, and those who get back more than they put in.
The leading donor states are:
- Connecticut
- Massachusetts
- New Jersey
- New York
They all send more tax revenue to the federal government, by far, than they receive in federal funding. In contrast, McConnell’s state of Kentucky is one of the leading “dependent” states, getting back $2.35 for every $1.00 it sends to the U.S. Treasury. So, as Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York said, “Who’s bailing out who?”
Disparaging Blue States, and “coastal elites”, has been in vogue recently, along with saying that the “real Americans” are in “fly-over country” or the “heartland.” But when looking at the numbers, we see who the real “makers and takers” are as former House Speaker Paul Ryan used to characterize it. Large urban metropolitan areas are the engines that drive America’s economy, and the rest of the country are the beneficiaries.
There’s one other fact about our GDP that should not be overlooked. That $21trillion in goods and services is divided between (70%) what we buy (consumer spending) and (30%) what we make (manufacturing). In the long run this cannot be healthy. The coronavirus has exposed the country’s vulnerability to outsourced manufacturing, as evidenced by the disruption to the supply chain of personal protective equipment when China had to shut down to flatten the curve of its outbreak there. We have to fix that, and establish a better balance between what we buy and what we make here.
When this is over, we should remember the politicians and corporations who are advocating putting profits over people – at the polls and in their pocketbooks – as we go about reopening the country. A HuffPost article described the people who are organizing or leading these “reopen protests” as a mix of “white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, anti-government militias, members of a neo-fascist street gang (the Proud Boys) and other assorted extremists and scam artists.” In other words, Trump’s base.
They are not the real America, however. We are.
Staff Writer; Harry Sewell