What’d be even more interesting would be to remake that as a percentage of each states GDP… or remake the image on a per capita basis. Then you could add a scaling red to blue third dimension based on the political make up of the legislative and executive branch.

I’m very disappointed to see Louisiana ranking so high on that.

Dems still think we can raise taxes to fix all this, Arnold is pretending to be a tax fighting republican (ignoring that he wasn’t this a few months ago). I’d say that we have a ~98% chance of running out of money.

Alaska is kind of an outlier, since they rake in millions and millions from the windfall profits tax they levied on the oil companies.

I note that two of the others have legislatures that only meet every other year, and the third limits is legislature to 90 days per year. I wonder how much that limits mischief-making among the local pols…

I would also suggest–particularly in California’s case–that this shows a weakness in the ballot-initiative system. California voters have brought themselves to this situation in many ways, ranging from Proposition 13 to the two-thirds vote requirement for any new tax legislation.

They are also four states that get more in federal funding than they pay in federal taxes (Alaska gets something like $1,83 back from the gov’t for every $1 it gives).

Also note:
Federal Funding per capita, state rankings (Wyoming, #1, Alaska #2, N. Dakota, #8 Montana, #12)

All rank very high in state gov’t spending per capita (Alaska #1, N. Dakota, #5, Wyoming #8). Per person, they spend A LOT! (and as noted above, much of that money comes from the Federal Gov’t).

But maybe they need that to pay for all the energy they use (Alaska, North Dakota, and Wyoming rank #1, 2, & 4 in per capita energy consumption).

In short, the Federal government is picking up a huge chunk of the tab for each of these states, all of whom spend a lot of money given their populations.

Alaska also has the advantage of that socialist revenue sharing thing known as the Alaska Permanent Fund (works well for them, maybe we should do it nationally?)

These are also the 4 states with the lowest population densities in the entire country, and 4 of the six lowest total populations as well. My guess is that this would play a role. Fewer people may translate to smaller, more efficient agencies, less paperwork, employees, etc.

Point being is that, overall, they actually spend quite a lot of money given their populations and all receive quite a lot of help from the government which comes directly from the pocketbooks of taxpayers in other states.