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Midlands wrote:

No, tax rate is not proportional to spending. I was talking very specifically about federal taxes. The federal government collects taxes in all states and also spends money in all states. In New York it collects a lot more money in taxes than spends, in Texas vice versa. If New Yorkers were only paying for spending in their own state, they would need to pay a lot less in taxes. But in effect they subsidize Texas and other states.

Well, i thought we were talking about state govt, if it's federal govt then yes, tax rate is not proportional to spending. but saying federal govt spend money on the states is an oversimplification because in the US, the federal govt can only spend money through the programs of executive agencies. it can't directly spend money onto each of the states because there will be overlap in fiscal jurisdiction.

what you may understand as federal subsidization of a state is merely executive programs executed in a particular state, it's not that the federal govt giving away money for the sake of subsidizing state govt.