That might be meaningful if you could show that most of the federal money going to New Mexico was used for R&D as opposed to, say, social support programs. And then you could try to show that the money going to all of the other "taker" states was similarly being used on developmental projects as opposed to social support.

I'd bet on it not being used on R&D. In fact, I'm betting most of that money never even leaves the state of New Mexico. Those contractors building roads aren't being paid with monopoly money.

I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

That's one of the reasons I'm such a big proponent of lower taxes. The tax resource allocation scheme is fundamentally unfair as currently structured. There are other reasons I support lower taxes, but you don't want to get me started.