> That's the most fucked up thing here. The regions with the highest concentration of people upset about paying taxes overlaps almost exactly with the places that get the most excess benefit of taxes, typically in the range of 1.1:1 (which means many other places are seeing about 15% less benefit per capita).

An explanation I've heard for this is that the people upset with overpaying taxes aren't the people getting welfare benefits, but they see those people and think that the benefits are not deserved.

And medicare/medicaid/social security total to ~half of all Federal spending in the US, so that's not nothing.

>That's the most fucked up thing here. The regions with the highest concentration of people upset about paying taxes overlaps almost exactly with the places that get the most excess benefit of taxes,

How is this any different than when some rich techie on HN says "I know it's not good for me personally but I want higher taxes because that's the right thing to do"?

There's a huge divide between the way cities vote and rural communities. If farmers do receive more tax breaks, it's to support a system that makes them unprofitable, so that they don't quit. Give you an example, getting tax breaks to grow corn for ethanol. Having more ethanol in their gasoline, is not something any farmer wants, its more of a want of politicians that live in cities.