Yeah, I definitely feel more comfortable trusting a random, terminally online Lemmy user who’s oddly concerned with one metric over the ton of diverse statistics provided in the video. One might wonder why you’re so skeptical about the channel.
Also, I don’t think New Mexico is your best go-to example (or you just don’t understand the data and thought “biggest number goodest”), since West Virginia for example has a return of 26 cents on every dollar, and since New Mexico is the second-most federally dependent state in the nation, providing the second least tax contribution in return for its federal funding in the nation. For every $1 it pays in federal taxes, it receives $3.26 in federal funding, so of course it’s going to have one of the highest local returns on the tax dollars it pays. In terms of states that actually contribute to the nation, New Mexico is one of the worst examples.
But hey, it’s blue right, and that makes it a good state, as opposed to Texas, which must therefore be bad in every conceivable metric in order for our tribalist, reductionist viewpoint to make any sense, eh?
I don’t agree with the way that Texas is currently being run economically, but that doesn’t change the fact that its enormous, booming economy provides a huge net surplus to the nation given its GDP, and that it therefore more than warrants this sort of investment from the federal government.