- Source: The Elway Poll
The big assumption underlying my piece in this week’s Stranger, provocatively labeling rural Washington a Welfare State, was the notion that most rural Washingtonians don’t know it… an assumption confirmed in a recent Elway Poll that found a plurality of respondents got their county’s tax donor/recipient status exactly backwards.
In fact, only 13 percent of respondents thought their counties received more in state services than they paid in taxes, when in fact about 55 percent of the population lives in a net recipient county. Meanwhile about 43 percent thought their counties paid more in state taxes than they got back, not far off from the actual population of the donor counties. But as Elway points out, “the real political story is where respondents live, not their overall numbers.”
Of those respondents living in net recipient counties, 43 percent incorrectly believe they pay more than they get back, while only 14 percent of those in donor counties got their status wrong. Giving credence to the stock liberal claim of living in a reality based community, a plurality of King County respondents got the question right, while more got it right than wrong in Snohomish, Skagit, San Juan and Whatcom counties. As for the rest of the state, respondents in every county but Kittitas got the numbers reversed (but then, Kittitas is the only Eastern Washington county to rank among the six net donors).
Who’d a thunk? No surprise either the way respondents broke down along partisan lines, with 50% of Republicans saying they paid more, and only 12% saying they got more back, compared to a 43-9 and 35-18 split for Independents and Democrats respectively.
Why does any of this matter? Well, here again, Elway echoes my broader thesis:
Everywhere you go in Washington state, with the possible exception of Seattle, you can hear the locals complain about how much they pay in state taxes compared to how much they receive in state government services. Eastern Washington voters complain about how they are sending all their tax dollars to “the coast.” Rural and small town residents believe they are paying for Seattle’s extravagance.
The belief that tax money is leaving the community to subsidize other areas of the state animates much of political and policy debate in Olympia. It has added significance this year due to the introduction of a bill to eliminate or consolidate some smaller counties that are not pulling their weight. The proposal is not likely to get very far, but it does present what educators like to call a “teachable moment” about state government and state taxes.
A teachable moment, unfortunately, that those invested in promoting an all-cuts budget, apparently don’t want taught.
Horn blowing and (very) heavy humor.
What I get from this: a majority of everybody regardless of party or location thinks that they pay more than they get. Some of them (those in King County) happen to be right, but it’s not because they’re any smarter but just because the facts happen to coincide with their prejudices.
Let us know when you can get disaggregated numbers that show that individuals in Eastern and Central Washington are more likely to be net welfare recipients than individuals in Western Washington. That would actually be interesting.
@2’s got it. Overall, losses tend to feel more significant than gains. It’s pretty well established cognitive science.
Sean P, Goldy wrote this in his recent news article:
“But perhaps the most glaring example of our rural welfare state comes in the category of “welfare” itself, where 2008 data from the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) clearly illustrates just how dependent on Western Washington tax dollars many Eastern Washingtonians have become. King County, home to our state’s largest concentration of urban poor, drew only $538 of DSHS expenditures per capita, ranking it 30th out of 39 counties. Meanwhile, such bastions of self-proclaimed self-sufficiency as rural Adams, Ferry, Pend Oreille, and Okanogan Counties consumed per capita DSHS benefits of over $900, while Yakima County—Washington’s “fruit basket”—topped the charts at $1,129 per person.
To put this level of dependency in perspective, 83 cents out of every dollar Yakima County sends to Olympia is paid back in DSHS benefits alone. Tiny Ferry County actually receives more in just DSHS benefits—$1.14 on the dollar—than the total tax revenues it pays to the state! Schools, corrections, higher education, everything else… that’s all gravy.”
I’d love to poll them thusly:
#1. Would you support legislation that each county only receive as much in state spending as it pays in taxes?
#2. Did you know that your county receives more in spending than it pays in taxes?
#3. How do you feel about question #1 now?
It would be interesting to see the change from #1 to #3.
Can we do @6’s idea, please?
@ 2, 4 – yeah, definitely.
I still say, except for children, cut them the fuck off!
Easy enough. #6 has the right idea. Only to heck with a poll. Just go right to an initiative that would prohibit any county in the state from receiving back more than they paid in. It would obviously easily pass.
Yes to @6, and @7.
The correct underlying model here isn’t that Western Washington voters got this question right because they are all super-informed and Eastern Washington voters got it wrong because they are dumb-shits. The correct underlying model is that all voters think they pay more than they get back; Western Washington voters, through no fault or virture of their own, just randomly happen to be right on this one.
Don’t dispair though, Goldy! I, at least, have been taught. I am a Western Washington voter and I am for an all-cuts budget.
@5: I saw that, but it doesn’t really show anything meaningful about how much each DSHS beneficiary is receiving in the absence of information about the number of DSHS beneficiaries in each county.
The school district data is a lot more convincing, and it does a pretty good job of showing how inefficiently we organize school districts in rural areas. However, even most Republicans think school should be funded (though they’d probably claim that school lunches in King County are sucking up all the money that should be going to Yakima County).
@2, et. al.: I’m glad several of you beat me to this conclusion. Sort of undermines one’s credibility to talk about living in a reality based community when your spin is so transparent, Goldy. Much though we’d like to believe we’re smarter than the rest of the world, Seattle’s got a long way to go before we’re smart enough to realize that if we really want to change things, we have to stop holding ourselves up as superior examples of humanity. o.O
So, you blast Goldy for making an assumption… by making another assumption. nice.
(That should read @12) dammit.
Thanks, as a fiscal conservative in Seattle, we all know who the welfare queens are. Thanks Goldy for helping our cause. It’s great to hear your fans yell ‘cut them off’. Damn right!
@14 et al,
The point of this post is that perception of revenue/expenditure flow drives policy, and that these perceptions are largely wrong throughout much of the state.
Whether I spin or no for dramatic effect, doesn’t change the underlying facts.
Thanks, as a fiscal conservative in Seattle, we all know who the welfare queens are. Thanks Goldy for helping our cause. It’s great to hear your fans yell ‘cut them off’. Damn right!
I say we get an Eyman-esque initiative on the ballot stating that at least 90% of all taxes must be spent in the county in which they were collected. Maybe when it passes, they’ll learn to stop voting against their own best interests.
Conclusion: Them red county folks is just plain dumb.
@20 for the win. Super majority for the No Tax Cuts For You win.
You are doing great reporting and analysis here – keep going!
How can this information be distributed to a wider audience than The Stranger? The initiative proposed by @20 is a great idea.
@20 That assumes they’ll stop living in their fantasy world.
Good luck with that.
I thought it might be fun to visit the Sec’y of State Initiatives page to see if anyone has filed a similar-sounding initiative, but received a pretty sobering surprise. Damn is it depressing. Naturally, our Timmy Eyman and his two erstwhile Eastern Washington companions have filed the lion’s share, calling for everything from 2/3s legislative majorities on raising taxes to $30-only car tabs to I-1100 part deux. Other folks have put in for some wonderful idea such as opting out of health care reform, or denying public assistance to non-US residents. It’s all still cut cut cut, deny deny deny without a thought to the true costs of these measures.
Actually, a “spend it where you collect it” initiative might be quite fun in this increasingly restricted and revenue-strangled world. I could see state offices closing up shop across the state and collating in the major cities only. Sorry, Garfield County residents, you have to drive to Spokane for your welfare check.
As fun as it is to think of such an initiative passing, the effect on children, the sick, and the elderly – not to mention the state employees who are just doing their job – would be horrible.
HOWEVER, it would be splendid to have it on the ballot just to see the “educational outreach” the various right-wing politicians and radio hosts would have to engage in. I wonder how they’d spin it?
That graph is ugly.
Under a “Spend it where it’s collected” model, the Capitol may have to move to Seattle due to fiscal reasons alone. That would be a hilarious endgame.