Posts Tagged ‘states’
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”*…
While the richer among us are better at sheltering their income, all Americans pay federal income tax on the same basis. But the return on– the benefits received from– those tax payments varies wildly among states.
MoneyGeek analyzed and ranked states according to their dependence on the federal government. Rankings account for political affiliation, net benefits individuals and organizations in the state receive, state government revenue from federal sources and GDP per capita. We also examined which states received the most in child tax credits — both in terms of the annualized total amount and amount received per capita.
Key findings:
• Eight of the 10 states most dependent on the federal government were Republican-voting, with the average red state receiving $1.35 per dollar spent [i.e., paid in federal taxes].
• Nine states sent more to the federal government than they received — seven of these were Democrat-voting and had higher per capita GDPs than many of the red states that received the most.
• New Mexico had the highest return on federal spending [per dollar of federal taxes paid] of any state ($4.33), and Delaware had the lowest ($0.63).
• The eight states receiving the highest child tax credit per capita were all Republican-voting.
The complete ranking, with data and more analysis at “Return on Statehood: How Much Value Every State Gets From the Federal Government.”
* Benjamin Franklin
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As we contemplate contradiction, we might recall that it was on this date in 1620, after ten weeks at sea, that pilgrims aboard The Mayflower first sighted North America. Two days later they anchored off the tip of Cape Cod.
“In a flat country a hillock thinks itself a mountain”*…
In 2003, the Annals of Improbable Research released the results of a study that was not so much groundbreaking as it was ground-battering: Kansas, the tongue-in-cheek analysis found, was flatter than a pancake. The researchers Mark Fonstad, William Pugatch, and Brandon Vogt used polynomial equations to calculate the flatness of the famously flat state, and discovered that—as compared to the topography of an IHOP pancake—it was indeed flatter than a flapjack.
Their finding was not incorrect. Parts of Kansas are, in fact, flatter than a pancake! But the study’s focus on Kanas, it turns out, was also misleading. Because there are states—six of them, to be specific—that are even flatter than Kansas. The states flatter than a pancake, you could say, could be served in a short stack.
This latest flatness finding comes courtesy of geographers at the University of Kansas, who just published a paper, “The Flatness of U.S. States,” inGeographical Review, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Geographical Society…
The top 10 flattest states, per their results? [Results charted on the map above differ as they reflect a slightly different analysis; c.f., the link below.]
Florida
Illinois
North Dakota
Louisiana
Minnesota
Delaware
Kansas
Texas
Nevada
Indiana
Get level at “Science: Several U.S. States, Led by Florida, Are Flatter Than a Pancake.”
* Turkish proverb
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As we reach for the maple syrup, we might send lofty birthday greetings to Albert William Stevens; he was born on this date in 1886. An career officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Stevens was a pioneering balloonist and aerial photographer who took the first photograph clearly showing the Earth’s curvature (1930) and the first photographs of the Moon’s shadow on the Earth during a solar eclipse (1932). In 1935 Stevens and a colleague made a record balloon ascent near Rapid City, South Dakota. 20,000 watched– and millions listened to a live NBC broadcast– as their sealed gondola, Explorer II, climbed to 72,395 feet, nearly 14 miles, a record that stood until 1956.
“Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out”*…
Using IMDb‘s ratings of popular films, a Reddit user, Jakubisko, made a map that identifies the most popular movies of each state in America. California thus becomes Pulp Fiction, Florida Scarface, Colorado Psycho or New-York The Godfather. Mainly all the motion pictures named in the map are American movies [in] which plot takes place in America…
Read more at Konbini… and then check out the top-rated films on IMDb set and shot in each European country.
* Martin Scorsese
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As take our truth at 24 frames per second, we might recall that it was on this date in 1887 that Harvey Wilcox officially registered Hollywood with the Los Angeles County recorder’s office. Harvey and his wife had recently moved from Topeka, where he’d made a fortune in real estate. They bought 160 acres of land in the Cahuenga Valley, in the foothills just of the city of Los Angeles, on what had been a sleepy settlement founded in 1781 as El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Poricuncula,
The Wilcoxes, prohibitionists, dreamt of founding a community of devout– and abstemious– Christians; by 1900, the community numbered 500. But the city of Los Angeles, fueled first by the Southern Pacific Railroad, then the Sante Fe, had grown to 10,000. By 1910, L.A. had used the promise of water (Hollywood had precious little) to lure the smaller community into annexation… after which the fledgling motion picture business began to grow explosively… and Harvey Wilcox’s dream of a sober, conservative religious community faded.
“Life is a desire, not a meaning”*…
Mashable created a map of what each state wants (according to Google’s Autocomplete).
The resulting map reads like a list of New Year’s resolutions made by Civil War veterans. Did you know, for example, that more than anything, Wyoming evidently wants an aircraft carrier? Are you close enough to Wisconsin that residents revealed their secret wish to be called “The Mitten State?” Who could forget existential Florida, whose only desire is simply “to know.”
Check out the map below and see what Google thinks your state wants most. If your state happens to be blank, it’s because Google says it doesn’t want anything, which has to count for something, right?
Mashable’s map was inspired by the somewhat more existential work of of Tumblr user Gaysquib, who used Google’s auto-complete to determine what each state is…
* Charlie Chaplin
[Update: here is Europe autocompleted; and here is the Middle East and Asia]
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As we deliberate on desire, we might recall that it was on this date in 1964 that the Beatles occupied the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time, when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” reached #1. It had already ascended to the pinnacle of the British charts: indeed, with advance orders exceeding one million copies in the U.K., “I Want to Hold Your Hand” would ordinarily have hit the top of the British record charts on its day of release (November 29, 1963), but it was blocked for two weeks by the group’s first million-seller, “She Loves You.” The release order was reversed in the U.S.: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” held the number one spot for seven weeks before being replaced by “She Loves You.” It remained on the U.S. charts for a total of fifteen weeks, and became the Beatles’ best-selling single worldwide.
Re-building America…
A map puzzle that should be simple (for U.S. readers, at least), but may be even more chastening than last Thursday’s…
Click here to play on Jim’s Pages.
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As we get our bearings, we might recall that it was on this day in 1845 that a majority of the citizens of the independent Republic of Texas approved a proposed constitution, that when accepted by the U.S. Congress and approved by President James Polk later that year, made Texas the 28th puzzle piece– that is, the 28th American state.
The Annexation of Texas to the Union, by Donald M. Yena, 1986. Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
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