Financial Times has collated a bunch of data in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity that attempts to measure the per capita impact of the sequestration based on past federal spending per county.
http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2013/09/29/sequester-county-impacts/
You shouldn't need to log in to view it. Definitely worth a look.
http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2013/09/29/sequester-county-impacts/
You shouldn't need to log in to view it. Definitely worth a look.
The sheer numbers are interesting - but perhaps it would be more interesting to compare these values to the average income in those areas - so we can see what proportion of the average income is affected. For example, Los Alamos in New Mexico "feels" $6400 per capita, but with an unemployment rate of 4% and median income of over $100K, is that really something those residents are going to feel? Also, we don't know the living costs of each area, so the disposable income could vary.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good point. It shows the double edge sword of government spending: it seems that most of the counties that received high government spending fared the best in the recession. Of course, the shutdown will be the test to see how dependent on the spending they are--again, you'd have to control for actual government employees in measuring such dependency
ReplyDeleteInteresting to note that almost all the outliers on the high end are "red" states
ReplyDelete