Picking up on yesterday’s theme, the fiscal cliff, let’s look at the wider context to the argument between left and right over taxes and spending cuts.

There are serious economists who study the difference between what our states pay in taxes and how much they get in return from the U.S. government. These people generally don’t draw political, let along moral, judgments from these numbers.

I’m under no such constraint. The numbers, for decades now, have been quite clear: With some exceptions, what we regard as red states are sent a whole lot more of your hard-earned tax dollars than the traditional blue states. In effect, supposedly indolent, ‘tax and spend