We don’t divvy up federal spend proportionally based on paid income taxes.
If we did “poor white” rural citizens/states would be in big trouble as they currently get more money than they should from a purely proportional measure.
Taxpayers in the poorest states pay tax based on their income. Not only do the Puerto Ricans pay no federal income tax, they've spent themselves into penury and would have expected a bailout had there been no hurricane.
I'm perfectly willing to see my tax dollars go to the Puerto Rican grid as soon as they start paying taxes.
They should start paying federal taxes as soon as the federal government allows them to become a state. Until that happens, they’d be getting taxed with no representation.
But they are US Citizens still. And the federal government subsidizes plenty of infrastructure into areas that pay relatively little federal tax, because we as a country care about fellow citizens’ well-being.
>They should start paying federal taxes as soon as the federal government allows them to become a state. Until that happens, they’d be getting taxed with no representation.
Great, then they should get no money from the rest of us.
They have no say in the matter, is the point. Because they aren’t a state, and aren’t allowed to become a state, taxing them would literally be applying one of the core justifications for US rebellion to Puerto Rico. Do we want Puerto Rico to revolt? Then we should either make them a state or not force them to pay federal taxes.
But unless we’re going to give them independence, we still have an obligation to protect and, to some extent, provide for them.
I feel the same way about Missouri. They’ve constantly voted to not modernize their electrical grid to the point an internal commission says its driving away state tax revenue.
They also are a net drain on the treasury. They get more federal dollars out than they put in.
