In a Tale of Two Charts, I examined Federal dollars both from and to the States. This Friday Follow-Up I give you a third chart — an interactive map showing dollars NOT anticipated to be given to the States because of the sequester. Nearly all states will ‘lose’ dollar amounts less than 1.5% of their respective GDP, although it is estimated that will mean a loss of “hundreds of thousands of jobs”.
I’m not sure if that’s all that much considering how unemployment is already these days, or if any such losses wouldn’t reallocate labor and resources to the private sector in the long run. Then again, one-fifth of those jobs we’re talking about are “administrative” with nearly as many “protective services” — whatever that means.
And here’s the “I told you so moment”: I griped that much of the income going back to states wasn’t the “welfare” nonsense Jesse Erlbaum implied by his graphic, but likely defense spending. If you break down the jobs expected to be lost between defense contracting and non-defense, it seems I was clearly onto something.