The rural-urban divide

Matthew Yglesias is picking on Kentucky, ...

Yglesias:

"Forty-three percent of San Franciscans have bachelor’s degrees to just 20 percent of Kentuckians. Not surprisingly, San Francisco’s workers ...[earn] a median household income of $74,000 to Kentucky’s $40,000."

The unstated corollary:  Medicare, medicaid, social security, and income taxes are higher on someone with an income of $74k than $40k.

Yglesias again:

"Kentucky is full of doctors and hospital administrators who think of themselves as hard working, highly educated professionals working in the private sector. But they’re living in a dreamland where their customers can afford their services thanks to taxes paid in San Francisco. Absent Medicare and Medicaid, health care professionals in Kentucky would see their incomes plummet..." 

I've thought about this for the rural-urban divide in Texas (Socialism Texas Style), but I really hadn't considered what it means for even non-rural professionals in a low-income state.

Yglesias' points are interesting - whether you like it or not this is the way the U.S. economy works, and if the European Union wants a common currency it needs a similar redistribution philosophy

Of course, my point is less intellectual.  I'm tired of the people who have a net inflow of Federal and state money into their rural and small towns complaining about socialism.