Lame “Study” Misrepresents Federal Spending In Wyoming

It's important to never take any ranking you find seriously.

There is so much about them that is either misguided, misjudged, biased, or just bad research.

Still, sometimes the question is interesting.

The website SmartAsset ranked "States Most Dependent on the Federal Government".

But we have to have a look at how the state is dependent.

For various reasons, each state gets a different amount of federal funding.

It's also important to look at where that money goes.

SmartAsset rankings were based on:

1). The number of federal employees.

2). The percentage of government revenue and the ratio of federal funding to income taxes paid.

Scan down the list we find that Wyoming comes in at:

9. Wyoming
Wyoming easily has the highest percentage of revenue coming straight from the federal government. The state’s federal share of revenue is at 56.43%, higher than all 50 states. As for the other metrics, it did poorly as well.

But Smartasset has not factored in that the federal government owns 48.19 percent of Wyoming's total land, 30,043,512 acres out of 62,343,040 total acres. Wyoming ranked eighth in the nation in federal land ownership.

With that much federal land and federal assents to manage, including coal, gas, oil, uranium, rare earth minerals, ranching and farming land, hunting, camping, fishing, and other outdoor activities, it's no wonder Wyoming takes in so much money directly.

You can read the full ranking list at this link.

If most of Wyoming was owned by the people of Wyoming the amount of federal money coming into the state would look very different.

As far as ranking on the amount of income taxes paid, Wyoming is the least populated state in the nation. Not a lot of income tax goes to the federal government from here. Yet the feds own and manage most of the land.

Let's face it, Smartasset did not think this all the way through.

This is why we should never take rankings like these seriously.