Let's Thank MAGA for Alabama Being a Broke, Backwards, Racist Sh*thole That Can’t Stop Sucking the Federal Teat

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Let's Thank MAGA for Alabama Being a Broke, Backwards, Racist Shithole That Can’t Stop Sucking the Federal Teat

Where “freedom” means gutted schools, shuttered hospitals, and a federal bailout

jillybeanmonet.substack.com

Where “freedom” means gutted schools, shuttered hospitals, and a federal bailout​

Photo by Phyllis Lilienthal on Unsplash
There is a particular American fairy tale about places that call themselves “free” because they keep government small, keep taxes low, and keep the culture unchanged. Alabama has told that story for decades. The result is not a renaissance. It is a narrowing. A shrinking of horizons. A public sphere that runs on nostalgic rhetoric while the metrics that matter fall further behind.

Spend an afternoon with the numbers and the romance collapses. Output per person lags. Schools struggle to meet basic benchmarks. Hospitals disappear from rural maps. Violent crime sits high while public infrastructure earns tired grades. The state takes a large federal allowance and then lectures others about self-reliance. It is not a mystery why families with options leave and why employers that prize skill clusters skip past.

What follows is not polite. It does not pretend trade-offs do not exist. It names them. Alabama can call this fate, but the record shows choices. And choices have led to a standard of living that a modern region would reject if it believed it deserved better.

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I. Economy: the façade on stilts​

Alabama’s headline economy offers a clean press release until you put it next to the national ledger. In 2024 the state generated about $48,988 in real GDP per person, which leaves a yawning gap from the US figure near $68,522. That gap is not just abstract growth. It is the difference between funding public goods at scale and scavenging for workarounds. It is the quiet reason talented graduates price their futures elsewhere. (USAFacts)

Household income repeats the theme in monthly terms. Median household income in Alabama was about $62,212 in 2023, while the US median stood at $77,719. That is a built-in discount on opportunity and resilience. It means less room for savings, less cushion for illness, and fewer consumer dollars for the small businesses that claim to be the state’s pride. (Census Data)

The tax design that was meant to goose growth ends up punishing families at checkout counters. Alabama keeps one of the highest combined state and local sales tax burdens in the nation, around 9.29% on average, and it taxes groceries too, only now trimming the rate from 3% to 2% in September 2025 after a partial cut in 2023. Low property taxes look friendly until you notice who benefits and who pays. When you load revenue onto sales while keeping property levies rock bottom, you protect land and shift costs onto working households. (Tax Foundation, Alabama Department of Revenue)

Infrastructure, the skeleton of commerce, is underbuilt and overused. The ASCE report card graded Alabama a C- overall, with roads and transit at C-, wastewater at D, and inland waterways at D. Business leaders can read those grades as friction. Truckers read them as hours in traffic. Taxpayers read them as the bill for deferred maintenance that always seems to come due the year after an election. (Alabama Department of Public Health)

All of this sits on a federal cushion that belies the independence talk. In FY 2022, 31.2% of Alabama’s state and local revenues came from federal transfers, notably higher than the national average. In 2023, the national accounting shows large net positive federal flows into some states and large net negative flows out of others—with high-earning states in the Northeast sending billions more to Washington than they get back. Alabama is not the patron here. It is the client. (USAFacts)

Finally, look at skills. The state’s adult attainment lags, and so do paychecks tied to that attainment. You can call this culture. Or you can call it a policy that chose short-term low taxes over long-term human capital, then acted surprised when the numbers followed. The economy is doing exactly what it was built to do.

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II. Education: the great unlearning​

Start with the benchmarks no campaign can sweet-talk. In grade 4 reading, Alabama posted an average score of 213 on the 2022 NAEP, below the US average of 216. By 2024, grade 8 math slid to 262 in Alabama against 272 nationally. Fourth-grade literacy and eighth-grade numeracy predict the high school that follows and the wages after that. Alabama is making those futures smaller. (CDC, KFF)

When defenders wave the “we test everyone” flag, remember that participation does not change performance. On the ACT, Alabama tests a broad cohort, which should temper comparisons, but it does not erase the result. The Class of 2024 posted an average around 17–18 against a national 19-plus. If you are a parent deciding where to put down roots, you do not read that as a talking point. You read it as risk.

Funding is the paper the story is printed on, and Alabama skimps. The state’s own analyses and national compilations show per-pupil revenue and spending below the national average, with a structurally weak local base because property taxes are engineered to be minimal. That design makes districts dependent on volatile sales taxes and thin federal patches. In other words, the system saves money up front and pays for remediation forever. (parcalabama.org)

Teacher labor markets behave like every other labor market. Pay less and you struggle to hire and keep talent. NEA tallies put Alabama average teacher pay near the bottom third, and vacancy lists in core subjects confirm what any principal could tell you by October. The result is a carousel of substitutes and a thinning pipeline in special education, math, and science. The state can pass recruitment slogans. It cannot pass a law repealing math. (Alabama Attorney General's Office)

Then came the CHOOSE Act, an education savings account that offers $7,000 for private tuition or $2,000 for homeschool costs, phasing toward broader eligibility by 2027. The sales pitch calls it rescue. The design reads like subsidy. Early reporting shows strong take-up by families already outside the public system, which means new public dollars follow students who were never on public rolls, while the remaining schools do even more with less. It is a transfer from broad obligation to narrow preference. (leecountyda.org, Rocket City Now)

If football trophies could teach, none of this would matter. They cannot. The scoreboard chants drown out the classroom bell, and the cost is not abstract. It is the twelfth grader who reads at a ninth-grade level. It is the business park that lands in a state that did not cheap out on its future.

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III. Healthcare: the distance between need and care​

Policy shows up in bodies. Alabama is one of ten states that still have not adopted Medicaid expansion under the ACA. That choice leaves a coverage gap for working adults who earn too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid but too little for subsidised Marketplace plans. KFF estimates that roughly 92,000 Alabamians sit in that gap, which is how you get a state with clinics full of untreated chronic disease and hospitals writing off care they cannot afford to keep giving. (KFF, files.kff.org)

The numbers are not shy about the consequences. In 2023, about 416,700 Alabama residents lacked health insurance, roughly 8.4% of the population, and non-expansion states post uninsured rates about double those in expansion states. Uninsurance drives delay, and delay drives worse outcomes. It also drives hospital red ink. That is not ideology. It is arithmetic. (KFF, KFF Health News)

Life expectancy makes the subtext plain. The CDC placed Alabama at 73.2 years in 2021, several years under the US figure. That figure is a summary of a thousand local frictions. The checkup skipped because the plan lapsed. The insulin stretched because the deductible reset. The mental health appointment never found because the list was full. To live in a non-expansion state is to learn how to price your health. (CDC)

Maternal and infant outcomes would shame a country that remembered how to be modern. Infant mortality rose to 7.8 per 1,000 live births in 2023, the worst in years. Maternal mortality has run high across multiple reporting windows. Lawmakers finally passed presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women, granting up to 60 days of outpatient coverage while applications process, a small humane patch that still leaves the wider architecture unchanged. You do not fix a failing bridge with a single plank. (USAFacts, AP News)

Access is collapsing where need is greatest. Thomasville Regional Medical Center—a brand-new rural hospital—closed in September 2024 after fewer than five years, becoming a symbol of a broader rural crisis. This year Lawrence Medical Center ended inpatient and ER services, leaving its county without an emergency room. Families now drive long distances for basic care, and many rural hospitals have already stopped delivering babies. When you refuse to finance coverage, you are choosing to unmap care. (Stateline, Business Alabama Magazine, Alabama Political Reporter, Alabama Reflector)

Provider capacity tells the same story. Alabama’s physicians per 100,000 people sit near the back of the pack, and large swaths of the state are designated Health Professional Shortage Areas for primary care. A system that skimps on insurance and payment predictably struggles to recruit and keep clinicians. The workforce goes where the coverage is. Patients follow or go without. (Becker's Hospital Review, HRSA Data)

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IV. Crime and quality of life: the civic bill come due​

Quality of life is not a slogan. It is whether your street feels safe and your neighbourhood functions. Alabama’s violent crime rate in 2023 stood at about 404 incidents per 100,000 people, above the US rate of roughly 383. The state’s defenders like to throw city names from elsewhere as a shield. The data refuses the deflection. Safety is local. Safety is policy. Alabama’s policies are not delivering it. (alabama-asce.org)

The property crime rate is higher than the national norm as well, which residents feel as stolen tools, broken windows, and higher insurance premiums. Insurance pricing is a silent referendum on governance. When carriers price a zip code as high risk, it is because the losses say so. Coupled with infrastructure grades that shout neglect, daily life becomes a sequence of frictions: a road that ruins a tyre, a claim that spikes your renewal, a police department forced to do more with less. (Alabama Department of Public Health)

Public safety policy has not helped. In January 2023 Alabama implemented permitless carry, eliminating the requirement to obtain a permit for concealed handguns. Law enforcement groups opposed it for predictable reasons. It removes a screening tool and complicates officer safety. When paired with a firearm mortality rate among the nation’s highest—about 25.6 deaths per 100,000 in recent tallies—the choice reads like bravado at the expense of outcomes. (alabama-asce.org, USAFacts)

What does it feel like on the ground. It feels like narrower freedom of movement. Parents replot errands by daylight. Seniors avoid certain lots. Small businesses invest in security upgrades instead of inventory. The state could invest upstream in schools, clinics, and community infrastructure. It chooses downstream theatrics and calls it strength. Crime, like health, is a policy mirror. Alabama does not like what it shows.

And because quality of life is an ecosystem, the losses stack. Weak transit and battered roads isolate workers from jobs. Parks and public spaces suffer when budgets chase holes in the roof. The result is a community that feels temporary even to those who stay. You cannot build civic trust on potholes and press conferences.

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V. Taxes, transfers, and the federal balance sheet​

The story Alabama tells about self-reliance collapses under the federal math. In FY 2022, about 31.2% of Alabama’s combined state and local revenue came from federal transfers, a rate meaningfully above the national average. Pandemic aid inflated shares everywhere, but even as relief receded, Pew still shows federal dollars around a third of state revenue nationwide, with some states leaning much more heavily than others. Alabama’s model depends on this flow. (USAFacts, Pew Charitable Trusts)

On the revenue side, Alabama ranks near the bottom for state and local tax collections per capita, a political choice paraded as virtue until you price the consequences. Starved property taxes neuter local school finance. High sales taxes shift the burden down the income ladder. When you refuse to collect stable revenue, you kneecap long-term investment and then blame Washington for not doing enough. (Tax Foundation, parcalabama.org)

Federal distribution runs the other direction for high-earning, high-productivity states. In 2023, USAFacts shows large net contributions from places like New York, while other states draw more than they pay. This is how a union works. But it is also how resentment grows when the recipient states are the ones most loudly denouncing the system that keeps their ledgers standing. (USAFacts)

Even within Alabama’s own design, the tax mix is perverse. Average combined sales taxes near 9.3% keep consumption expensive, while the long-promised grocery tax phase-out only creeps forward by single points. Property taxes remain the lowest in the nation, a gift to landowners that drains schools and county services. The state’s habit of calling this “competitive” is a tell. It is easier to be competitive when someone else backstops your floor. (Tax Foundation, parcalabama.org)

There is a cleaner way to say all this. Alabama takes a federal allowance, taxes the grocery aisle, keeps property taxes negligible, and tells the country it is winning. The numbers disagree. The roads disagree. The hospitals disagree. So do the schools.

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VI. The failure loop, explained​

When a state underinvests in education, it manufactures a workforce that struggles to command high wages. Low wages depress the tax base. A thin tax base cannot fund modern infrastructure or broad health coverage. Weak infrastructure and poor health outcomes repel investment. The cycle feeds on itself. Alabama is not trapped by fate. It is trapped by the loop it built.

Economic output per person is low, so households have less margin. Sales taxes bite that margin, especially on essentials. Families defer routine care. Hospitals eat the losses until they close. Shortages spread, particularly in rural counties. Maternal and infant outcomes worsen. Life expectancy falls behind. Employers reading this timeline do not need a pitch deck to understand what comes next. They choose to grow elsewhere. (Stateline, USAFacts, CDC)

Schools feel the loop most. Lower local revenue starves classrooms. Test scores lag. College readiness flags. Voucher schemes siphon funds without building new capacity where it is needed. The next cohort enters the workforce with fewer tools. Pay stalls. Mobility stalls. The loop tightens. (CDC, KFF, leecountyda.org)

Public safety then absorbs the externalities. Communities with frayed schools, weak job ladders, and poor health access pay in crime and fear and insurance bills. With fewer clinicians and limited prevention, mental health crises turn into police calls. With battered roads and low transit, neighbourhoods segment by income and risk. Residents adapt. They should not have to. (Alabama Department of Public Health)

The last line of defence is always the federal check. It arrives, predictably, because we are a union. But the check does not fix design. It only masks it for another fiscal year. States that collect enough stable revenue, invest in people, and build infrastructure do not need to perform outrage for cameras. They have proof of concept.

And that brings us to the blunt point. A country held together by cross-subsidy should expect recipients to move toward independence, not toward grievance. The trajectory in Alabama points the wrong way.

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Conclusion​

Strip away the anthem and the alibi. Alabama’s model delivers small output and smaller paycheques. Schools that graduate children into remedial work. Hospitals that flicker and go dark. Shorter lives and more dangerous streets. Infrastructure that apologises for itself. A politics that calls this freedom while someone else pays the invoice.

The ledger is not shy. A low and brittle tax base at home. A high reliance on federal transfers to look solvent. Year after year the money flows in to patch what policy will not fix. The sermon remains the same. Self reliance in speeches. Subsidy in practice. It is not a partnership. It is dependency with a flag.

A union can carry neighbours through storms. It is not obliged to underwrite permanent neglect. The obligation that matters is to the next generation. Children deserve schools that teach and clinics that answer and streets that keep their temper. That promise should not be mortgaged to states that refuse the basic repairs that every serious place has already made.

The remedy is not a chant. Tie extraordinary aid to measurable reform. Coverage that keeps hospitals open. Teacher pay that keeps adults in classrooms. Infrastructure brought to engineering standards. Public safety built upstream in clinics and youth rooms as well as on patrol. Cap permanent net inflows when legislatures choose theatre over competence. Let results, not slogans, unlock support. Keep true disaster relief for real shocks. Refuse the habit of replacing maintenance with emergency cheques.

If a state insists on threadbare schools and brittle hospitals and a tax code that starves the common realm, others are entitled to step back. Call it fiscal separation. Call it an adult boundary. Call it the minimum respect you owe to the future you are trying to build. The choice remains Alabama’s. So do the consequences.