California’s far northeastern corner is comprised of Modoc County, population 9,184. This heavily Republican, even libertarian place is the largest recipient of state spending on a per-capita basis. California’s blue counties subsidize the red counties, whose voters send reps to Sacramento demanding that the blue counties cut schools and health care spending even further:

However, both McGarva and Hodge maintain that state legislators shouldn’t even think of cutting health and education funding to rural counties like Modoc, where 9,184 residents knock around a territory the size of Connecticut.

Instead, they say, swing the budget ax on bloated-big-government-style frills – for instance, state-paid cars for legislators and misguided environmental regulations, though they don’t always agree on which ones are misguided.

The fact that health and education spending make up about 70 percent of California’s general fund, leaving little else to cut, only emphasizes the importance of that funding, they say.

As the article explains, rural counties like Modoc rely on the state government to survive. Want roads plowed in the winter? Need state money. Want schools for your kids? Need state money. Want police to keep your stuff and your self safe? Need state money.

Of course, the anti-government, anti-tax attitudes of places like Modoc mean that even those basic services can be rejected if it’s necessary to maintain those attitudes. Their neighbors across the border in Oregon have refused to raise taxes to fund things like police patrols, leaving several southern Oregon counties without enough police services to keep the population safe or enough resources to prosecute crimes.

Yet Modoc County isn’t rejecting the state money they are getting. Instead the dominant attitude there, as with other conservatives in California, is that the spending they receive is legitimate, whereas the spending someone else receives is illegitimate, wasteful, and should be cut.

Modoc’s tiny population makes this phenomenon an interesting curiosity. But when it is held in the Central Valley, or Orange County, or the Inland Empire, then it becomes politically significant. And while Modoc County residents can delude themselves into thinking they can survive without government, it’s even less realistic in these metropolitan areas where government is the difference between mass poverty and a decent standard of living and economic opportunity.