What are you kidding about that? I don't know about Chicago or LA, but NYC pays a disproportionate amount of taxes to the federal government, and I suspect that's true for most other major cities.

On an average year, NYC pays over $80B in taxes to the federal goverment and gets back about $17B.

I'm no expert, but it seems like NYC is subsidizing the rest of the country, rather than the other way around. Not to mention the fact that the major cities you mention are at least half the reason this country is as prosperous as it is. We are a service economy, not a manufacturing one; manufacturing and agriculture are being subsidized by businesses in the service economy, so the "country boys" should spend less time complaining about big business and city folk, and more time thanking them for making their country lifestyles possible.

Personally, I don't think the government should be bailing out the airlines. They're private businesses. I think the government gives out money to way too many people, like people who don't have the foresight to buy insurance.

But I maintain my point about everyone having a stake in security. You have failed to prove that people on the ground don't get any benefit from not having a plane crash into them, nor have you shown that country folk don't lose money and possibly their jobs when there's a stock market or economic downturn as a result of a major terrorist activity. Finally, you should also note that but for 9/11, the US wouldn't have spent billions of dollars on a war against Afganistan and wouldn't be planning on spending billions of dollars on a war with Iraq. Another sign that non-travelers do have a stake in security.

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