"Westerner"? Did you mean West-Coaster? As far as I'm concerned, from here in Virginia, everyone in Indiana is a Westerner too.
As for "welfare state", that's not a very good description. Welfare implies money for the worthless, deadbeat, drains on society so that they will vote for your party.
As I understand Alaska, they have a state full of natural resources but such lousy weather that very few people want to live there. So the state government pays everyone, man woman and child, equally to live there. That's not welfare, that's kickback. They get the money out of the ground, what better than to give it to The People.