Surprise! Your money is lying to you!

Oh sure, here’s a real shocker: If you live in Colorado, that hundo in your bank account waiting to be spent is worth less than what it actually says its worth. What’s that you say? A hundo isn’t worth a hundo? Not exactly, says a new study released by the nonprofit organization Tax Foundation.

Using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Tax Foundation calculated the purchasing power of said hundo-dollar bill in each state. Unsurprisingly states like New York and California bilk you for more cash because of large cities and general popularity. States like Mississippi and Kentucky — two places most of us forget are actual states until something shitty comes up in the news — have more purchasing power, thereby making them technically “richer” as a whole (wage differences not withstanding).

“Ohio is a low-price state,” says Alan Cole and Scott Drenkard of the Tax Foundation. “$100 there will buy you stuff that would cost $111.61 in a state closer to the national average. You could think of this as meaning that Ohioans are, for the purposes of day-to-day living, eleven percent richer than their incomes suggest.”

So for those of us in Colorado, as our buying power of a hundred dollars is $97.85, we’re technically 2.15 percent poorer than we thought when we woke up this morning. Sweet, so no last minute shots of well whiskey or a hangry-satisfying McDouble this weekend after all. Vultures!

The unfortunate thing is when our national deities use these things to decide policies pertaining to welfare and minimum wage and public benefits and tax brackets and *gasps for air* … important social structures with real consequences … things like purchasing power are rarely considered.

So if you’re “rich” in New Jersey (monetarily, obviously, because culturally they’re … ehh …) you may actually pay more taxes than somebody in the bible belt because of earning a higher wage — and you still aren’t able to buy the same amount of junk due to a higher cost of living.

Because when you’re making national policies it’s best to just arbitrarily do things you “feel” like doing instead of, say, Googling charts like these and adjusting accordingly?

Then again, this is the government we’re talking about here and … ehh …