I’ll take a small, parliamentary Federal government and then strong, distinct state governments. Like an EU that actually shares a history.
You’d have a point if we didn’t redistribute wealth away from those states…
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Yeah, the moving from Compact to non-Compact states issues you raise are serious flaws. But this was a compromise position. The original idea was to break up into different countries, which suffers from the same flaws, only more so.
I wonder …
According to this poll, in October,
71% of Trump voters said their vote was primarily FOR Trump, and
29% said it was primarily AGAINST Biden.
Does that answer the question?
Arguably, there is an asymmetry that needs to be considered when thinking about whether structural change is required to make states suffer the consequences of their own folly. For instance, net cash flows between the federal government and the several states vary by state, with some in the red and some in the black. Structural reforms may indeed be necessary to make those states currently subsidized by the U.S. feel the true costs of their ways.
This brings up the big problem with moving things to the states. The Founders gave us a system where people are allowed to move across state lines. If they wanted more state control, that was a poor choice.
Suppose a state has a retirement income system that is more generous to low income workers than the adjoining state. Low income workers will generally migrate in, high income workers migrate out. The same is true with state control of Medicaid, or Medicare, or SNAP, … This can result in a “race to the bottom” where all states want to be the cheapest in needs-based benefits.
I agree that there are some things where we could live with more variation by state than we have today. I think of abortion laws. Roe may have been the most divisive (in terms of generating political polarization) supreme court decision in my lifetime.
I also think the federal gov’t spends too much money on local transportation projects, and the Ds probably want to make that worse. Transportation is a place where some state compacts would work. For example, a tunnel connecting NJ and NY seems like a two-state agreement, not a federal issue.
But, looking at the federal gov’t overall, the stuff that can be pushed down to states is a small portion of the total. I think we are stuck with a “big” federal gov’t.
When I’ve seen those calculations, it seems that the states with net inflows generally have military bases, old people, and poor people.
Which of those represents a choice of the state gov’t?
I’m not sure about that. In the US, new laws require three big step - House, Senate, President. It seems, on paper, that would force a lot of compromise.
In a parliamentary system, once the gov’t is formed, the executive and the legislative are the same. They can push things through with a one vote margin. If that one vote flips, gov’t policies can flip.
I understand the parliamentary system allows for multiple parties so governments are often coalitions. If the third party is toward the “middle” it might be stabilizing, but if it’s toward the edge it doesn’t seem like it would.
Their own survival rate is irrelevant other than with selfish people who dont care if they kill the elderly.
Ok, so you have a poor state with lots of old people. Richer states effectively are paying for the federal programs to support those poor, old people. Yet when one discusses something like a national single-payer health care system (NHS), one is lambasted as a dirty communist socialist evil person. Am I wrong in thinking/assuming that it is those same poor states’ representatives in congress that most strongly oppose the NHS? Maybe I’m being petulant and childish, but it seems like a good response is to say “fine, we’ll do it our way, you do it your way, see how you like it. By the way, we’re not going to be subsidizing you so much any more, so you might want to figure out what you’re going to do with your poor, old people. Or… you could just sign on to the NHS idea.”
The military point does confuse the issue. Virginia, for example, gets about a net +$10k per capita from the federal government and a large chunk of the state’s economy is military. But we all benefit from having a military and we have to put bases somewhere. Even if you exclude military spending, though, there must still be imbalances; I admit I don’t know if those numbers would tell the same story. I would add, though, that military spending is, at some level, the choice of the states; what congresscritter doesn’t want to get on powerful committees in order to funnel federal money back to his/her state?
just got in a fight with a covid denying jackhole on fb and he deleted his post eventually. i think i totally owned him. pats self on back
just screenshot it and send to his employer. Easiest way to shut them up
i’m not sure with this guy he said anything that was worthy of being fired. a while back i got in an argument with an anti-masker who is a nurse in a nursing home, where i was pretty tempted to do that. i wound up not though.
keep monitoring his posts. he’ll slip.
Also, his hiring policies are not optimal. For the country, I mean.
If you did this, we would need a much stricter definition of “state citizen.” And, if the benefits are at some line relatively richer than the bordering state, the rich-benefit state would close their borders. And all that, I guess, is possible, but that’s not an America I’d like to be a citizen of.
If you could assure me that Trump-like celebrities have no influence over the population, I would happily wave a magic wand to destroy all US government, at all levels, forever.
But I just don’t see that happening…
Maybe I need more imagination though…
(And yes, I agree with others, there’s no such thing as a good government without strict borders and longer-term citizenship. Taxation, services, and regulation all fail when you can opt out.)
i just realized while fighting with idiots on facebook, that their stat of 99.9% survival rate can be disputed by just looking at NYC deaths alone. nyc deaths divided by nyc population is higher than 0.1%. not even a conditional probability of them getting covid either.
yes, i know that more people survive the virus now than they did when it blind sighted NYC, but that points to there having been a very good reason for the lockdown measures and their not taking the virus seriously should speak for them only and not all of the US when some cities, particularly NYC had a way higher death rate than 0.1%.
oh, and crazy trumpkins on fb STILL think that Trump is gonna have 4 more years. they still think that Biden won’t get sworn in on January 20.
They are probably taking the cornrow approach and using the whole US population as the denominator even though it’s stupid.