"thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all" I wonder what kind of policies / issues you mean by this, so I thought of some strawmen

"thinking that Californians and Iowans share anything in common at all" I wonder what kind of policies / issues you mean by this, so I thought of some strawmen: 1. How to name the streets in San Francisco 2. The insurance pool for social safety nets 3. Abortion Category 1 is issues that are obviously local, and are already handled locally, because there's no point wasting federal time on them. We both agree that Iowa shouldn't care what a street in SF is named. Category 2 is where I oppose your plan. A bigger insurance pool will amortized risk better. If all the states split up, wealthy people can vote their taxes down by moving between states. And the poor are still stuck in whatever state they were born in, which is probably a state with crappy benefits. For welfare, I want the opposite - I think almost everything should be federal. It's a bigger pool, and the wealthy can't dodge taxes by moving. Category 3 is a strawman - Obviously abortion is not related to longitude, so if the states split up and CA allows abortion and Iowa bans it, obviously one of them is wrong. There might be a subtler point that California's politics would advance if they weren't spending time trying to legalize abortion in red states, and Iowa might also get more done if they weren't ... doing whatever Iowa is doing. (This is just an example, for all I know Iowa might be very left on abortion already) What specifically do you think _is_ different about those two states? Don't the citizens need police, firefighters, food stamps, public transit, and public roads anywhere in the country?