Federal taxes redistribute tax money to areas where the burden exceeds the local ability to cover the cost. While PA as a whole received a bit more than it send

Federal taxes redistribute tax money to areas where the burden exceeds the local ability to cover the cost. While PA as a whole received a bit more than it sends to the Feds, cities like Pittsburgh almost always send significantly more on both the state & federal level than they receive in return. (I could not find specific data for Pittsburgh, so it's possible this trend does not apply there.) Centers of commerce &/or industry like Pittsburgh also tend to generate more economic benefits than can easily be measure by tax dollars alone. Administrative costs for programs also don't usually to exceed more then 1-2% after accounting for Fed & State administrative costs [0] While not great, If the cost of repairing infrastructure in a given region is $500,000,000,000, then $100M in administrative costs is not going to significantly alter the what that pool of money can accomplish, and no matter the tax system can never be diminished to 0%. "Skin in the game" is also not an apt metaphor here. It implies that a sufficient number of local residents will care enough about something like this, but in reality a bridge or other piece of infrastructure 20-30 miles away that a person rarely uses is still too abstract of a thing to really feel "Hey, I'd be willing to pay more of my own money to cover its cost". If you lower their fed taxes and raise their local taxes to cover costs I still don't think they'll feel any more sense of ownership over the issue than before. For most people, most things that are just a little bit outside of their usual experience are simply too intangible to feel much skin in the game. The situation we're already in with respect to infrastructure is a case in point. [0] https://www.cbpp.org/research/romneys-charge-that-most-federal-low-income-spending-goes-for-overhead-and-bureaucrats-is https://www.cbpp.org/research/romneys-charge-that-most-feder...