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I am fairly sure that decades of undermining trust in the federal government will at some point reach a tipping point where multiple states will no longer be in
by dougmwne 4y ago
I am fairly sure that decades of undermining trust in the federal government will at some point reach a tipping point where multiple states will no longer be interested in having a federal government. Just like Brexit, if you keep pointing at the feds as the source of all ill, eventually people will take you seriously and want out. And as with Brexit, states that find themselves on their own will be insignificant on the world stage, but with a surplus of sovereignty.
- throwawaymanbot 4y ago
- tootallgavin 4y agoUnlike Brexit, the first American civil war has set precedent to prevent secession. The first state to attempt secession will be labeled a word (like insurrectionist, fascist, racist, etc.) and then, like Ukraine, invaded.
- gowld 4y agoBrexit was a pre-agreed process for secession. That's why it's different. US has anti-Federalists, though who can work to legally diminish the power of the central government.
- arethuza 4y agoAlso worth noting that the UK itself has been perfectly reasonable (at least so far) about constituent countries that want to consider leaving - Scotland had an independence referendum and Northern Ireland has as a part of the Good Friday Agreement a possibility for uniting with the Republic.
- generalizations 4y agoWhich IMHO would be a healthy counterbalance to the federalists who successfully increased the power of the central government during the 20th century.
- JacobThreeThree 4y agoAnd almost every successive power grab by the federalists was sold as temporary, but has become permanent.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bitexploder 4y agoWhat does secession even mean? People living in the state will still pay federal taxes (the true source of federal power). Declare all federal laws invalid? This is such a fantasy I don't even know why people discuss it. Ever since the Interstate commerce act and threading of federal funds into states it has become impossible to realistically secede even if you could logistically pull it off.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoSecession would mean not paying federal taxes and repossessing federal assets within the seceding state. If you look to the Civil war, fighting wasn't kicked off by the declaration of separation, the flashpoint was possession of federal armories in southern states. I agree it is largely fantasy. The federal gov would never hand over bases in Texas, ect.
- munk-a 4y agoI mean - only if the state residents revoked their citizenship. As a US citizen you enjoy the pleasure of paying federal taxes no matter where in the world you live.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoWhile generally true, this is on income over 110K and you can get a US tax credit for foreign taxes payed. It is strange that the US is one of the only countries in the world to tax citizens abroad.
- krapp 4y agoSecession from the United States by definition means a revocation of citizenship. They're no longer a state, they're a nation that just happens to share landmass with the US, like Canada and Mexico, and their people are no longer American citizens, but citizens of that nation.
- munk-a 4y ago
- ghiculescu 4y ago(Not American here) Why do states never want other states to secede? It seems to me like if a state is taking more federal money than they return in tax, and they want out, most other states would benefit if they left. Why would you invade and force them to stay?
- rootusrootus 4y agoBecause it's just talk. No state in the union has anything like the military force required to close their borders and defend their territory. The rest of the states wouldn't bother invading, they'd just ignore them. What are they going to do, put mines on the Interstates? I guess it could get violent for a couple days.
- codefreeordie 4y agoBecause they like forcing their will upon them and keeping them in poverty such that they need said handouts.
- sky-kedge0749 4y agoOne of the most pro-Republican states is Wyoming, state population around 581,000 in 2020. If we consider Trump voters as a proxy for people who might want to secede, we have about 235,000 people who voted for Trump out of about 427,000 eligible. That's about 55% of eligible voters and 40% of the whole population. Even if secession were legal, it would be unjust to let a state secede with only 40% support. A more viable attempt at secession might look like: perhaps a new Hawaiian independence party forms with massive (>80%) and sustained (>20 years) on-the-ground support, with all federal representatives coming from this party. Eventually this party might convince the federal and enough state governments to support a constitutional amendment recognizing a specific independence referendum. That's very theoretical but I hope illustrates what actual secession might look like.
- ghiculescu 4y agoIf you don't live in Wyoming, why can you impose your idea of justice on them? It seems like a matter for Wyoming people to sort out.
- xbryanx 4y agoThis though experiment always gets stuck with the military and social security when I start to imagine this possibility. Not sure how you go about dividing those up.
- bozhark 4y agoRUSSIAN M.O. since the 80’s.
- DaedPsyker 4y agoDoes it really require Russian involvement though? Starve the beast tactics didn't require Russians, and was the goal not to reduce funding and make services useless?
- paxys 4y agoIn reality the states that are most outwardly in favor of small/no federal government and "states' rights" are also the ones that benefit most from federal spending. Don't buy into the campaign speeches too much. The federal government is only going to keep getting stronger. There's too much money in it for everyone involved.
- gowld 4y agoThere's no contradiction in wanting both (a) other people's money, but not (b) other people's rules. This is a natural mentality.
- rayiner 4y agoThat's rational. What's irrational is w hen blue states get mad at red states for not taking their money.
- dwater 4y agoNot if it ends up costing more in the long run, like when instead of spending money on prevention it must be spent on disaster recovery. If the agreement was "We won't give you this money now, and we won't rescue you later when it turns out you would have needed it" the attitude might be different.
- rayiner 4y agoIf any state is going to be demanding a federal bail out anytime soon it’s going to be blue states like Illinois and New York facing catastrophic pension burdens coming due.
- tptacek 4y agoThe federal government probably should not bail out IL and NY's pension systems, which are mismanaged. But have you done the math on this red/blue net dependency thing? I pulled up the numbers on proposed and theoretical pension bailouts, and then the net federal dependency numbers for red states, and it does not appear to be a close call. But I didn't look very carefully. Did you? Illinois has the highest tax burden in the country. We're not Greece. We are paying through the nose for, well, everything. We get 95 cents on the dollar for our federal taxes, and we pay a lot of those. Texas is a lower-tax state. It is, in some ways, better managed than Illinois. But it gets 20 cents back on every dollar it pays in federal taxes. It seems to me that the reason not to bail out pension systems is that they're long-term unsustainable, and that they're mismanaged, and something has to be done to stop the bleeding. But it's hard to argue that bailing them out would be a redistributive injustice. We subsidize the low-tax red states. (A comically similar microcosm of this debate occurs within Illinois, with rural Illinoisans regularly making noise about wanting to divest itself of Chicagoland. Go right ahead, Peoria!)
- pg_bot 4y agoWe literally fought a war over the ability to secede from the union. The precedent for an indestructible pact once you're admitted to the united states is quite strong. Any state government that intended to leave would be seen as illegitimate and be dismantled by the feds. You would need consent from the rest of the states in order to leave, and that isn't happening any time soon.
- throwaway9980 4y agoReally? If Florida wants to leave, who’s objecting to that? Half the remaining states would be on the side of “good riddance to bad rubbish” and the other half would support it because “let’s go Brandon!” I don’t think the hard part is getting people on board with it. The hard part is just getting a vote on it. EDIT to address your point: I think if enough people want it, it will happen. The Civil War was about slavery, no matter what some folks will say. The current direction isn’t towards war, it’s towards an indifference followed by dissolution. There’s no energy to keep Florida or Texas or California from leaving if that’s what a large majority want.
- hn_version_0023 4y agoI suspect that if the states from Florida to Texas all wanted to secede, a vote on that would be forthcoming nearly immediately.
- vkou 4y agoSo, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama? If they raised this sort of thing to a vote, I would strongly hope that we let them build their own Republican utopia. They'll never raise this to a vote, though, because the last thing they want is for that wish to be granted. Complaining about the federal government when you've mismanaged your state is easy, actually having to manage it without relying on handouts is not.
- tstrimple 4y agoI disagree. The value of river access through the Gulf of Mexico would give the seceding states a stranglehold on our ag and oil exports.
- lin83 4y ago> but with a surplus of sovereignty. And not even that. Similar agreements and compromises on shared standards, data transfer, compliance etc still have to be made to enable trade. Brexit voters were promised a "bonfire of regulations" yet red tape has doubled to continue trade with the EU and the trade deals the UK has signed with Japan and others are literal copy/paste of EU ones.
- helen___keller 4y agoDifference is there’s a mechanism to enable brexit with fairly low effort. The mechanisms to enable secession from the union are either constitutional amendment or military might.
- generalizations 4y agoThe Wikipedia discussion of the mechanisms was interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States#Disputed_legality_of_unilateral_secession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secession_in_the_United_States...
- fullshark 4y agoSo deserving of trust too, from the Vietnam War to today the federal gov't can only cover itself in glory.
- WalterBright 4y agoUndermining trust? People vote in every election to hand over more and more functions to the government.
- lumost 4y agoIt's surprising the extent to which legal scholars assume that state exits from the Union are a settled question. Ultimately, it's unlikely that the federal government would or even could force a state into compliance once the state government and courts have opted to treat state law as taking precedence above federal law. We already see this with legal marijuana, there are multiple campaigns aimed to form interstate compacts without the consent of congress. Ultimately a situation where the federal government declines to enforce its legal authority will just lead to a defacto change in the supremacy clause of the US constitution. The only situation I see where this would become problematic is if a state chose to stop sending tax dollars to the federal government. Even then, the federal government has levers to pull that would be tough for a state to circumvent except by exiting the dollar - which no state has any reason to do.
- jehb 4y ago> The only situation I see where this would become problematic is if a state chose to stop sending tax dollars to the federal government. This is not generally how taxes work, though; instead, individuals and businesses send taxes to the federal government (and sometimes, also to their states), and the federal government returns a great deal of the money to the states and localities, directly or indirectly. Leaving the federal government wouldn't mean the states would stop sending the feds money, it means they would be completely unable to pay for all sorts of infrastructure and entitlements that they receive money from the federal government for.
- codefreeordie 4y agoThe states would have to pass laws prohibiting the businesses and individuals within their borders from paying the federal taxes -- and that probably would get some sort of reaction.
- lumost 4y agoBut probably not a military one, the feds could just arrange for garnishment via banks. States would have to force customers to use different banks which don't do garnishment - and the feds would probably cut those banks off from the rest of the banking system. Worst case scenario, I'd see some byzantine system of declarations required when doing something across state lines or people using "fed taxed" and "state taxed" financial institutions depending on their objectives. Given the current state of military affairs, a war over Rhode Island would be a complex endeavor - a war over Texas, California, or New York is a practical impossibility.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoPart of the problem with Brexit is that the UK has suffered from a right-wing government for the past 40-odd years. While right-wingers say they are for "small government" this is largely performative, and what they mean is "much much bigger government, if you count all the money going into my husband's cousin's offshore company". It's a scam. Right-wing governments like the Conservatives are run by and for junkies, who will steal anything not nailed down to sell off cheap for a quick fix of cash.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jmspring 4y agoA number of those states will be ones that are a net recipient of tax dollars sent by all the states to the Federal government. Many of them in the south. I would be more than happy to see them cut off from any federal funding.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Fatnino 4y agoCalifornia can likely hold its own on the world stage. And it pays more into the federal government than it gets out. Not saying calexit is a good idea. Just that the numbers line up.
- casefields 4y agoCalifornia no longer pays more to Washington than it gets back: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-no-longer-pays-more-to-Washington-than-15243861.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-no-l...
- Fatnino 4y agoOh good. Then checking out won't be as strongly opposed by the leeching states.
- Fatnino 4y agoHere's California making agreements on the international level with smaller countries https://twitter.com/CAgovernor/status/1534948691957518337 https://twitter.com/CAgovernor/status/1534948691957518337
- rufus_foreman 4y agoToday I learned that the United Kingdom is insignificant on the world stage.