4 ms·

Defederalizing won’t work, for three reasons: - the red state/blue state divide isn’t actually real. What we have is a rural/urban divide, and the red/blue sta

Defederalizing won’t work, for three reasons: - the red state/blue state divide isn’t actually real. What we have is a rural/urban divide, and the red/blue state phenomenon is just an artifact of that and whichever faction happens to be larger in a particular area. - Defederalization doesn’t fix human rights violations when there’s disagreement on what counts as a “human right”, which is the case for a lot of our divisions. - the reason the United States doesn’t have its own version of the Greek debt crisis is huge, permanents fiscal transfers from blue states to red ones. This wouldn’t work under defederalization and a bunch of red states would go bankrupt.

landemva 4y ago
>> the United States doesn’t have its own version of the Greek debt crisis is huge, permanents fiscal transfers from blue states to red ones. The Greek debt crisis happened because those southern countries joined the euro without centralizing country debts up to EU. Greece still had it's debt yet could no longer service it by printing it's own currency. At inception, USA federal took over State debts. Nebraska is a red State and has about $1000 State debt per resident. Not likely to go bankrupt before blue Illinois. https://www.270towin.com/maps/blue-red-states-2000-thru-2012 https://www.270towin.com/maps/blue-red-states-2000-thru-2012 https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-sta...
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  That debt is after federal transfers, though. Illinois loses a net of $4.7k/year/person to federal transfers[1]. Get rid of that and they could pay off their full debt in a few years. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/donor-states https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/donor-state...
clejack 4y ago
In a past post, I mentioned that I thought the city was the appropriate area of division for this country--i.e. city's rights not states' rights. It may not ever happen, but I think it addresses your first concern since, as you mentioned, the divide is urban vs rural which is a good proxy for city boundaries. What I don't understand is the economic implication of such a split. Is there a way to keep the economic stability of the country while having more cultural freedom? I suppose one of the problems with this sort of split is that some cities can leverage agriculture, heavy industry, business activity, or tourism; but some cities probably exists that don't have any means to generating income beyond taxing citizens.
euroderf 4y ago
It's the 1920s all over again - a civil/cultural war between urban and rural areas.

landemva 4y ago

>> the United States doesn’t have its own version of the Greek debt crisis is huge, permanents fiscal transfers from blue states to red ones. The Greek debt crisis happened because those southern countries joined the euro without centralizing country debts up to EU. Greece still had it's debt yet could no longer service it by printing it's own currency. At inception, USA federal took over State debts. Nebraska is a red State and has about $1000 State debt per resident. Not likely to go bankrupt before blue Illinois. https://www.270towin.com/maps/blue-red-states-2000-thru-2012 https://www.270towin.com/maps/blue-red-states-2000-thru-2012 https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/debt-by-sta...

TheCoelacanth 4y ago
That debt is after federal transfers, though. Illinois loses a net of $4.7k/year/person to federal transfers[1]. Get rid of that and they could pay off their full debt in a few years. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/donor-states https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/donor-state...

clejack 4y ago

In a past post, I mentioned that I thought the city was the appropriate area of division for this country--i.e. city's rights not states' rights. It may not ever happen, but I think it addresses your first concern since, as you mentioned, the divide is urban vs rural which is a good proxy for city boundaries. What I don't understand is the economic implication of such a split. Is there a way to keep the economic stability of the country while having more cultural freedom? I suppose one of the problems with this sort of split is that some cities can leverage agriculture, heavy industry, business activity, or tourism; but some cities probably exists that don't have any means to generating income beyond taxing citizens.

euroderf 4y ago

It's the 1920s all over again - a civil/cultural war between urban and rural areas.