4 ms·
The economy turns out to be a pretty big deal, and Commerce Clause aside, states by design have little leverage over it: their borders being open, capital can a
by closeparen 4y ago
The economy turns out to be a pretty big deal, and Commerce Clause aside, states by design have little leverage over it: their borders being open, capital can always just head next door. Small federal government is basically equivalent to right-libertarian economic policy. In an alternate universe you might see liberals content to build welfare states at state level, but in this one it's not really an option.
The framers were well before the Industrial Revolution; if they intended a right-libertarian bias, the economy they wanted unchecked was a smaller and tamer beast than this one. But anyway, they did give us the Commerce Clause.
- DebtDeflation 4y ago>The framers were well before the Industrial Revolution They were well before radio, TV, internet, trains, automobiles, airplanes, nuclear power, and many other things that do not strictly respect state lines. "Leave most decisions to the states" made a lot of sense in 1789 but we live in a different world now.
- rayiner 4y agoI don’t really buy this. Somehow Europe manages pretty well with much smaller and more granular country level decision making units.
- closeparen 4y agoThe EU famously makes a lot of policy!
- xyzzyz 4y agoOnly barely more than half of the European countries are in EU, and 20 years ago, less than a third was.
- rayiner 4y agoNot compared to what democrats want the US federal government to do. EU countries have their own gun laws, separate healthcare, retirement, and unemployment systems, separate housing and labor laws, etc. Separate laws on abortion, same sex marriage, and other social issues.
- tptacek 4y agoThis is weird, because you're crediting sovereign states for having their "own" national health care, retirement, unemployment, and housing systems, and in the wildest dreams of the Democratic party we wouldn't have a national system for all of these things. It makes sense if you sort of skim over the idea that Germany, Sweden, and Spain are just "states" in a federation. But obviously, they are not.
- rayiner 4y ago@debtinflation was making a pragmatic argument: that modernity renders these granular state lines obsolete. My point is that the EU manages to keep chugging with all these little sovereign states of 5-10 million people managing their own healthcare and retirement systems Maybe a US state is something legally different than an EU country, maybe not. I would say the two weren’t intended to be different, and whatever trends have produced such a difference were a mistake. Either way, that doesn’t address the practicality question.
- DebtDeflation 4y agoLook at the specific examples I provided. European countries closely coordinate their regulation of radio spectrum, air traffic control, nuclear power, and pollution through the EC even if individual countries have separate national regulators on paper.
- rayiner 4y agoSure. Obviously the US does stuff. But that’s very limited compared to what happens (and people want to happen) at the federal level US.
- prottog 4y agoWe do have to acknowledge that the Commerce Clause has been twisted to federally regulate things that are probably outside what the framers intended. In Wickard v. Filburn, the Supreme Court gave the federal government authority to fine a farmer for growing wheat to feed animals on his own farm! Neither interstate nor commerce involved. Or Gonzales v. Raich, or any number of other cases.