To be fair to me that was not the point of my post. My post was to argue that States Rights, if done correctly, could lead to less government.
That would be an argument against decentralization. Look around the world, at all the countries where things in general go as well as or better than in the U.S. In all of them you will find government expenditures analogous to those American expenditures you are holding up as (I infer) things undesirable/unnecessary; in none of them will you find “less government” than we have now in the U.S.
On the other hand I could point to the economic growth rates of emerging countries. Countries where less state intervention is leading to vastly higher standards of living. I could also point to states such as France, Spain, Italy and the UK where larger government has coincided with economic stagnation. I would also mention small sized European states such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland etc. Small sized States that seem to be run very well. States where your governance economies of scale claim earlier is thrown out the window. If economies of scale were proven to work so well in government then the US government would be more efficient than the Canadian government; Spain’s government more efficient than Sweden’s; Italy’s government more efficient that Denmark’s; China’s government way, way, way more efficient than Norway’s and the French government more efficient than the Swiss government. Very few would argue these larger states are more efficiently run. Economies of scale in government do exist, but at a certain point economies of scale break down.
Plus it would be much more efficient for states to gear economic systems that actually work for their state rather than an economic policy that needs to serve the US as a whole. For example, why do we have corn subsidies that promote HFCS yet completely disregard sugar growers? Wouldn’t it make more sense for Iowa to support corn while Florida promotes sugar and let the best sweetener win?
2 pence worth. For a ‘third’ party to be successful, IMHO, two new parties of opposite politics must grow up at the same time. I think for example, that New York still has a distinct ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ party moniker. In order for someone other than a D or R to get elected to prominent national office, I think the D’s and R’s have to be weakened by concomitent abandonments from each of their ranks, followed by elections of Representatives (who would control who gets the top job if no one can get a majority of the electorals…)
The R’s already have two parties under the same name…and if they were to elect a president, the pressure to split up the party before the next presidential election might become very strong. Then Libs might divert from the D’s? Maybe.
:dubious: “Leading to”?
That would be the Democratic Party on both counts. The GOP hasn’t been the party of fiscal responsibility since the first wave of tax cut fever back in 1978.
That’s a whole ‘nother thing. Depends on what matters more to you, individual rights or states’ rights; to what extent you feel we should be one nation on things like SSM and choice, or whether we should be 51 of them, with individual states having the power to ensure that these things don’t become rights within their borders.
There are little things like this, sure. But the big thing with respect to an economic system is the central bank and the money supply. States don’t have a central bank, and they don’t control their own currency.
The Euro experiment kinda gives one a feel for how it might work if the U.S. government had a thin budget, and the states did the heavy lifting there, but the Fed still determined monetary policy. Because even though the nations in the Eurozone are actual independent nations with their own budgets, the European Central Bank is what’s really calling the tune.
So Tenth Amendment absolutism and devolving everything possible to the states wouldn’t really put states in the position of controlling their economic systems. Far from it.
There’s also a big practical problem with putting states more in the driver’s seat than they’ve been: states are the least accessible level of government with respect to oversight.
They are covered poorly in the news, and most people have no idea how their state legislators vote. (Is this surprising, in a country where most people this past fall had no idea that the Senate was up for grabs - a fact that everyone in this discussion took for granted?) News media cover statehouses only in brief most of the time.
The Federal government is at least half-decently covered by the press. And at the county level, involved citizens can attend the meetings of their county governmental bodies. But your state capital may be hours away from where you live; unless you’re retired, you can’t make a hobby of following the action there. But if you’re not there, it’s hard to know what’s going on.
Additionally, many states are set up to be run anti-democratically: maybe one-third of the states pay their legislators something approximating a living wage, so in most states you have to either be rich, or have a very flexible sort of job, to be able to serve on a state legislature. So you get a legislature that effectively excludes most working people from serving.
Perhaps that explains Lind’s Law.
Oh, I can imagine it. You may object that cases like this don’t happen very often. You would be correct, but that’s because in most cases, Small Government steps in and stops such things. If you weaken the feds and to a lesser extent the states, then you decrease their power against the Bell wannabes.
The reason the media covers Federal government better than local government is precisely because most major decisions are taken at Federal level. If decisions were to be taken at State level coverage would move to State capitals. Assume that tomorrow 90% of taxes paid by Floridians suddenly came under direct control of Tallahassee rather than D.C. The Tallahassee gig would instantly look a whole lot more enticing to journalists. Voters would demand more local coverage.
Big Picture = Federal; Little Picture = States
So things like a Bank of the United States (both 1 and 2) & Federal Reserve, trade treaties with other countries (or bans like with Cuba), setting tariffs, interstate water rights, et al would definitely be Federal jurisdiction. What I’m talking about is the state level stuff like let’s say logging. Since timber policy in Oregon affects the price of a house in North Carolina (in the aggregate), under the ICC the Federal government can step in an set up logging quotas or price controls or whatever. Those sort of things should be left up to the states. I just don’t buy the decision in Wickard that since little local things add up to affect the nation therefore every little transaction or regulation is a Federal concern and let’s throw out the 10th Amendment. We need more Lopez and less Raich.
I won’t argue that Pubs have been FCINO (Fiscal Conservatives in Name Only) since Reagan but you actually believe Democrats are the paragons of fiscal conservatism? First of all, they are the ones that bastardized Keynes theories from “in good times save so in bad times you can spend” into our modern spending theory of “in good times spend so in bad times you can spend more”. When was the last time any Democrat in Congress voted for a spending cut?
Please give me some facts that would support your position that Democrats are fiscally responsible and not tax & spend.
That sounds like a pretty good reason why they should not be.
Pretty sure that every, or nearly every, spending cut for any program or department over the last few decades had at least some Democrats supporting it.
They’re not “fiscally responsible” – they’re just more so than the Republicans. Firstly – they don’t believe lowering taxes magically increases revenue (except in extreme cases, like lowering a bracket that was at 95%). So they actually support raising taxes in some situations in order to bring in more revenue. Secondly, since 1980, deficits have increased with Republican presidents and decreased with Democratic presidents.
But you’re not looking at the whole picture. Lowering taxes while raising spending is not FC. OK we get that. But not lowering taxes while raising spending a lot more is not FC either.
It’s an old trick. Limiting deficit reduction and increases to only Presidents gives a false impression. I could give stats which show that Republicans in Congress have a better record at deficit reduction. It all depends on who you wish to credit deficit reductions to. For instance the Clinton years I’d give as much credit to Gingrich Republican congress for keeping spending low as I would the President. No doubt Democrats would disagree.
When it comes to fiscal responsibility its also worth pointing out that its the Blue Model States that invariably have the poorer fiscal record. Not always but more often than not.
Yeah I’m pretty sure we can all agree that neither party is fiscally responsible except for the Tea Party - at least for the 5 minutes before the far-right took it over.