JM: *And I could just as easily ask: What will happen if most of the industry flees to Red States, and the Blue states simply can’t afford services for even their current residents? *
Answer my question, and I’ll do my best to answer yours.
JM: * I am dead serious when I say that Blue state folks will harden their hearts if Red state refugees flood across the border. *
And I am dead serious when I say that that’s one of the reasons I think this “neofederalism” stuff sounds like a bad idea.
Kimstu: You needn’t look any further than the homelessness problem in many liberal areas of the country for an example. Santa Cruz, near where I live, is a magnet for the homeless due to a nice climate and a super-liberal politicat situation. In many ways it makes Berkeley look conservative. Yet SC has been clamping down harshly on homeless camps in recent years. Businesspeople, even in the funky areas, just got fed up with the fact that customers didn’t want to wade thru a sea of panhandlers to get to their shops.
I think you are only looking at half of it. More government services and the higher taxes to support them would attract people and repel business. Low government services and lower tax rates would attract business and repel people. The states would be forced to keep balance. Over the short-term, I think you have a point. If there were large differences, people would move. However, this movement is what will force the states to find an equilibrium. If the differences are great enough to cause a mass movement of people, then it will also cause a mass movement of business in the opposite direction. Red and blue states would have to bring their taxation/services closer to the same level.
JM: You needn’t look any further than the homelessness problem in many liberal areas of the country for an example. Santa Cruz, near where I live, is a magnet for the homeless due to a nice climate and a super-liberal politicat situation. In many ways it makes Berkeley look conservative. Yet SC has been clamping down harshly on homeless camps in recent years.
Trying to extract from this an actual answer to my question, I come up with something along these lines:
“The solution to the free-rider problem under these hypothesized circumstances is that blue states would end up abandoning their minimum standard of decency for social services, at least as applied to red-state immigrants. Poor red-staters would lose the incentive to migrate and would remain as a burden on the red states rather than siphoning resources from blue states.”
Fine. To which I reply: I think the social divisiveness and suffering this would entail would have a very negative impact on both types of states, and on the country as a whole. Largely-immiserated red states next to socially-responsible blue states sounds like a recipe for social unrest and economic inefficiency. If this is what neofederalism will produce, I’m against it.
Now you get to argue (if you want) your reasons for thinking that neofederalism wouldn’t produce largely-immiserated red states (in contrast to some of the liberal neofederalists here who seem to be supporting the idea mostly because they think it would). But I think they’ll need to be something more concrete than the usual blithe libertarian optimism about how the unfettered free market makes everybody rich and generous.
Leonard: *More government services and the higher taxes to support them would attract people and repel business. Low government services and lower tax rates would attract business and repel people. *
This sounds like only half the story, though. Don’t lower taxes also attract people? And don’t higher services also attract businesses?
Leonard: * If there were large differences, people would move. However, this movement is what will force the states to find an equilibrium. If the differences are great enough to cause a mass movement of people, then it will also cause a mass movement of business in the opposite direction. Red and blue states would have to bring their taxation/services closer to the same level.*
This is the same problem I’ve had with many other libertarian scenarios: the most probable outcome seems to be that we go through an awful lot of social, political, and economic disruption to wind up with a compromise that’s pretty close to what we’ve already got. I’ve never yet seen a convincing explanation of why we should bother.
Granted it is simplified. Lower taxes won’t attract people if they come at the expense of services that are percieved as being worthwhile. Higher services will only attract business if they are truly beneficial. It would force some accountability in how tax money is spent.
The benefits are the reason this thread was started. If power is pushed back to the state level we won’t have Texans trying outlaw gay marriage in California and New York trying to enact gun control in Texas, etc. I think it would worth it, YMMV.
Leonard: *If power is pushed back to the state level we won’t have Texans trying outlaw gay marriage in California and New York trying to enact gun control in Texas, etc. *
But if, as John pointed out, the Supreme Court still has nationwide authority, then the constitutionality of various hot-button issues like gay marriage laws won’t change from state to state. States already have a good deal of latitude in regulating the details of issues like abortion and gun control and civil unions, up to the limits set by the Supreme Court, and neofederalism wouldn’t change the impact of Court rulings.
True, it’s probably a moot point ATM. That could change with different justices that interpreted the Constitution more strictly and wouldn’t hesitate to strike down federal laws that ursurped the power of the states. You think there might be a chance of that happening? 
:smack: Let me correct myself. The accountability in how tax money is spent and the ‘free-rider’ problem at the state level are the reasons to move this direction. Granted, the other issues are pretty much at the state level now, but I don’t think they’ll stay there. Preventing them from ever reaching the federal level would be a side benefit.
It’s much easier to make sense w/o the kids crawling on me.
Actually, hot button issues like gay marriage WOULD vary from state to state, as they do now. To get to a devolved system, we would have to assume that the SC justices took a much stricter constructionist stance. Slavery wouldn’t be allowed, nor would poll taxes or other disenfanchisement tactics, or anything else explicitly covered by the constitution. But it would be reasonable to assume that things like minimum wage laws and affirmative action would be left entirely up to the states.
As for the economic issues we were arguing earlier, I have to say I can’t bring myself to put a lot of energy into that debate. We’re really just rehashing all the same arguments we’ve been over many times before, and neither of us going to convince the other.
Forgive me if I missed it, but was this map
already mentioned in this thread?
“Blue” and “red” aren’t as blue and red as it looks at first, even by counties.
Check the post at the top of this page. 