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Comment by mhneu | Hacker News Reader

Unlikely, because many states then cut those assistance programs when given the opportunity. It's more likely that the 'state' argument is a way to achieve their ideological ends (cutting the program.)

That said, this bill is a very positive development. Investing in local manufacturing and R&D is a great idea, and it will help the economy. Hopefully it will efficient and money will not be captured by rent-seekers or cronyism.

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Isn't that how it's supposed to work? The state is supposed to pass laws that represent the will of its constituents. If the majority of the people living in the state are opposed to such a program, then they shouldn't have such a program. The scope of the federal government is supposed to be for coordinating cross-state stuff that states alone can't decide for themselves.

> The state is supposed to pass laws that represent the will of its constituents. If the majority of the people living in the state are opposed to such a program, then they shouldn't have such a program.

You're ignoring that gerrymandering districts allow politicians to enact policies that don't reflect the will of the people.

> gerrymandering districts

But that would be even worse at a federal level because there are so many more districts to gerrymander, wouldn't it?

The federal government is a lot less likely to be one-party than a state. We haven't had a same-party trifecta for over a decade.

Also, states draw the federal district lines, so generally the Dems and Repubs both do it and the end result is less lopsided.

If we wanted local control then local towns/cities and counties would have the most power in our system. Instead things are reversed so smaller units of government have progressively less power.

This makes sense because we want people to freely move around the country without encountering wildly different systems in every small town.

Also, when education funding happens on the county level we end up having wildly different standards of education depending on if your county is where rich people live or not - everyone wants to demand the best for their own children, but I think it's pretty settled that children, who don't have freedom of movement and aren't viewed as fully rationale agents, should have access to good education regardless of who their parents are and where they choose to live.

Differing county education funding was a real and evident problem when I was growing up in Massachuesettes in the 90s - some areas (like Wellesley) had extremely well funded schools due to local taxes while other areas had far too many students for the funds they collected. This, in part, lead to a whole big thing involving student busing[1] which was honestly pretty awful for the students that rode several hours to attend suburban schools - even if they did end up in a better funded district it was a cheap patch that avoided the real issue.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/04/boston...

County level would be an improvement in some places, because school districts can actually be balkanized even smaller than that.

The name of our country is the United States. The state was intended as the primary unit of general government.

Lots of land is outside of cities, and that can't be left ungoverned. And many counties have very few people, which make a lot of government functions impractical or insufficient.

So states are still a reasonable unit after 250 years.

Over 4 million Americans aren’t living in States. United States is a name, but it consists of more than just States.

Good point.

Not enough to claim that the federal government must take responsibility for all assistance programs, however.

Alternatively the name of our country (well my former country but whatever) is the United States because existing colonial governments held significant power and weren't willing to unite if it meant they could be unseated from their cushy political appointments.

I don't think going by names is the best approach when we've got legal documents and statements to go by which are far less vague.

States Government don't have the taxing power of the Federal Government.

The only way to solve this equation is to drop Federal Government taxing power to as close to zero as possible and zero may not be enough as states power is likely to drop.

If economics was a harder science, it would be about mathematically proofs of these possibilities.

> States Government don't have the taxing power of the Federal Government.

Sure they do (except stuff like tariffs). They just face competition from other states on how much they tax their citizens.

Thats the abortion ruling in a nutshell - return it to the states and let the voters decide. However at the same time we have rulings saying gun rights are a federal issue and a state cannot regulate how permits are given out the way they want (although there are many nuances there), essentially making it a constitutional issue due to the 2nd amendment.

So in other words if it's the will of the country we need to pass an amendment, and if not then move to a state where your ideals are embraced. I know I've heard this story somewhere before...i think back in 1860's...

> essentially making it a constitutional issue due to the 2nd amendment.

Yes, because that's how the American constitution works. If you think something else should have similar protections - or if you don't like the second amendment and think it should be repealed - lobby for a new amendment.

Until then, it's the highest law in the land and is on equal footing with any constitutional protection, regardless of your personal policy preferences.

Oh to live in such a world... Unfortunately the Supreme Court is not a compiler that returns rulings from some objective process. The justices have massive leeway to decide how to interpret every part of the constitution, and they do so to align their rulings with their own personal and political goals. If we swapped this court with 9 other judges they would return very different rulings on the exact same cases.

In this instance though, the majority's 'political goals' are textualism and originalism- where the intent of the written words is paramount. This at least has the virtue of limiting the power of their unelected personal policy outcomes- which we see much more often with the putative conservatives voting with the liberals against their presumed personal opinions on what they'd like the outcome to be.

You see that quite often from Gorsuch and Alito- you'll not once see that from Sotomayor.

Thomas is consistent, though conveniently for him his policy and political preference's and how he reads the Constitution seem to align nearly perfectly.

Gorsuch I'll give you as, while intensely conservative, probably pretty honest about it, but Alito is a whole-cloth mythmaker on his own in the vein of a Scalia. He's about as much of a "textualist" as Thomas is, and both will search for any wild port in a storm (see Dobbs itself for plenty of them) to get to the point he wanted to get to.

How big of a majority needs to decide that the federal government should be what they want and not what you think it is supposed to be before it can change?

California renewed it for next year

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