Wednesday, October 22, 2008
in light of the financial crisis and the U.S. government's response to it, the role of federal government must be called into question. Personally, i'd like to see education and health care moved to the local/regional level, leaving regulation (enforcement of rules on important industries like financial markets and large industries) and the military to the feds... Ideally federal government will eventually cease to exist.
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2 comments:
One problem is that there might be inequality at smaller levels, like between bigger and smaller cities (economies of scale, etc.) and also, I think we will always have federal government as long as nationalism exists, which is such a powerful force today. I agree that there is a lot that is better left to more local levels, one of the reasons I guess why the tension between state and federal rights is so strong in the US. There are a lot of people here who want to see the state with much more power than it does. In Canada though, for example, the fed provides equalization payments that are really important for economically weak provinces like the maritimes.
fair enough, though with equalization payments I think they could use a revenue sharing system. Maybe similar to what the NHL does, where the teams that make a lot of money subsidize the losses of the poor teams.
It's true that nationalism is what makes a federal government necessary, but i think that those lines can become more culturally important and less so economically and politically.
Even at the state/provincial level i think it's too big. Basically it seems that when power is centralized and geographically absent from its constituents, things break down.
The distance is both psychological and geographical, and simply breeds complacency and corruption.
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