The Birth of the American City-state

[CountDeMoney]

If Raz's question is whether the rural parts of states would lose out financially if their revenue and spending were separated from cities, then I don't know.

I'm sure the benefits of walling off Dazzling Urbanites, Liberal Hipsters, Jews, Blatantly Gay Homosexuals, Immigrants that Sing "America The Beautiful" in Different Languages and other assorted non-Mayberry R.F.D. types outweighs the costs to The Real America(tm).

[Ed Anger]

God, that sounds wonderful.

[CountDeMoney]

That's because it sounds like Sweatervestville, Ohio.  You intolerant asshole.

[Ed Anger]

[Razgovory]

My guess is he's meaning this in the context of US politics.

The District of Columbia is a separate entity.

If Raz's question is whether the rural parts of states would lose out financially if their revenue and spending were separated from cities, then I don't know.

I mean the idea of splitting senate seats between rural and urban areas, urban areas setting up dictatorships, pass unconstitutional laws (presumably the countryside could also set pass unconstitutional laws and set up dictatorships as well) all so conservatives would have a political advantage because they are apparently disenfranchised.

The article doesn't really touch on the idea of states losing out financially, that's something everyone here assumes.  Crop land doesn't produce a lot of tax dollars, and sparsely populated rural areas cost much more to provide basic services to.  After all, a road that services 100,000 people in Montana is going to be much more expensive then a road that services 100,000 people in Newark, New Jersey.

[Admiral Yi]

Cities can plunder the tax money, resources, water, and anything else they want from the rest of the state. To redress this grievous imbalance of power, and bring about fair and equal representation to the conservative countrysides, the major cities have to be separated out from the states.

This is where I'm getting the financial transfers thing from.

[Ideologue]

I think it would make more sense just to have one centrally-run dictatorship.

[Maximus]

I think it would make more sense just to have one centrally-run dictatorship.

That's not very Libertarian Socialist of you

[garbon]

Also he's being a bit loose with "city-state" as he's taking the bay area as a whole as one city-state.

I don't see how that follows.  It's not like it would be totally bizarre to define the whole bay area metro as one city.

I suppose if you have a very loose definition of what a city is.

[Ideologue]

I think it would make more sense just to have one centrally-run dictatorship.

That's not very Libertarian Socialist of you

Ha ha.  FU.

[grumbler]

If Raz's question is whether the rural parts of states would lose out financially if their revenue and spending were separated from cities, then I don't know.

I'm sure the benefits of walling off Dazzling Urbanites, Liberal Hipsters, Jews, Blatantly Gay Homosexuals, Immigrants that Sing "America The Beautiful" in Different Languages and other assorted non-Mayberry R.F.D. types outweighs the costs to The Real America(tm).

I dunno.  The road burden on the hick states is going to pretty huge.

[Josquius]

That really just causes a city to move, eventually causing the same "problem" as before, to many liberals in the state.

Not really in Atlanta's case.

The metro area of Atlanta is over something like 15 counties and a bunch of "cities". The inner city core is the only place concentrated communities of poverty can effectively live--for instance, the major hospital serving the poor is there, and it is the only place with anything resembling reasonable public transportation.

The core part of the city is stuck with high taxes to cover the services, and as a result most of the major businesses in the metro area are now in the suburbs. The metro area has been rapidly growing, but in the core of the city significant amounts of office space is now unfilled (the largest skyscraper recently went bankrupt). Wealthier parts of the metro area want nothing to do with Atlanta, and have been separately incorporating and trying to secede for quite some time. The suburbs have made conscious decisions not to build public transportation that connects to the city (even if they don't have to pay for it) in order to keep poorer elements from being able to move into their areas.

I don't know if the results are good. Massive amounts of sprawl and traffic that is reaching absurd levels. However, economically the metro area has done well. There is a limit to how far it can go though. A lot of Georgia voters may not care, but if the hospitals serving the poor go under, it is going to be a public health crisis that hits everyone.

This is why American style lax Urban planning regulations are bad. You see similar donutting (albeit for different reasons) in japan and it really wrecks the livability of some obstentially decent sized cities
Busineses shouldn't be able to just up and move to a greenfield site.

[Ideologue]

They should be ________?

[Razgovory]

Cities can plunder the tax money, resources, water, and anything else they want from the rest of the state. To redress this grievous imbalance of power, and bring about fair and equal representation to the conservative countrysides, the major cities have to be separated out from the states.

This is where I'm getting the financial transfers thing from.

The basic concept of the city-state is self-funding and self-governing, just like a state. They could pass confiscatory tax rates which people would either pay, or leave the city-state. The city-states could pass all the unconstitutional gun-ban laws they could get away with, while the states would be more free to honor the Second Amendment. The city-states could create their own laws and their own constitutions, and would be free to create virtual dictatorships with the approval of their constituents. The city-state could make the most elaborate and inefficient public transportation system possible, and pay the most outrageous wages and benefits to the union employees. But they would have to fully support the system with tax money only from within the city-state, not the rest of the state. City-states would set up their own courts, and run their own education, police, health, welfare, fire, and other departments.The basic concept of the city-state is self-funding and self-governing, just like a state. They could pass confiscatory tax rates which people would either pay, or leave the city-state. The city-states could pass all the unconstitutional gun-ban laws they could get away with, while the states would be more free to honor the Second Amendment. The city-states could create their own laws and their own constitutions, and would be free to create virtual dictatorships with the approval of their constituents. The city-state could make the most elaborate and inefficient public transportation system possible, and pay the most outrageous wages and benefits to the union employees. But they would have to fully support the system with tax money only from within the city-state, not the rest of the state. City-states would set up their own courts, and run their own education, police, health, welfare, fire, and other departments.

This where I get the bizarre dictatorship thing.  What about the water transfers and the "resource" transfers?  I was under the impression that US waterways are under Federal jurisdiction, not state.  I'm not aware of any "resource transfer".  Is this a problem out the boondocks, city slickers coming in and taking all their iron ore?

[Razgovory]

If Raz's question is whether the rural parts of states would lose out financially if their revenue and spending were separated from cities, then I don't know.

I'm sure the benefits of walling off Dazzling Urbanites, Liberal Hipsters, Jews, Blatantly Gay Homosexuals, Immigrants that Sing "America The Beautiful" in Different Languages and other assorted non-Mayberry R.F.D. types outweighs the costs to The Real America(tm).

I dunno.  The road burden on the hick states is going to pretty huge.

And pretty much every other type of infrastructure.  Take schools for example.  In a urban or suburban area a class might have 30 kids in a class room, in a rural area you might only get 15 kids in a class room because the students are all spread out.  Since it's not feasible to bus kids 60 miles every day to school, you'll have to build more schools and hire more teachers to teach the same number of kids.  In this simplified scenario educating a rural student costs twice as much as his urban counterpart and you'll be doing it on less money.