BTW, no one on here has seen fit to respond to my tax proposal of letting each government body tax income for its needs, and only its needs. Feds for feds, state for state, county for eh county, and the city for the city. That would end the need to Aid for Cities the state has been dealing with this past session. Maybe my idea is half baked and rotten, but I figured I would at least be told so by some on this forum. I find myself amazed at that.
I think it's a great idea. Unfortunately, it will never fly.
Each state receives a large amount of money from the federal government -- some states far more than their taxpayers send to Washington DC, such as West Virginia, and other states receive less than their taxpayers send to DC, such as Minnesota.
The states then turn around and dole out a lot of that money directly to counties, cities and other entities, at the specific direction of the federal government. That is, block grants to the state for law enforcement can't be sent to counties for road repair, for example.
There is also federal money that bypasses the state completely and flows to counties and cities, although in smaller amounts.
A similar thing happens at the state level, as we all well know by now. LGA and lots of other programs take tax revenue from the state's taxpayers as a whole and redistribute those monies back to counties, cities and others.
The bureaucracy to handle all that transfer of money costs significantly, of course, so the efficiency is pretty miserable. Trying to cut back on it means cutting back on entrenched bureaucrats who will fight to hold onto their jobs. With ever increasing numbers of people being paid by the government, the entrenchment gets worse every year.
The counter argument at the federal level is similar to the LGA argument at the Minnesota state level: we want the country as a whole to prosper, have "equal" opportunities and justice, and equivalent standards of living, so there needs to be some redistribution from the wealthy states to the poor states.
Of course, it's gotten all out of hand, far more so at the federal level than at the state level. A billion here and a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money. All those politicians and companies doing federal contracting with their bellies pressed against the public trough aren't going to give that up willingly -- not even to turn our country into a country as much greater than it is today, as we like to believe ourselves as being greater than the corrupt monarchies of yesteryear.
The strange thing is, despite all these machinations at the federal level to shepherd the economy, to level the playing field between states, etc., it's pretty much a failure. They have less influence than they think they have, the influence they do have is full of unintended consequences and often opposite of those desired, and the difference between the economic, education, justice and other environments between states is still huge. Just look at Mississippi, Arkansas, South Dakota, Minnesota and Connecticut as examples that are all over the map relative to each other.
I'd say it's better to aim lower and focus on the critical issues. Make sure there's a minimum level of safety net, keep states from getting to antagonistic towards each other (e.g. the work the Interstate Commerce Commission does), and pretty much otherwise get out of the way. We've got pretty much all the federal highways we need, for example. At least, we certainly do not need to have the funding of major highway construction continue to be primarily dependent on federal dollars, which it is. Most any major highway project gets more than 50% of its funding from the feds, or it doesn't get done.
Lead, follow or get out of the way. Unfortunately, the feds and states pretend to lead while standing squarely in the way most of the time.
Another obvious benefit or weakness to your suggestion, depending on one's point of view and vested interests, is that it becomes very obvious to the taxpayers what they are paying for. They might decide to stop paying for it, once they know that.
But the wealthy-greedy are in power, and certainly don't want to give that up. Such a scheme does not benefit them nearly as much as it benefits the middle class and the poor. So I wont' be holding my breath for any significant change at the federal level.
There's a better chance of doing something like that at a state level, and I think it would greatly benefit Minneapolis, as well as most other cities in the metro area to have such an opportunity.
Chris Johnson Fulton
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
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