What resources and knowledge does the federal government have that the states don't? If the federal government has such knowledge, it should probably publish the papers, so that state and municipal experts can determine how to apply it to their region.
If the federal government lowers taxes, the states can raise theirs, and accomplish whatever objectives they need to. It's a many-billion dollar state issue in many states, which looks like a trillion dollar federal issue when you add up all the states, but there doesn't seem to be any economy of scale which makes the federal government better suited to solving the issue than any given state.
The problem is democracy. Local governments are more democratic in the sense of being directly responsive to community interests, especially since the 1960s-era reforms. But more democracy is not always better, especially when the community makes contradictory demands. Often you end up trading away administrative efficiency.
So what does the federal government have to offer? A dispassionate, distant, and non-responsive administrative apparatus. At least in the current political context. Whether it could be effectively utilized is another question as there are also other pathologies at play, such as ideological sentiments that the federal government shouldn't be involved, period.
That federal government shouldn't be involved is also not only ideological sentiment. Current opinion is that smaller problems are better visible closely, and can be solved locally - as they are smaller - and levels of bureaucracy add significant friction.
There is a position that good democracies are local ones. Some have to delegate for common problems to higher levels, but more remote levels become less democratic - as they are more detached from people. There are counterarguments, some of them are countered in a vague "good" prefix.
I'd love it if someone could point out if I'm wrong here.
These are levers generally unavailable at the lower levels of govt, especially not for the smaller states.
This is only true if you look at it in the absolute shallowest way. Seattle's increased output due to its subway system helps the entire country.
95% (to pull a number out of my rear end) of the use of interstates in a city are for private vehicles belonging to city residents. I-5 in Seattle doesn't "help" Miami either.
If only cooperation and decision-making were so simple.
This is probably nowhere close to true. People living in cities have less reason to use it. Interstates near and through cities benefit the broader region economically through commuters.
But the bulk of the miles of the interstate system are the boring stretches through Wyoming or wherever, and those stretches tie the nation together economically. Half of all big truck miles are on the Interstate, according to some totally random website I found.
~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich
Are you trolling?
Erin Brockovich isn't the problem. Dumping waste is the problem.
That kind of "building" just isn't helpful.
I think you could argue that the housing crisis is caused in large part by the fact that states cannot limit immigration from other states. Which would suggest that, perhaps, localism would be a solution to the housing crisis.
It's local homeowner associations, the tendency to litigate everything, the inability for large actors like government or business to purchase and develop land. The one person who symbolizes the reason why modern America can't build for me is Erin Brockovich. A person without any formal training in the legal field suing an entire project into the ground, although as it turns out there's actually no scientific evidence for any of the claims, yet she's celebrated as the little guy who stuck it to the man.
Devolving power to the states may only weaken the federal government whose resources and knowledge are needed to provide large scale infrastructure. The deficit here isn't in the billions, its in the trillions.
I'm not in principal opposed to experimenting with local democracy or whatever but it needs to happen on the back of a federal government with sufficient capacity and competence and power to act quickly.
For the "states as laboratories" thing to work you actually need a mechanism to ensure that the things that work actually get adopted. I don't see this happening in the US. There's way too many inmates running their own asylums.