For many of the things people complain about (transit, housing, education, policing) 90% of funding and 99% of oversight authority happens at the state and local level. Republicans in national government have pretty much zero say over say affordable housing policy in California. Trying to pin California's failures in those areas on Republicans in Kansas is specious.
Second of all, even if you only take into account income taxes, Federal income taxes aren't re-distributed to other parts of the country in the way that you think.
The biggest line items in the Federal budget is (in decreasing order) are:
- Social Security
- Medicare + Medicaid
- Defense
Social Security isn't really "distributed" to other parts of the country, it's mostly concentrated in regions where retirees happen to live. Ditto Medicare.
You could argue that Medicaid is "distributed", however it is funded by both States and the Federal government[1].
The comment to which you are replying is correct: most public sector services like education, electricity, water, sewage, libraries, law enforcement, fire departments, etc are all funded predominately at the state and local level.
[1] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/state-indicator/federalstate-sh...
But my point is, even if you think that phenomenon actually exists in practice rather than theory, shouldn’t Democrat-run state and local-level places be a counter-example? School, police, transit, etc. are all mainly state-level services. In places like Illinois and New York and California, it’s Democrats that set the taxes and Democrats that set the budgets and Democrats that oversee spending. In those places, you should see a marked difference between federal services (where big bad Republicans have a say) and state and local services (where it’s all controlled by a one-party Democratic system). But you don’t.
We’re seeing this happen with police. Police funding and administration is almost entirely a local matter. If Chicago PD is running CIA-style interrogation sites (or what’s happening in Baltimore or Atlanta or Minneapolis) you can’t blame Republicans. If schools aren’t good or transit is bad, or housing is expensive, you can’t blame Republican “sabotage.”
It’s a perverse argument. It’s saying to disregard Democrats’ obvious failures to run government services—it would all be better if you just gave Democrats more power. (That is not to say that Republicans would run things better. For the most part, they wouldn’t even claim to, and would point to that as justification for doing less. My recently-red/trending purple Maryland county has pretty good government services, but mostly because it doesn’t try to do much.)
I take your broader point that it's unproductive to pin the productivity concerns of the public sector on Republicans; especially in state government, I probably agree with you in sort of assigning good governance and management to the GOP, and expanding public employment and benefit rolls to Democrats.
But, like, I think you'll have a hard time making the argument that run amok policing isn't at least somewhat attributable to Republican voters. It's not "sabotage", in the mostly-mythical Grover Norquist sense, but it's a public policy mistake they mostly own.
I’m not sure I understand. Baltimore just revealed a new budget that contains zero cuts to the police budget.
To your point about city mayoralties, on average, Republican-led metros have lower inequality and higher cost-of-living-adjusted incomes than Democrat-led metros[1][2].
There isn't really a strong correlation between successful government and the predominant governing party. What you'll find is that things are not so simple that you can pin all of our problems on a single party in a neatly packaged way.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-are...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/upshot/red-blue-diverging...
Isn't it just that they are smaller and less successful?
> less successful?
That depends on what your criteria for "success" is. San Francisco has among the highest per capita GDP of any city in the Union as well as a thriving technology economy, but also has the highest rate of homelessness, as well as the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line. What does "success" mean?
How big is Claremont? How big is the LA metro area? How big is Elgin compared to Chicago? Provo is maybe half as big as Salt Lake.
When you're in Claremont, and you want a night out, do you stay in Claremont? Do you in Elgin? In Provo, you're more likely to stay local than go up to Salt Lake. As I said, it's geographically more distinct, but there's also a more insular mindset. "Claremont" is a legal entity, and it's a collection of colleges, but it's not much of an entity in peoples' minds. It's just part of the LA metro area, sharing LA's smog. Provo, in contrast, has a separate identity from Salt Lake, and even has separate smog.
Colorado Springs is probably the better example for the argument.
Colorado Springs does. It has a much more independent existence. It's across the Palmer Divide from Denver. It probably depends on the Air Force at least as much as it depends on Denver. In the same way, Provo probably depends on BYU as much as it depends on Salt Lake. (Whereas Elgin and Claremont are much more tied in to Chicago and LA, respectively.)
How many residents of Elgin work in Elgin? I suspect the fraction is much higher in Provo (and Colorado Springs).
And also, as another commenter pointed out, suburbs/exurbs can also be net producers themselves.
It seems to me the biggest reason people are leaving San Francisco seems to be the rent is too damn high which is a pretty straightforward effect of the city's housing policies.
I think it's pretty clear that the Republicans party doesn't have a monopoly on poorly run government at the city and state level. (At the federal level there does seem to be a large gap in the ability to govern between parties.)
Local government spending is what educates the children, paves the roads, keeps my house from burning down or getting robbed, runs the parks and libraries, etc.
Do you realize that (1) half of all government spending is at the state and local levels; and (2) many states and cities have been run by “the other party” (not the bad one) for decades? Cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Baltimore, etc., have been run by Democrats for longer than many posters on HN have been alive. If there was any truth to the notion that the US public sector is poorly managed because “one major party” “sabotages” it you should see a marked difference in the states run by the other party. But you don’t. Indeed, the major population trend in the US is people leaving Democrat-run states and moving to Republican-run states.