> another state that simply sucks on the federal government’s teat
It's antithetical to the federal nature of the US that the overwhelming majority of tax dollars are paid to the federal government and not to state and local governments. The federal government's share of taxation should be limited to support its constitutional mission, and more should remain at the state and local level to achieve state and local missions, including things like social services and infrastructure.
That way, some states may choose to have an expanded role of government with high levels of social services and infrastructure spending, some may choose the opposite, and none are left sucking on the federal teat -- the milk from which, may I remind you, are collected from people who live in every state, not just the ones with "better infrastructure".
In the end government money is just people's money taken by taxation. When you let the federal government take most of it, you allow it to browbeat the states into doing whatever the federal government wants, conveniently escaping the limitations that the Constitution placed on it.
Okay, I see you and I are coming at this from very, very different philosophical viewpoints. I do not care what the founders intended, I don’t live in 1786. I am sympathetic to Elie Mystal’s view from the book Allow Me To Retort towards the Constitution.
To summarize:
“Our Constitution is not good. It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance, hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share. The Constitution is an imperfect work that urgently and consistently needs to be modified and reimagined to make good on its unrealized promises of justice and equality for all.
And yet you rarely see liberals make the point that the Constitution is actually trash. Conservatives are out here acting like the Constitution was etched by divine flame upon stone tablets, when in reality it was scrawled out over a sweaty summer by people making deals with actual monsters who were trying to protect their rights to rape the humans they held in bondage.”
It's antithetical to the federal nature of the US that the overwhelming majority of tax dollars are paid to the federal government and not to state and local governments. The federal government's share of taxation should be limited to support its constitutional mission, and more should remain at the state and local level to achieve state and local missions, including things like social services and infrastructure.
That way, some states may choose to have an expanded role of government with high levels of social services and infrastructure spending, some may choose the opposite, and none are left sucking on the federal teat -- the milk from which, may I remind you, are collected from people who live in every state, not just the ones with "better infrastructure".
In the end government money is just people's money taken by taxation. When you let the federal government take most of it, you allow it to browbeat the states into doing whatever the federal government wants, conveniently escaping the limitations that the Constitution placed on it.