Ultimately, the economics of every one of the states depends on the federal government. The government creates dollars in locations like vector field sources, and creates sinks by way of taxes, thereby setting up flow, motivating activity. For the federal government, the vector field is non-conservative.
States, however, don't have a money printer. Every dollar they spend, they do have to tax or borrow.
Some questions arise in my head: If local infrastructure isn't being maintained, is it because it's not worth maintaining? How would we measure that? Does the stochastic nature of the problem make it intractable for local/state governments?
For example, if I have 4200 bridges that are in need of repair in such a way as I can expect two to fail this year, and I am unable to predict which two, does preventing two collapses necessitate addressing all 4200? Is that scale entirely too large for my local government? If it is, is that because those 4200 bridges serve too few people? If not, is that situation unprecedented (can the local government adapt to address a problem that it hasn't had to before)? What if the local government is unhealthy (ideologically opposed to service, disenfranchised citizens, perhaps a southern state)?
I guess I figured "yes, you do all inspections and maintenance on all bridges all the time and pay for it with taxes". If taxes go up, so be it.
> What if the local government is unhealthy (ideologically opposed to service, disenfranchised citizens, perhaps a southern state)?
Yeah, that's a general argument against giving any government any kind of responsibility (for any issue, how do you know that the government in question will be healthy enough to manage the responsibility?). But I think we can agree that some government should do this, and given the choice between state and local governments which might be dysfunctional (but which have collectively outperformed the federal government for the last two decades) and the federal government which we know to be completely dysfunctional, I would pick the former.
States, however, don't have a money printer. Every dollar they spend, they do have to tax or borrow.
Some questions arise in my head: If local infrastructure isn't being maintained, is it because it's not worth maintaining? How would we measure that? Does the stochastic nature of the problem make it intractable for local/state governments?
For example, if I have 4200 bridges that are in need of repair in such a way as I can expect two to fail this year, and I am unable to predict which two, does preventing two collapses necessitate addressing all 4200? Is that scale entirely too large for my local government? If it is, is that because those 4200 bridges serve too few people? If not, is that situation unprecedented (can the local government adapt to address a problem that it hasn't had to before)? What if the local government is unhealthy (ideologically opposed to service, disenfranchised citizens, perhaps a southern state)?
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