Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You have a single president, a federal senate, a federal army, a federal police, a powerful federal intelligence agency, and many institutions at the federal level.

This one sentence does an excellent job of summing up our failures as a nation over the last 236 years. One, gargantuan government can never hope to meet the vastly different needs of 300 million people living in highly diverse geographies, population densities, and climates.

So while the US should be treated like one country for all those reasons, those reasons should also be blamed for most of her failures.



I vote for school board, county supervisor, state governor, representative and two senators.

One monolithic government is a myth. It could even be argued that the fractured nature of US govt is responsible for wide variation is schools, infrastructure, moral laws etc.


Your school board, county supervisor, and state governor are flacid, neutered versions of their virile predecessors of the 19th and 20th centuries. All of them spend most of their time wrangling federal money.

And your representative and senators vote consistently along party lines, and, again, get re-elected almost entirely based on how much of their constituents' money they bring back from Washington.


[citation needed]


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_of_the_Uni...

Did you want published evidence of the structure of the government, or my personal conclusions?

If you don't believe the federal government is far and away more powerful and influential than all lower governments, just follow the money:

http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/

Tons of info there on US tax revenue.

If you are more specific with what you want me to cite, I could provide better citation.


Okay, so now you have something to blame. Is that as far as you wanted to go, or did you want to also remove these things? Genuine question.


I wouldn't remove them, but I'd certainly want to invert the power structure.

Make me dictator for a day, and I'd change the whole tax system so that the local govt gets 30% of your income and th e federal gets 1%.

The military and entitlement programs in particular would serve the wants and needs of the people better if they were structured and deployed by local power as opposed to a large, centralized one.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: