Hacker News Reader

Comment by 40acres | Hacker News Reader

Call me a big city liberal but in my view small states have way too much power and Congressional reform is needed to balance it out. If demographics stay on trend eventually we'll have something like 70% of Senate seats going to 30% of the population. The arbitrary limit of 435 House of Representative seats is not enough to accurately model the population growth of this country and ensure that the ratio of representative : constituent is feasible. We cannot keep operating on a constitution built for a completely different country and expect to grow with the challenges of the 21st century.

View on HN

If demographics stay on trend eventually we'll have something like 70% of Senate seats going to 30% of the population.

That was the exact point of the senate. Why would we change it?

Exactly. This was originally not perceived as quite so "unfair" because the senators were chosen by state legislatures.

But yes, one of the important goals of our Constitution was to prevent "Rule by Virginia" - that is to say, the tyranny of the majority. Today, it would be California and New York vs. Texas and Florida.

It was also less important when the feds did less. Whether you approve or disapprove of the changes, the original system was good, and the tinkering is what broke it. Maybe un-tinkering things should be considered as an option just as much as tinkering them further.

Or we need to split up the US into blocks that have less divergent values. The urban rural divide within Maryland is present but manageable. The divide between urban Maryland and rural Alabama is unmanageable.

What will stop rural Alabama from devolving into a third word country? Or do you still expect the successful urban blocks to pay for the backwaters blocks, but now without any input into their political structure?

Regardless of the governmental scheme picked, rural populations have been shrinking, which decreases their political influence. There are several states losing population.

Ultimately, you're going to have to count on the general public's goodwill.

Fun fact: Alabamans are richer than most Western Europeans. But that aside, I’m proposing letting Alabamans govern Alabama and Marylanders govern Maryland. The states wouldn’t subsidize each other or have input into the laws governing each other’s internal politics. Maybe there would be a military coalition like NATO.

To be honest, apart from huffing and puffing, I really find there isn't really any motivation for an actual divide of the country at the end of the day. Also, the divide is often within states, not just amongst the states, just look at California.

Support for secession is 25% nationwide, and 35% in the Southwest: http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four.... The national divide exacerbates intrastate divides. Last year in Maryland, Larry Hogan, a Republican, won 28% of the vote in PG county, an urbanized, high-income, predominately black county adjacent to DC. He won 32% of the vote in Baltimore. We fight over stuff like highways versus transit—we’re not paralyzed in this state of affairs where the sides have such divergent values that they regard each other as literally evil.

I would argue reducing federal control is step one. Local governments may want to take more power instead. Take Texas: many cities have become stark-blue due to immigration from south of the border. If they wish to pass certain policies, let them. If the rural areas wish to pass different policies, let them.

America was consciously designed with these divisions in mind. By federalizing the minimum number of things, we reduce the number of things on which we must agree.

> America was consciously designed with these divisions in mind. By federalizing the minimum number of things

If we are going to fetishize the decisions of the architects of the design of our government (which several of them would be appalled by), we should at least understand them: the Constitution (even in its original form, though the subsequent evolution also reflects this) is an embodiment of the idea that the correct amount of federalization at time n+1 may be significantly greater than seemed (and perhaps even was) ideal at time n, rather than the idea that federalization should be aggressively minimized. (Radical minimization of the federal power was the design of the Articles of Confederation and the impetus for the revision effort that produced the Constitution as a fairly strong rejection of that approach.)

> the correct amount of federalization... may be significantly greater than seemed

Wrong. This is why the Constitution enumerates a few, very specific powers and says that the rest are reserved to the states and to the people.

> Radical minimization of the federal power was the design of the Articles of Confederation

Wrong. Congress couldn't even regulate foreign trade; there was no federal power. When the federal government cannot represent the nation as a whole to foreign powers, there is no true federal government. We moved to a Constitution with minimum federal power because that solution didn't work.

If people are so concerned about the so called 'prosperous' blue states subsidizing red states, how about the actual people in the blue states subsidizing policies and people they might not actually agree with?

3rd world country? Just looking at employment, Alabama has a lower unemployment rate than NY, CA, WA.

They seem to be doing just fine, jobs wise.

> They seem to be doing just fine, jobs wise.

I think there's a problem comparing the official job numbers with "3rd world country" conditions.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

It's not just in Alabama![1]

"If I could add, the other thing that just struck me ... but I'm sorry, California is a rich state, by any measures, the United States is a rich country, and to see these deplorable conditions that the government is allowing, by international human rights standards, it's unacceptable. I'm guided by human rights law."

[1]https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/rapporteur-United-Nat...

Those blocks are supposed to be states. The states and population (senate and house) are supposed to both have to agree on something for it to pass congress, which is a high barrier by design, since it affects everyone. You have state governments for things people in a state want.

I mean that’s the folly. People destroyed federalism, devolving all power to the federal government, and now they’re upset that the voting system in the federal government is stacked against them. If they hadn’t made healthcare, for example, a federal issue, folks in Maryland wouldn’t need folks in Alabama to get on board to have “Marylandcare for All.”

Is there anything stopping them from having Marylandcare for All now? The ACA establishes minimums, but does it prevent a state from offering expanded care. My state has their own insurance for pregnant women and children for example.

No, see California. They are considering expanding their state healthcare much further, even to criminal aliens (reported this morning). I don't agree with the policy, but can approve of them trying to avoid forcing the rest of the nation to go along with them. As long as it is legal by their constitution, it's their prerogative.

Hold on. I was with you until you picked this example. How does Maryland run a single-payer system for Marylanders when sick Delawareans can move across the state line to access that care and still commute to their current jobs?

Just eat the cost of a few people doing that. It would balance out on the whole once most states did it anyway.

The entire premise of Rayiner's point is that most states won't do the same things, and that states should be encouraged to try different things (the "laboratories of democracy" idea). I buy it, but don't see how health care is a workable example.

States with state income taxes already tax their citizens' income regardless of where it's earned (AFAIK -- the states I've dealt with do, but I'm not familiar with the east coast). Wouldn't that cover it? If residency of Maryland is a requirement for the medical coverage, that would also achieve the tax collection to pay for it.

How does that solve the problem? Live in a low-tax state until your medical risk reaches a threshold, move (perhaps across a nearby state line, as would likely be the case with states like Illinois and Maryland where the major metros are a short drive away from red-state borders) to a higher-tax state when the payoff becomes worth it. Isn't this a textbook adverse selection problem?

I mean that’s definitely part of the problem. Arguably, expansive interpretation of the privileges and immunities clause (as in Saenz v. Roe, which held that a one-year waiting period for drawing on welfare benefits violated the “right to travel” implied by the privileges and immunities clause) is part of the trend of broadly construing federal power and rights to destroy federalism. Narrowly construed, there might be room for say waiting periods to be eligible for state welfare or similar measures that would be sufficient to curb some of that free-riding behavior.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com