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Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

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Re: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

#51

Post by Noseshine »

taprun wrote: post #10
saycheese wrote: post #6

66% of Americans live within 100 miles of the border. It would make more sense to move all the Americans living in the middle (sometimes middle of nowhere) and focus on making the cost of living in major cities more affordable; 9 of the top 10 cities are all within 100 miles of the border.

If you did that, a handful of people would be responsible for a huge number of votes in the electoral college. That might be interesting.

Apart from issues of gerrymandering, districts are at least supposed to be based on population. So they would just increase district size.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_district#Apportionme...

Re: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

#52

Post by SiVal »

aaron695 wrote: post #40

So move jobs to a place where people don't want to be?

You can move the jobs without moving all the people. There are a lot of people outside of the DC Metro area who have the necessary qualifications for most federal jobs.

When I was a kid, my father worked for a federal agency in an office that was two hours from Washington and, for some reason, they moved all 400 jobs out of our town to Philadelphia. The jobs all moved even though many of the people didn't.

Re: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

#53

Post by jawbone3 »

aaronhoffman wrote: post #41

How much of the money that would be re-injected into these communities was taken via taxes in the first place?

The point is that most taxes would be from other states, so it is a net wealth transfer to the new hosting state no matter the tax rate.

Re: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

#54

Post by douche »

mavelikara wrote: post #31
MonkeyKing01 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also assumes that should those people not move, that Cleveland has enough people with the right skillsets to fill the gap.

The more relevant question is this: are there enough people with right skillsets willing to relocate to Cleveland?

Money talks, and the same salary goes a lot farther in Cleveland than DC. It's really dumb that we compress all of our workforce into a few cities, especially in an age when 90% of office jobs can be done just as efficiently anywhere with a high-speed internet connection, rather than face-to-face in a cube farm.

Re: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

#56

Post by gibsjose »

Although I don't think this is feasible or even necessarily the right thing to do, I personally am dying to go back to the Midwest.

Coming from beautiful, friendly, cold Northern Michigan, I'd be ecstatic to get out of the DC area, but good luck moving the other 10,000 NASA employees.

It's a different culture in the Midwest. Some good, some bad, but overall I personally prefer the ability to have friendly conversations with strangers back home than the (generalizing here) awkward, egotistical, self-interested metropolitan area here. The first questions you are asked in DC are inevitably "Where do you work?" and "What's your title?". That being said, DC is a beautiful city and there's a lot of great things here.

But still, I'd much prefer to be camping on a beach on Lake Michigan...

Re: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

#57

Post by mtberatwork »

There are government agencies and regional offices in the midwest already. DFAS in Indianapolis, for example, is housed in one of the largest government buildings outside of the Pentagon. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Finance_and_Accounting...

Re: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

#58

Post by spangry »

achamayou wrote: post #46
rhexs wrote: post #26

I've worked with a lot of ex-federal employees that left mostly due to cost of living in DC (need a married couple both working with a federal salary to live anywhere close to work) and not enjoying the incredible sprawl of the area. Always fantasized about government jobs being relocated to less populated areas. Would be a great chance to develop better planned cities or help rejuvenate areas. Just a fantasy though.…

It's been done before, check out Brasilia, Yamoussoukro, Naypyidaw more recently. I think it's fair to say that it's not been a massive success, and that federal employees generally did/do everything they could to stay in the old capital. Aside from the fact that the entertainment and cultural options available tend to be limited, distance from the rest of the family and friends, as well as the perspective of being t…

The process also needs integrity.

I've seen a few of these proposals now. The good ones have a clear rationale for relocation: the Australian Federal Treasury, for instance, is moving a sizeable chunk of their workforce from the capital (Canberra, population ~400,000) to Sydney (population ~5m). Why? Because the financial industry in Australia, and many regulators in the Treasury portfolio, are based in Sydney. Seems logical to do this if you agree that lower-level, person-person connections are valuable (I think they are).

The bad ones have no clear rationale, and co-incidentally the relocation target happens to be a marginal electorate in some regional area...

Re: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

#59

Post by vinay427 »

Chos89 wrote: post #43
nightski wrote: post #42

Judging by comments it fees like the HN crowd has an incredibly warped view of the Midwest. It is amusing because it is a rather great place to live.

A lot of snobbish comments here IMO, coming from Europe I'm getting an image of the Midwest as a place where 99% people work in agriculture and don't know how to read or write.

It's a very misleading stereotype because where I grew up in the Midwest, seemingly 80% of my classmates had a parent who was an engineer.

Re: Let’s relocate a bunch of government agencies to the Midwest

#60

Post by saycheese »

lowpro wrote: post #33
dao- wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely not forced relocation, but on the other hand I don't quite understand why people think it's a good idea to fight urbanization on a policy level rather than embracing it.

Many people, including myself, don't like cities. Being from Indiana, everyone I know that lives here wants to be here. Cities are crowded, dirty, and far more dangerous than the country and many small towns. The coasts are already overcrowded, they don't need more people.

If you're able to cover the cost and except the risks of living in non-urbanized areas, that's fine.

Americans spending billions to create jobs for people to maintain them living in areas that are not economically viable needs to stop.

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