111–120 of 260 posts
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Thanks for the subtle racism towards southern italians...
Are Souther Italians their own race?
"Modern" racism can be more subtle than that, more about xenophobia or just classism.
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> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy Everybody says that, Catalonia that it pays more to Spain that it receives back, California and New York to the rest of US... But it's the only way to have nation states, otherwise we'd have to go back to city states (which some people like Taleb actually advice).
Tax redistribution inside nations or in nation unions (like the EU) is pretty much an investment. It generally generates more money than spent on it. E.g. Germany is the largest net contributor to the EU, but guess what would happen if Germany decided to stop putting out those few billions a year. Yeah, not so good for the economy (not just of Germany, pretty much everyone). Turns out, those few billions spurred trad…
Isn't there a word for a bundle of sticks bound together?
I always found this system very interesting, since the citizen can decide how some of their tax money is spent (besides voting). On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.
> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime. Heh, funny that richer parts of the EU say this about Italy itself.
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Cherry-picking a few NJ schools doesn't show much. It would be nice to see an aggregate comparison. This article does that at the state level, and is somewhat conciliatory to your POV. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/13/arne-duncan-school... . That said, another commenter pointed out that aggregating by state is doesn't really capture what we're interested in.
I highlighted Camden and Great Neck specifically because they were specifically named in the book cited by OP, and show how the funding gap has closed since 1991. As to the idea that aggregating by state doesn't capture what we're interested in: the second image in your link shows that, accounting for federal funding, poor school districts get more money in almost every state, including most of the most populous ones…
Something related has happened in recent elections: higher income is correlated with voting Republican in every state, but richer states are typically bluer. So if you aggregate by state, it looks like there's no relationship, but if you aggregate by people, there is one.
Returning to school funding, the complicating factor is that so far as costs of construction and labor are higher, New Jersey arguably would spend more per student than Mississippi in a completely equitable world. Because of that, I said that the map was somewhat conducive to your point of view, but there's still a lot of work to determine the net effect.
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> civil war where the heroes are universally agreed to be the side fighting for more powers for the federal government. The Union wasn't fighting for more powers for the federal government, just for the integrity of the existing federal government and it's powers. The war resulted in some expansion of federal power, but that wasn't what motivated the Union.
Sure, that's a reasonable way to look at it, and the only way consistent with having the victors write the history books. In the same way that the Commerce Clause always allowed the federal government to regulate growing wheat for personal consumption, the Constitution already allowed the federal government to forbid slavery - it just took a civil war or a supreme court hearing to make sure everyone agreed on that. U…
The Union wasn't (particularly the slave states in the Union weren't) fighting to abolish slavery, the Union wasn't fighting to preserve the Union, a goal to which the popular (in most of the North) cause of abolition had been deliberately subordinated in the elections prior to the war.
OTOH, by seceding, the rebel states also lost their leverage on preserving slavery within the Union, so the whole rebellion backfired. Abolition probably would have happened eventually without the war, but it wouldn't have been right away.
I always found this system very interesting, since the citizen can decide how some of their tax money is spent (besides voting). On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.
> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by corruption, clientelism, and organized crime. Heh, funny that richer parts of the EU say this about Italy itself.
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It's also interesting in the context of how strict Japan's rules for election campaigns are. For example, a few years ago Justice Minister Midori Matsushima got in trouble for distributing essentially worthless paper fans since they were considered gifts, whereas paper pamphlets would have been okay, and she had to resign as minister. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2799975/Japans-...
It is about reach, a leaflet would reach one person. That person might talk to a person or two about the information in the leaflet. One person with a fan could be seen by many thousands of people on their daily commute.
There are other various other rules about campaign activity though (where/when it can be performed).
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I don’t think this would necessarily result in more freedom. Remember that when the question of states versus the federal government was definitively answered a century and a half ago, the side in favor of more autonomy for individual states was pushing for that so that they could continue to own people as property.
At the risk of opening the world's largest pressurized can of worms... sort of. There is an argument to be made that The South cared about state's rights only in the instrumental sense that it allowed them to protect slavery. They were also in favor of stronger federal government when it protected slavery, e.g. fugitive slave laws.