The most dangerous time since the Civil War

[Eric the Green]

(05-08-2019, 09:45 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Bluexit

https://newrepublic.com/article/140948/b...ed-america

Excellent article. It's up to blue states to take responsibility to make our states even better than we already are than the red states. If we could repeal the federal income tax, a conservative/libertarian ideal, we'd get back the 4-times more money that we give than we get, and with that money we could finance health care, infrastructure, education, environment, social welfare, appropriate regulations, and the amenities that make cities and towns livable, through higher state taxes to make up for the lower federal taxes, and let you guys in the red states live on less government according to your philosophy, with no bail out. I don't know if such a scheme is workable, but I suppose it's an alternative to total bluexit. It certainly would be using a red-state idea, one they would not resist, to hoist them on their own petard.

Things might not be as bad as Kevin Baker says now, since he concedes that the 3 Trump rust belt states have gone over permanently to the red side. They were always shaky, but they are likely to return to majority blue. Then Illinois and Minnesota would not be left out totally in the red desert. Colorado is still shaky as a blue state too. 

The harder question is that the blue/red divide is more urban/rural than between particular states, as he points out. The blue states would have to hold on to their rural parts, and red states their urban parts, to make this scheme work. But if it's only a question of shifting who pays what, it might be possible. The rural areas of blue states are not going to oppose ending the federal income tax. Our state of Jefferson in northern CA and southern OR won't do that. But of course they'll have to deal with our stricter gun laws, which they do already. Would they secede from the blue states and join or create new red states in order to be under the rule of the Gorsuch-Kavanaugh Court that protects their "gun rights?"

He brought up the question of climate change, which red states on their own would make much worse. I wonder about that, since the red states will be living under trickle-down economics with no access to any trickle source. Their privatized way of life with no bail out will likely consign them to fast-increasing poverty and depression. Such an economic slowdown will reduce emissions. They might try to continue to intice corporations to move there with low taxes and regulations. That might have some initial success, but the lack of an educated workforce and the possible reversal of the population flow of youth back to blue cities could discourage this move. I have always thought, though, that the loss of many natural wonders now protected by the federal government from greedy tycoons could be tragic. Red state dependence on fossil fuels could backfire too if the fuels start to run out or get too expensive to mine and sell, with less revenue for their oil companies from a poor population.

Another wrinkle: unless the blue states simply refuse to pay, which is an illegal approach, then a constitutional amendment would be needed to repeal the federal income tax. So it would take a red-state/blue state agreement to accomplish this. Red staters are notoriously dishonest and selfish in public behavior (not necessarily in their private behavior), and when they realize that they won't get to feed at the federal trough anymore, they might forget their self-reliance philosophy and oppose this move. That is their modus operandi. They have no real principles at all, at least on the public political level. Just slogans and prejudices.