That's the most fucked up thing here. The regions with the highest concentration of people upset about paying taxes overlaps almost exactly with the places that get the most excess benefit of taxes, typically in the range of 1.1:1 (which means many other places are seeing about 15% less benefit per capita).

A lot of that money goes to roads and infrastructure, so it's a little more dramatic than it sounds, but importation of goods would take a hit if those roads degraded, let alone if someone put Czech hedgehogs and foxholes at the state line because your stupid ass didn't look at the logistics of secession.

If you think Brexit was stupid, imagine Idaho deciding it didn't want food from out of state anymore.

> That's the most fucked up thing here. The regions with the highest concentration of people upset about paying taxes overlaps almost exactly with the places that get the most excess benefit of taxes, typically in the range of 1.1:1 (which means many other places are seeing about 15% less benefit per capita).

An explanation I've heard for this is that the people upset with overpaying taxes aren't the people getting welfare benefits, but they see those people and think that the benefits are not deserved.

And medicare/medicaid/social security total to ~half of all Federal spending in the US, so that's not nothing.

>That's the most fucked up thing here. The regions with the highest concentration of people upset about paying taxes overlaps almost exactly with the places that get the most excess benefit of taxes,

How is this any different than when some rich techie on HN says "I know it's not good for me personally but I want higher taxes because that's the right thing to do"?

There's a huge divide between the way cities vote and rural communities. If farmers do receive more tax breaks, it's to support a system that makes them unprofitable, so that they don't quit. Give you an example, getting tax breaks to grow corn for ethanol. Having more ethanol in their gasoline, is not something any farmer wants, its more of a want of politicians that live in cities.

While the USA was once a true federation of sovereign states that really hasn't been the case since at least the Civil War, over 150 years ago. States depend heavily on the federal government for assistance, standardization, and regulation, and even depend on their neighbors for logistical support in various industries as well as energy and water.

For all its touted net-contribution to the federal budget California would not survive on its own, as it depends on electricity from other states and water from the Colorado River (a shared resource between several states). To be sure, California puts these shared resources to extremely productive use and pays back the value to its neighbors, but this kind of interdependence probably would not exist if California went rebel.

I haven't heard much talk of Californians dreaming of becoming independent, but maybe I'm traveling in the wrong circles. What I have heard is people talking smack about kicking California out, and taking 10% of the US GDP with it. Which would be dumb for the rest of us.

It's an attitude I've encountered with some Californians. I wouldn't call it a common one, since most Californians seem to be aware of their dependence on their neighbors for energy and water. But as for "kicking out" California, I'm not sure any such mechanism even exists in the Constitution. While the USA might not be a proper federation of states anymore, vestigial bits of the federation still exist, particularly when it comes to representation and self determination of states.

If a civil war or rebellion did break out I don't think it'd happen along state lines. The kind of power the states now wield actually depends on the existence of the union, so I don't see them wanting to destroy that relationship.

There is this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_...

but they want to secede from existing states, not from the union

The fact that all of the different economic regions in CA have to answer to one shitty state government is absolutely mind boggling. Imaging the Boston-DC corridor being one state and how dysfunctional that would be.

california has the 6th largest gdp in the world... ahead of every country save 5(that's including the US). California is a juggernaut and just saying that it would be taking 10% of the US GDP is underselling it.

They wouldn't survive very long without water. You can't drink GDP.

what do you think desalination plants would do?

Probably not much, since California routinely can't even import enough electricity to power itself now.

You do realize countries routinely buy electricity from other countries? Just because there's a country border doesn't mean trade can't flow over it.

Now, of course, if you were at war, such dependency would hurt, for sure. But on the long term, country borders don't mean that much to capitalism.

Funny, in France one of the region that want to secede, Corsica, is like the lazy and scammy region, which is basically living off handouts from the rest of the country.

They don't want to secede so much as to be able to decide for themselves how to the 1/95th of the government money that their headcount happen to mean.

(I have no data, but as suspect it's actually only a small minority of local politicians clinging to keeping a large part of a the small part of the pie.)

I suppose the metro government has something to keep in here too (national waters in Mediterranean see, maybe ? Links to the drug cartels ? No idea.)

But I suspect the French government that will announce true indépendance for Corsica would be met by forks and pitches _from_ the Islanders.)

Ironically, in the US, most of the people that want to secede are the ones in states receiving more taxes than they pay.

I don't know of any state that gets less then it gives. Most articles that claim such ignore tons of things like food stamp, section 8, or military spending in that state.