[tehjoker]

This is kind of a strange take.

Local taxes are for petty but useful stuff because the sovereignty of your locality is heavily circumscribed by state and national authorities. That means the real budgetary decisions made about the future of the nation, anything interesting, anything made with some level of self-determination, is made at the national level. Unfortunately, in the USA, budgetary discretion is used for war and rhetorically defended by all politicians while the non-discretionary spending on e.g. social security, is constantly attacked.

[petcat]

This is kind of a strange take.

> Local taxes are for petty but useful stuff

My state has completely state-funded healthcare, and a renowned state-funded university system.

USA is a nation of states and those states (mostly) make their own way. I live in one of the good ones.

[tehjoker]

It makes me feel a little crazy seeing the constitutional architecture post-civil war used to diffuse responsibility away from the federal government and divide the people against each other working in action. People act like this isn't a country with very definite choices being made or that if something is bad over there, it doesn't matter over here. The wealthy, the corporations, the army, and the central government all deal with this place as a unified entity with various domestic fractures to exploit for their own purposes.