$15 per hour by 2020 is not all that

[ieoeja]

22. Insead, local taxes need to be replaced with federal taxes.

After White Flight Reagan slashed federal income taxes then cut off block grants to states and cities. This helped suburbs where they could easily replace the missing grants by taxing their local populace. This hurt the big cities which made lots of people very happy. This also hurt small towns where the people, for some inexplicable reason, blame Democrats instead of Reagan.

Over time, cities have recovered to some extent. Corporations in those cities employ mostly Liberal, college educated people. So more and more of the following generations relocated to, and stayed in, the cities bringing their money with them.

The small towns keep getting poorer. They simply do not have the tax base to take care of themselves. But Reagan shifted the tax base to the states and cities. So everyone needs a local tax base where before the federal government took care of it.

But wait! There's worse!

This balkanization of the states creates competition between the states for large businesses. Indiana gave United Airlines a tax exemption. The moved to Indianapolis. Indy gains the tax base of the UA employees. Illinois loses the tax base of the UA employees + the UA corporation. Net loss = US corporate taxes. Illinois residents and smaller Illinois businesses have to pay higher taxes to make up for it.

Boeing gets a tax exemption to move to Illinois. Illinois gains tax base of Boeing employees. Washington loses tax base of the Boeing employees + Boeing corporate taxes. Net loss = Boeing corporate taxes. Washington residents and smaller Washington businesses have to pay higher taxes to make up for it.

Reagan's "new federalism", aka old anti-federalism, has created a disaster.