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by r3trohack3r6 hours ago |
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upvoteby akie5 hours ago|
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I know that this is a popular point-of-view in the US, but your states and legislative processes are all very homogeneous in comparison. You guys mostly speak the same language, you have the same cultural touch points, you have a shared history, shared media, and mostly centralized power.

Your country looks more like Germany (and if you know your history, that's no coincidence) than it looks like the EU.

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upvoteby Aeolun2 hours ago|
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I think, at this point, most people in Europe broadly have the same language as their second language.

> Overall proficiency: According to data from the European Union, over 43% of the total EU population speaks English as a second language, making it the most widely spoken non-native tongue across all 24 non-Anglophone countries in the bloc.

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upvoteby akie1 hours ago|
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Bombastic side eye
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upvoteby aleph_minus_one2 hours ago|
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> America does it with 50 states

And Germany has 16 federal states.

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upvoteby bryanlarsen5 hours ago|
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That analogy would hold only if inter-state commerce was the responsibility of the states rather than the federal government.
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upvoteby voakbasda5 hours ago|
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In theory, true. In practice, state independence has been dead for the better part of a century.

The 10th amendment has been eviscerated by the courts. By a strict reading of its relatively simple language, most of what the federal government does is unconstitutional.

Today, USA is unabbreviated as the “United States of America”, but the country was founded as the “United States for Anerica”.

As such, I am strongly in favor of returning to our former glory by stripping the federal government of most of its power and transferring it to the states.

I am also wise enough to know that will never happen without a long and bloody revolution, and I am okay with that given the lived reality that has defined my life.

We live in tyranny. You may not feel the rolling boil of the water that surrounds you, my fellow Americans, but make no mistake: your goose is cooked.

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upvoteby HWR_145 hours ago|
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> state independence has been dead for the better part of a century.

Can you please put a date on when you think this happened and what were the turning event(s)?

Because you could mean a lot of different points over decades. And what and when you think was the turning point is pretty significant.

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upvoteby WarmWash3 hours ago|
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The interstate highway system that is economically critical for most states, and gets repaired/maintained with federal dollars.

Anytime there is a spat, the federal government dangles those highway dollars to get their way.

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upvoteby Exoristos52 minutes ago|
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An easy to overlook affair called the United States Civil War kicked off the trend.
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upvoteby nemomarx5 hours ago|
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Given what the states use their current power to do, I'm pretty fine with it so long as the party I'm like is in control of the federal government. If the last ten or so years of politics have taught us anything it's good to be on top with the tyrants, I guess.
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upvoteby hnfong4 hours ago|
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> country was founded as the “United States for Anerica”.

Do you have actual sources for that?

(Funny thing, I googled the phrase in quotes, did not realize the misspelling, and was a bit frustrated that the only result was this comment on HN...)

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upvoteby senderista2 hours ago|
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LOL just last week I was looking at an original copy of the US Constitution at the National Archives and that is most definitely not what it said.
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upvoteby ericmay4 hours ago|
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Add in the function of the senate and the ongoing public perception of it, and as/if the senate is neutered by populist parties (MAGA/DSA) as they intend to also do with the courts, the argument that the states are sovereign (and they are by definition and constitutional agreement) becomes more and more practically useless, unfortunately (in some ways).

I'm not anti-federal government or anything but clearly we can see that there are issues in how the federal government has become so powerful and yet we're beholden to these two big-tent political parties leaving folks across the various states unhappy with decrees from Washington. Don't like Donald Trump's power over you? Maybe the federal government shouldn't have that power then?

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upvoteby deno5 hours ago|
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And EU does it with VAT-OSS scheme which was also separate in each country before. There's just no will to do this with EPR because there's too much money and lobbying power in the recycling cartel.
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upvoteby Aerroon3 hours ago|
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The funny thing is that when the EU introduced these new VAT rules then it screwed over small and microbusinesses as well. It took them years to implement a minimum threshold for VAT (which every reasonable country has, but somehow EU rules did not).
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