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Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
Yeah, I read that at the time and am highly dubious about the central factual claim. Sure, Utah's great and all, but Wisconsin is most definitely not better run than Minnesota while the two states share a whole bunch of similarities, aside from Minnesota managing to elect Dem governors and majorities from time to time to clean up the mess the GOP made.
Meanwhile, do we really think Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama are any worse run than Illinois, even granting that Illinois is a mess? And if you're tempted to answer "yes" do you think their black residents would agree?
(As an aside, The Blood of Emmett Till had some interesting comparison on that front, including some that did not shed favorable light on some of Chicago's black politicians.)
Also, how well do you think the 2012 rankings he linked to stand up a few years and an energy collapse later? North Dakota is definitely not one of the best run states, for example.
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I think the survey that he links to is hardly worth reading. E.g., a state's economy will depend on things that have nothing to do with how the government is run, though the opposite may not be true.
That said, you're focusing on states, not municipalities, and smaller governments will appear better run than larger governments. But also, when government funds your own group, it doesn't look like a transfer or subsidy, and when government funds other people, it does. So more heterogenous populations will appear to have less efficient governments.
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“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
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