It constantly amazes me that people believe that state governments are more responsive and fiscally responsible than the federal government. State governments are the least responsive. Can you name off of the top of your head the state representative and if you don't live in Nebraska, the state senator who represent you in your state legislature.
Not to belabor the obvious, there are only two levels of government absolutely needed, the local government and the federal government. The local government, usually cities or towns and townships or counties to service areas not in a city or town, to deliver schools, roads, jurisprudence, trash collection, building licensing and inspection, etc. The federal government to deliver defense, foreign relations, highways, uniform criminal and civil laws, the enforcement of the laws, to create money and banking and to raise tax revenue through the income tax.
The state governments were an obsolete concept driven by the realities of the 18th century, long travel times and communication with month long lags. Today they are clung to out of a sense of tradition and promoted by commercial interests because state government is the easiest to corrupt.
Go to your MBA professor and tell him that you are reorganizing your business to add even more levels of middle management to your organization to improve responsiveness and see what he says. He will tell you that you are crazy, that middle management reduces responsiveness and adds to the time to make decisions and to implement decisions once they are made. And this what state governments are, middle management.
