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People tend to forget that the United States of America is a union of 50 separate states under the umbrella of our Federal Government.
The Federal Government was mainly set up to provide a common and comprehensive defense of the different states, to create a uniform economy for all the states, and for foreign relations. The Federal Government has no rights over the states to make laws except what is specifically spelled out in the constitution. If the constitution doesn't give the Federal Government authority of a matter, it's up to the states.
States are responsible for healthcare and hospitals for their residents, policing, emergency repsponses, unemployment benifits, setting sales taxes and state income taxes, education, natural resources and protecting their lands, their laws and justice, whether they want the death penalty, gay marriage, alcohol controls, the age at which you can drive, the legality of prostitution, if they want to outlaw fireworks or not, speed limits, corporate taxes and business laws, the control of colleges and universities, their electrical grids, primary education in their state, welfare benifits, prisons, etc etc etc.
This is why states are quite different in their lifestyles and how rich/poor they are in relation to other states.
We're basically a collection of 50 different (yet extremely similar) countries under one Union that binds is together as a show of strength in the world.
Here's why- Walter Rybeck / Absentee Ownership in West Virginia (http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/rybeck-walt_absentee-ownership-in-west-virginia.html - broken link)
Only poor by American standards. Even the poorest state in the U.S would not be considered poor by 3rd world country standards. Last time I checked New Mexico, Mississippi, and West Virginia do not have neighborhoods that look like this.
actually there is a small area in the desert on the outskirts of Albuquerque with houses that bad, no running water or electric, just homemade shacks.
and there are really poor houses on some of the reservations, shacks.
I know that New Mexico and Mississippi are usually at the bottom of most lists, so I wonder why these states are always lagging behind.
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