A New Map for America
The fantasies of central planners never end.<p>The author neglects entirely the fact that these city-states arose <i>without</i> any central plan to create these economic zones. They are the result of the market and political processes we already had in place. Did some technocrat wizard in Washington say, &quot;We should target the Northeast Corridor to produce 20% of our GDP&quot;? No. That result was organic.<p>Here&#x27;s an alternate proposal: decentralize power back to the states and have groups of states work out arrangements among themselves to enhance their shared cross-border economies. Reduce the federal take of taxes, leaving the money in the hands of the people who actually innovate, employ, and make economic decisions.<p>The primary fallacies in this central planner&#x27;s thinking is that some new National Economic Planning Board will be a) completely altruistic in allocating a pile of cash to the places that will produce the most economic benefit, b) able to out-perform the decentralized economic decision-making mechanism of the market (prices), c) not be subject to the lobbying that so corrupts the Congress now.