Smaller states would make it easier for Americans to move

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Recently said in another thread(by keet?), I am assuming the claim is valid.

So why is it hard to move?

Here in Canada most of our provinces are considerably larger than most of your states. Yet I get the impression that people find it easier to move around. For example, at one point we had about 100 hundred thousand Newfoundlanders in Alberta out of their population of... 500,000? And Phil777 mentioned recently that a lot of his friends from Quebec came too. That would be equivalent to moving from Maine or New York City to Montana. A big cultural change.

So the point of the thread isnt to say its wrong, but lets examine what it is about the much more homogeneous American society that inhibits (some) people from moving?

Benefits, such as disability programs, often vary by state. You move and your program goes away.

The inhibition from moving for most people is one of families and opportunity.

Do you really want to live 1,000+ miles from your nearest relative? Some do. Some don't.

Are there good job opportunities where you are going? How expensive/cheaper is it to live there? Does it have a climate you'd like to live with year-round?

Even if all of that is favorable, arranging a move can be difficult. Pack up your stuff, pay to move it, have a place to put it where you are going.

It's not an insurmountable issue, but for a lot of people, moving further than the next town over is just something they aren't inclined to do. All states are fairly the same where most matters are considered. You'd really have to hate your state to leave it just because of the way they do things.

Sure, but further subdivision of the US mainland states doesnt reduce distances any.



This is the primary reason for people to move around Canada.



Thats what gets me. The relative similarity of neighbouring states should actually ease the process. If you look at my prior example, you have Quebec with its own language, culture and a 400 year history, more than 1000 miles from Alberta, speaking English and barely over 100 years old. Yet people make the move. Newfoundland only joined Canada in 1949.

So I think if you subdivided further, people would be even less inclined to move.

Americans are already very mobile compared to most of the worlds people.


Canada is comparable in size to the USA but has only a fraction of the US's population- about the same population the USA had in the wake of the Civil War when we had the Western Frontier. So Canada is still trying to fill up its empty West with people as we were doing back then. So thats probably why Canadians are even more mobile than Americans.

I cant concieve of what the size of states would have to do with it.

Canada is about twice the size of the population of the Los Angeles metro area.

That's pretty small. About 10% the size of the US's population.


Sounds nice. Overpopulation sucks.

I see a missing piece from your analysis, Fuzzy, and that is our system of equalization payments.

The federal government collects income taxes on behalf of and at the rates set by 9 of the 10 provinces. But these amounts are not simply flowed through to the individual provinces. Instead, they are subject to adjusters that take into consideration a wide range of factors including tax room (Alberta is assessed for the amount of tax that it could collect from a sales tax, even though it has chosen not to do so), own-source revenue (such as natural resource royalties), and program delivery costs. As a result, provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario (the so-called, "haves") will receive less than the amount of income tax collected, which will be transferred instead to other provinces (the so-called, "have-nots").

The practical impact is that every province can set tax rates that are roughly comparable with their neighbors, and deliver health, education and social programs that are comparable to their neighbors.

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In the U.S. the states really aren't all that similar. Many have their own state laws and state benefits programs which vary wildly from state to state. If you are gay and get married in a state where that is legal, a move to a state where it is not will nullify that marriage. There are also many jobs which require state-specific certification. If you are certified to hold a particular job in one state, that certification will not apply in many other states and you will have to be re-certified, a process that makes people think twice about moving. Differences in laws between states also make people less inclined to move. The gun that is perfectly legal to carry in one state will be against the law in many other states you could move to.

From the distance of Canada, U.S. states may look homogenous. But if you look closely at their vastly different laws, benefits programs and job certification requirements, you will see that moving from one U.S. state to another is not quite so easy as it may look from a distance. It's do-able. I did it. But it can be a pain in the neck and the differences from one state to the next do disincline people to mobility- a disinclination they overcome mostly when the local economy gets too awful.

Yeah...the haves mostly stay as the haves here. They call it tyranny if ever the haves were to be required to be responsible citizens.

Pretty much this and what others have said. I don't think it's an issue of smaller states not making it easy enough to move there. You have to have an opportunity worth leaving your family and home behind and those are few and far between today.

America still organizes itself in a federalist system, moreso than Canada. Laws vary more by state here than they do by province in Canada, and I think we probably have wider cultural gaps here than you do (think California vs Alabama) which also discourages too much moving around.

the whole moving thing is a giant pain in the tuckas, and to be avoided whenever possible, no matter where one lives.

That itself is a big factor.

California can be a nice place to live, but as fiscally messed up as that state is (thanks to how the people running it) and other idiotic practices, you could not pay me enough to want to live there. Few would want to live in Idaho or Montana are, but I find myself drawn to that area of the country.

I've lived in Wyoming and found the laid-back attitude towards religion nicer as a Christian than the nonsense I see in the "Bible belt" states thanks to disproportionate social pressure to be a church member.

Large stretches of America (midwest) have such big states because you're looking at millions of acres of flat, hardly changing landscape reserved primarily for farming and ranching. Lots of people wouldn't want to stay in such a "boring" place. Others love it.

Heck, I've considered moving to Canada only because I never have allergy problems when I'm that far north. I've had bad sinus migraines this year...no doubt triggered by seasonal allergies.

Even so it is not the Federal System constructed by the Founders. The States do not have the sovereign nature they once had. They are more like the Departments in France. The States are allowed to regulate purely local or regional matters but not completely. Look at the broo ha ha in California over growing pot.

ruveyn

Ah, but that is still a hotly contested constitutional matter on state rights. At no time has the federal government gained the authority to do much of what it has done. Rather, it has gone unchallenged in large part. The growing pot question will likely force the issue as I can see no constitutional authority for the federal government to deny people from growing or using pot WITHIN California. It can only deny it being transported across state lines.

Of course, the demand of THE PEOPLE to have access to the drug might be the beginning for national legalization of many drugs.

The power of the federal government as compared to the states has expanded over the past couple centuries, yes. We are now much less of the loose confederation that we were at the start. The legal/constitutional issues of federal vs state power have mostly been settled by now.