[InglewoodFan]

Originally Posted by New Era

I'm not sure how people find this surprising. This is the exact same way that red states have been for the 20+ years I've been living in the US. Blue states are much better, but usually ungodly expensive. Red states are cheap, but you have to put up with ridiculous politics that just get in the way of living. The greatest weakness to the US system is the lack of control and consistency over those things that you, as a citizen, rely upon as essential services for your family. If education, healthcare, law enforcement, utility provisioning, and so on, all the way down to refuse collection and disposal, are not managed in some consistent and responsible way, you're bordering on a banana republic. It is an extremely sad statement on the world's "greatest superpower" that you, as a citizen, have to research school districts, have to know the billing practices of each hospital in your area, have to know the jurisdictional responsibility of the layers of law enforcement, etc. before you invest in a community. Its very backward and if I knew then what I knew now I never would have come down here and got involved in the MLM scheme that is the American system. Love the geography, love most of the people, hate the systems that govern the land.

Thanks for the insight, do you think the diversity of services stem from the strength of "states rights" in the US? As a Canadian, I hear about "states rights" but I don't feel like I have a solid grasp on how far each state can individually drift from the federal government.