The United States is in a severe crisis of trust. Trust in government has collapsed since George W. Bush has come into office, and it has only gotten worse the more time Trump has been in office.
https://www.edelman.com/trust/data-dashboard
We see a clear uptick in distrust when Trump entered office in 2017 and then it stabilized and actually improved a small amount when Biden came into office.
I expect as we see more absurd behavior from Trump, trust will continue to decline. I anticipate we will observe economic repercussions from his tariffs which will be severe before his term is over.
Assuming we have elections since there is no clear sign that elections have stopped this year, and assuming the Republicans lose in 2028, we have two potential paths forward.
The Messiah
The optimistic approach in me is we elect a president who will be able to rally the country together, along with a democratic congress who will get things done. Be honest, caring, and abolish unpopular policies which are responsible for the decline in trust over the last 25 years while establishing safeguards. As we see our nation is more safe, more prosperous, and just generally better, this will start by ending the decline in trust, and then we have over a decade of competent and caring presidents with cooperative congresses who will move our country onto the right track.
Is this likely? I don’t think so. It feels like a fantasy. But it is possible.
Devolution
While trust in the Federal government has plummeted, trust in local government has remained quite high.
This brings us to our alternative to a competent president improving trust in the federal government. Assume 50% of Americans trusting federal government at this point is impossible. Call the project of federal social safety nets off and devolve to state governments.
Trump and congress work to destroy Old Age and Survivor’s Insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, TANF, unemployment, and other programs which benefit Americans. Federal support for education is cut. These social programs along with the military devolve down to the states to manage themselves, since people generally trust their state governments more than the federal. It is also easier for most Americans to get to their state capitol compared to Washington, DC. Reduce these interstate transfers permanently, and have state governments take over those functions.
The constant complaining from people in the south of a disconnected federal government which never serves them (mostly because they keep electing incompetent buffoons like Marjorie Taylor Green who does not serve her constituents well, so yes, it is absolutely their own fault) will no longer have any sway. If their schools, health care, and infrastructure are not working, they will only have their state and local government to blame. But who elects those state and local leaders? The only people to blame for their poverty and corruption will be themselves. Are they upset about having broken legislative maps? Stop whining and start an initiative process to move to proportional representation or independent bipartisan redistricting committees. Well-run states have done so. There is no excuse.
The states with functional state governments which spend more in federal taxes then we get back will find that constant flow of money out of our states will be turned off. We will have more resources then to improve our own states without the federal government getting in the way and diluting our surplus while cutting off benefits for our states. Our state governments will have the resources to implement universal health care, modern public retirement systems, transit projects, and more with far less intervention from the federal government. The need for federal grants will be eliminated when we no longer spend a large amount of money in federal taxes, the money will simply stay in our states. For the states which receive more than they pay in federal taxes, which tend to be Republican, they can finally implement the small government they want. States will be able to experiment with education policy without policies like Common Core. If your state wants to implement education standards meeting the latest standards in the field you will have the right to do so. If you want to build a heavy rail system and nationalize the railroads in your state, no one will stop you. If you want to stop teaching sex ed, privatize what is left, end public schooling, outlaw anything being abstinance-only sex education, and abolish medicaid, your state will have that right too.
In either case, the voters who vote in such policies will see the impacts of their decisions. If they go poorly, they have no one to blame but themselves.
While the benefits of good policies will unfortunately be limited to state lines, the consequences of idiotic policies will finally also be limited within that state’s borders.
With the federal government doing less in terms of domestic work, federal trust will only matter for foreign policy.
We will likely get to the point where seeing significant divergence in the economic realities of states will become very extreme. Some people will certainly be stating that it is the fault of the wealthy states that the poor states are where they will land, but that is a lie.
New York doesn’t have the Subway because God put it there. New York has the subway because New Yorkers staged a mass strike when they tried to eliminate transit, and the same happened in San Francisco.
The Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco did not come down as a result of fate or an act of the divine. San Francisco was not created with a trolley and BART on the day the city was founded in 1850. These things happened because the people of San Francisco demanded it and voted them into reality. The trolley exists today because the people of San Francisco protested the removal of necessary transit lines. California wasn’t mandated to have accessible and affordable college in the 1950s and 1960s, the people of California voted for people who made such policies at the state level. The people of California voted in a very open market system which made it easy to leave your existing employer and start your own company. It’s not about low regulation or high regulation, it’s about smart regulation. The people of California built the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley through decades of voting, public and private investment, and policy. That’s the only reason why Silicon Valley is not in Atlanta, but in San Jose.
Louisiana and Mississippi are not the poorest states in the United States because they are being held back by the Federal government, quite the opposite really, they get far more money from the federal government than they pay in federal taxes. These states are poor because instead of investing in health care, education, and infrastructure, they have consistently chosen to spend their money in corporate bailouts with the hope that companies will swoop in under the promise of few workers rights and low taxes. They consistently reject federal assistance through programs like the Medicaid expansion, so they should really be getting even more than they already do from the federal government. That being said, changing employers still has major disadvantages and legal restrictions compared to California, so these are only low regulation states from the perspective of businesses. They aren’t low-regulation states, they are stupid regulation states. The consequence is that without the constant annual bailout from California, these states would be financially bankrupt. The only reason for this is the people of those states continue to elect incompetent fools who lie to them and implement bad policies.
Sakartvelo (Georgia) didn’t become the fastest growing economy in the world because of fate. Sakartvelo became the fastest growing economy in the world because the people of Sakartvelo staged a nationwide protest in 2003 after the election was fraudulent, they elected Saakashvili, and his administration did an enormous amount of work cleaning up Sakartvelo’s government which transformed their country. It wasn’t inevitable. God didn’t make it happen. The people of Sakartvelo are the only reason it happened.
In all of these cases, these changes did not happen because the Federal government or God mandated it, in fact, the federal rules about transit and highways were stacked against the people of San Francisco and New York. The people made it so further destruction of the city would be political suicide.
The United States system of government reduces the benefits made by well-run states while propping up, bailing out, and supporting states that are corrupt and harm their citizens.
These corrupt states then blame the federal government and vote in presidents like Nixon, Bush, and Trump who then implement worst practices on a nationwide scale, hurting everyone.
It does not work.
This is why devolution is the most likely path to move us out of the mess we are in. Reduce the federal government’s power, be more like the European Union, give states more rights, and when they fail, it is the responsibility of their citizens to reform their state government and fix the problems, or deal with the consequences.
