There are only 50 states. The median state is larger than Greece.
The true problem is that the federal government is responsible for spending three times as many tax dollars as all the states put together. The county government knows they need to fix the bridge, but the feds took all the money the local taxpayers could spare and spent it on not-the-bridge.
Federal Defense: ~$0.7T
https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/revenue_pie%2C_...
And here's a graph of federal spending --
https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_...
In theory the payroll taxes from the first picture completely cover the spending on social security/unemployment insurance -- (and this is currently the case) -- so including that category in the total federal outlays is a little disingenuous when making an argument about too much federal spending/taxation if you don't intend to cut that source of federal spending/taxation ...
If what you say is true that the issue with u.s. infrastructure is entirely the result of too much money going to federal tax authority and not enough to local tax authority -- then to make more dollars from the federal budget available for local taxation you are going to need to do one of the following in order of which action affects the largest monetary amounts:
- argue for reducing payroll taxes and cutting social security benefits
- argue for reducing federal healthcare spending
- argue for reducing tax expenditures https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/taxexpenditures...
- argue for reducing the defense budget
- and then way down there at the bottom, the entire rest of the federal budget which is typically vilified as "government waste" and out of control federal spending by people who adamantly refuse to consider any of the above funding priorities when making arguments that try to scapegoat federal spending for regional management failures ...
