The whole point of the District of Columbia not being a state is that the United States is an equal compact between the states, and it would not be fair for the seat of the federal government to be in a state. So I'm a hard pass on DC statehood. I find GP's suggestion better.
Would you be as favorable to DC statehood if they were guaranteed to vote the opposite of you?
> Would you be as favorable to DC statehood if they were guaranteed to vote the opposite of you?
Yes I would, the people of DC should have representation, but using retrocession to get there would dilute any influence they have on their own politics and local control. I understand that the founders were worried about fairness and no state being favored over another by selecting one to be the capitol of the country, but I don't believe that'd be a concern for almost anyone alive today – especially if that state were made up out of whole cloth from the people who had already lived there.
> but I don't believe that'd be a concern for almost anyone alive today
On the contrary, it is a significant concern for me and I'm sure I'm not alone in my thoughts.
Fully half of the top ten richest counties in this country are suburbs of DC, a place that has no industry other than politics, administration, and lobbying. I find this to be an absolute travesty that shows just how much incentive and corrupting force there is in the federal government.
Return the land to the states. Keep a small federal territorial enclave for actual federal buildings and functions. Make a lot more of these territorial enclaves all around this vast country so that power is less concentrated in one place. That's one thing the Germans got right, in their federalism.
> a place that has no industry other than politics, administration, and lobbying.
Uh, I'd expect someone posting here to know better, given that Amazon HQ2 is in Arlington and us-east-1 is in Northern VA. There's also a videogame company called Bethesda that you might have heard of.
And you skipped over aerospace/defense, not to mention biotech. (Even if there is a lot of bloat in the defense sector, it's not all useless.)
It's in Arlington because... lobbying! Bezos wanted to absorb more defense spending in AWS and chose to be physically nearby to rub shoulders and get deals.
> us-east-1 is in Northern VA. There's also a videogame company called Bethesda that you might have heard of.
I doubt us-east-1 employs more than a handful of people. Datacenters are primarily hands-off. Bethesda supposedly has ~650 employees across 6 continents.
But I think you're missing the point: am I to understand that having datacenters and game developers in the area leads it to having the highest median household income in this fantastically wealthy country? Not New York with Wall Street, or Los Angeles through whose port the two largest economies in the world trade, or San Francisco with its own world-class port and all of its software industry?
Do you really think suburban DC would be so rich if it wasn't for people wanting to pay to be near the seat of a globe-spanning empire, to be better positioned to peddle influence and get rich off of the taxpayer's back? Do you not find that to be at least a little disgusting?
You completely skipped over the defense and biotech industries, I notice. Not to mention DC being the HQ of the US military-industrial complex and the intelligence community. Like I said, there's a lot of bloat in the defense industry, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that it's 100% waste.
> Do you really think suburban DC would be so rich if it wasn't for people wanting to pay to be near the seat of a globe-spanning empire, to be better positioned to peddle influence and get rich off of the taxpayer's back? Do you not find that to be at least a little disgusting?
IMO it's perfectly legitimate for organizations to advocate for their interests as long as they do not engage in bribery. They often have subject matter expertise the government does not, and more information allows for better decision-making. Would you rather the government operate in a vacuum, completely disconnected from what is going on in the rest of the country? Btw, it's not just corporations that lobby, there are plenty of NGOs doing the same thing.
If you want to blame someone for this dynamic, blame the founders of this country, who decided to create a federal district rather than put the capital in an existing city with an existing industrial base.
Now, I'm not a student of politics, so I may be making some error, but I'd say (1) only about 2/3 of the ones on that list* are in a decent political position, and (2) that in any event a shifting of the balance of power between states (not just US states, any states) and their corresponding federal government is a big deal and not to be done lightly.
Of course, because I'm not a student of politics, I also don't take any strong position about what the USA should or shouldn't do with DC. If y'all turn DC into Trump's personal walled castle and themed gold-plated golf course, all I'm gonna do is get some popcorn, I won't stop you.
* including e.g. the one I live in, where the president has far less power than in the American system and real power is with the chancellor, and also the voting system is completely different and supports a plurality of parties not just two: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-member_proportional_repr...
Just to clarify: I meant the fact that the capital of a country needs some kind of special exception. That normally really isn't the case.
NL is kind of special: the capital of the country is Amsterdam, but the seat of government is the Hague. But in Belgium, which is about as divided as it comes, the seat of government is Brussels, which is itself bi-lingual.
I don't think this is a problem that requires a particularly convoluted solution. What it does require is for people to simply play by the rule of law. And that's the thing that the United States is currently putting to the test on every metric that matters.
All DC statehood proposals cut out the capitol complexes from the territory that would turn into a state. The seat of power would remain not in a state.
I don't think that matters though. I'm more concerned about the broader metropolitan area where all the people with all those powers and all the people who are on their coattails reside. Which is currently Virginia and Maryland. Shrinking DC proper is basically a no-op on that front.
If anything were to happen it should probably be the creation of a "middle" Virginia on some sort of Northeast southwest line so that the metropolitan area is split among three states to dilute it.
Failing that just split it among VA/MD, that'd basically leave the status quo unchanged with regard to interests and power but at least make less people's lives subject to political football.
Alternatively, we could just make DC a state, which I'm broadly in favor of.