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You should check out the 38 State proposal. Redraw all the state boundaries so they're more sensible and local cultures are kept together better, and no major cities straddle state lines, while making the states more roughly equal in population.

To that regard, fewer states within the federal system may help.

That's another thing I'd like to see: fewer states. Not just 5 or 10 though, but 38:
http://www.tjc.com/38states/
The states should all be reorganized and borders drawn based on local culture, so for instance, NYC has its own state (including northern NJ and western CT), while most of the rest of NY state is separate from it, because the two regions are nothing alike.

However, I also recognize that maintaining our current form of government and reorganizing all the states within is a far more ambitious and ridiculously unlikely plan than simply breaking the country up into 5 parts.

Actually, it'd probably make more sense if the far eastern parts of those states merged with Idaho instead. Check out the 38 State map for reference. It also adds western Montana and a piece of Wyoming to Idaho, but then chops off the southeast corner and gives that to Mormon-land, since that corner of Idaho has a strong Mormon presence.

6 pieces is really too much, I think. A better plan is to start with the 38 States proposal from the 70s, and update it a bit for the times.

It seems to me that "upstate" NY should separate from NYC; NYC should join with west CT and northern NJ (and maybe west MA and a small bit of PA) and form a new state called "Hudson".

The old 38 States proposal seems like a good starting point for breaking things up along lines of regional culture (though things have changed in the 40 years since they came up with this, so it needs a bit of revision); after that, the new states can self-organize into a handful of larger nations.

Breaking up Canada and adding that to the mix isn't a bad idea either. I'll bet the Quebecois would like to be independent, and as you point out, Ontario really has more in common with MI and OH than with QC and BC. BC could join up with OR and WA. And NB and NS could join with ME, NH and VT.

No, a better idea is to follow the 38 States proposal made in the 70s (but with a little updating since there's been some big demographic changes since then). The NYC metro area should indeed be a separate state, but this holds for every metro area. Basically, no metro area should ever cross a state line, whether it's NYC, Chicago/Milwaukee, Portland, or Louisville. After this, the state boundaries should be drawn to keep local cultures together and minimize political infighting.

This proposal is terrible for this exact reason: local cultures are being completely ignored.

The 38 States proposal made in the 70s was a much better thought-out idea which started by making sure metro areas were nowhere near state lines, and then grouping together regions based on local cultures. They attempted to make the resulting states fairly equal population-wise, but that wasn't the overriding goal as this dumb 50-state idea in TFA.

I prefer the 38 States proposal made back in the 70s. I think it does a much better job of grouping together people in the country based on their local culture, rather than focusing solely on population and watersheds. It could use a little updating to reflect the significant demographic changes in the last 40 years, but overall I think it's quite sound.

We need lots of states rather than 1 because having a single government, with ~500 legislators, controlling most of the continent, and attempting to make laws managing all the disparate places in this country, won't work. It's the exact same reason a corporation the size of Google or Microsoft or IBM doesn't have a board of directors making all the decisions for the entire country, and organizes the company into "divisions" or "business units", each with its own management. How old are you anyway? This is the kind of comment I'd expect out of a 10-year-old.

You do have a good point, though unintentional, with your comment about why we need 50 states. Why 50? Why not 38 states? More states means more administrative overhead. 1 is obviously stupid, however maybe 50 is too many; we could save a lot of administrative overhead by having fewer states, maybe 20 or 30 or 40 instead of 50. According to TFA, the reason they stuck with 50 is so they don't have to change the Constitution (namely the part about the Electoral College), but I think that's ridiculous; the Constitution is outdated, especially the Electoral College bit, and needs to be revised extensively. Personally, I think we should dump the whole President thing and switch to a Westminster Parliamentary system like the UK, Canada, Australia, and lots of other countries have. The President has way too much power, and we saw the problems with that in WWII in Germany, and the people focus too much on choosing the President and totally ignore all the other choices they need to make on the ballot, and we end up with a President at odds with the Congress and no progress made.

Finally, I think this new 50 states proposal is pretty bad, as it seems to totally ignore local culture, focusing instead only on population and watersheds. The only thing they got right was starting with metro areas, but the 38 States proposal from the 70s did that too, and focused on organizing states based on local cultures, so as to eliminate infighting, rather than slapping together different groups of people just to make the numbers work out, which will surely only result in infighting in the new states as these groups' cultures clash.

I've always loved these thought experiments, carving up the world into new and improved political alignments. This stemmed from encountering C. Etzel Pearcy's proposed 38 State map published in the 1975 People's Almanac; his notions of a better functioning nation arising from a more equitable distribution of state alignments really had an impact on me, growing up as I did on the mostly barren east side of Oregon, and listening to my elders constantly complaining about getting shafted via taxes by the moneygrubbers in Portland/Salem/Eugene. The Almanac also featured another new map of the US, with 22 states I think; can't find any info about it at the moment though.

Also an interesting read was Joel Garreau's book The Nine Nations of North America, which was more about the cultural mass regions that make up the continent.

Grew up in Eastern Wa where the same clap trap bs stories abou being shafted by state funds reside to this day. My favorite is the present whining about not getting allocated road funds while lobbying the state to gut business taxes and eliminate individual taxes. Complete moronville.

I've always loved these thought experiments, carving up the world into new and improved political alignments. This stemmed from encountering C. Etzel Pearcy's proposed 38 State map published in the 1975 People's Almanac; his notions of a better functioning nation arising from a more equitable distribution of state alignments really had an impact on me, growing up as I did on the mostly barren east side of Oregon, and listening to my elders constantly complaining about getting shafted via taxes by the moneygrubbers in Portland/Salem/Eugene. The Almanac also featured another new map of the US, with 22 states I think; can't find any info about it at the moment though.

Also an interesting read was Joel Garreau's book The Nine Nations of North America, which was more about the cultural mass regions that make up the continent.

What's interesting is I actually used to live in Virginia, and was even born in Fairfax County, so I'm a little familiar with it. VA has a LOT more counties than AZ, probably close to 100 IIRC (I also used to live in TN, and remember there were 95 counties there). Things are very different that way from the west coast states like AZ and CA, where counties tend to be huge. There's only 14 of them in AZ, and many of those are bigger than many east coast states in land area, though are frequently unpopulated and mostly open desert.

So one problem I see is that breaking Fairfax Co. up would create even more counties in VA, though it's probably still better overall. Maybe the least populated counties should be merged with neighboring counties to make up for this (subject to approval by referendum of course). There's some counties in central VA that have zero or maybe one stoplight in the entire county. A county that small should probably be merged with another county, as it obviously doesn't have the revenue base to really exist on its own effectively and efficiently. If they can't even afford a friggin' stop light, how do they afford to have a courthouse or jail or run their government?

I would like to see a redrawing of State lines however, something like what was proposed with the 38 States. Fewer states would be more efficient than 50 states, and redrawing them this way would make their populations more equal too so you don't have giant states like NY and CA dominating the elections, plus make government in those areas more responsive by trimming it down (people in Napa Valley shouldn't have to fight with people in San Diego over things; the fact that they're in the same state is entirely a historical accident). Of course, the 38 States proposal needs some modification because things have changed significantly since 1975, with a lot of population moving south and a lot of immigration into the southwest, but the idea is sound and the fact that many state lines (particularly these out here in the West) were drawn for bad reasons, with zero regard for local culture, hasn't changed. All the lines out here are straight lines along an arbitrary parallel, after all.

Not really; I'll explain.

1) These days, the States have very little power at all. They don't even have much control over their own funding, as they get most of it from the Federal government, which gets it from federal income taxes, borrowing from China, etc. The Federal government constantly interferes in State affairs with abuse of the commerce clause of the constitution. This isn't new, it's been going on since the Civil War; in fact, our founding fathers argued over it, and divided into two camps, the Federalists and the anti-Federalists. And if you remember before that, they even tried a Confederation before the Constitution, but that didn't work out which is why the Constitution was devised. To my understanding, the basic problems with the Articles of Confederation were that they couldn't stay united with the states having more power, and they desperately wanted to stay united because the British were still threatening to come back and take over (which they tried in 1812).

In my opinion, the climate that made it necessary to have unity back around 1800 (British aggression, etc.) are no longer present, plus the population of all the states is much larger than it was before, so unity is simply no longer necessary. Unlike 1790, the USA in 2011 is one of the largest countries in the world, both in land area (#3 or #4) and in population (#3), and has probably the largest economy. It doesn't need to stay united to survive or weather external threats.

2) Now, the problem with simply disbanding the union and letting all 50 states go their own way is that the states really are too small on their own, IMO. Plus, they aren't really divided along any real boundaries, only arbitrary ones. In other countries, boundaries are frequently drawn along ethnic lines, so a single country comprises a group of people that largely think alike and have a similar culture. That's not the case here; there's lots of states where if you put people to a vote, they'd probably be happy to split the state in half. Much of Illinois would be happier without Chicago dominating their politics and forcing their decisions on the rest of them. Same goes for New York and NYC. Check out this link for a plan some guy in the 1970s came up with to redraw the state boundaries along more sensible lines. Of course, things have changed in the last 40 years, but overall it's a pretty good idea I think, grouping together more like-minded people. As someone whew grew up in east Tennessee, this map makes total sense because we had nothing in common with the people of Memphis, and this plan splits off the western part of the state and combines it with northern MS and part of AK, which makes more sense to me. It also combines upper east TN with western VA, most of WV, and eastern KY, which makes total sense as all those regions are culturally similar. The end effect is 1) fewer total states, which is more efficient governmentally, and 2) eliminating the problem where metro areas span states, which is always a big problem--just ask the Oregon and Washington governments, where a lot of people live in southern WA where there's no income taxes, than drive to work in OR and shop there because there's no sales taxes. As the website author points out, "The 'straddling' of State lines causes economic and political problems. Who should pay for a rapid transit system in St. Louis? Only those citizens within the boundaries of Missouri, or all residents of St. Louis's metropolitan area, including those who reach over into the State of Illinois?" This plan puts metro areas squarely within state boundaries to eliminate these problems.

38 individual states organized this way, all on their own, would be better than the 50 we currently have, but I think they're still too small, and would either need some kind of economic confederation like the EU, or perhaps they could group themselves into a handful (5-10) of larger, regional countries for better efficiency. For instance, going with the 38 states

You wouldn't be able to keep your pistol license if you moved across the border? That sucks. Looking at a map, it looks like you're only about 10 miles from PA, so living in PA and commuting would be easy, and it's not like you'd be leaving the area (only 10 miles away isn't a different area).

This is a prime example of why I advocate redrawing the state borders, and following the plan for the 38 States. Upstate NY (which in reality is most of NY) should be separate from NYC, which should be combined instead with parts of CT and NJ (namely the beautiful and picturesque Newark). According to the 38 States plan, your home would become part of the new "Mohawk" state, along with your neighbors across the border in PA. Most likely, the gun laws there would be relaxed, the taxes lowered, and the politics more to your liking. Your neighbors in the state of Hudson, however, would be stuck with high taxes (probably even higher, now that they don't have all the upstate NY voters rejecting their tax increases) and restrictive gun laws.

This article is filled with misinformation.

It's best to go right to the sources at the Copyright Office, ASCAP, BMI, RIAA, etc. The restaurant info, the who-owns-the-copyright info, etc., are wrong in implication if not in detail.

And if the legalese is too much, then go here or (when it's back up) here.

Dennis