34 NEW STATES: Why Every Major U.S. City Should Be Its Own State, But Never Will Be

No it should be a 1:1 ratio for a state and major city not Texas having 3 or Wyoming having 0

I'm in favor of anything that strips power from the rural south.

no unless they both had same electoral votes and every state had a city , no one wants cal or nyc controlling the usa

I live in a city but would not want to be governed under state rule by the extreme far left, who would likely disband all police forces, allow tents everywhere, and never prosecute crime. There would be mass exodus from cities.

Like the German states of Bremen, Hamburg, and Berlin...

So instead you want the people outside the city to be held hostage by the city dwellers? Gtfoh

& New Orleans ??

DC is by almost all definitions a U.S. territory.

IMO, I think the US should adopt a 3-tier federal system. Have the cities and other localities have as much autonomy as the states. This system is practiced in Brazil and Mexico.

loved the video. The same movement as "Greater Idaho" but from the polar oposite side. Mostly the powerfull citys due not feel persucuted by the rural counties and so have no movement to break away. Would love to see a video about what would happen, good & bad, if rural counties that feel they have no representaion could vote to join a more rural adjoining state and the law was such that they did not need the vote of their states legislatures or of the federal goverment. I think the changes would be fasinating and very different for differnent areas of the country.

that's pretty left tarded.

When Alaska has 733k residents and Wyoming has 578K residents, yet they have the same amount of electoral votes, 3, its safe to say the entire EC is just federal gerrymandering.

It feels wrong that Riverside CA would get a whole state, but Jackonsville FL wouldn't- the Duval county region alone has 1 million, and if you counted outlying areas in St. Johns, Nassau, and Clay counties it should easily hit the threshold. It's very much so the central driver of economic activity in Northeast Florida.

Each state gets an EC per senator, and then the rest is based on population. So each state always has at least 3

I think that if any state borders change soon, it’s gonna be the greater Idaho idea

Poor Salt Lake City doesn’t get to be own state, or even considered a major city ;)

Many rural people want nothing to do with the mega cities. Examples: eastern Oregon counties wishing to joining Idaho. Most of Illinois leaving Chicago metro. Redrawing state boundaries around cities accomplishes little if the rural is still tied to those city problems & values. * I like your idea. But you need to tweak it a little.

We can hope

I'd say it's less the cities being held hostage by the rest and more the opposite way...

Just as a practical matter I don’t image having 168 senators would help reaching decisions

They do this in every other country on the planet

I'm a republican from Seattle, and then moved to a rural county in Washington, and then to another state. I think the states are held hostage by their major cities. That's definitely the case for 34 of the 39 counties in Washington. I'm sure Oregonians outside of Pirtland would day the same thing.

I'm glad you recognized and discouraged the social divide in our population, even if it did so with an oversimplification of conservative views.

Why screw up this govt more than it already is!

Dividing LA from the Inland Empire is so dumb, it's a continuous urban area. Count it as one metro area

This would be my wet dream, thanks for your balanced take on it!

Though one change I think should be made to accommodate this would be for the US Congress to add a third legislative house, one to represent all the city-states separately.

As an Illinois native there is nothing I would love more than to have Chicago separated from the rest of us.

Ridiculous. Cities pay the bills for areas outside metro areas.

If any of you are under the age of 40, please read more and stop watching dumb things like this. If you are over the age of 40, you should be ashamed, and read more, and stop watching dumb things like this.

It would make more sense for NYC to become a state and each borough becomes an independent city with its own mayor.

Democrats vs Republicans as your map shows

What is Washington DC? I would never agree that kind of structure.

Nah bro. You got to do all of Northeast Ohio bro

If any states ever are added it will almost certainly be Missouri Compromise style between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans would demand something like the secession of Downstate Illinois or Eastern Oregon becoming its own state. Neither party is going to concede two senate seats to the other without balancing it out for themselves.

I detect at least a marginal bias in favor of cities, and yet you raised a fantastic point (in passing) against cities: historically, they were reliant on the resources of the countryside and woods for their growth and prosperity. This really hasn't changed at all, save for a very heavy 'curtain' that keeps us blind to it. Heres the thing, the left (primarily residents of cities) acknowledge that petroleum has driven the development of our country. This is often a maligned finding for them. They want solar and wind farms to create energy. They want local food instead of heavily transported international produce. Here's the big 'BUT': how could they do any of their dream projects without the cooperation of the countryside they talk so much crap about?! There just isn't enough land on their periphery to drive them forward sustainably. The country is where timber, steel, cotton, food, livestock, wind and solar farms, and so much more come from. Cities are often where these raw resources go to get processed, which rural residents benefit from. I think that mutual respect and compromise are values worth a reset in America because none of our lifestyles work without each other.

With that said, if it all collapses tomorrow, my money is on the countryside to survive.

I would argue puerto rico should learn english first

This would make a lot of sense if you wanted the U.S. to be a one party system run by Democrats. All our major US cities are solidly Democrat run and have been for decades (Maybe Salt Lake City is an exception. Even Dallas, Ft Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin are all solidly Democrat and why Texas is effectively purple. Our political divide is realistically urban rural. Creating a nation that is dominated by urban populations would make the U.S. a one party system.

why add another senator, divide the two. make one for the city state and the other for rest of state

My policy professor this quarter at UW told us that back when he was in our master's program, there would be at least one paper every year in each section about legalizing weed and the professors would make fun of the students openly, saying it could never happen. He graduated five years before recreational became the law.

Never say never, especially not in policy spaces.

I like this idea.

I like where the video ended. "We will all have to learn to work together within our current borders." Or how about, what if we learn to NOT work together? Eh? Eh?

Fight beaver Geography you won’t

DC was setup to be a neutral ground, a federal ground. That space needs to shrink and the rest of its space be absorbed back into the state it once was.

This is a surprisingly good idea

Looks like you have Placer County as a separate state in California. They are more conservative so they most likely would not separate from the rest of rural California. I would LOVE if SF and LA became their own states. A lot of Sacramento County is pretty conservative too, except for the actual city of Sacramento itself. I grew up in rural California farmland. Farmers are becoming an endangered species. Big city people cast votes that affect the farming communities without having an actual understanding of the needs of farming. We are seeing water supplies dwindling and then eventually see food supplies dwindle - which is actually happening now! Interesting video to say the least. Eastern Oregon is trying to become part of Idaho. Northern California wants to become the State of Jefferson to separate themselves from the liberals in SF and LA.

If the democrats every became overwhelmingly powerful, their party would split almost immediately between Socialists and Neo Liberals. As a socialist who hates the democratic party, and votes 3rd party, I know many amongst my fellow socialist friends who only vote democrat out of fear of republicans even though they know the democratic party is disgusting and ruthlessly capitalistic just like the Republicans.

Someone on the right in this comment section should explain what they think would happen with the Republicans if they dominated the nation as well, would their party split?

This is bogus... cities hold states hostage. In 1964 the Supreme Court forced states to delegate state senators based on population, not county. Which means states, like NY, have more delegates/representatives AND Senators from highly populated areas, instead of county.

Before I watched this video, I immediately thought, You need to explain the Electoral College and how it works to make viewers understand your point of view.

After I watched this video, you summarized how the Electoral College works, but then you don't properly explain the ramifications of states being dictated to by city-states. All of the states would secede from that scenario and then require the city states to declare war .... oh wait. I see what you did. You're describing how the Cyberpunk 2077 USA works.