Somehow an edit went awry. Thanks for noticing. Fixed.
People are not tied to a location. They leave.
The overhead, however, is considerable. People have jobs and houses. They have spouses with jobs. They have kids in school. They don't just pack up and relocate because water is two cents cheaper elsewhere.
Until Obamacare came in to decimate our advanced medical system, US was the leader in medical research
It also had the by far most expensive medical system in the world. Routine treatments that my insurance pays 50 bucks for over here are ten times as expensive in the US.
even though you probably have a whole argument laid out why it wont
No, I'll just wait a few years and then remember this argument and one of us will be laughing. Nothing beats an argument like the real world does.
Hope you realize that you are making my argument for the diversity of local governments empowered to pick their own paths.
Not at all. Some of the most fragmented countries are also some of the most corrupt ones. Others aren't. The relation isn't that simple. Scandinavia, for example, is very high in every quality of living index even though you americans call them socialists.
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.