Basic civil rights should be identical everywhere within a nation, and in a federal system social insurance is most efficiently handled at the national level. But there remain many local institutions that can be provided as amenities for all local residents—public clinics, public libraries and museums, city and county parks, even public golf courses, basketball and tennis courts, and swimming pools. To ensure that what Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott call “public options” like these are adequately funded even in poor localities, they should be financed by national revenue-sharing schemes
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