It would absolutely be more healthy. One of the big problems facing our country is that we have centralized so much power in the federal government (which wasn't meant to have it), that everything the federal government does becomes super contentious. The election of a president should be, in a better world, relatively boring because the real action is happening at the state or even local levels. But instead, the president has so much power to affect things that the elections become a desperate fight as people perceive it to be an existential threat if the wrong person gets elected.

It's been a long process to get that much power in the federal government - it goes back at least to FDR (so, near a hundred years now), and I've seen arguments that it goes all the way back to the Civil War. But I do firmly believe that the centralizing of power is destroying us. We got away with it when the nation was more united in its values and culture, and even then it could be contentious. But today vast swathes of the country share little to nothing in the way of values or culture. Of course we can't get along when such widely disparate groups of people are tied together and a single government body is controlling large portions of their lives.

> the real action is happening at the state or even local levels

A lot of it is. For example the California housing shortage? It’s all state and local. But the same single family zoning pattern played out in many places.

Fun to see people derive Federalism from first principles.

I mean, a United States of America would be better. But not the Bickering States of America that exists. Might be better to have them all go their own way.

Yes, this was the pre-Civil War intent. There's a vast archive of history here that elaborates in great detail about how the Founders expected the country to be run. All that changed in the late 19th century, and was codified in the early 20th.

> It would give the president less power to decide exactly how schools and universities should be run

He doesn’t have that power. But he’s taking it, and the parties who are supposed to be stopping him are uninterested in doing their job.

But it is the same with the department of education that DOGE is threatening to close down.

This may actually be a good thing (although they missed the chance to gain some confidence by doing it in a chaotic way).

I am certain that California could run their own DOE.

> “But I wonder if it wouldn't be more healthy for you if the states grew a bit more independent.”

Land borders and water rights. I don’t see it working out.

Water rights have been regulated across borders forever. And same thing with land borders. EU has it, and people don't move as much as you expect.