Hello to all my classmates here I discuss the definition of Federalism and why I believe Federalism has a lot of negative effects on Democracy. According to an article by the Cornell Law School website, Federalism is a system of government in which the same territory is controlled by two levels of government. Generally, the central government shares some power with smaller regional governments like states. In addition, I believe Federalism has many bad aspects such as capital punishment for which the death penalty can be avoided by a criminal who committed murder/murders depending on its jurisdiction. For example, according to the Death penalty information center, it states “The use of the federal death penalty in jurisdictions that have themselves opted not to have capital punishment—such as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and many states.” Therefore the reason why I choose this quote is that it explains how depending on the state’s jurisdiction, criminals can avoid the death penalty even if they’re found guilty of murder.

  Another example of a bad aspect of Federalism is it causes the federal government to tax other states much higher. According to NCSL calculations by the Bureau of the Census state “Caused by the 67% increase in taxes in the united states collected by the federal government.” The reason why I chose this quote is that it explains how taxes increased in some states because of Federalism In Addition the federal government has the power to tax us high.To summarize I believe that Federalism can have some advantages but In my opinion, the negative effects of federalism outweigh the positives.

Sources:

•https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/federal-death-penalty

•https://www.ncsl.org/documents/fiscal/statefederalandlocaltaxes.pdf