Maybe we need to offer the cities their independence. It would be a place to start. We could bring back the idea of the city state, build walls or fences around them and declare them no longer a part of the United States. They would pay no taxes but at the same time get no subsidies. Citizens of Los Angeles would be treated as foreigners when they tried to travel to Burbank. In some parts of the nation you would have nothing but a bunch of city states squabbling with each other for survival. It would require some hard decisions and no nonsense negotiations. Should they be given the opportunity to vote to leave or told that the checks would stop and the chain link go up on the morrow?
Too drastic for you? We could take a page from the story of the American Indians. They exist today on “reservations”. Those reservations are semi-independent. Some federal law applies but the local sheriff can’t go on the reservation to enforce it. At one time if you saw a gambling casino in certain states you could assume it was standing on Indian land. It didn’t matter if the state law declared gambling illegal, the Indians were outside the United States.
Maybe we need to encourage business to relocate. Why are banks in a place like Los Angeles? Why are computer firms clustered around San Francisco. If they want to stay, well and good but if we removed all the government subsidies they might be glad to move to Iowa. We already see this happening on the state level as businesses flee California. It would lower the costs of their production if their employees could buy a house for $200,000 rather than $450,000.
I am sure there are other things that can be done but I would stipulate that it is time for cities to go.
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.