STAND-ALONE CITIES? Various criticisms of my claim that cities need the rest of the state as a tax base to maintain their social services etc. I’m getting this from an old, and not online, City Paper cover on problems with D.C. home rule, so my memory may definitely be faulty here–it’s hard to imagine that most cities could pay for themselves (I’d believe NYC as an exception), but maybe I am overestimating the proportion of poor people and concentrated services in cities, or assuming that other cities are more like D.C. than they are. How much of their services etc. do most cities pay for based on city, not state, funds/tax revenues? Regardless, none of the commenters have argued that D.C., specifically, could stand alone as a state, which was my main point.